That reminds me of something I didn''t like about GTA. If you went through the missions, you eventually found yourself in a hopeless situation. In GTA3, after "beating" the game, there are parts of the city you just can''t go into anymore, because you die pretty much as soon as you come into sightshot of enemy turf. The Mafia blows up your car with shotguns faster than you can get out of it, and even if you get clear before it blows, you get eight pounds of buckshot through your sternum before you can get out your own smokewagon.

In Escape Velocity, you can get such a low reputation that ships will shoot you on sight. I remember times when I had to jump eight system out of my way to avoid Confederate patrols. Sometimes, just one planet will hate you, and if you try to land there, they''ll refuse you docking privelages. But in EV, you could eventually convice them to forgive you, either permanently via dedicated service (mission completion, pirate extermination, raids against enemies" or temporarily via bribes or threats of violence (it takes a lot to intimidate a planet, but it can be done). I wish I could have just greased the mafia''s palm (or greased their enemies) and gained safe passage through the 23% of the map under their control.

Yeah, you actually wind up assassinating the Mafia Don, so they''re up in arms about that, but you absolutely have to in order to progress. That''s what i''m griping about. If there was a little bit of wiggle room in how you go about certain things, you might have been able to continue the story on a parallel path without getting a thousand shotgun-weilding hitmen mad at you.