There was this game that you saw in stores, and you thought it was a video game for X-men 3. You either ignored it straight up, because you didn’t want to play an X-men video game, or you picked it up and were sourly disappointed that it wasn’t. Either way, it’s probably okay that you skipped out on this one.
X3 is a space simulator that is mainly from the first or third person views of your spaceship, and the player can choose to fight, trade, pirate, protect, all sorts of stuff. You can do practically anything; even follow the story, if you feel like it.
The graphics are pretty amazing, and the universe that is created I definitely enjoyed. I not only love hard sci-fi settings, but the expanse and area of exploration you pretty much can’t argue with. Unless you have other things to do, or a very short attention span: the loading times I definitely give a minus. Even on my high-end PC, I experienced horrendous wait times, on my 2006 PC on a 2005 game. I can’t imagine playing it on something else.
Okay, so the graphics are great but load really slowly; so what? I enjoy great settings and usually will sacrifice loading screens for beautiful graphics, something I value greatly. Problem is, the loading screens only magnify the already slow game play. This is a game I got excited about, because, in theory, with enough time and effort, concentration and talent, one could build an expansive commercial trade empire, defended by a considerable private militia while making side trips to pirate goods from competing traders and at the same time find contracts with local authorities to hunt down enemies. Or just look at stuff.
Problem is there is a lot of looking and not quite enough stuff, because even with the time compression feature, it takes so long to start up, to get enough funds to even BEGIN to start making more money.
Straight up: the game is hard. It has a pretty steep learning curve. This game is pretty much right up my alley, but maybe a little bit too far. I love customizable exportable settings, and component features on spaceships and the patient economic maneuvers in video games; this was just a tad too slow.
