Nice try, but needs more sass
The original Escape Velocity from Ambrosia Software was one of those truly great games you run across from time to time. Instead of being yet another remake of an overworked idea, it used a concept that had yet to been explored; in essence, creating a game with no point. Flying around in a little spacecraft with no preset enemies and doing as you pleased in a sort of Han Solo type style of living, was a gaming idea long overdue. In addition, its droll humor and wit were just as good as the actual gameplay itself.
Unfortunately, it's successor, Escape Velocity Override, suffers from the common belief that more of a good thing is better. EVO is, to put it simply, a lot bigger than the original EV. With roughly three times the ships and four times the races, EVO would seem to be a whole lot more diverse and better than its predecessor, but EVO is missing a lot of those things which made EV so popular.
The Basic Game
Escape Velocity and its successor 
EV Override are games of life. There is no way to win or finish them. Your character goes around the galaxy earning money, plodding through ordinary missions, and occasionally getting that special assignment that can pull him in big time. As you stop at spaceports, you can buy weapons, trade commodities, or head for the bar where all the cool people hang out. You can gamble away your savings (at odds considerably better than Vegas) and you can watch holovids informing you of the unimportant happenings in the universe around you. If you want, you can ally yourself with a specific race or species and do odd jobs for them, sometimes gaining useful weapons or ships in the process, or you can become a space pirate, stealing goods from others and enslaving their ships. When the game becomes so boring that you would kill to have something to do, there's always the option of taking over planets and facing their massive fleets of defense.
In several ways, EVO is a lot better than the original EV. What the folks at Ambrosia miss is that the original game wasn't just about running around and shooting whoever you saw. It was that sort of sarcastic view of the world, a way of looking at things as if you had a wookie by your side and a weirdly dressed man with an idiotic youth could appear at any moment. When you would enter a bar and look at the holovision, you could expect to see news like, "Scientists on Earth discover cure for common cold!" or something that made you smile since you realized things are still the same in the future. Here, the best humor the new game has to offer is, "Environmental News: Radical eco-group predicts galactic catastrophe will result from interstellar travel." Remind me again how that is funny?
The changes, from A-Z
The original game also added more of its dry wit to the naming of worlds. Zaphod Beeblebrox (from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) was a personal favorite, as was the idea of putting Stardock Alpha in Earth's orbit. In the new game, worlds are given standard alien names cranked out by the alien name generator, so Igrazda and Miranu are common planets. The new influx of strangely titled worlds makes it nearly impossible to remember any of them. Gone as well are all of those allusions to science fiction, such as the outlaw named Lucas (as in George Lucas), and the basic premise of the game, a struggle between the imperialistic Confederation and the well-meaning Rebels (directly from the Star Wars Trilogy).
Despite the losses of some of its most valuable elements, the game play does feature some vast improvements. The bigger galaxy is a lot nicer to play in since its more realistic and there are so many more places to explore. It's good to see that the creators have finally gotten the "Earth is home" idea out of their mind and made the human race one of the worst and weakest in the game. The amount of weapons is another plus: lovers of old EV will just itch to get their hands on "Needle Launchers", "Electronic Counter Measures," and, my personal favorite, the "Plasma Siphon." 
The sheer amount of weaponry is staggering: the problem is that each world only supplies the types of weapons for it's race, so that if you need to reload on S.A.D.s (Search and Destroys) on Emalghia, you're just plain out of luck. Another nice feature is the diversity of ships: instead of that linear progression of one to the next, there are several routes to take, and depending on the planet you're on, you can buy different versions of the same ship.
The missions here are a lot better than those in the original. You can work for any alien race you want, including Renegades, Igrazda, Emalghia, and Earth. Money flows like water in these, with none of the stinginess in the first game. Some missions give fantastic weapons: such as the sweet plasma siphon from a mission for the Igrazda. As time goes on, they get even better, and before you know it, you're a fully fledged member of about ten organizations!
It Is Your Destiny
One of the best features of the newer version is that your action actually affects the plot. If you decide to be an office boy for the Miranus, you can end up saving a world from a horrible disease. Unfortunately you'll have to wait a while; having played for over 20 hours now I have had only one or two decent world changing missions. It is said that you can discover new worlds and help Earth take over some others, which would sound really nice except for the fact that the game can get straight tedious before you get them. Resedit reveals that there do seem to be a lot of great missions out there, but getting to them before your patience runs out may be tricky.
Since this is an initial release, many of these bugs will hopefully be fixed up in EVO 1.01. In some missions where you hunt down ships your enemy never shows up, and in others you are given too little to time complete it. One noticeable flaw was one assignment in which I had to get a lighter ship to complete it, since they go through hyper space faster, but ended losing five million credits in the process. Another annoying thing is that certain installed devices, like the cloaking beam, don't carry over from ship to ship.
Unlike Harry the Handsome Executive or Mars Rising, EVO is not crippleware, but Cap'n Hector, a parrot flying a spacecraft (more weird humor) steals your money and eventually starts shooting at you until you register the game for a $20 fee.
While lacking that sort of wit that made the original so enjoyable to play, Escape Velocity Override is on the whole a good run around and shoot them up sort of game with an adventurous twist. I just wish they had packed more of its predecessor's humor and sense of fun in there.
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 Shareware Fee: $20 |