Disappointment is not a strong enough word to describe how I really feel about this game's gameplay and controls. Maybe this just happens to be one of those games that I just can't seem to do well in, but in all honesty I blame Paradox and not my flying skills.

The first thing that I want to point out is the fact that Dark Horizon is a space flight game but unfortunately for us joysticks do not work. There is an option for them, but after about an hour and a half of trying to get either one of my two joysticks to work I gave up. While the flight stick itself works, for some reason you can not bind any controls to the joystick; they are limited to keyboard and mouse only.

While that in itself was a great disappointment to me I decided to play the game the way that Paradox intended: with mouse and keyboard. While the controls themselves are not too terrible, I have not been able to complete more then the first two missions. The first mission took me about 20 tries and caused me to waste around three hours. I was so infuriated by my waste of time and lack of fun in the game that I abandoned the 2nd mission after just one hour of failure. It did not seem to matter what I did but before I even knew what was attacking and hitting me I would end up dead. Much of the time my shields would get drained with no one hitting me; actually, with no one even around.

In this next paragraph I'm using the information from the game manual to share with you. I can not speak from personal experience because I have not been able to get far enough in the game to find out for myself if it is true or just a lie. One of the features that this game advertised is the resource factor. Apparently you can gather resources and you can assemble new equipment such as weapons or armor from the resources gathered. Ship customization seems to be another way that this game "distinguishes" itself from the competition and while I did experience a bit of this feature, you can't really tell the full potential from just two played missions. Another thing that is a bit disappointing is how your wingman and the rest of your squad responds to your commands. Either the AI is there just for looks or your fellow squad members are so terrible at flying to the point that if you want to destroy an enemy ship you have to charge in and do it yourself. I play over 100 games a year and for the most part I do fairly well in all of them. If this just happens to be something that I have no talent for I completely apologize.