Some of the derelict ships made for an interesting mix, and almost crashing into a planet while in a cloud of dust gave it a unique feel along with the dark matter clouds.įunctionality and replay value are all better with X-Universe though. I like the idea of being able to completely fly around a planet, and the suns were part of the mix as well. I also liked the dynamic race relations system of it as well. One of the game's most magical moments for me came from just flying along the hull of an enormous trading post and enjoying the reflections of the planet in the metallic surface.Personally I prefer the way sectors are set up in Freelancer better. Space stations, other spacecraft, asteroids, space debris, and other objects in space are also simulated with the same level of loving detail. Space in X3 is filled with gorgeous nebulas, clouds of glowing glass, and enormous planets that fill the player's viewport with images so convincing it's easy to believe that if one just hits the engine and lets the game run for a while, their starship will eventually land on a fully simulated planet. I'm usually fairly difficult to impress when it comes to graphics because developers very often use technical gimmicks to hide flaws in gameplay or a distinct lack of artistic and design sense. X3: Reunion is mind-bogglingly beautiful. Under this patch, I was at least able to appreciate the lofty goals of the game - and the major failings that will keep most players from ever appreciating its finer qualities. At this writing, the game had been patched to version 1.3, which clears up a lot (but by no means all) of the worst bugs. The upshot of all this was that the game was simply unplayable out of the box, and so we were forced to install a patch just to make it playable - something we rarely have to do here at. Bugs can make it impossible to complete the game's plot, and there's a nasty memory leak that can slow down other applications even after X3 has been shut down. In my first eight hours, rarely did the game run for more than 30 minutes without crashing, with frame rates frequently slowing down to slide-show level, and scratchy sound effects. X3 is infested with enough bugs to warrant a co-marketing agreement with Orkin. Once the game is loaded, however, the nightmares have only begun. It is to Egosoft's credit that they quickly acknowledged the problem and posted a convoluted workaround that will at least get the game loaded up. It seems a manufacturing defect in the North American production run caused a flaw on the game's second install CD. The game's first hurdle is getting it to install. Even if they manage to push their way past a manufacturing defect and massive, game-killing bugs, they still face a nearly vertical learning curve to master one of the worst, most obscure user interfaces I've ever had the misfortune to wrestle with. How much slack can you give a game that in many ways manages to achieve that lofty goal, but buries it under a painfully incomplete implementation? X3 may have had the potential to be exactly what it advertises - a vast, living universe that is built around the player - but unfortunately, very few players will ever get that far. There's no "goal," and no "end," beyond what you as the player set for yourself. The ideal of this sort of game is to create a vast, open-ended universe that seems "alive." Economies will rise and fall in a realistic fashion and races will love or hate you depending on your actions with them. The basic premise is that players start out in a small, underpowered spaceship in a vast, hostile universe and through a variety of smart trading, combat, and knowing which races to suck up to and which to shoot at, eventually parlay that ship into a vast, mercantile empire. For those unfamiliar with the series, X3: Reunion, is the latest in a long line of games that aims to finally become the true sequel to Elite, which is still considered the gold standard in space trading games.
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