Star Trek and other like-themed movies give a glimpse of life in space, but EVE Online actually puts you there yourself to carve your own niche, choose your own fate and leave your own legacy. Space - and EVE Online - have no limits. No boundaries. No mercy for people who go it alone. The game covers more than 5,000 solar systems, and traveling between systems can literally take several hours of real-time travel. The universe is big, boys and girls, and "big" doesn’t begin to describe the scope of this game, either. The Sims franchise has nothing on EVE. If you want to live an alternate life, and you want to live it in space, look no further than this game.

Let’s start with a synopsis of why you’re here: humans had colonized the far reaches of the galaxy before discovering a wormhole that allowed colonization in the outer reaches of the universe. Fearing that the wormhole would collapse (which it did), scientists constructed an artificial portal for intergalactic travel. Cataclysmically, an unexplained phenomenon rendered the manmade portal inoperable, abandoning thousands of remote settlements and forcing them to fend for themselves. After thousands of years of isolation, five distinct factions emerged, each with unique evolutionary traits.

This is where the game begins, with the player creating his/her character based on these five factions. It’s not just a simple selection, though, where you pick "aggressive merchant" and go about your business. Instead, this is one of the deepest character-creation systems I’ve ever seen, which gives you a good indicator of just how deep the rest of the game will be.

First you determine your race, which will start you off with certain strengths and weaknesses depending on the traits of that faction. Then comes your ancestry, which further specifies the skills at which you will excel, followed by the school you want to attend, your department, your chosen field and the specialties you want your character to have. You’ll want to read up on each option before creating your character, because your choices will have an impact on how you interact with the game’s persistent universe. As a result, you can expect to spend at least 20 minutes customizing your traits. I spent 35 minutes myself, and that’s not counting the massive graphical customization, which I’ll talk about below.

With your character created, it’s time to begin your life in space. And I really do mean begin your life. As you might expect from all the customization above, EVE Online offers innumerable career paths and ways to spend your days. Unlike Freelancer, which offered an admirable array of story-based and open-ended missions, EVE Online opens the entire universe of employment options, from the most mundane to the eerily exotic. Work for a corporation, run errands for Agents, start your own company, draft and sell exclusive blueprints, pirate others’ ships or mine asteroids for a living that would make Fred Flintstone proud. If there’s a job you imagine might be useful in space, you can do it in EVE Online.

Ironically, though, therein lies the biggest obstacle for mainstream players: EVE Online may be too big. Crowd Control Productions has hands-down created the largest, most dynamic and interactive version of space I’ve ever seen, and not just in scale. Sure, it can take players several real-time hours to traverse from one solar system to the next, and that might be too slow for some players. But the kicker is the utter reality of EVE’s universe, in which every player starts on the bottom rung, where it can take upwards of a week to get to a point where you really start to have fun. I doubt most gamers will want to mine asteroids, refine the minerals, make something useful, rinse and repeat for seven days, but that’s precisely what EVE Online necessitates. Like any RPG, once you build up your character’s skills and equipment the game gets exponentially more enjoyable and engaging. But seven days to find the joy? That’s a little extreme.

Fortunately, since this is basically a life simulator in space, you can speed up the process by allying with computer- and player-created corporations - yes, player-created corporations. For example, while several of you mine asteroids, several real-life players across the globe who happen to have larger ships can transport the minerals to a spaceport for refining, which gives everyone in the corporation some financial and technological benefits that would take you literally weeks to realize individually. This is a fantastic example of EVE’s realistic universe, but if you feel like a cog in the wheel in your "real life" job, why would you want to repeat that pattern in a video game?

With that said, EVE clearly blurs the lines between what’s real and what’s virtual. Aside from the number of careers and focus on real-time teamwork, the dynamic markets mimic real-life so authentically that the EVE economy borders on frightening. Spaceport markets actually fluctuate based upon players’ supply and demand. Also, training your character to learn new skills (EVE’s version of "leveling up") takes place in real-time, so if a skill takes 36 hours to learn, it really will take 36 hours to learn. Rest assured that your character will "study" even when you’re logged off, though, so it’s best to learn time-intensive skills when you’re not going to play for a couple of days. Especially when you can only learn one new skill at a time.

EVE Online is very menu-driven and in fact controls similarly to your standard Windows session, a strict departure from the action-driven controls in Freelancer. There is no throttle or brake for your ship; you double-click on a location to fly to it. There is no option to manually unload items to the market; you drag them from your cargo menu to the market menu. There is no real-time shoot button; you click a ship with your mouse to attack it and watch the scene play out, with the victor determined by statistics. The commands even have their own windows that can be minimized, closed and re-opened, which you’ll quickly appreciate for clearing your interface of the obstacles blocking your view of the game’s fantastic graphics.

Regardless of whether EVE Online makes you want to actually live in space, you’d better believe that its graphics will make you want to at least visit for a few weeks. This game is, in a word, gorgeous. From colorful nebulae to detailed ships to swirling wormholes, the graphics in EVE Online rank among the best I’ve seen in any PC game, online or off. But the fact that they’re this consistently detailed in an MMORPG that spans millions of scale miles speaks volumes for the work that went into making EVE as believable an experience as possible.

The game even includes little details like asteroids that pick up the glow from your lasers as you mine them for minerals. Or debris that careens by your ship in space. Or small flames that emit from certain spaceports’ trajectory systems. The character-creation process is probably the best indication of the detail-minded developers, though.

Every customization option, from cheekbone height to eye color to head shape to your orientation in the mugshot, is completely determined by the player. If there’s a disappointment in these details, it’s that outside of the time you spend creating your character, you won’t really see your avatar again, and there’s no guarantee that other players will, since they can turn off the view-mugshot option. I wouldn’t go so far as to call the process a waste of time, since you’ll enjoy knowing what you look like, but it would’ve been nice to showcase your character’s face more often.

There really isn’t much sound in EVE Online, but what’s there is done well. The soundtrack is appropriately ethereal, the warp-speed sounds are believable, and the distant bustle in the spaceports helps immerse you in the market experience. The game also has a jukebox that allows you to switch between music, but I honestly can’t see why you would. The music is fine as it is.

Do you go to work every day? Probably. Consequently, you’ll probably replay EVE Online as often as you replay your daily real-life routines. Well, presuming you have the patience to guide your character from wet-behind-the-ears miner to a more enjoyable "adulthood," that is. EVE truly is a life simulator, albeit in space, so if you’re married, do your spouse a favor and make sure you limit your playing time. DailyGame won’t be responsible for your neglecting of daily chores. Like bathing.

EVE Online is the most ambitious title I’ve ever "played." Technologically, it’s hard to beat this game. With the most expansive universe this side of, well, the universe, a dynamic economy and a limitless choice of careers, this "life sim" is both astounding and frightening. My only worry is that it might be a little "too" real and too involved for its own good. I have a feeling that EVE Online is going to be a game that only the hardest of the hardcore will give the time it needs to show its promise. But for those players patient enough to let EVE unfold before them, a truly awe-inspiring experience awaits.