After several hours of play I’d flown through three “systems” and become bored out of my skull. The developers, Egosoft, obviously missed the point of single player RPG games and that is that they’re supposed to be fun and actually have things to do in them. They should not be megalithic constructs of confusion. Egosoft seem to have the largest ego I’ve ever seen in the gaming world, apparently they think they can make three games with “X” in the title and then use their profits to make a MMORPG (Mumorpuger) based in the same universe.

Excuse me if I’m wrong but X3 WAS a Mumorpuger but only for one person at a time. It has all the things that identify a Mumorpuger. The universe is huge, the AI is limited and only seems to stay in its original “system”, you have to grind to be able to get anywhere in the game. It’s a MMORPG, but without the Multiplayer Online part.

Anyway, now I’ll try to talk about the games good points…ok, it only has one. The graphics are pretty. That’s it. I can find nothing else that is good about this game.

Now the bad points, and there’s alot of these. It’s long-winded, the HUD has more data and buttons than the starship Enterprise, the manual is huge and the ships have no consoles in them, they’re just a camera floating in space.

Ok, I can’t summarise anymore. According to a piece of text in the manual, which occupies most of the box, you can do the main story whenever you feel like it, you can drop in and out of it. So the point of this main story is what? It becomes a side quest…the main story becomes a side quest. Seriously, what incentive is there to see the story play out if it’s not that important. In my opinion, the main story of a game like this should always be hanging over your shoulder like an annoying sibling.

I couldn’t even keep hold of the story, and I was actually trying to do it. Having been talked at by a man who my character apparently knew, I was immediately told to go on a patrol. Ok, I thought, it’s only the first mission so it’s bound to be easy. Eventually, I reached the West jump-gate of something like the second “system” only to find that my patrol buddies were no-where in sight. I checked my objectives, yes I was in the right place, but where were they?! This was about the point I gave up with X3, I hadn’t even fired a shot or seen anything that looked remotely hostile.

The “systems” in the game aren’t actually systems, they’re planets. One planet in fact where everything is in orbit. When you bring up your system map it’s an un-inspired 2d jobbie with little pictures of space stations and stuff stuck higgledy piggledy over a black background. It looks like a 3 year-old made it.

Alot of reviewers apparently called this game “deep” and I agree with them. It’s so deep that everything, even peoples sanity, seems to drown in it. Overall, I think it’s a bad excuse for an RPG and an even worse excuse for a game. Well, that’s a little harsh, it’s not a bad game, it’s mediocre, boring, tiresome and many other words for bad.

Here’s the thing Egosoft, if you’re going to make an RPG then give it a story that is interesting, propelling and always there. Make the interface easy to understand and easy to use. Make the universe easy to navigate. Basically make things a little simpler. If you’re going to make a game the manual should not come to 85 pages, ever. If I can put shelving together with two pages of instructions then a game should only require one page. The controls and some back story.

Going back to something I mentioned earlier, Egosoft are planning to release an MMORPG. A proper one at that. Just one question. Why? Is there really any point? EVE Online already exists. Also, this GOTYE of X3 is a re-release, the game was made in 2005, being re-released in 2007 makes it only 2 years old. Why was it re-released? had it been 5 years old then I would have understood but 2 years. Man, Egosoft must be laughing at all those people who bought the game again because it was “patched to 1.4″. That’s right, they released a patched game…which people paid money for. I despair at the gaming community when they allow companies to sell a patched game for £30.

I’ve digressed quite alot, so I’ll try to finish off. I found X3 to be a boring, over-hyped, long-winded game with none of the fun or finesse I first imagined it would have. It was a big disappointment for me personally, but apparently some people think this game is the best they’ve ever played. If you’re one of those people you should buy the game but chances are you have already. If you don’t think you’ll like this game then you’ll probably be thinking that the 260,000 people of the “X” community are idiots and you’ll go spend your money on something better…like Mass Effect.

P.M.