Reviewed by: DNM
Developer: Egosoft
Publisher: Koch Media

In Elite on the BBC Micro, I remember trading food between Lave and Diso, and making my money from Computers on the return trip. It was a simple life, pirates rarely bothered me, I had a decent living and the Police authorities rarely had cause to harass me. Sadly, depending on your point of view, I actually lived for the game, and lived in the game. It's that addiction that I want in a modern day Space based game. Freelancer went some way to reaching this goal, but there was some missing ingredient that was to end my brief love affair for the game. Enter 'X2: The Threat' to try and lure me into its vast universe.

X2 really does try to give you a free reign in what you decide to do in the game. As you'd expect you can trade your way to bigger and better things, or steal from others living the life of a pirate. If neither appeal you can keep your eyes on the local bulletin boards for odd jobs that range from simply ferrying around of passengers to delivering urgent supplies and assassination requests! If none of that floats your boat maybe you'd like to follow the game's storyline, play the game by the book and reap the rewards this gives you. And if you're still not convinced by any of that, X2 uniquely includes the ability to build your own stations, manage your own fleets and create your own force to be reckoned with. There are other options available to you, but I think you can already tell, X2 is one diverse cookie!

Unfortunately all that diversity comes at a price, namely the games rather steep learning curve and how slow everything is to get going. Just travelling from system to system is a time consuming process, even with SETA (Singularity Engine Time Accelerator) installed on your ship which can up the game speed by as much as ten times, you will soon be finding things to do while you're waiting. My favourite is playing the guitar at the moment - hey, it's getting me playing again, so it’s not all bad!! I jest, but this early sluggish nature of the game will put a lot of prospective gamers off, guaranteed.

Naturally the best way to learn the game is via the story-driven method, which breaks you in gently and acts as a fairly good tutorial in its own right, though you do have a Simulation mode if you wish to learn the game this way. A new threat (hence the title, clever eh?!) is rearing its ugly head in the X Universe, and you are to play a pivotal role in their eventual demise. A prisoner bound for the mining world of Artur, your journey is interrupted by Ban Danna, member of the Argon Federation secret service. Ban requires your piloting services; rather than have them wasted on the prison world he wants you to channel your energy into leading a crime-free life. So it begins, you are given a standard issue Argon Discoverer to start you off, and it isn't too long before you are rewarded for your loyalty with a second ship.

Regrettably the cut scene action is less than pleasing to the eye, with a really quite daft bobbing camera type motion. Characters look rather basic, aren't particularly well animated and the voice acting along with dialogue is pretty poor. Oddly enough they've chosen to incorporate dialogue choices for you to select, which don't really appear to have any bearing on the conversation outcome or direction of the story, and with the general shoddiness of it all you find yourself skipping past it all to the mission briefing anyway! I also discovered a nasty bug where I left particular mission in limbo to go off and make some more money to buy better protection for my ship. I came back later on expecting to be able to finish the mission off, and my objective is no longer there, but my mission briefing is - so the story is now stuck at this stage!!

Trading at first is a little hard going, as you don't know exactly what prices are good in one system and bad in others. However, you soon realise you can upgrade your onboard software so that you can find out market prices from stations without having to dock. Once you have established a supply and demand 'loop' you've got it made, though sometimes this can be unrealistic like a Bakery station having a dire need for meat produce, and a cattle ranch is directly adjacent to it!! Makes for quick money, but is a little daft!

The combat side of the game is fairly disappointing; the ship controls are finicky which has a knock-on effect when it comes to aiming true. Even once you've got an aim on the enemy, the AI is so lacking that the majority of the time their response is to simply turn and fly straight into you!! Fair enough when they have superior shielding to you, but not what I'd expect from what should be quality dogfighting! I found myself simply avoiding the combat, preferring to focus on making money via other means.

On the whole the interface used for trading, managing ships etc, is easy to use, but it does require some getting used to. A little more graphical representation rather than unfriendly text driven menus would've been nicer. Bulletin board missions are good fun, but you will need to improve your reputation throughout the X Universe to get the more juicy missions.

X2 is a visual feast it has to be said, with beautiful plasma cloud systems, lightning filled nebula and fantastic looking ships, stations and planets. The only real let down is the aforementioned cut-scenes, which are really quite awful in comparison to the rest of the game. Music is nice, in particular the main title themes, but sound effects really need to be beefed up a bit.

Overall I get the impression of 'what could have been', which is no disrespect to 'X2: The Threat' at all. Once you are past the learning curve, and start earning serious money, the game starts opening up properly for you. Alas this just takes too long in coming to light, and I worry that this will have scared a good few too many gamers off. For me though, it's a keeper, and I certainly want to explore more of the X Universe.