Okay, this is slightly complicated. Space Rangers and Space Rangers II are both games for Windows PCs. They’ve both recently been released on one disc under the name Space Rangers and so some people are reviewing Space Rangers II – which is, obviously, the game of choice to play – as Space Rangers. But I’ll be calling it Space Rangers II in a desperate effort to try and minimise confusion.

Basically, it’s Elite meets, oh, something else. God knows. There’s an excellent review up at Eurogamer, which is the reason I bought it in the first place.

Anyway, I just installed it – it’s got Starforce copy protection, be warned – and started a game. I was pottering around trying to find my way around the interface and doing the training missions, when someone said we had a duty to kill another ship hanging around. Not being one to shirk my duty, I joined the fight. Long story short, all my shots seemed to leave my ship at a 45 degree angle and miss the baddie ship completely, but all his shots hit me. He offered to let me live if I gave him money, I cut the connection to his ship. Just like Captain Sisko would have done.

So he killed me.

Dead.

Before I’d even got through the tutorial.

And I’d been feeling so clever about buying some machinery on Venus when I dropped off the medicine I was told to take there.

Ah.

I’d not saved, either. So, well, I’ll try that again sometime, eh?