X³: Terran Conflict

zakhal · January 4, 2009

Ive played evochron and its open ended like X series except its even less story oriented. You mostly make money in it and shoot stuff. Parkan 2 has som serious problems iirc. I dont remember what but I decided against picking it up.

You can fly to the planets (no transition) in evochron but the planets themselves dont really have anything except few towns that are all look-a-likes. Combat is interesting in evochoron but the rest is just forgettable.

If you want open ended game where you can fly to planets you might wanna check Universal Combat Collectors Edition. You can even have ground travel (vehicles/foot) on it. Not to mention landing entire carries/battlecruisers on the planet. The planets have enemy bases so theres somthing to do on them too. The game is all dynamic on large scale so theres not much written story in it though.

JDR13 · January 4, 2009

Parkan 2 looks\sounds very impressive, unfortunately it's seems to be very obscure as well, I combed the net trying to find any type of demo with no luck. I also did a search on both Ebay and Amazon US\UK with no results. It seems to be only available as a direct download from the 1C Company website. I would love to try it out, but I couldn't find a single review anywhere, or even an English forum that talked about it, to give me an idea of whether or not it's any good.

zakhal · January 4, 2009

Gamespot and gamersgate have many user reviews. There are lots of positive ones - heres what bad they had to say:

This game boasts a huge universe, it is quite big, over 400 systems, yet there's really not much to do!

You can land on planets, but they are devoid of life, there's no real point in exploring them since you'll find nothing. You can only go a few hundred yards from where your ship has landed, which by the way you have no say whatsoever as to where you're going to land... so basically landing on a planet is just simple fluff to make the game a little more interesting. Because once you're on any given planet, there are just three things you can address.

1.) Destroy any lingering opponents.
2.) Go towards the main building, walk in and connect with the exchange interface.
3.) kill everything in the building and loot the place.

Not that there is much of a variety of things to kill... robots mainly, oh and there's also robots, and an occasional, robot. They all sound the same too. Little voices that insult you in poorly spoken English.

Sure the planets vary in landscape, from jungles, to deserts to snowy scenes. Some have exotic looking plant life.. but that's about it. there's no real interaction with anything other than... robots.

Imagine visiting 400+ worlds doing the same thing, over, and over, and over, and over, and over.... get the picture?

Another thing that bothers me is that, supposedly you are given a HUGE MOTHER of a ship to fly... yet it handles like a fighter... they all do! So a tremendous frigate or destroyer zips, banks, turns and yaws like an F16... not what I would call immersion.

The good part is this game is a decent space sim/FPS, but neither are good.

The game has a clunky interface that could've been made better, but it wasn't. The voice-over is really bad and is hard to understand a bunch of times, I had to go over and thorugh the tutorial twice.

The shipfights are a joke, all you have to do is get close, press x for about 3-5 seconds, and you can dock the enemy ship. All you have to do then is kill about 5 crewmembers, all of which are weaker than you and fairly easy to kill on the most part, and leave.

This is where I wonder WTF the game developers where thinking. What is the point of boarding a ship if you can't take it. Thats right, you can't take ships. The last crewmember sets up a 2 minute self destruct sequence. There is absolutely no reason to board an enemy ship other than it is much easier and more guaranteed of a victory, but it takes longer than shooting. Even much larger ships are easy to kill with the docking method, and this isn't balanced at all.

http://www.gamersgate.com/?page=product&what=view&sku=DD-PARKAN2 (you can order it from here + more reviews)

mute · January 4, 2009

What turned me off from parkan 2 was the reference to "only robots!". Never dared getting that game for that reason. Perhaps I am afraid of robots?

What surprised me most about evochrone was that it was so much better polished then the first title i tried from them. Starwraith 3D.

My initial impression of the Evochrone demo might reflect the leap they made into this version. But still, since its lighter then the X games i will probably try it. I was intrigued enough to keep checking it out.

zakhal · January 4, 2009

mute said:
My initial impression of the Evochrone demo might reflect the leap they made into this version. But still, since its lighter then the X games i will probably try it. I was intrigued enough to keep checking it out.

Its light but its also light in content. I bought it because I liked the demo but Im not sure it was worth the 25$ I paid for it. After I made few millions there was not much to do in the game except shoot random enemies just to gain rank.

I quit the game shorty after I lost those millions (I spent a lot of time making that money) just by pressing one wrong button thanks to the unfriendly UI. The game's savesystem is so fascist that I could not reload the game to fix the mistake.

The game's developer did fix that button immediatly in a patch and even offered to edit my save to give those millions back (nice person I must admit) but I gave up on the game allready. It has a nice flight model but rest is just not that good - it gets repetative fast.

X series atleast has a solid story, real handwritten missions, much more and bigger ships, way better economy and better production values overall.

JDR13 · January 4, 2009

Just spent a few minutes with the Evochrone demo. It seems to take forever to get from point A to point B in that game. Also, it's possible to land on planets right? How do you land, and what is there to do on planets?

zakhal · January 4, 2009

JDR13 said:
Just spent a few minutes with the Evochrone demo. It seems to take forever to get from point A to point B in that game. Also, it's possible to land on planets right? How do you land, and what is there to do on planets?

There is a hyperjump or somthing button on the game. You need to choose the distance through map. You can also use boost buttom to accelerate elite style. Thers two flightmodes wing commader style and elite style.

You can land simply by flying towards the planet. If you fly too fast you die - theres a warning though. In the planet you can:
(1) Land on the few cities to sell minerals or trade goods to make money
(2) Find crates that have items and sell them for money
(3) Find ancient artifact that gives you clues where the next ancient artifact is (this is the main plot)

You get text messages after jump about 2 and 3 if they exist nearby. They are very small and very hard to find so you need to triangulate to find them. You can also hire crew that helps finding them.

dteowner · January 4, 2009

@JDR- Freelancer wasn't on Target's shelf yesterday. Not even a spot for it. That happened some time in the last 2 weeks. They do have the game here in the Bustling Metropolis at Wallyworld, on their version of the $10 oldie rack.

rune_74 · January 4, 2009

Free lancer you can land on planets....and I'm sure it is better then the two european ones. I am going to recommend it again here.

zakhal · January 4, 2009

rune_74 said:
Free lancer you can land on planets....and I'm sure it is better then the two european ones. I am going to recommend it again here.

The landing&planet is just a "animated movie & screen" though. You dont actually land. The story missions are worth playing but they are short. Too bad they never did any expansion packs.

rune_74 · January 4, 2009

I think if you check out some of the mods you will be surprised....if I remember correctly its quite a good set out there.

JDR13 · January 4, 2009

Thanks dteowner, I stopped at a Target last night and couldn't find it. I'm going to try a different store tonight, as well as Walmart.

I also tried the demo for DarkStar One last night. It didn't seem that bad at all to me. I'm going to play it a bit more before deciding whether to pick it up.

Dhruin · January 4, 2009

Picked up Darkstar One myself the other day in Steam's sale for $4.99. The reviews were pretty solid for a Freelancer clone and I don't expect much for the price. Back to X3: TC after the latest update first, though.

Guest · January 5, 2009

I think I'm getting the expansion for Space Rangers II and playing it all over again.
It was such a great non-linear space game where you can do whatever you feel like doing, without all the boring ship maneuvering shit. Hmmm.. the more i think about it... the more I like this plan of mine.

Dhruin · January 5, 2009

Got that one on Impulse sale for $4.99. Now I just need to play all this.

JDR13 · January 5, 2009

Dhruin said:
Now I just need to play all this.

I know how you feel Dhruin. I have way too many unplayed games right now.

zakhal · January 6, 2009

Tomorrow war looks interesting but it might be mission based instead of open one:

The Tomorrow War is a space sim based on the trilogy of novels written by a famous Russian author, Alexander Zorich.

* Powerful game engine capable of modeling whole planetary systems. The engine allows continuous flights from space into the atmosphere of a planet and landing on any part of the planet
* Adjustable settings - from a hardcore space sim to a near arcade game
* Dozens of NPCs and locations
* Different types of spacecrafts - from fighters to ferry ships

Play.com releasedate says its out next month. Gamersgate has preorder even.

Jabberwocky · January 6, 2009

Now we're talking! I liked the mission based games like Independance War better than sandbox games. I don't have time for sandbox. I'll have to check into this new game.

rune_74 · January 6, 2009

God we need a new wing commander like part 3

zakhal · January 6, 2009

rune_74 said:
God we need a new wing commander like part 3

Yesterday I started a replay of wing commander series after 10 years. I started with a 3DO super wing commander (better gfx,sound and new "1.5" mission pack) and I have like five wc games, 6 mission packs, 13 tv episodes of wc academy, one movie, 10 books and lots of mods to finish. Im also going to play privateer remake and privateer2. The whole thing will end with the lancer series which were the last space sims from them.

It was very hard to get the 3do version to work and there was no joystick support even but after many hours I did manage to fix it and Im doing excellent with keybaord alone. I get like 80% of the kills on each mission.

EDIT:

Starshatter is one of the more successful new mission based space sims. Theres a demo even but its from very old version. The game itself has a dynamic campaign where you can fly everything from small fighters to big capital ships on both space and planets. The game is like a Falcon XX of space sims:
http://www.matrixgames.com/products/334/details/Starshatter.-.The.Gathering.Storm

X³: Terran Conflict

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