Competition for elite?

Serpentstar

S
I was navigating my way to Steam today. And seen this.

X Rebirth http://store.steampowered.com/app/2870/

I have got to say, their video's look impressive. Not to the detail that Elite is, but looks fairly detailed. Making me yearn for breaking out my warthog from it's drawer and drop the $50 for it. Anyone else have thoughts on this because it is here now, and playable...
 

Darren Grey

Darren Grey
Graphics looked pretty poor to me, and rather vitally they showed very little actual gameplay footage. Lots of fancy explosions, sure, but what does it feel like playing the game?
 

Variform

Variform
I watched the trailers and they don't show much gameplay. Just fancy pictures.

I can't get over smoke stacks in space though, let alone huge billboards depicting there is some exchange there or trading point whatever.

Strange.
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
It is true that this is a beautiful video. The sets are sumptuous. A lot of work, it seems. But I prefer to concentrate on ED who will be the only game which I shall play
 

Riandor

Riandor
Actually it was the internal details i had issues with... Plants and people just still looked old school graphically speaking, even if the outdoor design styles were pretty good and interesting.

I dont like the one ship concept and X series has always notoriously been slooooow, though apparently they picked up the pace for this one.

Still, their long range scanner video was "ping for objects, shoot for canisters and collect..." Boooooring.

Im sure the game is better than that, but i just also have bad memories of X2 & X3.
 

Cosmos

C
The problem is that the uninformed gamer could end up buying something like this game rather than ED. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery but we must recognise that competition is high. Now that there has proven to be a desire for the 'space sim', expect more to follow.

I'd say Star Citizen is more of a threat - They've been doing a hard marketing job and sites like massively are heavily biased towards them - as is the whole of the corporate American machine.

Best advice I can offer Frontier is concentrate on making a game with fantastic gameplay - that is something people tend to notice.
 

deusx_ophc

deusx_ophc
Serpentstar said:
I was navigating my way to Steam today. And seen this.

X Rebirth http://store.steampowered.com/app/2870/

I have got to say, their video's look impressive. Not to the detail that Elite is, but looks fairly detailed. Making me yearn for breaking out my warthog from it's drawer and drop the $50 for it. Anyone else have thoughts on this because it is here now, and playable...
Click to expand...

ya rly?!

i have thoughts on this but i better keep them to myself :D
 

Lestat

Banned
Lestat
It looks to cartoonish. Also the space combat lack that zest. destroy the guns then the engines and BOOM. It to basic for me. Cities in the sky? Not realistic. Ships all flying the same direction :eek:. And what the hell Space Highways. :S
 

manifold

M
You have to give them credit for being the only company brave enough to continue pumping out space sims for the entire duration that other companies turned their backs on the genre ;)

After several hours in XR I have mixed feelings. The atmosphere is truly incredible, by far the most atmospheric space sim available to date. Being able to land on a capital ship and walk around the pad while seeing the stars move overhead as the ship continues on its way...not at all an underwhelming sight :D As with all X games it will take many more hours to get into the real gameplay, so I can't comment yet on building and managing an empire. But I'm sure it'll be of a similar depth/quality as X3. I do love the process of meeting my pilots in person before I hire them :) Very cool stuff (even if the characters can be...erm...a bit awkward :rolleyes:)

To be sure, there are a lot of issues. The UI probably the most glaring. One can hope that they'll listen to the (numerous) complaints...and if so, I think XR will shape up to be quite a game.

Obviously it's no competition for ED because...it's out now... ;)

Lestat said:
It looks to cartoonish. Also the space combat lack that zest. destroy the guns then the engines and BOOM. It to basic for me. Cities in the sky? Not realistic. Ships all flying the same direction :eek:. And what the hell Space Highways. :S
Click to expand...

There's definitely an issue with some kind of toon shader or just bad flat shading on station interior graphics. It is mitigated by SSAO but currently that effect is so poorly-tuned that it takes a beast of a GPU to run it. I do hope they fix that. Still, the graphics are better than previous X games.

Space combat is as it always is in the X games: not very visceral. Never has been, never will be - it's just not that kind of game. Ships don't all fly in the same direction, there are "traffic lanes" for atmosphere at major stations but it's just for looks really. The major ships are doing other things. Space highways...well that's a highly-contentious matter of opinion so I won't combat you on it, but realize that many people like it. In one sentence: a highway system makes space travel vastly more interesting (although I know hardcore Elite fans are opposed to that idea). And, one last remark - there is nothing "basic" about any X game, XR included ;) The usual criticism is quite the opposite.
 
Last edited:

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
yowl said:
Reviews not so good from http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/x-rebirth/user-reviews, but the Limit Theory guy also thought it was atmospheric. Last post - http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1670

On the subject of LT, I think he does a better job of updates than ED. Can be just rambling but there is something pretty much every day.
Click to expand...

Different cultures of communication in my opinion. It is easy for limited team (well, one person orchestra with little help) to communicate more frequently. Also LT plays in a little bit different league. In same time FD only shows or announce things which they know for sure will happen. If something will be different they repeat too many times (like infamous Michael quote of what video actually shows, which caused lot of misinformation about state of ED is actually in). After KS I actually thought that it will be much worse - I really didn't expect so many newsletters and updates to come out, and that there will be actual DDF archive to follow development discussion.

It is just done differently, and while I get a little bit grumpy because of FD lengthy confirmation process of information release, I fully understand reasons behind this. Things can always improve though of course :)
 

Hamerstein

Hamerstein
yowl said:
On the subject of LT, I think he does a better job of updates than ED. Can be just rambling but there is something pretty much every day.
Click to expand...

Josh Parnell (Limit Theory) appears to be developing his game in an organic manner, rather than the way a large development team (like FD) would.

It may go some way to explaining why JPs updates are more interesting. It would be difficult I'd imagine to match his style of update when the project is subdivided and being produced in parallel. We wouldn't see the progress of ED properly until the various elements were combined and I guess it's not practical (or perhaps possible) to do these mini builds for our project updates.

The advantage that ED has is when we do see something - it's going to blow us away, because we haven't sat through the whole process ala LT.
 

Capt. Hook

Capt. Hook
I've a friend who has bought X-Rebirth and says it really sucks. He has a nice rig including a very new GC (GTX770 I think) and he says FPS is poor, lots of crashes and smacks of an unreliably tested and patch hungry game. Buyer beware possibly or at least hang off buying to patches deliver better gameplay? Tbf, had a quick shufty at web and some folks liking the game for all its wrinkles
 
Last edited:

StarTux

S
First impressions of Rebirth really sucked, but the more I got into it the more enjoyable it became, using the campaign to learn the ins and outs of what to do as the Free Play will literally drop you in the game without any guidance.

After playing the campaign for some hours I think the strength with Rebirth is the same for their previous games, building a fleet and constructing stations to accrue wealth and upgrading the ship.

Navigating to other systems is a lot lot easier than previous X games and it has given me a taste of what I can expect from ED and SC.

I expect ED to be better in virtually every department than Rebirth, minus the owning a squadron which can follow you or the ability to construct space stations:

3D cockpits in 25 different ships, not that ugly fixed 2D looking cockpit.
Far better menu system
Controller setup designed around PC's not consoles.
NPC's, if they're in game actually look good.
More intuitive.
Better graphically overall.
 

Riandor

Riandor
StarTux said:
First impressions of Rebirth really sucked, but the more I got into it the more enjoyable it became, using the campaign to learn the ins and outs of what to do as the Free Play will literally drop you in the game without any guidance.

After playing the campaign for some hours I think the strength with Rebirth is the same for their previous games, building a fleet and constructing stations to accrue wealth and upgrading the ship.

Navigating to other systems is a lot lot easier than previous X games and it has given me a taste of what I can expect from ED and SC.

I expect ED to be better in virtually every department than Rebirth, minus the owning a squadron which can follow you or the ability to construct space stations:

3D cockpits in 25 different ships, not that ugly fixed 2D looking cockpit.
Far better menu system
Controller setup designed around PC's not consoles.
NPC's, if they're in game actually look good.
More intuitive.
Better graphically overall.
Click to expand...

Caution... One of the developers in another thread said the look of X:R was ahead of ED and that some of the ships cockpits will likely be similar to that within X:R. Do not overhype your expectations of Elite!

I have to say some of the in space graphics are excellent, but its the internal stuff that is poor.

What i do expect is the walking concept to be graphically better in Elite, "when" it is delivered down the line.
 

manifold

M
Well-said, I think X:R is stiff competition for ED in terms of space graphics, but I imagine ED will be able to pretty handily blow it out of the water with respect to landed / interior graphics.

Really not sure what happened with the interiors in X:R :rolleyes: Oh well, it was their first try :p
 

Commander Mick

Commander Mick
I actually thought this game sounded interesting didn't look to bad in one of preview You-Tube videos I saw earlier. I quite like the concept of combat, trade and building things in space.

One thing I didn't really like about it was piloting the space craft. It just moves left or right in stead of rolling.

So ordered myself one through Electronic Boutique and it won't arrive until some time in January in time with my new computer next year.

I also won't have the pay the $45.00 AUD it cost me until then. I was tempted to buy the Limited Edition which is nearly $200.00 AUD, but I just went for cheaper.

For the mean time I also ordered the X-Superbox which contains all the previous X-Space-Sim games. It was reasonably cheap and will most proberly arrive on my doorstep sometime next week.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom