Expect the unexpected. It's a little funny that in-between two big games I have to review for Games32, the huge MMO Aion and the new big RPG Risen, the most fun I had was while playing a strange little strategy game with a long name: Gratuitous Space Battles.

But GSB is a strange breed of strategy, as it shares some turn based elements and some real time elements... in a way. Confused? Let me explain. After selecting a desired mission, you can fully customize every ship design you have, and include/upgrade modules as you see fit. There is a maximum of slots of course, some weapons need more energy than others, if you outfit more energy generating modules you cannot equip as many weapons, and so on and so forth.

After you've completed what you think is the best ship design for that class, you can save the prototype and deploy it into battle. You can carefully arrange all the ships you have on the tactics deployment screen, up to a maximum resource limit.

Specific orders can be issued to each vessel, although these are usually attack or defense priorities based on sliders. There are also some pre-given orders to each ship type, so they can manage in battle even if you don't give them explicit orders. Several orders can be stacked together as well... for "enhanced" smartness.

Finally, when everything seems ready, double check that you've got everything right (don't forget the place where the battle takes place, as this could influence things), and push "Fight".

The battle then takes its own course as phasers, lasers and phase cannons discharge and torpedoes explode everywhere. The only available interactions during a battle are speeding up time by a certain factor or pausing the game. You cannot in any way alter the target of your ships or their movements.

Top left and right corners contain a statistic percentage of how much of your fleet and of your enemy's fleet respectively is still alive. On a rare stalemate, the fleet below 20% looses. I haven't experienced such a case yet however.

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One thing worth mentioning is that there isn't one battle similar to another no matter what the army placement is. There are obvious strategic advantages or disadvantages to certain army placement as projected, but don't expect to end a mission with the same score if you replay it. This can be used somewhat to your advantage if you are playing against an AI.

Of course, you won't get to play just against an AI, because the multiplayer mode sounds really exciting too. The "no battle interaction policy" opens up the availability to just send troop orders and positioning to your friend, and then simulate the battle this way.

A lot of veteran players claim many recent games just lost that great oldschool feeling at the expense of good looking visuals and such. But perhaps having less details allows your imagination to run wild, and maybe that and nostalgia to some degree made some past games this great.

And this is probably why thoughts of the greatest Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes like "Sacrifice of Angels" passed through my mind the second I've tried one of these battles. Or this may be why I quickly thought of one of the best TBS out there: Master of Orion. Who knows? Memory and imagination are strange things... Who knows...?

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Conclusion

I've only had the opportunity of testing a pre-release beta version of Cliff "Cliffski" Harris' Gratuitous Space Battles, but I can tell you I've had great fun with it. The game is developed for braniacs and lets your imagination thrive, even if it's a top-down, 2D strategy. Looking forward to check out multiplayer and the final version.