Out of nostalgia an curiosity, I decided to rent Vivendi Universal's BATTLESTAR GALACTICA for original Xbox system. I had wondered which way they would've gone. Go classic with the late 70's / early 80's version or go modern with the more human-like cylons. Instead, and unfortunately, they didn't go either way. They went somewhere in between. In addition to that, there's two major issues I have with this game. The first issue is the game play. Right of the bat you're thrown into combat to defend the Battlestar with your fellow Viper pilots. Unlike most modern games, you're not given any missions that teach you the controls. Instead, they have a pause menu controls section labeled Flight Manual. Within that, there are about 5 categories, each with about 5 or 6 screens of controls. This is where it seems the game has an identity crisis. Given the amount of controls and energy management involved in flying the Viper, at a quick glance it seems they were going to a futuristic flight simulator. After about 5 minutes of battle with the cylons, it looks like they're going for a BG version of Rogue Squadron. Another part of the game-play that was annoying was the targeting. While going after a cylon, if you're in range of the ship you're chasing, a small circle will appear for you to target. For the inexperienced, this is so that you can shoot ahead of the ship, so your lasers hit the target. The problem is that there were many times where l saw it automatically send your lasers toward the target, if even you're not shooting at the circle. The best way to describe it was like an forced yet seemingly random auto-aim. If you don't want to use your lasers, your other choice are your missiles. The odd thing is that, with all the simulation like controls, your missiles are almost unlimited. Instead of having a finite number of physical missiles loaded into your ship, when ever you fire a missile it sucks power from your weapons energy, nearly at the same rate the lasers use up energy. The second issue are the missions. They are way too linear & there aren't enough save points. Each mission has pretty much three parts (rule of 3's). The problem is that you are forced to start at the beginning of the entire misison if you die during the 2nd or 3rd part. If this doesn't annoy you, the unbalanced or "rubber-band" AI will annoy the crap out of you. I believe it's the 2nd mission that you go up against a BaseStar (cylon base ship). During this mission you must defend the Battlestar Atlantis against the Basestar. The logical strategy would be to take out the BaseStar's guns while your fellow pilots take care of the cylon ships. The problem is that if you don't take out the fighters first, it won't let you progress thru the mission. Not only, if you try this, it seems as if all the cylons ignore your wing-men and go after you only. Every time I thought of a better or different way to complete the objective(s), you get punished by the AI. What started out as a journey of nostalgia, turned into the rental of annoyance. The graphics are on par with Xbox graphics and the cut scenes are okay, but the game-play really brings down the game.