The first game in this series is Ambrosia Software’s little known space combat game; Escape Velocity Nova.

Read the full article after the jump.

I first came across the Escape Velocity series back in my pre-windows days (both of my parents were graphic designers, and both used Apple systems) on a small demo disk I found somewhere, and was instantly hooked. Since those days, the series spawned it’s first sequel (Escape Velocity: Override) and more recently, a third game; Escape Velocity: Nova, which was also the first of the three to be released on Windows (with the original two games now being available through plugins for Nova).

Despite being predominantly an action game, EV:N also boasts a lot of sandbox style exploration and freedom; with a massive universe for the player to explore right from the start of the game (though I wouldn’t recommend attempting it in the starting ship… its a little underpowered and fragile). EV:N is one of the few games where you actually get a lot of freedom (as opposed to marketers telling you the game has a lot freedom) in how you play it; you can immediately join the first military organization you see and serve your nation, or make an honest living hauling freight and trade goods, or even live life on the edge as a Han Solo-style pirate, swooping and stealing cargo from trade ships while avoiding the authorities.

In fact, the game boasts its own, constantly changing, internal economy; each populated planet has numerous goods to trade and a lot of money can be made buying goods where they’re cheap, and selling them we’re they’re valuable. Also, by paying attention to the news, astute players can find planets where major events (such as natural disasters) drive up the price of certain goods, with huge amounts of money to be made.

No matter which role you choose however, combat is likely to ensure at some point and again, theres a lot of freedom to how you deal with enemy attacks; ranging from taking them head-on if you’re in a heavily armed warship, to hiring armed escorts to guard your freighter or, as a last resort, bribing the attacker to spare your life, among many other possibilities. Combat itself is relatively straightforward to manage; ships have both a shield rating (which recharges over time) and armour rating (which must be repaired at ports), and once armour is reduced to zero, the ship is destroyed (though the pilot can escape if an escape pod is purchased).

Offensively, ships can have a mix of standard weaponry which had a limited range, and special weapons which include a range of seeking missiles/torpedoes as well as powerful laser weapons or even  your own attack craft. Again, the sheer amount and variety in upgrades is staggering, and no two ships are the same.

In addition to tall of this, Escape Velocity: Nova boasts depth beyond most major games; with 6 unique major factions (each with their own deep and unique though mutually exclusive storylines) and numerous smaller factions and sidequests (theres around 700 unique missions in all), as well as countless unique ships (as well as numerous models of each ship) to purchase as well as hundreds of upgrades to add your ship of choice. All these alone allow for huge amounts of replayability, but theres also a massive mod support base with hundreds of mods ranging from small additions (such as the ability to repaint your ship) to huge total conversions (such as recreating the Star Trek universe) avaiable to increase the game’s longevity.

All in this one little shareware package where you can try it for free for 30 days… whats not to lose?

Do yourself a favour and go check it out now.

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