X4: Foundations heads to Earth with today's Cradle Of Humanity expansion
Alongside a major free update to the base game
The X series kept the dream of space games alive for several barren years for the genre, with a set of pretty, convoluted and buggy space trading sims. Now we live in an age of Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky and Star Citizen, but X carries on. X4: Foundations expansion Cradle Of Humanity released today, and you'll find a pretty-as-ever trailer below.
Cradle Of Humanity focuses on Earth, telling the story of what happened to the human home world in the decades after the "jumpgate shutdown" made the huge distances of space much harder to traverse. It tells this story via two new Terran factions who have their own economies, ships and political stances. The expansion will cost you £12.50 from Steam or GOG and requires X4: Foundation to play.
The expansion's launch comes alongside the release of the free 4.00 update for X4: Foundations, which adds terraforming, volumentric fog and a lot more to the game. A post on the game's Steam page lists the many fixes and additions.
The X series clearly still has a place in a post-Elite Dangerous world. It has its own style, one that's more committed to simulation, economics, and to making you look at UI screens. It clearly also still has ardent fans, some of whom may be sharpening their knives at the moment, waiting for me to say something they consider too critical. I won't, though. I'm glad the X series is still going, being as ambitious and convoluted as it likes, even if I don't personally want to play it.