Review by: Dave VanDyk

While I have nothing but the greatest of love and respect for Gratuitous Space Battles (and everything its anti-DRM developer stands for), I have to deliver the unfortunate confession that I haven't played it all that much since my initial review. I had a good set of weeks blasting through the release build, but I soon got swept away with so many other releases that I simply lost track of the game.

Hence my joy in encountering The Order, the new expansion pack for the game. Suddenly, I've been given an excuse to not only check out some of the all-new content, but also catch up on the five gazillion patches that have been released since I last gave it a glance. And wow, I've sure been missing out - not only have some of the badly-needed interface improvements been put into effect, but the graphics have also been given a facelift.

Warhead smoke trails look better than ever, the explosions feel a bit beefed up, and missiles actually launch from on top of a ship's hull (where the launchers are visibly located) rather than underneath. Okay, it's still not perfect - I'd love to see a friendlier way for the differences in the various weapons to be presented rather than the current approach of dumping raw stats and a "trial and error" approach onto players - but still, it's nice to see that Positech has been paying attention.

As for the expansion pack itself, installing it will gift you with a pair of new missions, ten new ships to pimp your fleet out with, and four new weapons. The focus of the expansion is a new race called (naturally) "The Order" - a group of religious fanatics who feel the only way to appease their all-mighty god is to romp around the galaxy wiping out anybody who isn't listed in their "holy book". In order to carry out this divine task, they make use of some very unconventional ship designs which are literally errant clusters of platforms held together by tractor beams. To claim this makes for some odd-looking vessels would be an understatement, but I have to offer some applause for the unique visual style this race conveys.

They also carry some new tools of destruction - anti-fighter "limpet" mines (which will slow down those annoying swarms of enemy kamikaze pilots long enough to bring your big guns to bear) and radiation-based weaponry in the form of a direct-fire gun and a nuclear missile launcher. These weapons offer some particular use in that direct impacts on an enemy ship will inflict a constant amount of damage over time due to the radioactive nature of these weapons. Unfortunately, their effectiveness against shielded or armored targets is laughable at best, which means that other weapons are still needed to clear the way.