Yesterday, the Roberts Space Industries website announced a closed Pre-Alpha release of one module of their upcoming and much-anticipated release Star Citizen. The release introduced the multiplayer function of the arena-combat game mode entitled Arena Commander. I was among 250,000 to be asked to take a ride, and boy, was I ever excited.

I was thrilled to be able to get a sneak peak at this release, I’ve been looking forward to it ever since I first heard about it last year. Chris Roberts, the brain behind the Wing Commander series has a thing for fighter jocks. I can relate. I’ve been playing EvE Online for about 8 years, and the one thing I always wished was that they gave you the option to pilot your ship with a joystick and actually dogfight. So when I heard the guy that made Wing Commander was making EvE Online with fighter jocks, joysticks, FPS components, and Oculus Rift functionality, my reaction was, in a word, positive…

The first thing that surprised me, once I got the patch downloaded and got the game running, was that how not-buggy it was. There are a few snags, as you can see, but for the most part, the game is highly playable.