I canceled EVE again not so long ago.  Signed up for the WoW yearly subscription thing, so I could get a free copy of Diablo III and entry into the next WoW beta and all that good stuff.  And I’m having great fun with it…  But there’s a very distinct feeling to EVE that most other games simply do not deliver.

There’s a feeling of loneliness and quiet desolation as you fly through space.  Thousands of kilometers between you and the nearest object.  Millions of kilometers between you and anything that could be called “civilization”.  A feeling of freedom, of being able to wander aimlessly wherever you want.

And the open-ended nature of EVE just isn’t replicated in many other places.  You can run missions, engage in piracy, build a trade empire…

But the X Universe games have always done a pretty good job of capturing that kind of feeling.  That same feeling of the vastness of space, and the open-ended possibilities.

So, I’ve recently started playing X3: Albion Prelude…  It’s the newest title in the X series.  I guess it must take place some time after Terran Conflict, but I have to admit that I’m not familiar enough with the setting’s lore to know what’s going on with any certainty.

Looks like there’s been some kind of falling out…  The Terrans appear to be at war with everyone else.  I’m not entirely sure what has caused this rift.  There’s an intro video that looks like it might explain what is going on, but it’s just a bunch of dramatic scenes.  And, honestly, I’m not sure that even matters too much.  The meat of the game is the free-roaming, open-ended gameplay that you engage in outside of the storyline missions.

I’ve just started playing around, and I’m horribly rusty.  Having a hard time navigating and fighting and anything else.  No idea what I’m doing.  And there isn’t much of a tutorial.

The graphics look pretty awesome.  Much improved from the earlier games I played.

And the game is definitely more mouse-friendly than it used to be.

But there’s still a distinctly X feel to it.  And I’m having fun wandering the spacelanes.  Can’t wait until I get the hang of things and really get going.

I’ve had a real love/hate thing going on with X³: Reunion.

It’s a terrifically cool game…  Fantastic premise…  Completely open-ended…  Basically a single-player version of EVE…  But it’s got some very rough edges.

The graphics look a little dated.  There’s absolutely no tutorial.  There’s very little in-game information about anything.  The GUI is clunky.  The whole thing is awkward and hard to deal with.

It’s compelling enough to make me keep coming back for more…  But painful enough to make me shut it down in frustration after just a couple of hours.

I’ve had to go to the web several times in order to look up information.  I’ve had to dig up maps of the universe…  Or walkthroughs…  Ship and weapon guides…  Eventually even a cheat script.  And along the way I’ve seen numerous mentions of X³: Terran Conflict – the follow-up to Reunion.

X3:TC is the more recent title, the one everyone is currently playing and talking about.  I kept seeing discussion on the forums about X3:TC being far superior to X3:R.  Eventually, curiosity got the best of me and I acquired a copy of X3:TC to try out.

The difference was obvious as soon as I started the game for the first time.

The GUI has been completely redone in a much more usable way.  Everything can be done with the mouse, instead of requiring obscure command-keys.  The command-keys are still there…  And they’re still very handy for quickly navigating the universe…  But they aren’t obscure anymore.  The mouse-driven menu entries all have their command-key equivalents clearly displayed.

The graphics have gotten an improvement.  I haven’t seen much of the universe yet, but what I have seen is very nice.  Very polished.

There’s actually a tutorial.  Nothing amazing…  But it at least teaches you how to fly your ship around, target things, communicate with other ships, dock, and things like that.  Enough essentials to get you into the game.

There’s also some mission guidance to help you complete your objectives.  Instead of telling you where to go and then leaving you to your own devices, X3:TC actually hilights the relevant steps along the way.  It’ll hilight the ship you need to kill, then hilight the gate you need to go through.  It’s very nice to actually know where to go and what to do.

Plus, I’m getting paid.  I’ve only done a few missions so far, but I’ve already made several thousand credits.

So far, I’m very impressed.  If X3:TC is still as open-ended as X3:R, I’m going to be a very happy person.