The following 50 or so missions of X-Wing Alliance involve a series of sorties against the Empire, taking in prototype TIE fighters, trading, traitors (on both sides), a recreation of the Battle of Endor from the major motion picture Return of the Jedi, and occasionally returning to your family to help out with their own affairs.

While mixing these two storylines is a work of narrative genius, inexorably drawing you into a complex and exciting world, it's just a shame that you're not given a choice of missions. You're led through the game in a straight line to fit the story.

This isn't a game to be finished in a weekend. Even if you conquered the originals, Alliance is going to surprise you. It's tough. Reflecting this, you can skip up to two of the missions altogether.

The only real complaint we have about the game is that you rely heavily on wingmen, the problem being that they're totally unpredictable. For instance, one mission gave us terrible trouble, solely because our wingmen kept getting shot down. The moment they happened to survive against the Empire pilots, we breezed it. Most irksome.

But this is a practically insignificant niggle - whether you win or lose, each mission is 30 minutes of pure gaming joy and excitement. (And success is guaranteed to bring something between a warm glow and a whoop of delight.)

X-Wing Alliance is Star Wars on your computer.