Escape Velocity Nova is the 3rd in its series but the previous 2 are only for Mac so I know most of you aren’t going to be able to play them, but like Final Fantasy They doesn’t tie in too much at all. The game is an exploration/RPG/Adventure/PITA/Action/Dog Fight. It starts off with you buying your first shuttle and it explains about a war that is still going on, they also explain about the “Hyper Gate disaster,” Which was when a series of hyper gates were blown up (Go figure). Hyper gates are a cheap effective way to travel long distances with out having to waste a lot of time and fuel. After your hear the whole story bit you appear of above a random planet usually one or two systems away from Sol (The Solar System) When you land on the planet your started by you start up this irritating tutorial that takes money, fuel, and time. The Tutorial is optional as most things in the game are. Shortly after the Tutorial its basically free will. The most common thing I’ve done is for about 3 or 4 hours is earned one hell of a lot of money form the courier missions which can be done by anyone and are available on most planets. Eventually after popping into the bars, Ship yards, and Outfitters, your going to come a crossed a storyline mission, there are plenty of these and they can get meticulous and pretty difficult. The game is very diverse in ships, guns, people, and sides. The draw back to there being so much to do is when it comes to storyline missions you can loose where you are suppose to go and easily get sidetracked. Dangers and other things exist too like Pirates and things of that nature which are very very irritating when you’re in a weak ship. The plus side to Pirates is you can disable their ships and steel them and no real government gives a crap so you can make a cheap powerful fleet in a short amount of time.

The game play takes a while to get used to though it follows some of those propulsion rules I’m picky about like, You only need to leave your engines on until you reach terminal speed then u can turn them off. The controls for most ships are like the game Asteroids; Hell you can mine asteroids if you want. These controls make maneuvering really difficult and it makes evasive action nearly impossible. The controls are simple enough when it comes to attacking, they can get a little confusing if you have a fleet and need to give commands.

This game was worth the $50, I’m still exploring some of the story lines >.< it’s a very damned big game I have been playing it for a long ass time and I still haven’t uncovered the entire map yet.

I remember when this game was called "Space Trader" and was all in ASCII and ran on BBS systems.. hahah.. actually.. I like games like this. Since I'm quitting FFXI, maybe I'll have time for it..