As I stood at the New York Comic Con, covertly flexing my back muscles trying to get the kinks out of my butt cheeks after the ridiculous five-hour bus ride, I couldn’t help but feel that the guy pitching the game really was trying too hard to get me excited.

A game should speak for itself, and this one wasn’t really doing that — at first. But what the hell, I figured, I’ll give it the ol’ college try and see if grows on me.

This one didn't for quite some time.

Jumpgate Evolution has all the makings of a great game, if you like real-time space battles in which your spaceship tumbles out of brilliant starlight to fall like a valkyrie on the astral field of combat. And it had a host of behind-the-scenes features that made it great.

You create a character, chosen from three variable races, and pick the appropriate stats and portrait to match your style. Then, climbing behind the helm of your fighter, you select missions or quests that allow you to improve just about everything.

You can decide if your character wants to go on military missions and improve his progress in that field, or you can be an “independent contractor” going on smuggling runs or a miner getting goods and gear; that part’s pretty wide open.

NetDevil president and Jumpgate developer Scott Brown talks to Joe Urban (aka dain120475) as Joe gets a feel for gameplay.

As you play, you end up gaining experience for your ship, which allows you to unlock new ship upgrades, and completing missions earns you trophies and medals for your character to show off.

The real treat is that your ability to fly comes from your actual ability to handle the stick. You either pilot your ship well or you die! This gives a rookie with no experience points somewhat of a fighting chance against the big boys who have pimped out their rides, because maybe the kid’s actually got moves, so he might just make it after all.

Meanwhile, the graphics are really gorgeous, and the music also is symphonic — to remain classic and stylish in a way that appeals to all audiences. (Sadly, in this case, it seemed that everyone seemed a little bored with the music as opposed to just almost everyone.)

But graphics and music aside, getting 30 fighters together to stage a raid against an enemy capital ship is the kind of thing that every kid who played Wing Commander and the old X-Wing: Rouge Squadron really wanted to do. Suddenly you’re screaming into your headset that you’ve got bandits on your tail and you need someone to bail you out, and where the hell was Biggs anyway ...

NetDevil president and Jumpgate developer Scott Brown insisted lag time won’t be a problem and that the system has a really dedicated team to back it. Despite the fact that you get that same schpiel from every guy promoting a massively multiplayer online game, I believed him.

But here’s the thing: A cut of meat can be kosher; bris, that’s kosher for sure; the Hebrew National Hotdogs all over New York are even more kosher, but something about this game wasn’t kosher to me. I don’t know what it is, because it had all the makings of a great spacefighter game, so it should have really been a great hit with me, because I love that stuff, but something was missing.

After mulling it over, I guess what I was really looking for was a connection to the game, a bond. What makes this different than Galaga, for example? You fly around and blow up bad guys ... yay. But I saw no evidence of sweeping cinematic displays to tout my victories after destroying that impossibly huge and well-defended capital ship. I heard no desperate pleas through garbled subspace begging for assistance from me and my ragtag bunch of flyboys to bust up a series of enemy raids on peaceful merchants. I had no private communiqués from the ship’s XO selecting me and an elite team of hotshots for a special ops mission deep behind enemy lines. And (most tragically) I didn’t watch one of my fellow MMO players get loaded into the little coffin and launched into the void of space after a tragic death with a full 21-gun salute with laser rifles in the hands of space marines.

All I did was fly around and blow stuff up in very pretty backgrounds and land in very pretty space stations and examine very interesting upgrades for my ship. I liked that I could use any type of controller to fly the ship, from an archaic mechanical mouse to a complicated cordless joystick. I loved the fact that you can utilize real dogfighting moves and that they have little rewards and cookies for your successes (including a medal for the WORST PILOT EVER, an honorary medal that was bestowed on me during my 20 minutes of play-testing, thank you, thank you) and that you aren’t locked into one story but have choices to go in whatever direction you prefer for your character to develop.

So despite my concerns as I finished the interview, I left with high hopes. Most of the connection to the game I needed was something I believe can come after playing it for awhile — when you actually have time to get involved with your character. Hell, I didn’t even make a character; I just used the one they had for play-testing. How could I really be expected to be connected? So, as I hurried to purchase a $5 bottle of FIJI water from the food court, I nodded my head sagely and began to daydream about the game coming out so I could get a copy. I could see myself sitting at my desk, lights dimmed, a half-drunk bottle of Mountain Dew on the carpet beside me, and as other players saw my scrappy ship tumble through the stars, I could glibly say into the mic, “She may not look like much, but she gets .5 past light speed.”