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Req.: P3 800, 128MB RAM, 32MB video Card Reviewed On: Athlon xp 2600+ (2.13 GHz), 512 Meg RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro | |||
Intro Space combat simulator fans have it tough. Roughly once every six months, they are rewarded with a new title in their most favorite of genres. It could be good, or it could be bad, but they are fans so dedicated that they will play it and try to love it regardless. And so comes X2: The Threat from German studio EgoSoft in an attempt to satiate gamers' appetites for more space combat and economic maneuvering. Will it fill the void left by the long departed Wing Commander or FreeSpace franchises, or will it merely suffice until the next big thing in these rabid gamers' lives? Gameplay: 7/10 Despite the title, X2 isn't really much of a sequel. In a continuing quest to develop their vision of an ideal space combat sim, developer EgoSoft released X2 as the next step in the evolution of their original title X: Beyond the Frontier. After releasing various patches and modules up to the X-Tension pack for the original, they then decided to update everything one more time and wrap it up into a nice little package with an accompanying X2 moniker. As the story goes, there once were a couple of space pirates foolishly attempting to liberate a ship from a space dock. Well as these things commonly do, the plan hastily fell apart and soon gave way to an inter-stellar spaceship chase. Finally, the culprits are apprehended, but not before giving the space police an asteroid-weaving, cop-killing chase scene that would leave a tear in Lando Calrissian's eye. As the story advances, we find out that the risky space pirate is actually (GASP) you! And that the reigning ultra-mega-corporation, TerraCorp, not only bailed you out of prison, but wants you to fly FedEx missions for them, eventually building up to you, the pilot, being the sole savior of the known universe. X2's universe is populated with several conflicting races and space pirates as far as the eye can see. As far as game stories go, this one is down on the list - it's boring, uninspired, and a sorry excuse for a cutscene. While the dialog is interactive with several choices given at ever conversation point, the PC dialog is recycled - choose one conversation option, let the NPC talk, then choose the next and repeat until the mission is given. A bad story in an immersive environment is always a sad thing to see. Fans of the genre will instantly think "Freelancer!" and remember just how far a story can go in games of this type. Luckily, the story is hardly X2's drawing point. The open-ended gameplay is the real meat of the game, allowing the player to choose between becoming a feared space pirate, an economic force, a police squad, a hunter, or a corporate lapdog - or any combination thereof. And it is this gameplay that fans of the genre will celebrate, raise up on their shoulders, and give a hero's praise. For it is this gameplay that provides an incredibly deep, rich experience; but then again, it requires nothing short of a life commitment to play. With so many ways to play and with a universe that's so large, it is a bit overwhelming to a new player. To combat this, the developers have included a tutorial and several simple missions before thrusting the player into an unfamiliar world with nary a credit to their name. Unfortunately, the tutorial is weak, simply walking the player through a variety of tasks from flying straight to setting up a simply economy over a short period of time. But with the game as large as it is, most players won't even begin to use the economy on the scale of the tutorial till many, many hours into the experience, making the lesson a bit moot and underdeveloped. The remedial, beginning missions lay out the groundwork for the game a bit better, giving the player simple instructions and simple missions that can still be applied to later missions when the complexity is compounded upon. With such a rich system, gamers can expect to invest days in the game before they can even expect to understand the control scheme, not to mention the system at work behind the game. And because everything is so damned expensive in X2, expect it to be days until enough money is even earned to begin to purchase the equipment that unlocks the upper-tier play. But one of the main reasons why X2 is so appealing is its open-endedness. Even with a linear story/mission progression, players can choose to give up on the story at any time and go seek their riches in any manner of ways. Obviously, the most appealing of these to most people is space piracy. With scores of available ships, upgrades, and weapons plus the ability to own and control an entire fleet of ships, it's entirely possible to own and operate a pirate band capable of terrorizing the known universe. Capital ships, heavy transports, small scouts, and drone fighters are just some of the ships available, each with their own set of upgrades and weapons. Combat in X2 may be one of the game's worst flaws. Due to the odd physics in the game, Newton's First Law of Motion, inertia, simply doesn't exist. So say you have a pirate in your sights, start blasting away, stopping only to wipe the sweat from your brow, and the next thing you know the enemy ship has turned completely around and rammed your ship right in the damn hull, all in a second's breadth. Due to the game's AI and (lack of) physics, this is possible and will, I repeat, WILL happen a lot, making every fight annoying and unrealistic (as unrealistic as something that takes place in populated deep space can be). Once this flaw is accounted for, it is possible to maneuver around, but damn, it sure does suck and inhibits space combat to a very large degree. So if the combat is unreliable and annoying in a space combat sim, what else is there to do? Well a player can always dominate the universe by economic means, and there are certainly ways to do just that. Because everything in X2 is so expensive (players start at around 20,000 credits, capital ships cost about 85,000,000 - unequipped), players must have a control on their finances and economics. The fiscal system in X2 is based around a supply and demand dynamic resource pyramid scheme, where the simplest item, energy crystals, is required for every more advanced process. The next tier of goods requires only energy crystals to make, and the next tier requires goods from the preceding tier and energy crystals, etc. For example, my Solar Power Plant produces energy crystals and requires nothing (it produces its own energy). My plankton plant (next step up) requires energy crystals in order to operate, and my Stott Spice factory (the third step up) requires energy crystals and plankton. In theory, it is a system that should work admirably, creating a complex web of buying simple goods at low prices and selling complex good at high prices, but instead the economy is flawed. Because energy crystals are required for every process, it is much easier and quicker to just buy multiple Solar Power Plants (again, the producers of energy crystals), place them in a high-demand area, and just watch the money roll in. Advanced players can form more complex and profitable factory chains to make the money roll in faster, but when using only Solar Power Plants is so easy and profitable, most players will just opt with that option. My final complaint
is the time requirement. Between the steep learning curve, the exorbitant amount
of money required to progress, the complex control scheme (to be mentioned later),
the universe's size, and the fact that the game takes place in real time (there
is a fast forward feature, like Sim-City), X2 is very time consuming, requiring
upwards of 60-80 hours to finish, depending on how you progress and what you do
in the course of play. But a good majority of this time will be spent just feeling
like a (for lack of a better word) n00b, or doing trite tasks. For example, docking
in X2 is taken very seriously. First, the player must request docking,
then either rely on their docking computer (if installed) to maneuver the ship
into the dock, or they must do it manually. Then once they are in the ship, they
must find an open ship bay and park. But what the manual doesn't tell you is that
by simply hitting the "Esc" key, the player can simply avoid the whole
docking process. I'm still not sure if this is an undocumented feature or a bug.
At any rate, the story-assigned missions do a good job of giving the player some
direction, but eventually the player must leave the story for a while and "level
up" on their own with little to no instructions on exactly how to do that.
Die-hard fans will embrace the game's complexity, while casual players will undoubtedly
throw up their hands in frustration and give up within hours. Graphics: 9/10 Sound: 6/10 Overall:
7.5/10 [ top ] |
