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I would normally summarize the game as good and bad points, however the bad points here are complicated and involved.
Good:
-Highway system
-No SETA
-Stations are huge
Surface Bad:
-UI is horrible, probably worse I have ever seen
-Graphics are dated, even for half a decade ago they are dated
-Performance is unpredictable and doesn't scale with settings
-Plot glitches make the game unplayable in campaign
-Game crashes far too often
-Fleet management and Trading is broken or too difficult to manage
-Mini-Games... seriously?!
Core Bad:
-AI is a step back, not improved
-Pathing is a joke, noclip is being used to hide poor AI path-finding
-There is a noticeable memory leak, game pegs at 3.2gb and crashes once LAA hard-code is hit.
-Xbox code is everywhere, it has been suggested the game actually runs inside an Xbox emulator for our PCs, however I have not seen evidence that is true yet. The design at its core was definitely for Xbox360 first and XMath library calls are still active in the code (which PCs can't use)
-Game design flaws (one ship)
-XML parser is having a hell of a time keeping up with read/build requests and it shows in game.
I would personally rate the game in its current (now 10 day old) state as a 2/10. There is potential to fix surface problems and make some of the core problems better, but I wouldn't put much hope into that.
Refunds are becoming more normal now, many people simply charged back their Credit Cards or Paypal. The game had 3300 users at peak today putting it 46th on Steam, which is horrible for an opening month -AAA- priced game.
I really hate to be the guy who rubbed it in, but as early as January of this year I warned many of the games shortcomings and the Xbox design problem. All I got was a ban and a "calm down naysayer"
I would do a youtube review, but the FPS are so bad I decided against it.
Barrenearth gives X Rebirth a 2/10
Rebirth Summary
Board Index »
X: Rebirth »
Rebirth Summary
BarrenEarth
Proguey (12)
Proguey (12)
Posted 10 years ago.
jjhawk
Markoguey (10)
Markoguey (10)
Posted 10 years ago.
No seta = good? Unless you are making a multiplayer game then seta is fine... Like everything else it's there if you want to use it and you are not forced too...
Large buildings = good? Not when Egosoft are coding the ai it's not lol...
Highway system = good? It's not original nor are gates, I don't see any benefit over the old system, but lore wise gates make more sense or have we forgotten about the formers?
Large buildings = good? Not when Egosoft are coding the ai it's not lol...
Highway system = good? It's not original nor are gates, I don't see any benefit over the old system, but lore wise gates make more sense or have we forgotten about the formers?
BarrenEarth
Proguey (12)
Proguey (12)
Posted 10 years ago.
I simply like the direction of those changes, not necessarily the implementation in this game. Like I said, 2/10 at best.
birdtable
Skillguey (7)
Skillguey (7)
Posted 10 years ago.
I do not think there is any doubt now ...Bernd way back made the decision to make a game for 12 year old xbox players ....Shallow, Simple and Sexist.
rhohltjr
Fightguey (6)
Fightguey (6)
Posted 10 years ago.
I do not think there is any doubt now ...Bernd way back made the decision to make a game for 12 year old xbox players ....Shallow, Simple and Sexist.
- birdtable
- birdtable
Agree.
and from BarrenEarth
Surface Bad:
-UI is horrible, probably worse I have ever seen
-UI is horrible, probably worse I have ever seen
My worries about using my joystick for flight control have come true.
banking left fires my gun.
banking right also fires my gun.
pitch doesn't fire anything yet...still at 1.17.
I really don't have a vocabulary colorful enough to describe the
frustration of trying to use the keyboard, mouse and joystick at
the same time.... and all three fail.
I am not an XBOX type of player.
X-Rebirth is released and there was much rejoicing. Obamacare website developers point and proclaim "Yes, the website and UCA sucks, but we're not the worst,...no, not the worst anymore."
Roguey
Trueguey (22)
Trueguey (22)
Posted 10 years ago.
@barren are youtube review? oh, that would of been good to see.
retribution1987
Rookiguey (4)
Rookiguey (4)
Posted 10 years ago.
oddly enough my joystick worked decent day one, only thing that doesn't work is the hat, and i don't really use that, but yeah, i miss the x3 ui, just enter and arrow keys to do everything if you wanted 
BarrenEarth
Proguey (12)
Proguey (12)
Posted 10 years ago.
@barren are youtube review? oh, that would of been good to see.
- Roguey
- Roguey
If it wasn't a slide show with crashes every 10 or 15 minutes from a massive memory leak... sure.
But until I can even get this game stable enough to take at least 10 minutes of video, no way.
NetHawk
Eagleguey (11)
Eagleguey (11)
Posted 10 years ago.
I agree. Tried to give Rebirth a real chance, read the reviews, worked around problems and in genral tried really hard to enjoy it. But as sad of a moment this is for me for having to say that, Rebirth is rubbish. It's not worth the download from a torrent site. So why do I think so?
Well first let's take the good parts. No SETA and the introduction of the highway system are my favourite changes. SETA was a hack...in every single game it's used (or whatever they call their Time Acceleration). It's meant to hide the "boring" parts of gameplay, like traveling to different system or (like in X3) traveling through large (and mostly empty) sectors. If they'd kept the old style sector/map layout, this change would be terrible, but together with the highway system you get a great feel for scale (it really seems now like your moving through a system and not going from one room to the other), which helps a lot with the feeling of connectedness of a system, yet still keeping the vast scale of empty space between zones.For example, now you don't need to search for some empty sector to rally your forces, you don't need to search for some low-traffic sector to prepare the stage for an assault, just move away from the center of the zone, go 20-50km out and you're in empty space, with no sensors tagging you (which to me not only feels more immersive but is also a great way of showing the vastness of space). All put together, this is probably the biggest change in the series, and atleast for me, a welcome one.
The other great improvement is ship subsystems. Having hard-points with the JD, turrets, shield generators etc. is one of the highlights of Rebirth. It's more immervise, makes boarding quite a bit more interesting, and makes tactics really viable in fleet combat. BUT...that's it. This should've been a huge change, but the implementation is lacking (to say the least), which turns this change into another mini-game.
First off, there are only 2 types of surface mount parts, turrets and shield generators. And you can have only a single type of each. So...where is the difference of just buying weapons and equiping them and having surface mount parts? With this implementation, there are none. I was expecting being able to choose the JD, choose shielding, turret styles (missile, Gattling, Mass driver, Large non-rotating canon) and of course I expected to be able to change out engines and thrusters. Another thing that could've been implemented here is choosing (when building the ship) how much of which cargo it will hold. just a couple of sliders. Also scanners could've been implemented in this way (like tactical, navigation and prospecting scanners). All said and done, they have a great feature there, one that could've made the universe simpler and yet deeper, by having every ship being really unique, but keeping the art asset count down (Rahanas is Rahanas, no matter if it's hauling BULK, WATER or being used as a mining platform) they all have the same core HULL (the visual changes could've been carried over by having the lower part of the ships hull have hard-points too, which would be populated with the number of cargo modules of each type choosen, so you'd still see at a glance what the ship might be carrying).
Ship Crews are another well-discussed feature. Having engineers, defense officers, pilot's and captains and some station personel was a great idea. The feeling of your engineers repairing ships (why not mechanics/ship technicians...who knows...), the captain steering the massive tanker, and a defence officer checking the radar for contacts would be great. I put would here, because the implementation just isn't up to par with the idea.Like Bernd said it's suppossed to make the UI easier to udnerstand through acting with humanoid NPC's, but that means having intelligent AI that is aware of current situation and reacts accordingly (instead of just waiting there while some punk in the smallest armed ship in the universe blows the super-freighter to bits).
This design extends to stations as well. Now a manager is taking care of all the needs of your station, and different personel can help with the functioning (some make production faster, others keep the station exterior modules in shape etc.) This seems like a welcome change, no more micro-managing 100's of stations, keeping each one seperated. It's easier and conveys more of a corporate feeling to owning stations. I haven't played around too much with this, but so far, this seems like the only feature that's working as expected (correct me if I'm wrong through).
NPC hiring and stats is one of the problems in this section. It's a good idea, but blatantly undeveloped. The mini-game is repetetive (more to come on that), and there is very little variation between the different NPC's. Those are minor annoyances, where the real problem lyes, becomes visible once you buy 5-10 ships at once. You can't transport more then one of each type of NPC on the skunk, and you need to find, get the stats (you really don't want to hire anyone without knowing their stats) which means playing the boring mini-game, hire and deliver EVERY SINGLE crew member. This was either not given any consideration when planned or was rushed out too fast (as everything else seems in this game). Instead of feeling some kind of relationship with your NPC crews, it's a tedious job that needs to be done in order to get on with the game.
Station construction is another interesting area of change. Now stations are build from modules and can be expanded upon (no more spaghetti tubes!). In and off itself, this is a welcome change, as not only look the stations much better, they also serve more of a city/hub purpouse instead of being just a factory in space. This also allows for stealing from stations (by shooting or hacking the right module), and gives an interesting mechanic to exploration, as station modules are scannable/explorable and yield some beneficial rewards. This is one of the mechanics that seems the most thought out and polished, but again, I have a couple of things to say about this too. First off, you don't get ANY choice in how the station will look. Yes you can build module by module, but it will allways be in the same orientation/position. So stations of same type on same expansion level will look the same. This is of course a minor thing, but why go through all the trouble of implementing expansion and modules and the construction of those in different orders if ALL OF THIS doesn't change squat? It doesn't change the layout/looks and it sure as hell doesn't change stats. It doesn't even allow (for example) to setup a a small outpost that has docking and repair facilities with the neccessary production lines inside. No sir, you can build a HUGE space city, but not an outpost. And the most annoying thing (for me atleast), you can't build the station anywhere you want. You're fixed to less or equal 4 spots in each zone where you can build. Now how am I suppossed to make a small pirate raiding and refuel outpost? Just slap it in the middle of one of the zones? Yeah cause it wouldn't stand out at all.
Ship classes and changes, and I'm not talking about only having one ship...well not talking much about it.
The fact of personally flying a single ship is not disturbing me, on the contrary, actually I was pleased with the idea, as I was hoping for some great art assets to the ship, many customization options etc. Well I was wrong, my hopes and dreams lie shattered. But still flying a single ship personally ain't all that bad. Now the change from ship classes to basically Capitals and Non-Capitals is welcome, at least from my perspective as many of the classes had only a single useful ship (M7C's anyone?) or were completely bogus except for the beginning stages (M5's). Now the game introduced drones to get the jobs of anything smaller then a M6 done, and this makes a lot of sense from a reality perspective, and also gives a few good gameplay-options as well. Mostly I'm happy with this change, but again, the ships should've been more customizable.
Drones are great! they are quite fun to use, make a lot of sense, and seeing cargo drones moving back and forth between a station and trader is beautiful (seeing them blow up just before I grab their cargo is an even better sight
). BUT! The AI should be able to USE the drones too! they don't, atleast they don't seem to know how. The AI has no need to hack you ships, the AI has no need for shield-drones...or it just doesn't know how to use them. The only drones the AI seems to know of are cargo and mining (these are the same I think) drones.
Mini-Games, they suck, period. Mini-Games feel like a quick fix to some un-thought-out gameplay elements. They make the game seem arcadish and cheap, but most importantly they get boring with time and break the immersion. If you ever intend to use mini-games in your game, make 'em more complex (hacking in Deus Ex 1), thus atleast they get a position as gameplay element rather then being a mini-game which might aswell stand on it's own in a arcade gallery.
And now to the epilogue:
X Rebirth was a grand idea, it was suppossed to be TNBT, and it easily could've been. BUT soemthing wen't horribly wrong in the implementation phase. I don't know what, I don't know when, and sure as hell I can't understand why a company with over 20years of experience in making PC games goes down such a road, but they did. It's their choice to design whaever they like, and it's ours to play whatever we like. Personally I'm waiting for Limit Theory (ltheory.com)
Well first let's take the good parts. No SETA and the introduction of the highway system are my favourite changes. SETA was a hack...in every single game it's used (or whatever they call their Time Acceleration). It's meant to hide the "boring" parts of gameplay, like traveling to different system or (like in X3) traveling through large (and mostly empty) sectors. If they'd kept the old style sector/map layout, this change would be terrible, but together with the highway system you get a great feel for scale (it really seems now like your moving through a system and not going from one room to the other), which helps a lot with the feeling of connectedness of a system, yet still keeping the vast scale of empty space between zones.For example, now you don't need to search for some empty sector to rally your forces, you don't need to search for some low-traffic sector to prepare the stage for an assault, just move away from the center of the zone, go 20-50km out and you're in empty space, with no sensors tagging you (which to me not only feels more immersive but is also a great way of showing the vastness of space). All put together, this is probably the biggest change in the series, and atleast for me, a welcome one.
The other great improvement is ship subsystems. Having hard-points with the JD, turrets, shield generators etc. is one of the highlights of Rebirth. It's more immervise, makes boarding quite a bit more interesting, and makes tactics really viable in fleet combat. BUT...that's it. This should've been a huge change, but the implementation is lacking (to say the least), which turns this change into another mini-game.
First off, there are only 2 types of surface mount parts, turrets and shield generators. And you can have only a single type of each. So...where is the difference of just buying weapons and equiping them and having surface mount parts? With this implementation, there are none. I was expecting being able to choose the JD, choose shielding, turret styles (missile, Gattling, Mass driver, Large non-rotating canon) and of course I expected to be able to change out engines and thrusters. Another thing that could've been implemented here is choosing (when building the ship) how much of which cargo it will hold. just a couple of sliders. Also scanners could've been implemented in this way (like tactical, navigation and prospecting scanners). All said and done, they have a great feature there, one that could've made the universe simpler and yet deeper, by having every ship being really unique, but keeping the art asset count down (Rahanas is Rahanas, no matter if it's hauling BULK, WATER or being used as a mining platform) they all have the same core HULL (the visual changes could've been carried over by having the lower part of the ships hull have hard-points too, which would be populated with the number of cargo modules of each type choosen, so you'd still see at a glance what the ship might be carrying).
Ship Crews are another well-discussed feature. Having engineers, defense officers, pilot's and captains and some station personel was a great idea. The feeling of your engineers repairing ships (why not mechanics/ship technicians...who knows...), the captain steering the massive tanker, and a defence officer checking the radar for contacts would be great. I put would here, because the implementation just isn't up to par with the idea.Like Bernd said it's suppossed to make the UI easier to udnerstand through acting with humanoid NPC's, but that means having intelligent AI that is aware of current situation and reacts accordingly (instead of just waiting there while some punk in the smallest armed ship in the universe blows the super-freighter to bits).
This design extends to stations as well. Now a manager is taking care of all the needs of your station, and different personel can help with the functioning (some make production faster, others keep the station exterior modules in shape etc.) This seems like a welcome change, no more micro-managing 100's of stations, keeping each one seperated. It's easier and conveys more of a corporate feeling to owning stations. I haven't played around too much with this, but so far, this seems like the only feature that's working as expected (correct me if I'm wrong through).
NPC hiring and stats is one of the problems in this section. It's a good idea, but blatantly undeveloped. The mini-game is repetetive (more to come on that), and there is very little variation between the different NPC's. Those are minor annoyances, where the real problem lyes, becomes visible once you buy 5-10 ships at once. You can't transport more then one of each type of NPC on the skunk, and you need to find, get the stats (you really don't want to hire anyone without knowing their stats) which means playing the boring mini-game, hire and deliver EVERY SINGLE crew member. This was either not given any consideration when planned or was rushed out too fast (as everything else seems in this game). Instead of feeling some kind of relationship with your NPC crews, it's a tedious job that needs to be done in order to get on with the game.
Station construction is another interesting area of change. Now stations are build from modules and can be expanded upon (no more spaghetti tubes!). In and off itself, this is a welcome change, as not only look the stations much better, they also serve more of a city/hub purpouse instead of being just a factory in space. This also allows for stealing from stations (by shooting or hacking the right module), and gives an interesting mechanic to exploration, as station modules are scannable/explorable and yield some beneficial rewards. This is one of the mechanics that seems the most thought out and polished, but again, I have a couple of things to say about this too. First off, you don't get ANY choice in how the station will look. Yes you can build module by module, but it will allways be in the same orientation/position. So stations of same type on same expansion level will look the same. This is of course a minor thing, but why go through all the trouble of implementing expansion and modules and the construction of those in different orders if ALL OF THIS doesn't change squat? It doesn't change the layout/looks and it sure as hell doesn't change stats. It doesn't even allow (for example) to setup a a small outpost that has docking and repair facilities with the neccessary production lines inside. No sir, you can build a HUGE space city, but not an outpost. And the most annoying thing (for me atleast), you can't build the station anywhere you want. You're fixed to less or equal 4 spots in each zone where you can build. Now how am I suppossed to make a small pirate raiding and refuel outpost? Just slap it in the middle of one of the zones? Yeah cause it wouldn't stand out at all.
Ship classes and changes, and I'm not talking about only having one ship...well not talking much about it.
The fact of personally flying a single ship is not disturbing me, on the contrary, actually I was pleased with the idea, as I was hoping for some great art assets to the ship, many customization options etc. Well I was wrong, my hopes and dreams lie shattered. But still flying a single ship personally ain't all that bad. Now the change from ship classes to basically Capitals and Non-Capitals is welcome, at least from my perspective as many of the classes had only a single useful ship (M7C's anyone?) or were completely bogus except for the beginning stages (M5's). Now the game introduced drones to get the jobs of anything smaller then a M6 done, and this makes a lot of sense from a reality perspective, and also gives a few good gameplay-options as well. Mostly I'm happy with this change, but again, the ships should've been more customizable.
Drones are great! they are quite fun to use, make a lot of sense, and seeing cargo drones moving back and forth between a station and trader is beautiful (seeing them blow up just before I grab their cargo is an even better sight
). BUT! The AI should be able to USE the drones too! they don't, atleast they don't seem to know how. The AI has no need to hack you ships, the AI has no need for shield-drones...or it just doesn't know how to use them. The only drones the AI seems to know of are cargo and mining (these are the same I think) drones.
Mini-Games, they suck, period. Mini-Games feel like a quick fix to some un-thought-out gameplay elements. They make the game seem arcadish and cheap, but most importantly they get boring with time and break the immersion. If you ever intend to use mini-games in your game, make 'em more complex (hacking in Deus Ex 1), thus atleast they get a position as gameplay element rather then being a mini-game which might aswell stand on it's own in a arcade gallery.
And now to the epilogue:
X Rebirth was a grand idea, it was suppossed to be TNBT, and it easily could've been. BUT soemthing wen't horribly wrong in the implementation phase. I don't know what, I don't know when, and sure as hell I can't understand why a company with over 20years of experience in making PC games goes down such a road, but they did. It's their choice to design whaever they like, and it's ours to play whatever we like. Personally I'm waiting for Limit Theory (ltheory.com)
Burn rubber, not your soul!
BarrenEarth
Proguey (12)
Proguey (12)
Posted 10 years ago.
It is almost like the things they did well they accidentally spilled wet paint on them and the things they did bad they forced us to eat like a kid refusing beansprouts.
I love the unified station thing, and highways over gates... but the walking in stations, the scanning the outside for crap and the mini games are retarded.
I love the unified station thing, and highways over gates... but the walking in stations, the scanning the outside for crap and the mini games are retarded.
birdtable
Skillguey (7)
Skillguey (7)
Posted 10 years ago.
Bernd has just stated that the testers for Rebirth had a different version to test and did not notice any problems ,,,Still telling porkies.
NetHawk
Eagleguey (11)
Eagleguey (11)
Posted 10 years ago.
....that's a whole new level of LOW for the company...
Burn rubber, not your soul!
BarrenEarth
Proguey (12)
Proguey (12)
Posted 10 years ago.
Bernd has just stated that the testers for Rebirth had a different version to test and did not notice any problems ,,,Still telling porkies.
- birdtable
- birdtable
Yeah, we already know from what we can tell from Roguey, and some more up front un-named sources that is complete BS.
jjhawk
Markoguey (10)
Markoguey (10)
Posted 10 years ago.
I still cannot believe people aint complaining about the space invaders style combat... I thought this game was supposed to be a flight sim of sorts..
Again I see Seta mentioned as a welcome change; well I will say it again, if you don't like it then you are not forced to use it, but there are certain elements even In Rebirth where the feature would come In handy.
I see drones mentioned as a step forward.... I say It's a step backwards because you could control actual ships through a monitor back In X2 and before that you could use your satellites to view a sector on your monitor even if you were In a different one yourself and that was In X-tension..
For every feature you could say is ok In Rebirth, you could probably mention a dozen better ones In previous games and lets be honest here, non of them were perfect.
Again I see Seta mentioned as a welcome change; well I will say it again, if you don't like it then you are not forced to use it, but there are certain elements even In Rebirth where the feature would come In handy.
I see drones mentioned as a step forward.... I say It's a step backwards because you could control actual ships through a monitor back In X2 and before that you could use your satellites to view a sector on your monitor even if you were In a different one yourself and that was In X-tension..
For every feature you could say is ok In Rebirth, you could probably mention a dozen better ones In previous games and lets be honest here, non of them were perfect.
aiden
Rookiguey (4)
Rookiguey (4)
Posted 10 years ago.
i really do not know why people like the highway system, even leaving aside the silly mini game. The fact is that the highway system allowed the developer to drop everything in a really small radius around stations, with 90% of space being completely empty and having nothing in it.
This removed all point of exploration from the game, and any sense of exploration, all you did was scan to pick up loot containers. Quite simply, everything about the game is simplified over x2/x3, with Egosoft removing significant game elements, which resulted in a watered down game experience. Even the improvements like ship crews & officers, had no real depth, you basically hire a NPC and issue one simple command to get him or her to do there thing.
This removed all point of exploration from the game, and any sense of exploration, all you did was scan to pick up loot containers. Quite simply, everything about the game is simplified over x2/x3, with Egosoft removing significant game elements, which resulted in a watered down game experience. Even the improvements like ship crews & officers, had no real depth, you basically hire a NPC and issue one simple command to get him or her to do there thing.
BarrenEarth
Proguey (12)
Proguey (12)
Posted 10 years ago.
i really do not know why people like the highway system, even leaving aside the silly mini game. The fact is that the highway system allowed the developer to drop everything in a really small radius around stations, with 90% of space being completely empty and having nothing in it.
This removed all point of exploration from the game, and any sense of exploration, all you did was scan to pick up loot containers. Quite simply, everything about the game is simplified over x2/x3, with Egosoft removing significant game elements, which resulted in a watered down game experience. Even the improvements like ship crews & officers, had no real depth, you basically hire a NPC and issue one simple command to get him or her to do there thing.
- aiden
This removed all point of exploration from the game, and any sense of exploration, all you did was scan to pick up loot containers. Quite simply, everything about the game is simplified over x2/x3, with Egosoft removing significant game elements, which resulted in a watered down game experience. Even the improvements like ship crews & officers, had no real depth, you basically hire a NPC and issue one simple command to get him or her to do there thing.
- aiden
If it was done properly there would be areas of space to explore and get into trouble if you got off the highways early. It opens the game up and makes it that much larger... again if done right.
Unfortunately Egosoft just made Highways the same as gates and added a mini-game instead of a loading screen.
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