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The letter X, for gamers passionate about space flight simulations, in the last decade has meant much more than "the place to dig". For all those who have the pleasure of combining management phases, interplanetary trade and diplomatic relations in dogfighting between the asteroid belts, the Egosoft saga has always represented the only possible point of reference and, above all, the only genre brand in life. today again. Although each new release has been accompanied by a considerable load of inaccuracies and bugs, with the passage of time, and patches, the development team has always proved capable of smoothing the corners and making the vast space epics enjoyable. With X Rebirth, the German software house had promised a real rebirth of the saga, accompanied by updates for the most obsolete mechanics, a finally exhaustive tutorial, and in general an emphasized accessibility. Some longtime fans, already at the announcement, had raised an eyebrow (after all, part of the beauty of X has always been represented by its hermetic nature), but many have looked with confidence at this new release, also because of an absence from the shelves that dates back to 2008, the year of release of X3: Terran Conflict, then followed by the Albion Prelude expansion in 2012. A mix of desire and nostalgia, that of the fans, which unfortunately has to collide with a really hard reality. We don't know what happened during Rebirth's long development, but two things are certain. The first is that the game is far from complete, the second is that, this time, patches will hardly be enough to fix the situation.

In the space...

The problems of X Rebirth begin already during the very early stages of approaching the game. Our experience has seen us restart the client several times just to access the first game, and although several days and two small patches (about 10 MB each) have passed from the start of the tests to the writing of the review, no tangible improvement. it is obvious.

Before even getting into the tutorial, it is good to choose the way in which you will go to control the game, and, although the latter places a particular emphasis on using a pad, this solution has proved to be unsuitable for the experience. Our tests with an Xbox 360 gamepad have in fact given us several problems, not so much in the navigation phases, but in the exploration of the menus, which, due to the bad design and poor optimization, are unfortunately even more complicated to use with a gamepad, and putting down the peripheral every time to manage even basic functions was not a happy choice. We therefore adapted to the use of keyboard and mouse, which, on the other hand, proved to be not very optimized for dogfighting. The tutorial proposed by Egosoft accompanies the player in the discovery of the main points of the gameplay of X Rebirth, which, as per tradition for the saga, is divided equally between free exploration, combat, trade and management aspects, including management of its own fleet and possible construction of a space base. The first difference to catch the eye compared to the previous chapters is the impossibility of driving the other ships in your fleet, to which you will have to limit yourself to giving orders. In fact, X Rebirth grants control of a single ship, the Skunk, for the duration of the adventure, with no possibility of sitting in another cockpit.

Although the ship is customizable in several of its performance aspects, remaining tied to it for the duration of the game still represents a limitation, further accentuated by the fact that remotely managing your fleet, rather than piloting it in person, is a ' very inconvenient operation. Although the visuals from space suggest a very accurate simulation, a deeper analysis shows several weaknesses, starting from the tutorial. The spatial bases, rich in details from the outside, instead leave much to be desired once inside, both from the graphic point of view and from that of the gameplay, which is reduced to opening lockers to steal objects of little value (with a predilection for spacesuits), get lost in the anonymous corridors in search of this or that character and complete a very trivial mini-game to get discounts on goods. If that's not enough, a short tour of the galaxy will be enough to realize how the base assets have been reused indefinitely, in stark contrast to the variety of outdoor designs. Adding to this some bad work on character modeling and facial animations, it can be concluded that, in X Rebirth, everything that happens outside the spaceship has been done in the worst possible way.

Despite some good ideas behind it, X Rebirth represents a failure across the board

... no one can hear you scream ...

Although, compared to the aseptic visual proposed by the previous chapters, the view from the Skunk's cockpit is actually very immersive, it is inexplicably accompanied by some deficiencies in terms of game design. As fans of X know well, the gameplay of the saga foresees a lot of time spent between the game menus, since the combat and space exploration phases correspond to at least as many hours spent trading and establishing relationships with the various systems.

Unfortunately, this very important phase of the game was handled in a very clumsy way, replacing the more comfortable full-screen menus with virtual screens inserted in the ship's cockpit, which are not only uncomfortable due to the limited size, but also not very reactive and badly designed, to the point of making most of the game operations impractical, some so tortuous as to force the player to waste time memorizing the internal paths. All this is accompanied by a very poor rendering of the interior of the ship (which, we recall, is the only one that can be controlled throughout the main of interactive elements. Even a simple operation like the exploration of the galactic map, in X Rebirth can turn into a nightmare, thanks to the bizarre system proposed by Egosoft, which sees the main sectors connected by what we could define "space highways". Once you have access to these tunnels, to get maximum acceleration it will be necessary to queue up to other spaceships, taking advantage of their wake. This is not only a conceptually embarrassing idea, but also a badly executed minigame. The situation does not improve when, diplomacy aside, we move on to combat, governed by mechanics and artificial intelligence routines that leave a lot to be desired, with a really excessive ease of most clashes.

Even the view from the cockpit soon reveals major shortcomings, such as the inexplicable absence of a radar, which forces you to constantly keep an eye on the edges of the screen to follow enemy ships and points marked on the map. Perhaps, in Egosoft's vision, the co-pilot Yisha should have made the navigation phases more fun, but, given the endlessly repeated dialogue lines and dated animations, the result is sadly tragicomic, if not annoying. As for the control of the fleet, essential to progress effectively, the latter is governed by uninspired mechanics. The inability to control the ships directly clashes both with the inconvenience of the menus and with the need to personally recruit several lieutenants for each vessel and bring them in person from the space base to the assigned ship, before this is self-sufficient and capable to go on a mission. Although the officers are characterized by scores divided by various statistics, this does not seem to reflect in a sensible way on the gameplay and in general the mechanics related to the management of the fleet are uncomfortable and tend to an infinite repetition of the same operations.

... of anger

From the graphic point of view, X Rebirth alternates a good rendering of space exploration, although in any case far from today's graphic standards on PC, with an incredibly dated realization for everything concerning the interiors of the space bases, which also cover a certainly not a secondary role in the gameplay. In the latter area, everything, from polygonal modeling to animations, seems to come directly from a production of ten or more years ago, with no possibility of recovery. All of this definitely clashes with the visuals from space, rich in detail and convincing effects, especially in the case of large-scale clashes between large ships. Too bad that, in this case, to ruin the good performance there is the lack of optimization, which at the moment does not allow to exceed 30 frames per second regardless of the hardware supplied, with frequent and dramatic drops. Very annoying bugs, which sometimes do not allow you to complete even simple operations, and frequent crashes close the circle, confirming, in case it was needed, how X Rebirth was released in a version closer to the alpha than to the beta. The audio sector does not reserve better surprises, with generally dated effects and a clearly amateurish dubbing in English (accompanied by Spanish subtitles).

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

The editorial team uses the ASUS CG8250 Personal Computer
Processor: Intel Core i7 860 at 2.8 GHz
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
Operating system: Windows 7 64-bit

Minimum requirements

Processore: Intel Core i3-2100T 2.5GHz o AMD Phenom 9850 Quad Core
Scheda Video: GeForce 450 GTS / ATI Radeon HD 4870
Memory: 4GB
Operating System: Windows XP, 7,8

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Anyone with even a modicum of familiarity with the X saga could hardly expect a smooth launch. Precisely with this proactive spirit we approached Rebirth, convinced to find good foundations on which developers could build. Unfortunately, with the intention of renewing and making the brand more accessible, Egosoft has managed, if possible, to transform it into something incomprehensible, cumbersome, incomplete and, above all, not fun. The trade has become tedious, since giving orders to the ships of the fleet is not dynamic, the combat is too simple, the operations in the menus extremely cumbersome, the exploration of one's own ship limited and useless. The harsh reality, to which we mentioned at the beginning, is that the only thing that binds Rebirth to the tradition of X are the bugs that accompanied its launch but, even when and if they are fixed, what made the saga great is not no trace will be left.