I was really looking forward to this one, but so far I'm having a very negative experience dealing with bugs, and a show-stopping crash problem.
I have about 30 hours logged in the game with SETA (the time advance) on, so that's about 8 real time hours about. The game ran just fine up until the 20 or 30 hour mark at which point the game started freezing every 20 minutes. That's where I'm at now...I can't play for more than 20 to 40 (real time) minutes without a system lock requiring a hard boot.
For those that are wondering what SETA is, it's basically advancing the time by 6 to 10 times normal speed. It's common in X games that once you get a few factories up and running self-sufficiently with cargo ships, you can then leave X running all night with SETA on in order to make money faster. It ran flawless the first night, but then started to crap out the next day.
I've tried going back to old save games, tried installing new drivers (as well as downgrading) for my video card, motherboard, directX, everything I could possibly think of.
I'm convinced this isn't a driver problem, and has something to do with a bug in the game somewhere that's being triggered. Could be wrong, though.
In any event, I'm going to be returning X2, and I might check it out again when the European version is released in Feb. 2004. Hopefully, all the bugs will be hammered out by then. I dunno though, I feel like I'm beta testing a retail product, and it annoys the crap out of me.
PROS:
1) The game is beautiful! The space backdrops are absolutely stunning. The sense of scale in the game world is well done and amazing. Even though it would be great if you could actually land on the planets, I felt that didn't detract too much from the sense of realism. The planets are gorgeous, and I've probably only seen a small amount of the different ones in the 20+ sectors I've explored.
2) The economy is excellent. I really like how you can build up your financial empire and buy as many huge factories as you like, or become a pirate and steal ships to use or sell. There is a nice array of products to produce as well, although it's all the same as X-tension, so nothing new here. To say there is a lot to do in the game is a vast understatement...between building and trading, to piracy or bounty hunting, and don't forget the main plot which you can tune in and out of at your leisure.
3) The universe is pretty damn huge. Ok, so it's broken into individual sectors, but there are twice as many as X-Tenion, and damn...that's just massive. 50+ sectors, I believe. Big, big, big! I dare you to see them all!
4) Capital ships! You can buy em, you can fly em, and I'd like to know who's gonna mess with you when you're flying a freaken battleship around! HUH? No one, that's who.
CONS:
1) Flight model is ass. Think really bad. Now think worse than that. Ok, seriously, it's adequate, but it feels like you're playing space invaders, because there are no physics in the game at all. You speed up to max speed instantly, and you stop on a dime. Turning is instant, no intertia build up at all. As basic as you could possibly get. There has never been a better definition of flying "on rails". The enemy AI takes full advantage of the lack of physics, and substitutes these cheese tactics for any real intelligence on their part. In fact, the enemy AI is so bad, they usually just end up ramming you. If you go into the game not expecting any epic space opera dogfighting like you might have seen in Freespace 2, or even Wing Commander or the X-Wing series, then you won't be too let down by X2. Personally, I liked the IW2:EoC flight model best, but comparing IW2 to X2 is like comparing the Millenium Falcon with a paper airplane.
2) No improvement AT ALL from X-Tension's interface. There are just some new options, which are nice, but all the menus are still controlled by the keyboard, which is just lame. No mouse support other than using your mouse wheel to go up or down--there is no mouse pointer at all. If you can deal with the keyboard as an interface, it will feel fairly tight at first, but over time as you build your empire and acquire more ships and factories, it becomes an ever-increasing chore to manage them all. In the end it bottlenecks pretty badly, and makes you scream for an improved interface. It's sad, too, because the game itself can become very deep in terms of assets you control and making sure they are running efficiently, but you eventually get bogged down in the interface trying to manage it all. Mouse menus are essential here, but weren't improved on at all from X-tension. Tis a shame.
3) Crap performance on high end systems. I have a 3ghz machine and a ATI 9600 Pro, and the performance ranks from O.K. to Craptastic, depending on how many things are going on around me. If more than one explosion occurs next to me, the game will slow down to a slideshow. We're talking 2 fps for about 10 to 15 seconds. Totally unacceptable, and not playable if you enjoy furball combat. I've tried the Catalyst 3.7 to 3.9 drivers...all work the same in X2: crappy.
4) Joystick controls are hyper sensitive. At first I coulnd't believe it, and there's no way to turn down the sensitivity, and that was almost a show-stopper right there...but then I just disabled rudder control on my Saitek Evo, and things were playable again. A band-aid solution until a patch, but at least I was able to play again.
5) When you first start the game and see the intro in-game cutscene with the 3D modeled NPC's of the main story, your jaw will drop at how 1985 the 3D animation is. Really, it was so bad I choked on my bubblegum. Wait, it gets better! The voice acting is even worse! The sound to animations are way out of sync, and the voice acting sounds as though every sentence was chopped up and done by someone different, but with the same voice, and then pasted all together. The 3D animation for people is the worst I've ever seen in any game. The characters all have a colon load of poop, AND have a Mag-Lite shoved up their ass to boot! You haven't seen a stiff constipated zombie until you've seen X2 NPC's. George Romero has nothing on EgoSoft. I could really go on for an hour on how bad the animation and voice acting is, but I don't want to ruin it for you.
As a side note, as soon as someone made a comment about how the 3D models reminded them of the old Thunderbirds puppet show, the 3D characters started to immediately grow on me. Your mileage may vary.
6) Ahhh...the big show-stopping bug. The game is totally unstable, and crashes every 20 or so minutes. What more can you say after that? For a game where you almost have to let it run over night so your factories will make money, instability is not something you can work around. It's a show-stopper, folks. Also, the real bad news is that the game works fine for a lot of people for upwards of 30+ hours, and THEN the crashing starts to hit you. Very bad news.
6) EgoSoft has taken a policy of turning off their technical support forums to anyone who doesn't register the game on their forums. Ok, on one hand I can see why they would do this, as they have the right to protect themselves from piracy. On the other hand...it shuts out potential buyers from any technical problems with the game (and there are plenty!), and also denies people the ability to make hardware purchasing decisions based on what will, and what won't work with X2. It's just a bad move, IMHO, and I won't support that. Not a big beef, but it's annoying to see them take that policy, and I think it'll hurt them in the long run. You can't even download the patch if you don't register their product!
I make it a point to NEVER register a damn thing with any company, because I don't want my personal information out there for them to sell to other spam companies, so here's another reason why I'm returning X2. If the game worked, and was fun as hell, sure I'd just register, probably. But as it is, it's not worth registering to get tech support on a broken game. That's just me, though.
Ahhh, well...I had high hopes for X2, but it's going back and I'm going to get another copy of KOTOR for my cousin. KOTOR was a pure pleasure to play...not a single problem. After playing that gem, it really set a standard, and made playing a bug-ridden mess like X2 intolerable.
In all fairness, I have no doubt the European version of X2 will perform just fine. EgoSoft will probably fix all these show-stopping bugs, but for the North American release, I don't have the time to deal with a random crashing bug. Small bugs I could put up with, but the hard locking my computer is a deal breaker.
EgoSoft does have a great history with patches, and they've always added more than just bug fixes to them, such as improved interface features, better AI, and overall empire management improvements. So, while it's a shame that they will, no doubt, lose sales over the North American bugfest release, perhaps they'll get a few of them back with the Euro release when they've slapped on some bondo and made it perty.
My advice: Pass on X2. And if you're a diehard X fan, then at least wait for the Euro release to curb disappointment.
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