Eternal Silence

If You Have experienced FreeSpace 2, then you'll feel right at home in the airtight, bug-free and enjoyable world of Eternal Silence, one of the most complete modifications for Half-Life 2 of recent times. The goal in this online game is to take down the other side's corvettes (which are slightly bigger than your craft) as well as their capital ships: gigantic spacecraft that you have to board with a squad of fellow soldiers.

The game is broken into two separate chunks. You'll start each map on foot, jumping into your craft (be it a bomber, a fighter or a troop-carrying gunship) and flying into space and taking on or dodging other craft. There are distinct phases too, that require you to either take out the other team's corvettes, attack (and enter) their capital ship, or defend your own.

Once you're inside their capital ship, it's much like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, blowing up objectives and skirmishing against throngs of defenders, with a team of soldiers (to shoot things) and hackers (to break into things).

This game has some of the most engrossing space combat ever seen in mod form, as the ES team has tweaked both on-foot and in-craft controls to perfection, making them tight and hugely intuitive in a way that we didn't think mods could be. While we're able to give most free-to-play things amnesty from the sheen of a finished product, Eternal Silence is a quality product through and through, and only improves with each update.

For these last words, we're going to implore you to get on Eternal Silence and play, right now. It's sharply developed, beautifully designed and utterly excellent. Because we want everybody playing it we've put it on this month's disc. But it's being worked on all the time so keep checking its website for changes, and we'll have an interview with the developers in the coming months.