As little kids, a lot of us wanted to be astronauts and discover new worlds... now is your chance.
In this game you�re the director of either American or Russian Space program. You start with little funds, no technology and a few astronauts. Your goal is to be the first nation to land on the moon. But it�s not easy; failures happen, politicians are impatient (just like astronauts) and you�re responsible for everything.
The game's system is rather easy to understand. You invest money into rockets, space modules and EVA suits. Also, your task is to plan missions, but it�s not as easy as you might think. Should you please Kennedy by sending the first probe to Saturn, or rather invest into safety precautions on Apollo? Will I have time to work on Atlas rocket some more, or should I already launch it so Russians won�t be first in space? These are daily worries the director (you) must control.
Atmosphere in the game is very good. When missions are starting, you can see how it progresses step by step - from countdown to landing. In every stage you will see the progress in small graphs below the video display. If you are lucky, everything goes all right, but sometimes you will have a partial failure which usually means the mission will not be a disaster. And when one thing goes wrong, you can expect further trouble such as injured astronauts etc. On rare occasions, a mission with a few minor problems can be completed successfully, but most of the time the outcome is a catastrophic failiure resulting in death of the whole crew. While a mission is in progress, you can hear operators and astronauts talking which really helps in creation of the overall atmosphere.
Although being quite challenging, this game is definitely worth a try since its very entertaining.
TIPs:
Astronauts are very impatient and demand to fly all the time, they live for it! So if you forget about one crew-member, the other members will become frustrated and they will quit after some time.
Sometimes you have to pay for maintaining the same safety level (if you won�t pay it will be lowered for this mission). If it�s just for one mission then you will encounter partial failiure, but mission should still go on as expected.