X2: The Threat

"Is this a beta?"

I, like many other disenchanted Freelancer fans, hoped this game would be everything Freelancer should have been, a phrase which ran through quite a few people's minds and made a repeated appearance on several game forums. Well, X2 certainly fulfilled its promise of owning factories and fleets of ships, but it did so very poorly.

Graphics 7/10

The cut scenes are just horrible. Beyond that, the graphics are mediocre. The universe is very bland, and sector designs are ugly. Space station locations make no sense, as most are just cluttered together towards the middle of the sector (solar system). There are some planets, but they are not attractive to look at. Some ship designs look good, but the artwork, even at high resolutions, is poor.

Sound 7/10

The sound is a mixed bag. Explosions and weapons fire are pretty standard fair, which is fine. Voice acting is actually good sometimes, and is the best part of the game, quality-wise. The background music is not only bad, but very repetitive.

Gameplay 1/10

The nuts and bolts, the heart of the game, has so many flaws, it is hard to look past them. The good thing about X2 is the large size of the universe and the ability to build a business empire, owning multiple factories and ships, even having multiple fleets. This is the real selling point of this game, and it's the very thing that Freelancer lacked. Unfortunately, the game's trade system has many flaws.

Trade in the game is dynamic, meaning that prices change change for various resources and products, supposedly according to some supply and demand system that is over simplified. Unfortunately, the pricing system is artificial and illogical. Ore mines, for example, sell ore for more than any other factory will buy it. Most factories will not buy food from you, as though the workers there have no need for food. Basically, factories will only buy from you the resources they need to manufacture their products. Trade stations only buy certain products, but not all, and usually for low prices. That makes no sense, because trade stations, basically retail outlets, would pay more for a finished product than the middleman, so that the middleman could make money. This game has a decidedly wrong economic system.

The trading game is also limited in many other ways. You cannot hire managers to operate your factories and see to it that they are supplied with necessary resources, you have to do it all yourself. You cannot engage in partnerships or create vertical monopolies, nor can you buy out competitors. There is, in fact, no sense of competition in the game at all.

The financial system of this game also stumbles when it comes to pricing. Ships are prohibitively expensive, and profits are rather small in comparison. It can take fifteen hours or more of play time to afford a factory, and that play time is very boring A to B buy and sell missions. There is no loan system, the foundation for all capitalism and entrepreneurship. Ship components, such as shields and weapons, are hard to find and some are very rare. Many are outrageously expensive, and require quite a business empire backing up your wallet if you hope to buy them. Many players set up a few factories and simply let the game run overnight to build money, which they then use to buy another factory, of course.

The developers could use with some economics classes, but the game is more than just a trade game, right? There is fighting, right?

Well, yes, there is fighting. Unfortunately, the game falls on its face here, as well. The controls of your ship are very clunky. Even efter stopping your turn or your spin, your ship will continue to turn or spin. Precise control is very difficult. Dogfighting physics are very clumsy, and you may often find yourself colliding with ships more often than scoring weapon hits, especially with your faster ships. Add to this a lack of ''target nearest enemy'' button and a missing auto friend-or-foe recognition system, and the action game bogs down. You can have your targeting system target only enemies, but that requires a keyboard toggle. Your reticule does not change color over different targets. Also, after dispatching one enemy, your computer does not auto target another enemy, you have to manually target another one.

This inefficient control system plagues the entire game. The game is menu driven, through a system of ugly menus, accessed by mouse wheel and arrow keys and a host of keyboard shortcuts. What's worse than ugly menus is that they do not feel like a part of the game. They are not, for instance, a part of your ships HUD. They are windows that pop-up on your screen. There is no mouse cursor in the game at all that can be toggled on/off. The game does not feel like a cutting edge sci-fi computer. It feels like like an old clunky DOS machine.

This clumsy, inefficient design only takes away from the lack of immersion. Unable to land on planets, or to ever get out of your ship (except to space walk, which is useful only for entering an abandoned ship in space, not a common event), the ''X'' universe takes place in your cockpit at all times. There are no bars, no shops, nothing. There are space-station shipyards, but you never leave your ship's cockpit to buy new ships. You can get jobs, but only from bulletin boards. Bulletin boards have news stories, but none of them matter to you, they are just meaningless filler. The univere is your cockpit. The very limited NPC interaction you get will thrill you despite its briefness and limitations to jobs, because the ''X'' universe feels empty. There are very few ships flying around, there are no police patrols or company trade fleets or merc fleets hunting bad guys. There is a lot of nothing, a lot of emptiness, in this game. It is space after all, but I'd expect traffic, especially in major industrial areas and at sector gates.

In the end, the game is unattractive, plays poorly, has an economic system so far from reality it's laughable (only you paid for this game, and that's no laughing matter), is not polished or streamlined and could use with a lot more playtesting and could use tons of fixes. The problems I listed here are only a few that plague this game (space is limited, after all).

I recommend that no one buy this game except for people who want a poor quality space business sim, absolute die-hard ''X'' universe fans, or who don't mind nonsensical economic systems in their games but have to have every space sim ever made. The difficulty of learning how to play this game, reinforced by a poor manual and inadequate tutorials that are so buggy they don't always run all the way through, but simply stop in mid lesson and you're left wondering...''well..?'' while staring at the screen, perplexed and feeling very lost, is by itself a huge hurdle to leap. Once you get past it and see the poor design and low quality of this game, you'll want to kick yourself. This thing is like a beta, not a finished product, and could use a year of tweaking, streamlining, polishing and fixing.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/11/03