The ships
of the Boron, a peaceable, aquatic race, are suitably marine looking, for
example. Bump mapping is used extremely well in this game to add convincing
texture to the... um, textures. See our screen shots a little further on in the
review for some examples.
Number five is the sheer variety of things to do, see
and buy in the game. Each species has its own ships, its own
unique branch of the economy with certain goods that are produced only within its
borders.
Beyond this, there are a host
of useful add-ons that can be purchased for your ships, anything from mining
lasers to navigation satellites that allow you to conduct certain trade and scouting functions
remotely.
The
weapons array is also fairly broad, with several categories of missiles and beam
weapons, mass drivers and huge capital ship only guns which cost more than small
spaceships.
The one thing to be said for the
scripted missions within the game is that they will expose you to a variety of
situations possible within the game. Fleet battles, for instance.... Mmm, fleet
battles.
So to sum up the good
things;
- Lots' o ships to fly
- Factories to own
- An excellent economic model
- Great graphics
- An interesting and diverse
universe full of things to do.
The not
so fun stuff:
While it's probably obvious by now
that I am rather fond of X2, the game is certainly not without its failings,
some more annoying than others. Let's take a look through.
Control problems: To be
honest, controlling the ships in this game with conventional mouse+keyboard is not much
fun. Considerable over-steer is present in the mouse movements, often making combat
extremely frustrating. It also makes manual docking (not actually necessary in the
game, fortunately) annoyingly hazardous.
To be fair, some of this is probably intentional, as Egosoft has
given each ship in the game a different maneuverability rating, and mammoth
transports do handle considerably more poorly than scout ships, but the mouse
control still feels bad.
You can purchase maneuverability
upgrades for each ship at some of the trading docks, but be careful because it
is possible to overdo them and end up with a ship that is too twitchy. Using a
joystick improves the situation somewhat, but the controls, coupled with the
fact that all ships are equipped with regenerating shields, can make combat with
small, maneuverable enemies an exercise in frustration at times.