I'm a Browncoat. If you don't know what that is, go and buy the Firefly series and Serenity movie on DVD. Now that that is out of the way, Starport: Galactic Empires feels like the closest game I'll ever find to being a recreation of that beloved franchise. Hunt bounties, transport and sale goods, give passengers a lift, battle other players - it is all up in the air in this MMO strategy game set in space.

THE STORY SO FAR
There isn't a story per say, other than the ones given to you as missions, such as a patron at a bar needing a ride to another space station or someone who needs to be escorted through dangerous space.

Instead, the game plays out like a constantly changing universe, and you get to choose how you want the story to unfold. Do you want to be a dastardly pirate? A simple deliveryman? An intergalactic taxi driver? A bounty hunter? A federation President? An evil dictator? The warden of a series of prison colonies? Though you don't pick these jobs at the beginning like in other MMORPGs, in this MMO strategy game they are rather defined by how you choose to play. Shoot innocent players and you'll go bad, letting you to be able to start stealing and become a pirate. Hunt the pirates and you're a bounty hunter. Set up a civilization on a planet and how you choose to run them affects what kind of leader you are to them. The ways in which you play was really engaging, and I soon found myself being a deliveryman/taxi driver, reminiscent of my favorite Captain Mal.

GAMEPLAY
Once you start the game, everyone starts off with the same pathetic little ship, but what you choose to do is up to you. The game will present you with some initial scenarios to get you accustomed to the game, such as giving you the task of setting up a spice trade route. You'll first go to a nearby system, buy from the station, and then you'll have to find another station port that will be willing to buy your spices. But you don't have to do this task mind you.

When you start in UN space, you can't get attacked or hurt by any other players. The UN space is like the training ground, because once you get out beyond sanctioned space, anything and everything will and can happen. Players can shoot you and destroy your ship; you can capture colonies for yourself and have them build for you; run into enemies you can battle for experience; or get shot by sophisticated defense forces.

You'll want to try and amass as much money as you can at the beginning, because this will help you buy bigger ships for more room to transport goods, or you'll start buying a battle ship to take on other players. There aren't an abundance of ships to choose from, but there is enough, one specialized in every field you could probably want.

The big thing about the game is building your own Galactic Empire (hence the subtitle). To build your galactic empire, you'll either need to first buy a colony to establish on a planet (there are several different types of planets suited for different constructions) or you can takeover a colony that someone has either abandoned or not guarded well. Once your colony is set, you can choose what kind of leader you want to be, tell your people what you want them to focus their attention on, and after a while they will even build experience points for you or cash. After your colony is established, you'll want to buy some defense mechanisms to either place on the planet or either around it, to defend off other players who may want to take it for themselves. Raiding colonies is quite fun, but what's not fun is early on, when you can be performing a simple taxi mission where you aren't harming anyone, you stumble upon a system where someone has set up mines around a planet or even worse a ton of lasers, and you get your butt zapped into nonexistence before you can even blink an eye.

As for controls, you can zoom around with the arrow keys and shoot with your keyboard as well, or you can do the preferred method (or at least I preferred it), which is using the mouse to autopilot your ship around by clicking. The game has a nice note taking system, which allows you to type personalized notes in regarding systems you come across, and you can place flags on the star map as well, to define such things as places where you have colonies, space stations that have certain goods, etc. It can be difficult to easily find where you want to go, because if someone tells you they need to go to "such and such" planetary system, all you have to go by is a number; you'll then have to search the star map, dragging your mouse over every system you come across, seeing what number that is, and then moving in whatever direction you need to go to either increase or decrease the number so you come closer to finding where you need.

There are many different servers for many different games, such as ones that last for certain time periods and whoever amounts the most during that time wins or even constant universes, like that of a MMORPG, where whatever happens happens and stays that way until the universe is reset or stays that way forever.

GRAPHICS
Here is where the game starts to suffer, because this thing is ugly, like road kill chilling for three days on a freeway and then ran over kind of ugly. The planets are muted and bland colors, the systems are mostly black with sliding stars like that in Star Trek, and the ships are flat and uninspired recreations that resemble things like a flower, and in the worst instance, the fatty Xbox controller.

SOUND
In space, apparently music doesn't exist. The game is pretty mute and dead for the most part, with only the sound of your ship firing and zooming around (and even then sometimes the sound skips and fades out).

IN CONCLUSION
It's sad that Starport: Galactic Empires is wrapped in such an ugly package, because the game can be quite relaxing and fun, especially if the idea of living out the virtual life as a galactic overlord is your cup of tea. The game won't appeal to everyone, as only a really niche market will ever discover it, but for what it is it isn't bad. Plus, it is free, so you can't really argue with that now can you?

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