Basically, the rear end of the ship points towards the mouse. Also the ship automatically shoots for you and bullets flies off from the rear end.
This means that you have to dodge the various obstacles while simultaneously shooting as well. This makes the game,I think, more interesting and difficult.
I have experimented with strafe and making the ship follow the directions of the mouse when mouse is clicked. It's definetly made the game easier to play but however the ship repeatedly glitch through the wall if I strafed too much.