Escape Velocity – Ambrosia Software - 1996 - First time playing?: Yes!

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90s Mac games really don't come up often in common video game discussions at all, but on the rare occasions I have seen forum posts or Reddit threads on the subject, celebration of the Escape Velocity series is a constant. They're beloved classics, right up there with Marathon, the best of the best, shining examples of high quality shareware and Mac exclusives… And I've never played them. I’m pretty sure I played a bit of a demo of one of them at one point? But it was so long ago that I can't even remember what game in the series it was. Escape Velocity passed me by, and while the same is true of Marathon, I've at least played enough of Marathon in more recent years to understand why it was so special. Still haven't beaten Marathon yet however, so there's another review for another time…

Anyway, if the first game is anything to go off of, I'm in for a treat with the Escape Velocity series. This was an engrossing and immensely satisfying experience unlike any other I've played, partially because I'm uncultured and have never played Elite which I understand this game borrows heavily from, while still doing enough different from its inspiration to feel like its own thing, such as being on a 2D plane and its Asteroids style combat.

Centuries into the future, humanity has made huge leaps forward in space travel, has travelled beyond Earth and formed colonies throughout the galaxy. This sudden rise in activity however ended up drawing the attention of an invading alien race, threatening humanity with extinction. Humanity was immensely outclassed by the alien technology, but under the leadership of Earth, the alien threat was destroyed as all of humankind united together to overpower the forces, forming The Confederation in the process. The war was over… but now The Confederation rules over the human colonies with an iron fist, slaughtering the rebels that would dare fight for independence. Humanity was immediately thrown into another war, this time against itself. In the midst of all this chaos and crossfire, you in your piece of junk shuttle must try and find a way to make enough credits to upgrade your ship and survive.

Taking control and getting into gameplay, it's somewhat overwhelming to even know where to start. Escape Velocity is a very non linear game, a somewhat intimidating sandbox action sci-fi CRPG-adjacent game with little guidance and a ton of different keys to memorise the functions of. To boil it down as simply as possible, your primary goals are getting money and getting stronger, with how you go about that being up to your playstyle. You can do deliveries as a courier, trade goods across planets, go bounty hunting, do mercenary work for either the rebels or the confederation, or forge your own path as a brutal space pirate.

Something that there's no getting around is that this game starts slow and extremely low on action. It takes a ton of saving up credits before you're even remotely ready to take on a single space pirate, and even then it's likely to come at the cost of half a dozen expensive single use missiles. Starting out, your best course of action is really just doing courier jobs and trying your damnedest to not draw attention to yourself and get attacked by pirates. This is however an excellent chance to explore and map out the universe, something that will come immensely in handy and gives a sense of the game world opening up more and more as you learn where more planets are located. The universe is divided into systems, each system being an open map you can freely fly around which contains planets for you to land on, where you can get missions, visit bars, buy and sell merchandise, upgrade your ship, hire allies and so on. What services are available varies from planet to planet, as does item stock and value. You can jump from system to system via activating your ship's hyperdrive, which after a charge up that leaves you open (make sure you aren't swarmed by enemies when you activate it!) you'll zoom off to the adjacent system you selected on the map.

Once you've made some money, it's time to look into some new ships. Every ship has their own unique base stats, divided into top speed, acceleration, turning speed, shield and armour, as well as limits on how many guns can be equipped to the ship at once and how much storage space there is for cargo or further upgrades. Even with the most expensive ships, there's still always a trade off present, the larger and tankier ships tend to have worse handling and speed, while the more agile smaller ships tend to be glass cannons with very limited and restrictive storage space. As a result, each ship does feel fairly different to play as and it can be fun to experiment with them and see what suits your playstyle best and decide what stats you're willing to sacrifice.

The part of shopping I enjoy the most however is choosing my ship's weapons and other upgrade parts. First up, for weapons, you have your primary guns that fire straight forward lasers from the front of your ship, having multiple guns allowing you to fire more lasers at once. Turrets meanwhile automatically aim in the direction of whatever enemy you are targeting, an essential given how tricky it can be to get a direct perfectly lined up shot. Then there's the missiles, much stronger weapons that can be used as an alt fire but have the trade off of having limited ammo that's very expensive to keep refuelling. In addition to these weapon upgrades, you also have other upgrades such as armour, handling upgrades, quality of life features such as automatic refuelling at planets and a more detailed colour coded radar, escape pods, storage upgrades, or even if your ship is big enough, fighter bays that you can launch smaller fighter ships from to attack alongside you. Most of these weapons and upgrades however take up mass on your ship, mass being a stat that indicates how much space there is on the ship for additional parts. Some of the most powerful and useful upgrades come at the severe cost of a ton of your mass, often resulting in you having to decide if you're willing to make room for that upgrade, even if it means you may have to give up some extra weapons you wanted. Swapping parts in and out and figuring out the most ideal combination for my playstyle and this ship was consistently engaging to me and gave me all the more drive to keep earning credits to get more toys to play with.

At this point, finally, you're ready for combat. As alluded to earlier, it controls and looks like Asteroids, rotate your ship left and right, push forward to fly in the direction you're facing. In addition, you can push backwards to turn around 180 degrees from the direction you're moving in, or press the autopilot button that will automatically rotate you to be directly facing your targeted enemy. Space being what it is, your inertia will keep you moving forward even when you let go of the thrusters until you turn around and push in another direction. It's very similar to how Asteroids feels, but unlike the wholesome space rock blasting of the 70s, here in Escape Velocity there's a lot more… murder. Here's my immediate ultimate recommendation; take up piracy. Not only is taking on innocent bystanders, blasting their ship to the verge of destruction and boarding the wreckage to steal all of their possessions before blowing them up for good just, well, a delightful joy that makes you feel all warm and tingly inside, but it's also a good way to start practising combat as long as you don't mind being morally bankrupt. You can also loot missile ammo from ships you board too, so if you're reliant on missiles then you've got an easy free source for more. One of the coolest parts of boarding a ship however is that you can try and capture the ship and add it to your own fleet. The success rates are low but if you manage to pull it off it's a huge boost to your galactic conquest. One thing to keep in mind is that the more that you steal from a ship, the higher the risk of you accidentally triggering the self defence mechanism is, which then prevents you from attempting to capture it. However, if you fail to capture a ship then the entire ship locks up and nothing more can be stolen from it, so you have to decide what you feel is or isn't worth the risk.

One of the things that surprised me about Escape Velocity, as alluded to in that past paragraph, is how dark, cynical and violent it is. Not in the sense of like, blood and guts or anything, there's nothing graphic about this game, but more in how ruthless this universe is and the lengths you must go to in order to survive. The Confederation is so war hungry that immediately after ending a galactic threat, it immediately turns all of its weapons against its own allies in its continued lust for power and assertion of dominance. It's impossible to travel through space without getting caught in the crossfire of this endless universe-wide war between the confeds and the rebels, even as an independent trader. Literally every faction is at war with another, to the absurd extent that even rival courier companies are killing one another and hiring mercenaries for assassination work. If you somehow avoid all of the non stop political violence, then you'll just be killed by a space pirate instead on the off chance you happen to have any valuables on you. It's a surprisingly brutal game, one where the gradual escalation of what you must do to get stronger and make progress highlights the gradual moral degradation that is required to make it in this universe. You'll start doing some shady delivery jobs, then you'll rob a few people here and there, then before you know it you'll be threatening entire planets with violence as you demand that they pay you tribute.

As you get stronger, you'll be offered more and more jobs at the bar from the various factions. While there's a ton of side missions for smaller organisations, the main plot will have you ally with either the rebels or confederation. This is where you start to get into larger scale conflicts against military forces as opposed to independent pirates. It can't hurt to hire some extra help for these skirmishes, which can be done at the bar too for a regular daily fee. You'll also do missions such as rescuing double agents and retrieving important intel for whatever side of the conflict you chose to assist. Even if just for selfish reasons, the rebel and confed missions are absolutely worth your time as nothing else in the game pays as well as them, plus you get access to new exclusive upgrades and ships in the process. This is where you'll be challenged the most in combat, finding that balance between keeping moving to avoid damage vs leaving yourself open just long enough to get some direct hits in, figuring out when best to use your limited missile ammo and commanding your allies in a light RTS esque style.

My biggest issue with Escape Velocity however is that in the end none of this really amounts to anything at all. Escape Velocity just doesn't have an ending, the closest thing it has to a final boss is very out of the blue and underwhelming and after that the game just kind of unceremoniously stops having new missions for you. I'm of the belief that there's nothing wrong with a game lacking a story, it's okay for a game to just be about gameplay and can often even be appreciated, but where Escape Velocity slips up is in building up what seems like it’s going to be a bigger story but ends up going nowhere with it and just giving up halfway. Even after spending the whole game assisting the rebels or confeds with assurance that you're aiding the cause and making huge leaps forward, nothing actually changes, the war continues to rage on just as it had before with absolutely nothing changing. On one hand, this fits the cynical vibe of Escape Velocity's universe that I mentioned earlier, but the lack of payoff in any sense both narratively or gameplay wise is underwhelming.

All of this might make it tricky to understand why Escape Velocity is such a gem. On paper it sounds pretty dry, a lot of trading and grinding for credits just to get a taste of simplistic arcade combat already mastered in the 70s, all in assistance of a plot that doesn't go anywhere. Looking at individual elements makes the game appear weak, but together they create something immensely absorbing, where every mechanic ties into one another in a way that brings far more engaging depth to the game as a whole. The biggest draw is seeing how the universe opens up to you as you play, that sense of your power gradually building up with more and more successes and more dangerous jobs becoming available to you as you prove yourself, as lethal systems that previously walled you off from progression completely are now trivial to blast your way through. The universe is an expansive frontier to conquer, one that is fairly rich in its attention to detail and world building, loaded with flavour text for planets, ships, weapons and upgrades. Escape Velocity is a proper sandbox and playground for your ruthless galactic conquering fantasies, with satisfying progression, non linearity, extensive customisation and depth. While the in-game story may be weak, in the process of role playing you'll create your own story for your pilot, a rags to riches story unique to your play style and the path you took to reach such heights of power by the end.

Escape Velocity remained a Mac exclusive, however a total conversion for Escape Velocity Nova, a sequel that did see a release on Windows, allows you to play the original Escape Velocity campaign in the Nova engine.

- Page written by MSX_POCKY, 1st April 2023