n my history of playing video games, I’ve had the opportunity to do some pretty sweet things with a starfighter, from blasting through a hail of pixellated asteroids to being Darth Vader’s wingman. Sadly, nothing I did in Yager came close to matching the glee I felt in any of these moments. This isn’t to say that it is a bad game – it is just unremarkable. It fails to build on any of the foundations laid by the titles that came before it, and hits that "totally mediocre" target right on the nose.

By modern standards, Magnus Tide’s ride, the Sagittarius, is a Fisher Price "My First Spaceship." It has two modes, and each is about as difficult to understand as a spoon. In hover mode, you either stand still or move slowly. In flight mode, you move at a constant, slightly faster speed. Unfortunately, any operation of the ship beyond making it move forward gets to be frustrating due to sluggish controls and sub-par targeting. When you finally do get the hang of it, all you end up using your ship for is laborious dogfights and aggravating protect missions.

Not everything about the title is so familiar, though. The ships look surprisingly good, and there are some interesting ways to use the hover vs. flight dynamic. Sometimes you need to remain stationary to use your sniper cannon (sniper cannon…I like the sound of that), while other times you need to weave back and forth at top speed to avoid homing missiles. Still, when my time with Yager was done, rather than think about all of the sinister space pirates I had obliterated, I just wanted to go play some TIE Fighter.