The basic story line involves Earth and the Mars Colony falling out over representation on a Solar System wide government. Things come to a head when the Mars negotiation team is mysteriously wiped out in transit from the Moon to Mars. The resulting accusations lead to a state of war being declared between Earth and the colonies. In the single player campaign you have the option of playing Earth (which is less technologically advanced but enjoys a bigger fleet) or the Martian Colony (who have the more advanced ships and weapons). Although we don't want to give too much away some alien races make an appearance as well.

The game is played in a gorgeous 3d environment. In fact this is an understatement, the rendering of the star systems and backgrounds are just stunning. More so when you consider you have the ability to zoom the view in and out and rotate the axis. Planets look like the planets, with more detail being apparent as you get closer. Asteroid fields and space debris (yes we manage to litter space as well) abound and help to add character to the whole setting. Individual ships are artfully executed with reasonable engine and weapon effects. Battles are awesome to watch with ships suddenly zooming in from the foreground to shoot off into the distance.

The basis of game play in the campaign is a mixture of strategic world management and missions that allow more of the story to unfold. You earn money by mining resources from asteroids using huge mining rigs and by taxing the population on the worlds and moons that you control. By positioning heroes in command of different areas of your empire you can increase production and build rates depending on their specific qualities. You have to carefully balance production, population growth and research. Research includes both military and civilian technologies. There is also a lot of random events such as abandoned ships and rogue asteroids thrown in to spice up each mission.

As things hot up you need to start directing your resources to the production of new ships and these are formed immediately into squadrons. You can not control individual ships but rather you direct squadrons to various tasks around your empire. These can include guard and escort missions, removal of pesky meteors and assaults and patrols as required. When in combat the player can determine the target for the squadron (although the AI will engage nearby enemy squadrons if it's designated target is eliminated) and whether an aggressive stance or cautious stance is taken in the attack. When attacking capital ships you also have the option in targeting specific points on the ship such as weapon turrets or engines. Certain weapons are also better against certain classes of ships - you need to be careful about what you select to engage an enemy unit with.

So how does it play? Well on our demo machine the graphics and scrolling worked without a hitch and with the superb eye candy it was a joy just to look around the screen. In combat we discovered one of the problems in having such wonderful graphics. Trying to spot enemy units was nigh on impossible in the 3D environment. Ships were very difficult to spot in the distance and during combat it was difficult to identify friend from foe without pausing the game and moving the cursor over each ship to see who it belonged too.