Graphics

Puuurrrty

Wow! The nebulas and backgrounds in FreeSpace 2 were impressive, but no backdrop in space gaming history can touch the ones in X. The game has a nice star matte and impressive lens-flare from closer 'suns', but what really blows the mind is the planets. Each sector has a planet of varying type, all done in 3D and all animated. The player will see all sorts of planets - from Earth-like through medium sized gas giants up to ringed monsters like Saturn. There was none of the regular blurriness expected on a Voodoo3 card for such large objects (limited as they are to 256x256 textures), since all the textures were quite small and the planets and backdrops simply collections of the textures, instead of just one large one.

Whoah

Those gates are tough

X looks fairly nasty at 640x480 resolution, which is understandable since the game's default resolution is 800x600 and we had no trouble playing it at 1280x1024 on a Voodoo3. The DirectX 6 optimized mode produced some obvious artifacts and had some errors which looked like a Z-buffer glitch.

What Do I Fly?

The craft that the player starts out with is what he is stuck with through the entire game, though, admittedly, it is a good looking ship. Most of the ships and stations in the game have a semi-realistic design; realistic enough to be believable without sacrificing good looks. Each race tends to have unique craft and space stations, though some ships are multi-racial. Don't expect a high polygon count either - most objects tend toward blocky and angular rather than complicated and curvy.

Zoom mode

Check the lights on the gate's arms powering up

Still, that does not take away much from the stunning beauty of the game. Even when suffering from the typical D3D pox of overdone colored lighting, the game is beautiful. Weapon effects are fantastic. The piddly little Alpha Impulse Ray Emitters lasers that are normally the first weapon on a ship act and feel weak enough. As you gather your fortune, however, you will be eventually able to afford the supreme weapon - Gamma High Energy Plasma Throwers. Wow! When you put two of these babies on a ship and fire, it throws the ship back and around! The Gamma HEPTs need to be fired in short bursts, since prolonged fire leads to a complete loss of aim and therefore the ship's just wasting energy.

About to jump

But first - more potshots!

All weapons move fairly slowly in the game, but have a decent rate of fire. This gives combat a lot of that up-close and personal dogfighting, and should you ever find yourself strafing a large spacecraft, you're in for a treat. When fighting large craft like space stations, battleships and destroyers, you'll often do strafe runs to get your hits in without being hit yourself. As each energy weapon has an exploding blast, sending a stream of fire across the deck of a ship leads to a grand cascade effect of explosions. It's just not something that can be described in words or pictures, you have to see it for yourself.