*****EGOSOFT TNBT (X Rebirth)****

If you're judging CaptainRave's metacritic review (there's a lol straight away by the way, just go and read a few of them) he wrote that early on when people were giving the game zero's and one's (of course people still are). Perhaps it was misguided to overrate the game like that just to compensate for the rage, but let's be honest, the majority of negative (and overly positive) reviews over there are a cesspit of stupidity.

The game has quite a few problems, but it's by no means anywhere near those scores. Perhaps I'm biased because I've not encountered any of the game breaking problems other people have had, but it's at worst in the low 5's, but probably in my opinion high 6's or low 7's.

EDIT: The reason I'm so, so annoyed at this **** happening on almost every game release, people giving zeros, ones, twos for games just because they're angry at it for various reasons whether it's design decisions, bugs etc, is best expressed by linking to this: http://www.gamespot.com/big-rigs-over-the-road-racing/

That was a game which thoroughly deserved it's rating. Compare X:Rebirth to that. Go watch the twitch streams of X:Rebirth and come back and tell me honestly and with a straight face that this game is as completely and inherently broken as that game was. It's got major design flaws and problems, yes, and I am not defending those but none that completely destroy it's functionality like that game did. As Halfmad said, this game is basically average, with the potential to be good or even maybe great with Egosoft's history of dedicated patching of their games.
 
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I'm going to leave it a while untill a major patch is released. Started a kill mission I could not complete as a fighter was struck inside the station.
 
Munimentum said:
If you're judging CaptainRave's metacritic review (there's a lol straight away by the way, just go and read a few of them) he wrote that early on when people were giving the game zero's and one's (of course people still are). Perhaps it was misguided to overrate the game like that just to compensate for the rage, but let's be honest, the majority of negative (and overly positive) reviews over there are a cesspit of stupidity.

The game has quite a few problems, but it's by no means anywhere near those scores. Perhaps I'm biased because I've not encountered any of the game breaking problems other people have had, but it's at worst in the low 5's, but probably in my opinion high 6's or low 7's.

EDIT: The reason I'm so, so annoyed at this **** happening on almost every game release, people giving zeros, ones, twos for games just because they're angry at it for various reasons whether it's design decisions, bugs etc, is best expressed by linking to this: http://www.gamespot.com/big-rigs-over-the-road-racing/

That was a game which thoroughly deserved it's rating. Compare X:Rebirth to that. Go watch the twitch streams of X:Rebirth and come back and tell me honestly and with a straight face that this game is as completely and inherently broken as that game was. It's got major design flaws and problems, yes, and I am not defending those but none that completely destroy it's functionality like that game did. As Halfmad said, this game is basically average, with the potential to be good or even maybe great with Egosoft's history of dedicated patching of their games.
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Yeah, the game is average. It's an average game that costs 40 stinking quid and was hyped to hell and back with trailers that made it look like a much more interesting game than it actually is. The trailers made me think I was going to be Captain Mal ****ing Reynolds, the badass roguish space captain, making a living in space by taking any job that pays (even if it's legal), and having witty banter with my NPC crew. But it's not fair to criticise a game for failing to meet my over-inflated expectations, so I'll give a more balanced list of rants.

My biggest complaint is that we were led to believe that we'd get to explore the interiors of ships and stations, and even our own ship. This never happened. Those vast beautiful space stations you see from the outside - you get to explore a tiny fenced-off section of them. Same with ships. First time I boarded my own capital ship / freighter thing, I could see all the way to the other side of the cargo bay and I wanted to go over there. But no, it's just skybox, and I was given access to this insultingly tiny section with a few boxes to loot. As for the Albion Skunk, you can't explore that at all - you only get to see the bit directly adjacent to the disembarkation ramp; entering and leaving the cockpit is just an animation, and there's nothing in between. The interiors themselves are uninspiring and bland. And worse, they're copy-pasted all over the place. I think I've seen maybe 3 distinct station interiors in dozens of stations.

NPCs might as well be vending machines for all the immersion they add to the game. They just stand there motionless until you talk to them, at which point you get to choose from a small selection of dialogue options, none of which are anything a normal person would ever say in a natural conversation. And the voice actors for most of them should be fired. Out of a cannon, preferably. But that's a problem that has always plagued Egosoft games.

The graphics in first person mode on board stations and ships are shockingly poor for a £40 game released in 2013. Low res textures, dodgy shaders, bad lighting. The graphics would have been considered adequate maybe 10 years ago.

The trading system is clunky and counter-intuitive. Instead of the good old days when you could just fly up to a station and view all of its wares, you now have to fly all over it looking for subsections which sell the specific thing you need. This is not acceptable.

If this game was some indy creation selling for a tenner, I'd probably be very happy with it. In fact, I might even be impressed. But when this comes from an established game developer with some seriously good games under its belt, and charging 40 squidaroonies for it... I expected better.
 
£40 is the problem, when you think something like skyrim came out for £35 if I remember correctly.

This game should really be <£30.
 
My problem with X-Rebirth is that my gaming time is limited, so I'm not going to commit to so many hours of a game like this, where everything is sub-par. I'm going to play other, quality games instead, and wait to see if alternatives like Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous come out and are actually worthy of my time and money. X-Rebirth surely isn't.
 
Curunen said:
£40 is the problem, when you think something like skyrim came out for £35 if I remember correctly.

This game should really be <£30.
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This is why i continue to say preordering is NEVER worth it. Even with developers and publishers with a proven track record, or previous hit games, or are lord god almighty.

Always wait for the release and critique, and then the subsequent glut of patches, fixes and mods.

Im a little disappointed in Egosoft, seems like a lot of the polishing never got done and they released wayyyy too early to coin it in (hell they describe the launch as a success in the press)...

hey ho, nice to see the modders fast out of the blocks :) I reckon a month and all the annoying sh** will have been modded out,

edit: release >>> released
 
Phosgene1974 said:
Im a little disappointed in Egosoft, seems like a lot of the polishing never got done and they released wayyyy too early to coin it in (hell they describe the launch as a success in the press)...
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People should be aware they spent 7 years making this game, thats enough time for even a small indie to make something amazing, sure they did an expansion and stuff for x3 but thats on top of an existing game with decent game play etc, it really makes me wonder whats going on and how they spent their dev time because it's a horrible waste if this is the result.
 
I just don't think I'll be able to get past only being able to fly one ship.

Why remove the option to fly larger ships?, seriously? - what is added by this design choice?.

I'd have preferred an upgrade X3:TC with a new engine, compared to this dumbed down version of the X series for kiddies.

The interface is actually worse (despite being simpler), the indoor sections are a horrendous waste of time & time sink (nothing is gained by leaving the ship, it should be made completely optional).

If it wasn't for X-Com Enemy Within to fall back on I'd be more annoyed that I'd wasted £40.

The worst thing is, this isn't like Rome 2 where a few months of patches can fix it - it's the core mechanics & game design which they ruined.

The origional X series had something Star Citizen & Elite dangerous don't (which gave me a reason to keep up with the series as the newer games come out) - Rebirth just seems inferior.
 
Well I played it some more last night, I'm about 1.5h in and still following silly orders from that thing I have to sit next too. Somebody needs to make a mod that puts a big red button in the cockpit that spaces her. Or maybe one that makes her chair give her a shock every time she opens her mouth.

Had to buy 100 energy cells but I accidently bought as many as I could afford leaving me with 4 credits to my name! I assume my freighter is on the way to the station to pick them up so I did a taxi mission as suggested by my nagging co pilot and my god it was tedious, having to get off the ship every time you have to do something is killing it for me. I think that's the last mission I will be doing and its not just the pointless walking in stations that's boring, playing that god damn minigame in the highways is just as annoying. Traveling anywhere is a pain in the arse to be honest.

I don't know what the devs were thinking. Its like they've got a semi decent game and then added on the most annoying and tedious gameplay mechanics they could think of just to annoy the player.
 
Jeps said:
I don't know what the devs were thinking. Its like they've got a semi decent game and then added on the most annoying and tedious gameplay mechanics they could think of just to annoy the player.
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Indeed, it's not like the game is broken due to bugs - it's stupid choices made during the design phase.

Didn't they beta test this game?, surely nobody would have said "WOW - these station sections are ******** amazing!".
 
Its just a poor game, plain and simple and for £40 it surely rubs salt in the wounds.

People say that the Metacritic review system is poor, but I feel that its a great representation of what to expect from a game.

You will always get the odd idiot that rates a game 0 becuase he/she is angry...but when you get the general consensous giving it a poor rating, there is a reason for that.

It seems to me like a game made in about 12 months on a very limited budget.....not a well established game dev with 7 years of dev time.....that just astounding!
 
They had to build the new engine first before they could start on the game and I'm guessing this is where most of the time went. I don't know, maybe they just bit off more then they could chew. I loved the previous x games and I was happy to pre-order this one to support the team that made them but I was expecting more.

So my take on it is that the engine was a huge undertaking for egosoft and something they weren't really prepared for or experienced enough to do in the time they wanted. This led to a massive delay in getting the engine finished and a rushed game to get something to market before the funds ran dry. If you look in the files, there are references to xbox. It seems like they tried to develop the engine with at least the option to use it on the consoles should they wish too but it took them so long that they have missed the console generation they were aiming for. The game looks good when flying in space far away from anything, very colourful and vibrant but as soon as you look at anything in detail you realise its all low poly and low res textures. X3AP looks miles better imo.
 
I've sunk about 15hrs into it so far. Its... "ok" I wouldnt say its bad, and there is certainly nothing in it that I cannot see being fixed or modded in the forseeable future.

My main gripes so far are:
- Capital Ships: The AI is laughable at best. When told to "refuel" they will go to the closest station, even if that station is hostile and obviously die. I've seen them sit and get shot at without firing back. They dont seem to launch drones to deffend even when stocked. They constantly follow you, you cannot tell them not to. Only being able to repair at Shipyards seems very limiting.

- Trade: Once you issue a trade order, you cannot cancel it. You can only issue trade orders to ships in your Wing. You can only issue a max of 3 commands per trade item.

And then a couple of misc ones:
- The skunk seems too powerful and you can essentially solo Capital Ships with ease if you exploit blind spots. Im not sure if this is caused by the poor AI i mentioned above or imbalance.
- You never know if the NPC you hire is the best available without hunting each stations 3 or 4 hubs, which while neat gets tiring after a while.
- Enemies are free to shoot at you, even when docked yet deffending yourself is a punishable action?
 
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