Never lacking in content, gameplay or even humor, Escape Velocity Nova deserves its place as a professionally-built and
One of Escape Velocity Nova's strengths is the sheer number of options available to players. Anyway you play it, you can come back a week later and play it in a completly different way. Do you want to plunder ships and have your name feared across known space? Do you want to be a wealthy trader whose patience has paid the bills and then some? Do you want to be a rebel and oppose the Federation? Do you wish to explore space and meet new people? All these options are open to the player, yet new players may be intimidated by the sheer number of options available to them but none will be the least bit disappointed by the path that they choose.
Escape Velocity Nova does an excellent job of immersing you in the world of the game. After only a few hours, you'll find yourself coveting some lavish new starship or outfit and trying to figure out how you're going to budget your money as if you were trying to justify purchasing a new car or television. Combat feels natural and never really devolves into a slugfest of standing toe-to-toe and blasting until you or your opponent run out of shields (unless you're dealing with two capitol ships). Players are free to develop tactics that work for them, and in this way the different ships available to pilot take on their own unique personality as each handles differently and has different attributes (ie. fighter, frigate, light freighter etc.).
If there is a downside to Escape Velocity Nova, it must be the rather primitive nature of its graphics and the sometimes maddening bugs in some specific missions. Once on one of the Rebel missions, i was stuck on a given leg of the mission when the game refused to let me advance in the given mission "string". Fortunatly, a patch is available from Ambrosia Software to rememedy some of these kinda of problems.
Graphically, Escape Velocity Nova isn't going to win any awards with its 16-bit sprite-based graphics, although careful attention has been paid to every aspect of the visual realizaiton of the Nova universe. Ships sport engine effects and running lights and some have special animations for special weapons. Sadly the game's 16-bit nature is hard-coded into the engine and none of the (many) plugins available for the game can change that technical shortfall.
Sound-wise, Escape Velocity Nova is incredible. From explosions, to shockwaves to the sound of starships accelerating into hyperspace, the game always manages to fully articulate exactly what is happening onscreen in the greatest traditions of science-fiction audio. You'll find yourself flinching when you hear the alert klaxon or comforted by the rolling waves of the still-screens for watery planets. All in all, the aural experience is very well done and never pulls you out of the universe, instead further deepening the already-impressive immersion of the gameplay.
Interestingly, the plugin archeticture of the game allows for relative ease of customizibility with a wealth of plugins available on the internet. From cheats to full-scale total conversions, if you somehow manage to run EV: Nova into the ground with gameplay content, hours more is waiting for you via user-created mods.
Although it does have some technical shortcomings, Escape Velocity Nova is an amazingly addictive game which is well worth the $25 shareware fee. Never lacking in content, gameplay or even humor, Escape Velocity Nova deserves its place as a professionally-built and incredibly fun shareware game.