[Nico]

Noooooooo, 3D is bad, you want a 2d cockpit!!!!!!!1111oneoneone

[Setekh]

What's so ass about X2? I mean, I hear it's just a game that's neither here nor there in terms of its central experience (when you wanna shoot stuff, you've gotta fly there for eons; when you wanna buy stuff, you have to shoot stuff; when you wanna swear, you get on the trail of something good, which turns out to be a pants-worthy waste of time). Did you buy it?

[Drew]

ugh...back on topic....
the secret of mana was ugh.... the storyline sucks compared to zelda......
the combat system was kickass tho

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Setekh
What's so ass about X2? I mean, I hear it's just a game that's neither here nor there in terms of its central experience (when you wanna shoot stuff, you've gotta fly there for eons; when you wanna buy stuff, you have to shoot stuff; when you wanna swear, you get on the trail of something good, which turns out to be a pants-worthy waste of time). Did you buy it?

Unrotunately, yes, I did buy it.

The flight and combat model is very arcade-ish. This turns me off, for obvious reasons. Somehow, they made the flight feel like Freelancer's mouse-flight, even with a joystick. This is a BAD thing. The combat is, on average, as shallow as Freelancers bounty missions. To this, they bolted on the economic model--or rather, they bolted THIS onto the economic model. The flight/combat engine is obviously an afterthought. They did make it pretty though.

The place where the game shines is the economic/resource model. It turns out that this is the real point of the game. Its spectacular--in a space combat game. In a 4X game, or an RTS game, it would be shallow and boring.

Then there's the animation... wow. This is where the game shines again--only not in the way you'd want it to. It shines like a glistening, still wet and steaming horse dropping. Not only is the animation stiff, its poorly modelled and very poorly paced. The voice acting is enough to make Biohazard/ResidentEvil 1 look positively Oscar-worthy. The writing is a notch worse even than that.

Finally, there's the ship designs. Those I've seen... well, they're bad. There's a few interesting bits, but they're all ruined by being attached to truly hideous designs. Honestly, they'd have done better hiring some HLP modders to do the ship and station designs.

The one thing I can't complain about, though, is the space scenery. Its stunning to look at. I mean, absolutely gorgeous. Its not as dark as Starlancer, nor as bright as Iwar2. The planets, nebulae and stars in the background look someone distilled the pure essence of old  school sci-fi pulp and painted the sky with it. I mean its STUNNING.

So, all in all, Steak, X2 is ass, and I regret buying it. As much as I dislike Freelancer, I dislike X2 even more.

[Lightspeed]

X² looks crap. Even FSretail had some better effects than that.

Ugly compression artifacts on some of the backgrounds, nebulae looks really silly, heavy perspective distortion at the FOV edges, crappy bumpmaps, ****ty models, low-poly planets, need i say more?

[mikhael]

Wow. I don't recall it looking like that at all, Lightspeed. Maybe I need to boot it up again and see if my memory is at all accurate. I remember it being absolutely gorgeous.

[aldo_14]

I hope you keep receipts, Mik

[Nico]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
X² looks crap. Even FSretail had some better effects than that.

Ugly compression artifacts on some of the backgrounds, nebulae looks really silly, heavy perspective distortion at the FOV edges, crappy bumpmaps, ****ty models, low-poly planets, need i say more?

That real time demo ( the engine is running but you can't play ) was definitively not like that.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by aldo_14
I hope you keep receipts, Mik

I live in America. We can't return opened software unless its defective.

[01010]

Originally posted by mikhael

I live in America. We can't return opened software unless its defective.

Make it defective

[Flipside]

Actually, I quite like X2, but then, I liked Elite, which actually worked upon similar lines, you traded like crazy so you could afford to shoot stuff
It is basically a space-based role-playing game.

[01010]

The large plasma accelerator was a waste of money, by the time I'd got it I could kill most things by letting them fly right into me, took most of the room in my Panther Clipper too.

[mikhael]

Elite was cool. X2 bites. Its poorly integrated and the it just doesn't play well. If they'd used Flux for flight, graphics and combat, and rewritten the economic model, the game would have been a hell of a lot better. Since the story is presented in such broken cutscenese (painful to watch AND to listen to), its hard to bring myself to suffer through the gameplay just for the story.

I can't beleive there's something worse than Freelancer At least with Freelancer, I'm willing to put up with the horrible flight model and combat model in order to get to the story.

Speaking of Freelancer, the game allows for trading and the like. Why is it that the only non-story missions are bounty missions? Its damned annoying.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by mikhael

I live in America. We can't return opened software unless its defective.

bit bollocks, that.  Act the idiot and pretend you can;t get it to work on your system, so they eventually get fooled into thinking you don't know your arse from your elbow.

[Flipside]

Well, I think a lot of the economic modelling stems from the upcoming release of X-Online. A bit of a cheeky move that, since X2 won't be compatible with it, but was more a test of technology. X suffered from 'Top End Overkill' as well alas, but I haven't gotten all that far yet

I think the choice of 'Khaak' or whatever for the 'enemy' was a bad call, considering it's pronounded 'Kack'. It really does give new meaning to being knee deep in the kack

I wish I could drag this thread back on topic, but I've never heard of Secret of Mana, sorry.

[mikhael]

Secret of Mana, AKA Seiken Densetsu. The story of a young boy who picks up a narky sword, unleashes hell, and has to go and save the world with the help of a beautiful girl and a bouncy... um... magic thing. Oh and a flying, fluffy, four winged dragon.

All in all, the absolute BEST action-RPG ever. Think of it as multiplayer version of the SNES Zelda game, but with better graphics, a groovy interface, and snazzy snazzy enemies.

Even thought he game is tile based, Square did an incredible job of hiding that fact from the player. All the art is done in tiles, but instead of using a tile grid, they used a pixel grid. That meant they could place graphics anywhere. Sprites moved on the pixel grid too, so there was never the constrained tile grid feeling like you had in Link to the Past, or the Final Fantasy games.

[ChronoReverse]

And Seiken Densetsu 3 was even better.  More responsive controls, better art and music, and Angela (ahem)