Rating: 
Summary: X2: Threatens to be great
Review: I've only been playing this game for a couple of days, so this is a early review of something that will probably mature with the release of patches over the next few months. So I'll bear that in mind.This game has a lot to live up to: The shadow of elite and other great space exploration games such as starflight loom over it, and while its release sends waves of joy through a starved fanbase, any maker of the space explorer/trader game knows that the audience demands a lot. This is a place where fans want to get themselves lost, and disappear for months at a time. This game delivers a lot: of mixed things. You get the feeling that the team working on this title were all of very different talent. The message sent to me by this game was just that. Some of it is brilliant, while some of it is crud. The crud first: The cutscenes. Godawful. The worst voice acting and character animations I have seen in....ever. The female character that gives you character his first missions looks like she either has her eyes propped open with matchsticks or is possessed by lucifer, and the skimpily dressed girl you meet in your third mission looks like she has several eating disorders at once and sounds like one of the judges from the 'Iron chef'. Read: BAD. Lots of Germans doing bad American accents. Aaargh! The editing of the cutscenes is especially pointless, tedious, detrimental to the storyline, with long load times between scenes (you get to stare at a black screen during these load times- unforgivable in this day and age) The absolutely necessary tutorials are really frustrating. They should have had a tutorial for the tutorials. When you are instructed to key to do such and such, and the tutorial doesn't tell you which actual key it is, because it only tells you in the booklet as the player may have re-mapped them, it makes you want to rip your hair out in frustration.
The graphics are generally stuttery, even on low resolution settings on a powerful machine with a high-end video card (ti4400 128 meg).
It's a difficult game to get used to, and pretty much the entire keyboard is used up twice over for controls.The good stuff:
The feel of being in outer space is brilliant. There is a true feeling of being insignificantly tiny, which is all important in a space exploration/trading game. The missions are enjoyable, and there is a non-linear feel to the game in that you can go anywhere. The amount of ships, stations and stuff which you can buy and use is phenomenal. Docking the space stations is cool, as you can fly right into them (one station in particular has long metallic tentacles that curl around itself: beautiful!), but they are completely empty, and it feels like you're flying into an elaborate screensaver rather than a living breathing station. While the planets look incredible and suitably gigantic, you can't land on them at all. Which is a great disappointment in this genre. Such great potential, wasted. I think this game was rushed out for christmas, and the great sales (gold in most countries) indicate that a desperate and hopeful audience is rushing out to embrace this under-represented style of game. Some will be disappointed. Most will battle through, and derived enjoyment from this game. I think. Freelancer, released last year, promised the open-ended gameplay of Elite but did not really deliver what it promised. However its incredible slickness was something that Egosoft could have taken note of- Next to freelancer, this title seems very messy, albeit bigger and more open-ended. If someone can put both of these games best features together, then that will be something worth waiting for. Elite 4 maybe? This genre is obviously VERY difficult to make work- due to the players endless demands for huge universes, endless varieties of artifacts and spaceships and new innovations, which are difficult to actually implement in the genre. Derek Smart keeps failing, every Braben release since Elite pretty much failed, and Privateer and Freelancer only worked because of their self-imposed linear limitations. With that in mind, this game has probably done the bravest job yet, and in my mind, succeeds despite its flaws. Graphics 85%
Generally Beautiful in space. Some great effects, such as nebula dust, and various Direct X 9 bells and whistles, but the cutscenes look like out-takes from a 5 year old game (the Starcraft intro, now over 5 years old is infinitely better cinematic work). Sorry to be harsh but: Get better animators Egosoft. Sound 80%
Good ambient music, but some effects are missing, and sound is generally weak. Playability 85%
Despite the frustration of the controls and learning curve, the game manages to make itself somewhat more addictive due to this. Once you master things, you feel quite proud- just like the old C64 games that were good *because* they were so darn hard to master. Longevity 92%
You'll be playing this sucker for a long time. Overall 89%
Flawed greatness. Last time I felt this was when I played Ultima IX: Ascension, except that had worse fundamental problems and bugs. Egosoft have gone and attempted the near impossible: the big fat space trading/exploration elite game, and have done quite well really. A few patches, and this game may threaten to be quite brilliant. Now there's a threat.
Rating: 
Summary: Getting better and better
Review: In the last review- I stated that I had only been playing the game for a few days. Now I've been playing it for almost a week. This game is brilliant. The more you play, the more involoved you become in the dynamic economy. It truly is amazing. Add 4% to the last review. This may just be the next elite. Mirko.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't Perform
Review: Ok, Ok, I was a little impatient in my last review. Actually the game is quite good. For someone who has been looking for a game similar to the old Starflight, this one meets the bill. Good graphics, and once you learn (don't be impatient like me) the basics things go pretty good. It would be nice to be able to land on and do some mining on some of the planets, which are just beautiful, but there is plenty of astroid mining to be done, and lots of trading. Normally I turn off music in FPS games that I play, so all the better to hear the bullets flying, but the music in this game I think is quite good. Give the game a try.
Rating: 
Summary: User Friendly as using a hack saw on granite
Review: Okay, I couldn't give the game one star because it had really good space graphics. I actually felt like I was in a cockpit. But it certanly dosen't warrent anything above what I gave it.
Allow me to write this in a recognizable fassion. Pros: 1- Great Space Graphics.
2- Somewhat Interesting Storyline. Cons (allow me to clear my throat): 1- The character graphics are some of the worst I've seen in a long time. Even the original Monkey Island, or Space Quest had better character animation than this.
2- It has a serious problem with character interface, and user friendlyness. This is it's biggest problem. I will garentee you, it has no tutorial, training, hints or tips, or anything else to help out. It throws you in and expects you to know how to do everything off the bat. I couldn't even figure out how to repair! And I was DOCKED!
3- It had a review on the box saying: "This game could be better than Freelancer!" or something like that. But I consider this to be something a desperate company would do to sell a completely useless product. It's a very nasty, dirty thing to do. In conclusion, This game ranks only two stars because of it's Bad Character Graphics, Terrible gameplay, and nasty marketing. If you want a Space Sim, get Freelancer, at least the characters look like they have joints!
Rating: 
Summary: Pathetic
Review: Pure eye candy. I fired it up and started the tutorials. The business tutorial seemed to stall. The combat tutorial showed me that anyone who actually manages to shoot an enemy ship with a laser is just plain lucky. Combat was just pure frustration, with opposing ships crossing the screen in the blink of an eye. You'd need to be Luke Skywalker to win a fight on merit, because Han Solo wouldn't have a chance. Gee it looks great. Who cares because if you have to fight to get on in the game or protect your interests then you might as well forget it, because you're going to be tearing your hair out. I wouldn't give this game away to my worst enemy. There may be a rewarding game in there somewhere, but why should I put myself through hours of boring frustration?
Rating:
Summary: Pathetic
Review: Pure eye candy. I fired it up and started the tutorials. The business tutorial seemed to stall. The combat tutorial showed me that anyone who actually manages to shoot an enemy ship with a laser is just plain lucky. Combat was just pure frustration, with opposing ships crossing the screen in the blink of an eye. You'd need to be Luke Skywalker to win a fight on merit, because Han Solo wouldn't have a chance. Gee it looks great. Who cares because if you have to fight to get on in the game or protect your interests then you might as well forget it, because you're going to be tearing your hair out. I wouldn't give this game away to my worst enemy. There may be a rewarding game in there somewhere, but why should I put myself through hours of boring frustration?
Rating:
Summary: Horrible User Interface, Wimpy Physics Model
Review: There are so many games out there that it's not practical to waste time and money on an average or poor game. This game has some good qualities, but the stupid, unchangeable user interface will be a show-stopper for many people. Unbelievably, you cannot redefine which keys do what in this game, and yet the tutorial will not tell you which keys to use, but rather says, "look up the key in the printed manual now"--I'm not kidding!!! LOL Even the original Descent allowed you to remap the keys, and that game came out TEN YEARS AGO.The ships have a "maximum speed"... anyone who played Independence War will realize that this is not the way to model the physics of spacecraft. The days when computer game companies are going to be able to survive and make a profit while treating their customers like garbage are coming to an end... and Enlight had better learn the lesson if they want to survive. Wish I could give it zero stars. Another crappy game to sell on ebay... ...
Rating:
Summary: The sorry state of the art in the "Elite" genre
Review: This a game with a lot of potential, but so riddled with flaws that in the end, it isn't all that much fun.A game like this is all about atmosphere (glossing over the fact that there's no air in space). The player is (or should be) free to explore a bewilderingly vast and beautiful universe - sailing gracefully through the endless reaches of space, cooing at the majestic scenery, and marvelling at the strangeness of the alien races. This, at least, is how I remember the original X - a very slow-paced game, but one that rewarded the player's patience, as its mysterious plot unfolded. However, any sense of atmosphere or strangeness one might get out of "X2: The Threat" is scuppered by the shoddiness of the the things the NPC's say. In short, they sound like a bunch of annoying, sarcastic Americans from the year 2004. Their ignorance about their own universe is astounding. For instance, if one of them hires you to carry something from A to B, then when you're en route, they'll make some sarcastic remark about how they expected you to go much faster than this (even if you're actually as fast as a ship of your type can possibly be). Also, there are some puzzling continuity errors. For instance, if you're ferrying a passenger from one place to another, and you don't get them there in time, then (of course) you get an ear-bashing about how stupid and incompetent you are, but then the angry passenger mysteriously disappears (rather than asking you to drop them off somewhere else, or whatever). Even "Frontier: Elite 2" was better in this respect. Sarcastic, disappearing NPC's can do a hell of a lot to destroy your suspension of disbelief - reminding you that here you are, in the early 21st century, wasting your time on a silly computer game. Now I want to talk about how the economy of the game is messed up. Trading forms the backbone of games like this, especially early on, when you're not that rich. In theory, the player is supposed to be able to work out profitable trade routes for each type of resource, buying them at the factories where they're produced, and then selling to other factories who need those resources as inputs. However, for some reason nearly all of the factories are nearly always out of production, waiting for some of their inputs to arrive (and hence have very little to sell). I think the underlying cause of this 'gridlock' can be traced back to there never enough 'Delexian wheat' - it looks as if the designers simply misjudged the number of these wheat farms necessary at the outset to balance the economy. Also the system by which the various space stations determine their buying and selling prices is disappointingly simplistic: For each of the game's resources, there's a function of the form P(Q) = b - aQ, where P is the price, Q is the quantity present in the station and b and a are a couple of constants that depend *only* on what kind of resource it is (irrespective of whether it's an input or an output for that particular factory, or how abundant the resource usually is in that sector etc.) Ultimately, the economics of the 'X' universe gives the impression of being rushed, flawed and brainless, which detracts very much from the enjoyment of the game. The physics model is indeed very very simple (just like X-wing, Wing Commander, or even Elite for that matter), but this needn't necessarily ruin the game. However, I have to say the combat isn't very exhiliating. Whereas in X-wing, we had lots of little, fragile fighters whizzing around, firing fast-moving laser beams at each other, combat in "X2" usually consists of a couple of relatively big, ponderous ships, dancing slowly at very close range, which can quite easily hit each other (even with their ridiculously slow-moving lasers), but whose shields are often excessively strong compared to the weapons fired at them. This just leaves the adventure side of the game. I haven't yet got very far into it this aspect of X2, but I suspect it's where most of the enjoyment is going to lie. There are some nice long cut scenes (marred by wooden acting and robotic animation, but I still like them), that gradually explain the story to you, at quite some length. It's a beautiful-looking game, but ultimately rather shallow and annoying.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome Space Game
Review: This game is the best space game I've ever played. If you like freelancer, then get this game. One thing I love the most about this game is that it isn't linear at all, unlike Freelancer and such. I love the idea of building stations and factories. All the makers of this game need to do is enable you to land on planets and simply add a lot more weapons, ships, etc. One more thing about this game that is cool is how it evolves.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Game!
Review: This is really an excellent game. It is much like freelancer, but even better. Main Favorite Features:
1. You can do anything, not just follow the storyline.
2. You can fly around in stations, your own, or someone else's.
3. You begin fighting when you want to begin fighting.
4. Their are HUGE carriers and transport ships you can pilot.
5. Time device allows you to speed up gameplay (good for long journies if you don't have a jumpdrive).
6. You can leave your ship and fly in your spacesuit if you wish.
much more! Main features that need improvement:
1. VERY hard to make money as a newbie.
2. Bad instruction manual.
3. Kind of hard to get the hang of it at first, but if you stick with it, it will get better!
4. Can't land on planets. I would suggest this game to anyone who likes a good space sim. If you even remotely liked freelancer, then you should definately try this game, or at least the demo. 5 stars!
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