And for something completely different, take a look at Muse Games' Guns of Icarus. You play the part of a privateer, inhabiting a steampunk future where airships travel the atmosphere, ferrying goods from place to place.

As an original, it works out nicely. What it lacks in scope it makes up for in its frantic style. You control a single pilot who's trying to deliver his cargo while fending off airborne attacks in the form of pirate airships. You're responsible not only for shooting down enemy fighters but also making repairs to your airship.

You'll start off in front of the tiller, navigating the skylanes. In your lower left, a radar that displays the movements of enemies as they wheel around and attack. In your lower right, a series of damage indicators for each of the destructible elements of your ship: left and right engines, which control your forward movement -- if your engines get destroyed, it's game over, as you'll never be able to deliver your cargo; cargo bay, which holds the goods you need to deliver -- if this goes to zero, you won't be able to deliver anything, so you lose; zeppelin, and rigging, both of which destroy the ship when they're destroyed.

To make repairs, you have to physically run to each particular area of the ship and click the mouse button when you draw near enough. A repair meter slowly fills up -- accompanied by animation of your character ratcheting things and sometimes smacking the machinery -- and when it's done, you're back to normal. However, while repairing your ship, you continue to take fire from the enemies, so you have to decide when to repair and when to fight.

Running your character around is accomplished by the WASD control scheme, and you'll use the mouse to look around. Unfortunately, you can't look straight up, which would have been helpful now and again when trying to make your way around the ship. It's not a terribly large craft, but your guy doesn't run too quickly, so it can be nerve-wracking to maneuver around. Especially when trying to make a jump to a platform and missing, necessitating having to run back around and up the ladders.

To fire at enemy aircraft, you'll approach one of your mounted guns, stationed both fore and aft, two to a side, and one at the front, and one at the back. To fire one, you need to run up to it and click the mouse button, which will put you into the targeting mode, where you'll line up your aiming reticle to lead the enemy aircraft a bit while you pepper them with shots. A few hits, and they're down for good. It is possible to run out of ammo, but it recharges in a few seconds -- of course, the aircraft are all wheeling around the sky at the same time, so it's not wise to wait for a recharge.

There are multiple paths to take on the map, and you can upgrade your weapons after each victory. Guns of Icarus is lively fun, and it's well worth the price of the game.