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X2: The Threat - Game Review
X2: The Threat - Game Review  - PCSTATS
X2: The Threat is a space-simulation that mixes fairly typical story driven missions with an extremely detailed and complex economic system, achieving a sort of pseudo-RPG effect.
Filed under: Games Published:  Author: 
External Mfg. Website: Egosoft Jan 14 2004   M. Dowler  
Home > Reviews > Games > Egosoft X2: The Threat

Trading and Combat

Various programs exist to upgrade your ships, each adding separate commands to the remote control menu for navigation, trading and combat.

Number two, you can also own factories... That's right, the socialist space gamer may control the means of production. They're incredibly expensive, and require a considerable amount of forethought (not to mention positioning) but you can do it. And then you can put your picture on them.

You'll have to plug away at the game for many hours before you can expect to try your hand at factory ownership though, and you'll need a whole fleet of merchant vessels just to keep one factory happy and well fed.

Number 3, the dynamic (space) economy is done right. While on the surface things appear to be fairly typical (you know, you buy things, look for the best price to sell them, sell them there, rinse, repeat) you will quickly realize that there is a LOT going on under the surface. For one thing, every trade item and product (with the exception of the ships themselves) is produced from a factory, and each of these products or commodities depends on other products or commodities.

Prices of a given good don't just rise and fall based on how much you buy and sell, they change depending on the supply level of the materials needed to make that good. This leads to the final joy of the economic simulation in this gameā€¦ All the transportation of material is done in real time by real AI driven ships. No magical transportation of trade goods here.

Each factory retains a retinue of cargo ships which are constantly transporting goods here and there. This means, if you like, you can blockade systems to cut off competitor's shipping lanes, ambush vunerable freighters, or even just nip in front of that impending shipment of silicon wafers to grab a better price for yourself.

All the stations and factories (as far as I'm aware) are destructible also, though you will need some heavy firepower to actually take one out.

Number four, the graphics and art are rather nice. Lots of shiny spacecraft, over 70 unique designs which use bump mapping in abundance. Each ship has a different cockpit design which can be panned around with the view keys, adding a nice touch of atmosphere.

Speaking of atmosphere, it's abundant in the graphical treatment of the space sectors. They are graphically diverse and often spectacular, with nebulae and alien planets galore.

Better still, instead of all celestial objects simply being part of the background as was the case in EVE Online , many are actual 3D objects which can be flown to (and through in the case of nebulae) which is a nice touch. The varying architecture of the six races is also very well done, with the stations and ships (all unique to each race) reflecting the nature of their makers.

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Contents of Article: Egosoft X2: The Threat
 Pg 1.  X2: The Threat - Game Review
 Pg 2.  Intro to the game, objectives
 Pg 3.  — Trading and Combat
 Pg 4.  Summing up the better points of X2
 Pg 5.  Minor Issues with the Fun Factor
 Pg 6.  System Requirements and Performance
 Pg 7.  Conclusions and Hints

 
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