A shining example of space-based shoot 'em up design or colonic irritation of the highest order? The Future Gamer team are mildly starstruck...
James Price

I hate it when I argue with myself. It's so... metaphysical. It also annoys my cat, who must believe I have a mild form of Tourette's Syndrome: "Would lovely kitty like some food, you parasitic little bastard?" My critical and behavioural pseudo-schizophrenia can make appraising software a fraught experience, too.

Cynical Me: Another shoot 'em up set in space? With cliché-ridden FMV sequences? Look! There's another one! And they're introducing female love interest! Ooh, and now they're spinning the old, tired, Messiah plot premise! Ugh! George Lucas will be spinning in his grave.
Nice Me: But George Lucas isn't dead...
Cynical Me: You saw The Phantom Menace, didn't you?
Nice Me: Okay. I'll concede that point. But Colony Wars: Red Sun really is a tidy little shoot 'em up, with plenty of nice ideas...
Cynical Me: No. It's a shoot 'em up with plenty of other people's ideas, and a few minor touches of its own.

Nice Me: But what about the front end? Rather than simply offering a linear sequence of missions, it allows you to choose from a few each time. You get credits for successfully completing those, which you can then spend on upgrading your ship.
Cynical Me: Pah! So you get to play a few missions in an order of your choice? Big deal! And the act of upgrading your ship is pretty arbitrary too. You just need to get a better one at certain times - rather than it being prescribed by the game code at pretty much the same juncture - and equip certain devices for specific missions. It's just pointless busywork. Gullible, anal, unimaginative saps like you get a hard-on for it every time. Remember that story we used to read when we were kids?
Nice Me: The emperor was wearing new clothes!
Cynical Me: I rest my case.