X2: The Threat

[Urban Ranger]

Supposedly this is the spiritual descendant of Elite. Anybody heard of it before?

game website

[duke o' york]

I'd be very interested in new Elite, but this game won't let you use mouse control. I haven't used a joystick for many, many years, and can't see myself going back, no matter how much entertainment arcade games used to afford me.

[Daz]

I swore i'd never use a joystick, ever, until I tried it playing Privateer: The Darkening. Now I prefer it.

Anyway, I'd love to play this, but my notebook won't let me. Says its not a pack-mule....

[Skanky Burns]

I'm not going to buy new hardware, regardless of the game. Even an Elite sequal.

[General Ludd]

Joysticks are a must for anyone who enjoys space or flight games.

[Spiffor]

X2 is the game I'm playing right now. I enjoy it very much, because it is a beautiful game with many different ships and an excellent economic system (dynamic economic system baby!)

Also, you can own your own stations, you can own a fleet of ships scattered across the universe, and in short you can become an interstellar mogul

Besides, you can upgrade your ships with a variety of upgrades that make ship-tuning much more interesting than in previous Space games.

Lastly, the game is beautiful, and sends Elite2 back to stone age in this regard

There are a few shortcomings that make the experience different to Elite2 though:

1. The scale. Elite2 used realistic scales, and space was really fricking huge in that game. In X2, star systems are squares of about 100 km per side. Sure, you can go beyond the 100 km (actually, systems are infinitely big, there is just nothing save a few hidden bonuses past the boundaries).
Within this little square, scales are consistent. Stars and planets belong to the background, unlike Freelancer, so you won't navigate around tiny planets / stars that are 10 km wide.

2. No landable planets. Planets belong to the background texture. This is sad because scenario intermissions do happen on planets, and they are nicely rendered. Very frustrating

Aside from that, the game has serious control issues if you don't have a joystick, and it can be frsutrating for the non-fan to have to trade for many hours before getting a factory that belongs to you, or a real nice fighter ship: the average profit with the trade ship you get after Mission3 is 5,000. The cheapest factory is 150,000. A really good fighter ship is 890,000

There is another very serious issue for ATI users: their ATI will have trouble running the game as smoothly as it should. Nvidia cards are much less troubled: my GeForce4 64 Megs runs the game smoothly in 800*600 with all fluff removed (it would work in 1024*768, it's just that I never bothered to try).

Finally, there seems to be bugs, according to X2's forums (corrupted saves). However, I play on version 1.00, and I have no problem at all in this regard - apparently, the bug has to do with long player's and ships' names.

[duke o' york]

I agree with Skanky. Mind you, I'd be tempted to pay an extra £5-10 if the game came with a joystick, but I wouldn't buy a joystick especially to play one game.

[General Ludd]

I wouldn't want to buy a $10 joystick, either.

Get a good one, and you'll be amazed how much it improves any space or flight sim you play.

[Spiffor]

I am on the verge of buying a new joystick, because of this game. Mine sucks badly, and since I have a laptop, I can't use my old (great) joystick that can only be connected through an plug on the audio card.

I intend to buy the sweet Joystick for Logitech, which I should use until USB doesn't exist anymore

[duke o' york]

But I don't play flight sims so a decent joystick wouldn't be worth the money. I played Elite and then Frontier for days on end, but on "lesser" computers, for which most of the games needed a joystick, these days I'll get action games for the PS2, on which I can use the joypads, and more "cerebral" stuff for the PC, with which I only need mouse/keys.

It's a shame to hear that you can't land on planets - it took me ages to work out how to do that on Frontier, but once I'd cracked it, then I'd do it all the time just for the hell of it. The raw materials you could scoop from the planets' surfaces were pretty worthless, but it was cool to be able to land in a fight and see the other ships all crash.

[Daz]

I'm not going to buy new hardware, regardless of the game. Even an Elite sequal.

You will.... eventually ... so why not now

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by duke o' york
It's a shame to hear that you can't land on planets - it took me ages to work out how to do that on Frontier, but once I'd cracked it, then I'd do it all the time just for the hell of it. The raw materials you could scoop from the planets' surfaces were pretty worthless, but it was cool to be able to land in a fight and see the other ships all crash.

I just loved to discover pristine habitable planets myself. It was a shame I couldn't get off of the ship and have a pic-nic, lightyears form the nearest human

The only thing I really regret, is that I never bothered to take an Imperial Courier, put a hydrogen scoop on it, and go explore the great void, beyond what the telescopes could see I just wanted to neme my own planets

[The Rusty Gamer]

It's a sequel to X- beyond the frontier isn't it? Is it much improvement over the original?

[DrSpike]

My mate was into driving and space games, and he got a force-feedback joystick and wheel. They were admittedly awesome but:

[alva]

Are they still that expensive? I thought prices had dropped over the last couple of years.

Not buying a joystick to play a game either, did it once , never again.