their wingmen of enemies coming up directly behind them. There are those who expressed minor disappointments with the AI tending to collide too often with other objects. While the dynamic mission objectives were celebrated for coming up with twists and turns to spice up the story, there were a few who found these "in-game red herrings" overused instead. Sharky Extreme praised FreeSpace 2 for having the enormous capital ships, as this burst the "trapped in a bubble" trend in Wing Commander- and X-Wing- type games. Instead of the action simply coming to the player, it flows all around, and the player is the one who has to go and seek it. The scenes of these giant ships duking it out, with many gnat-like fighters swarming around in their little dances of death, have led reviewers to feel a sense of epicness, comparable to reliving battles in science fiction series like Babylon 5 and Star Wars. Similarly, PC Gamer praised the scaling of ships and battles and said that they "[came] as close to creating the feeling of a World War II naval battle in space as any game has ever come. That's what fighter combat, in space or on Earth, should be all about". Opinions were generally favorable towards FreeSpace 2s multiplayer implementation. SquadWar received favorable responses from the reviewers who were impressed by its persistent nature and statistics tracking. While the required registration with PXO was considered a troublesome process by a few, the gameplay itself was a smooth experience with no lag at all. Other reviewers' experiences with lag were different. Reynolds of Combatsim.com said Internet gaming was laggy with ships jumping places, but LAN gaming was smooth sailing. GameSpy's reviewer said lag became more apparent on a dial-up connection during a multiplayer mission with four or more players. FiringSquad's reviewer's experience was similar but he said the lag was not enough to hinder his enjoyment of the multiplayer action. Blake Fischer reviewed the PC version of the game for Next Generation, rating it five stars out of five, and said that "no self-respecting space-combat junkie should live without it". GameSpot, in electing FreeSpace 2 as one of the "Greatest Games of All Time", pointed out that while most of the game's features could be found in its predecessor or peers, its "sheer quality of presentation and gameplay" was the key reason for their choice. Computer and Video