This is quite simply a brilliant game and one of, if not the best, space combat simulations ever made. A cool story coupled with great gameplay and awesome amounts of fun.
The ships handle pretty damn well, obviously not Newtonian but more in the vein of the classic X-Wing/TIE Fighter, Wing Commander vein yet feels somehow more appropriate. The scale of battles can be quite rather huge with giant capital ships duking it out and you in a smaller fighter or bomber in the midst of some pretty epic battles and this really immerses you in the game and it's universe.
It has all the classic tenets of the genre, a lot of targeting controls, power management, weapon grouping controls, communications and the like, and a fair few hefty buttons. It did take me a few trial and error runs to find the perfect setup up my ancient, but still great, Saitek X35/36 Throttle and Stick but once I got that nailed down I had everything at my finger tips and rarely needed the keyboard, which is always nice.
The game itself can be pretty damn tough and I had to retry some of the missions a fair few times before I nailed them. Tough but fair, makes a change from all the damn easy games of today.
As others have no doubt mentioned there's still large modding scene for this game. The Source Code Project makes all of this possible and then the Upgrade Project which improves the visual quality a lot amongst other things, and dozens of other mods including full conversions and massive new campaign arcs.
In conclusion, if you're a fan of the genre and do not own this game then get out there and bloody buy it!