Evochron Renegades is a ship to ship space combat game, but the game includes much more than just dogfighting in it's deep game play. Everything in Evochron Renegades revolves around - of course, money and ways to get it. With money you can upgrade and customize your ship, buy new weapons and missiles, and more importantly, refuel and repair your ship. There are many ways to make money, such as mining resources from asteroids, combat, or completing "contracts." Contracts are odd jobs that are provided at any space station. The job might be to use a mining lance to clean solar panels, using a tow cable to deliver supplies to a damaged ship drifting in space, or even another mercenary who wants a race. In races, you fly head-to-head against another fighter to be the first to fly through all of the rings. Weapons are not allowed during the race, so there won't be any dirty tricks. Or, you can use a lance to mine asteroids and sell what you collect in the space station for a set price. Mining is a good way to make money, especially early in the game. Also, you can shoot down other ships for money. The other ships will drop whatever they were carrying, which you can then pick up and sell. Be careful though, because the ship you shoot down probably has friends who won't be too happy with you for killing their buddy for a small profit. The more ships you shoot down, the more ships will be hunting you down. There are ways to buy your enemies off, though.
But Evochron Renegades isn't your average dogfighting game. The game adds a unique realistic twist to arcade style space combat. First of all, Evochron Renegades decided to aknowledge that the laws of inertia actually exist after all. Your ship has a system called the IDS which automatically fires retro-rockets to control inertia and prevent drift. But the IDS can be turned off so that you can control drift yourself and use it to great advantage in combat.
And the Evochron Renegades world is huge. Every system has a jump gate in it that leads to another system, and it goes on for a very, very long time, with each system getting more and more dangerous. In every system there is a space station and usually a base on the planet that you can land in. Every space station has an active market with prices affected by supply, new contracts that you can complete, and a shipyard that allows you to upgrade and customize the parts and hull of your ship. For a price, of course.
Overall, Evochron Renegades really is an in-depth game with lots of features and objectives you can complete. The game never really ends, and there are PVP servers to fight against other people online, although I haven't really explored the online aspects of the game. But single player or online, Evochron Renegades is endless entertainment.
With so many big name games coming out in the year of 2007, it can sometimes be hard to appreciate smaller titles with more independent roots. However, Evochron Renegades is just the sort of revolutionary title that warr... Read Full Review
Really excellently constructed space sim, completely seamless and a great atmosphere. This game does a great job of building on classic space sims such as Elite and Wing Commander Privateer. There's tons to do and an ... Read Full Review
