Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Hang on. I just need to move all this space to one side to make space for more space. X3: Albion Prelude is a just released expansion pack for X3, bridging the gap to X: Rebirth, which should be with us early next year. The storyline of clashing corporations leads into Rebirth and there are new stations and ships to play around with. That’s why I’m posting this, to be honest, to share pictures of all the glorious new stuff that’s floating about up there. X3 is a beautiful game, one that it’s easy to admire both in motion and stasis. So sit back and feast your eyes.

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The many skywalking fans of the X series of spaceship shooty-tradey epics are waiting impatiently for X: Rebirth, a full-on sequel/reboot due next year, but now we unexpectedly hear another game will startjump into our orbit before 2011 is done and dusted. X3: Albion Prelude is an expandalandalandalone for X3, and plans to tell the tale of how the X universe transitioned into the state it’s in come Rebirth.
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While the kneejerk reaction to this is obviously one of mild incredulity, I can see why Egosoft have chosen to release this “benchmarking” version of X3 as a demo. It must be remarkably frustrating for people who build wide-open, sandbox titles and then find they can’t adequately promote or explain their game with a demo version. Perhaps there’s no way to chop out a chunk of the universe for people to play, and there are obvious problems with putting out a time-limited version of a full game. I guess this keeps the download size down too. If you want to see how your machine renders Terran Conflict’s pretty-pretty spacemobiles then you can get it here.

I didn’t really get on with the X games. Even by my high tolerances for videogame tedium among the stars, X3 seemed to be taking the piss a little. The scope and ambition of its Elite+++++ delivery is commendable, but there was something about its humorless space trudge that put me off. I do feel like I should go back, and plenty of my space-gaming chums chide me for my lack of appreciation. What I can say that is that I am not immune to its prettiness, and this battle-trailer for expandalone Terran Conflict certainly looks fantastic.
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