Being a fan of combat space sims, I'm a little biased but feel Dark Horizon is a pretty good game. The graphics are top notch. The storyline, while a little confusing, is pretty interesting. First the game's engine. It has plenty of problems. It runs kind of slow on my crappy computer, but it's hard to attribute that to the game or my computer. Next, it's difficult to change your keys. I use a Logitech Freedom 2.4 Cordless joystick and had to manually edit some configuration files to get it to work, and I still could not remap ship roll to joystick twist, as well as strafing to the joystick's POV; for those, I had to use xpadder (a gamepad/joystick to keyboard mapping program). Next, regarding the game's engine/programming, I've had some weird save game issues but overcame them. For some reason, the last saved game is wrong (load the one before it). Be careful when choosing your ship loadout, because it seems you can't go back unless you replay the mission before it! The game's difficulty is next. It's hard. Be prepared to replay a mission multiple times! But that doesn't mean it isn't fun; it's quite satisfying to get through a mission. I found the most effective, yet tedious, method of completing a mission is to attack when you're not targeted and immediately run and dodge, while cooling down to "invisibility" mode, when you get targeted. The combat (which is basically all the game is), is quite fun and exhilarating. DH has an interesting mechanic, "Temperature", where you can literally heat or cool your ship which provides faster rate-of-fire or radar invisibility, respectively. Those come at the cost of shields or speed and ROF, again, respectively. As mentioned, you can customize your ship's loadout. I have no idea if there are resources or anything so I basically have been choosing the best stuff and going with that. All in all, I gave it 4/5. It has some issues but they've all been overcome. I wouldn't recommend this game to a non-space-sim fan.

Bought the game as part of a package deal. I must say I'm glad it was only 3$, granted I would have rather spent it on gas at this point. The game is unplayable. It will not go past the Hangar without crashing my vid drivers (8800 GTS).

This is basically Tarr chronicles 2. It's multi-chapter mission based space combat. Same confusing "upgrade" system with 3 disassembles per chapter. Controls are confusing at times (but you can change the keys at least) and all enemy ships try to ram you (bad AI). The learning curve is steep as not much of anything is explained.