X2: The Threat

List Price: $39.99 Discount Price: $9.45

Features:

• State-of-the-art graphics engine utilizing all the latest Direct X capabilities
• Large dynamic universe to explore, packed with thousands of objects
• Build your own empire as a trader, bounty hunter, pirate, or miner
• Heart-thumping, freeform storyline with dozens of interlinked missions
• Over 70 ships to buy and fly; employ a myriad of offensive weaponry

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

A game that lasts [Posted on 2005-02-18]
I have been playing X2-the Threat for about a year, and I have not gotten board yet! There is a lot of stuff to do. And then there is some more.

You can own more than one ship at a time. A lot of them. You can own stations and factories. A lot of them. You can own battleships. If you can pay for them.

If you get tired of running the details you can automate them.

In most games things only run when you are there. The places you are not are frozen. But in X2 everything runs all of the time. All over the "universe" of the game. Even in places you have not discovered yet. Leave your factory and go exploring and when you come back it has made you half a million credits and boosted the economy for six sectors around. But one of its freighter ships has taken damage from a pirate attack.

The economy starts out in a recession (probably to give the new player opportunities for profits) and as you build factories and trade products the other nations economies start to wake up. If you corner the market prices will go up. But the factories will got buy from other nations when the prices get too high.

The menu controls are a little slow and the character animation is clunky, but I can live with that.

And it does too have a training and tutorial section! But most of my onfo I got from the EgoSoft Forums.

Sail On Software - Dishonest Company [Posted on 2005-03-13]
We ordered a DVD through Amazon via Sail On. They sent us a used DVD (no packaging), which did not work. After stringing us along, we returned the DVD and were promised a replacement or refund. Needless to say, they have avoided our e-mails since. I would recommend NOT dealing with Sail On Software.

This is a pure SPACE SIMULATOR and ECONOMY game. [Posted on 2005-04-29]
And this game sure delivers on that! The character animation is horrible and the story/plot line of the game takes only a few hours to complete. Don't get this game if you are looking for structured linear gameplay... Also don't get this game if you dont have a good programmable joystick and throttle control. Also don't play this game if you are looking for an awesome battle soundtrack (use you own music for that... rob zombie music makes the battles awesome!). I love the game because it has an option called scripting thats activiated through a sort of cheat code making a console window appear on command ingame allowing endless modifications and add ons. Since the laser battles in this game stock are pathetic and slow there are scripts you can get from fan sites to speed up or slow down or even animate and automatically take care of the boring stuff so you can go out and blow stuff up and take over the entire universe... there are even scripts that get rid of all spaceship sounds sines some people want realisim in space battles while keeping that menacing rumble of a starship in the cockpit view... But YOU NEED A FULL JOYSTICK. I actually broke my joystick from playing this game so much and pulling hard manuvers.

Since most reviews here are a little blan Im going to describe what its like after it's modded and scripted correctly. Tweaked to my tastes, if you will.

Imagine cruising in with your carrier class starship... bigger than anything else in the game. You ship is upgraded and modded to the max... this is something that could scare the gods themselves as it unleashes its full load of 150 heavy, medium, and scout class fighters to all swarm in on the usually overpowering enemy. The battle lasts for hours and you have to do everything in your power not to let your beautiful and heavily armed Carrier or battleship from getting destroyed by the enemys larger ships.

You have your own personal and heavily armed corvette class ship waiting in your carriers docking bay for a quick escape just incase the unlikely event of having your carrier or battleship destroyed happens or if your carrier or battleships jumpdrive is destroyed and or the engines are damaged to the point you can't save the pride and joy of your armada. The battle begins to shift in your favor as your fast, heavily armed, corvette class ship squadron breaks off of their sector to sector patrolling to aid in your fight. They exit the jump gate into the system and begin wiping the enemy out of existance almost effortlessly, using their own single scout ships for coverfire or as extra moving sheilds. Missles, laser light bolts, ships, debris, asteroids, even foolish trader and passenger ships fly by your view as the battle rages on.

After a few more intense moments... the enemy system is now yous to plunder and take over. You have your corvette class ships go in for repairs and then back on their patrols to keep the errant pirates or alien ships from messing with your trade routes and freighters and stations. You send out your carriers wing of heavy freighters to search and pick up all the spoils of battle. Bringing you back enough supplies and parts to not only upgrade, and repair your damaged ships but to buy you a second battleship.

And when the battle is over you now have fame! Every distressed system in the universe wants your help! After re-arming and repairs, you head off for yet another intense and extreme space battle... where there is no right side up or down, and there is no gravity to slow you down. The enemy can, and will, attack from every possible angle... And this time, they know your weakspot... and the enemy heads right for your prized carrier in a kamakaze style attack... It's time to get in your personal, customized, one of a kind corvette class ship and help with taking down the enemy in the hopes you will be able to get your carrier to limp out of the battle and to a station for repairs before it gets destroyed completely.

Now it's time to be sneaky and use underhanded tactics such as hiding in asteroid tunnels and blasting anyone that flys by. Or using the sun in that system as visual cover for your ship while you come roaring by, blasting everything that moves. Strafing, sliding, barrel rolls. Making your fast and heavily sheilded corvette class ship a big enough of a threat to the enemy that most of them break off the attack on your wounded carrier, giving it enough time to limp its way to a jump gate and get to a protected and friendly star system.

You also send your other ships along with it... It's now you and your corvette class ship and it's single docked medium fighter against 10 enemy battleships , 4 enemy carriers, and hundreds of every size enemy fighter coming to splatter your atoms all over the universe... You can run for your life... Die (surrender is not an option)... or... you can turn up your heavy metal battle music, grin, and charge full speed at the unstopable hoards of enemy fighters and capital ships and damage and destroy as many of the smaller ships as possible by getting them to crash into each other or follow you into an asteriod tunnel network and have them crash into the rock walls in the darkness before blasting out of the ateroid with a huge fireball following you, leaving the battle and jumping to another system while the enemy now fears you... it's your choice... there is no commander to give you orders... there is no structured storyline to hide in and recover for a while... It's just you and a universe full of danger and profits and edge of your seat action space battles.

Year round gaming [Posted on 2006-01-04]
This is a very very good looking space simulation. O man, my mouth dropped. The last good simulation I played was Wing Commander 3. Flying through Nebulas with the cockpit view made me feel like I was there. The cutscenes however could use some work (needs a good artistic touch with textures - they were off color).

This is a long long game period. The parts I played were fun. However, I didn't quite get what I am supposed to do at certain points. For example, Argon One... what the hell was that? It took me a couple of memory walkbacks later I realize it was the first ship I came out of dock with. You won't find it easily on the map without some searching or a good scanner. The economy is good and realistic enough to be fun. The only draw back is that I find the whole game to be really really long. Then again it could be a good thing since I usually beat the whole story of a game in just a week. Very replayable with the egosoft site pointing gamers to forums and a modding community.

Btw, simulators are an absolute necessity since the learning curve is more like climbing a cliff... a really large cliff... with no safety. Partly due to the difficult keyboard interface. The rest of it is due to the many things taking place around you. Not only do you have to keep track of the enemies in front of you. You can have around 5 "monitors" to look at in addition to the main screen in capital (larger) ships. It's not a bad thing nor is it a good thing. I just feel it is necessary to the playing of these game types. However, I do feel the tutorial should not need an update in order to function properly.

The update you have to be careful about. Some of the versions can't use certain updates. It took me awhile to realize this fault in the update system. (caused my system display error message after error message)

Graphics 10/10
Gameplay 8.5/10
Ease of Use 7/10
Overall 8/10

Aims very high, sort of delivers [Posted on 2006-03-16]
This game is most similar to some of the massive online games I've played. Alot of your time in the game is spent in transit to various systems, or just waiting for your transports to move around. (Definitely set the SETA time compression to 10X!) This is the kind of game you want an entire summer to do nothing but play, and might want to pull up a T.V. and throw on a movie while you are waiting for stuff to happen. Once you explore all of the systems and realize there isn't a whole lot of difference between them, (different factories, races and theme music, hurray) the game settles in to trying to build up your economic empire of factories and trading runs, and trying to get better ships. The controls on this game and interface are pretty awful, think spreadsheet sytle menus. I found myself staring at one spreadsheet/menu of where all of my ships are for quite awhile, watching them march across to my various factories. In between trying to keep all of my factories from blinking yellow (meaning they are out of a resource), I spent my time trying to keep the khaack (aptly named) away from my shipping lines. The problem is they just spawn in from nowhere, and the computer can spawn them in alot longer than your patience for it. Definitely do only the fewest missions possible, as the Khaack get alot worse later in the game. I'd say wait until you have an M6 corvette before completing all the missions. (You could do it with an M3 heavy fighter though) Also, when you have the TP class ship at the beginning of the game with the annoying scientists on board, strip it down before returning the ship and get 400K credits! Huge time saver! The learning curve is absolutely unreal, and took me more than a week to figure all out (I hate tutorials). So, play all the tutorials, and good luck figuring it all out. Overall though, this game aims extremely high, but rapidly turned into the game I love to hate. (Or more like hate to love) It just isn't nearly polished enough for a game demanding this much playing time. (Why can't my freighters go AROUND khaack ships like they do for other obstacles? Why don't the Argon defense forces go after enemy ships in the area? Why isn't there a "buy domestic goods" command, forcing your freighters to buy resources continually from your own factories along safer supply routes? etc, etc) If it were done by the likes of Blizzard, it would undoubtedly have been one of the best games ever, but as it stands, I give it 3 1/2 stars out of 5. From what I've read, X3 is even worse when it comes to the programming and finishing touches, so I'm not planning on getting it anytime soon.

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