X Rebirth Review

There are two things to keep in mind here: There is the game Egosoft made, and the game the X community wanted. It’s a bit more complicated than that, and if the rumours are true X: Rebirth has had a very odd genesis indeed, but with regards to the here and now those are the two most important points to keep in mind. The game Egosoft made, if you ignore the bugs for a second, is not a terrible game. It’s not amazing either, but it’s a perfectly competent space arcade game, with simulation elements set in a beautifully made universe. X: Rebirth, the latest instalment in the company’s trade mark space-simulation series, was meant to represent a new beginning for the franchise. The only problem is it’s not the game the X community wanted. Like, at all.

Don’t get me wrong - that’s an incredibly sweeping statement. There are probably many of you out there making the most of, perhaps even enjoying your time in X: Rebirth. Well done, you are a better person than I am. To be honest, we should have been prepared for this – I remember, when first hearing about Rebirth’s existence, the company saying they were going to keep the focus on one ship. This should not have been unexpected, but having played the game (or tried to, anyway), it’s definitely not what I wanted. X: Rebirth makes a number of drastic changes from previous games, some good, some bad, and the overall effect is that you sometimes feel like you’re playing a game with the X branding, as opposed to a ‘genuine’ X game. As you may have spotted, I refer to X: Rebirth as more of a space-arcade game with simulation elements, as opposed to the truer ‘space-simulation’ tag of the earlier release. Rebirth definitely tries to add a touch more arcade into its DNA, and the grafting has clearly had issues.

An early press shot of your trade ship, which you get pretty early on in the campaign. Companion AI is a bit rubbish though

As we’ve mentioned before, the game only lets you control one ship – The Pride of Albion, which runs under the nickname ‘Albion Skunk’. This applies for both free-play and the story campaign. It’s a pretty robust ship – the size of a large fighter, perhaps, it’s got a cockpit that fits two people in it, plus the living facilities to accommodate, and it’s meant to represent the cutting edge of that ‘class’ of ship. In previous X-games, whilst you could buy equipment to help improve performance here and there, essentially if you wanted more power you changed up for a better/bigger class of ship. In Rebirth, with the Albion being all you can ever pilot, there’s more scope for improvements, and upgrades, although it’ll still only ever be a slightly beefed up fighter, so you have to be careful when taking on larger ships.



Being tied to one ship is not the end of the world. Like I said, it’s a fairly robust ship and if you kit it out properly you can do some serious damage. Missiles, lasers… even drones for long range combat if you don’t want to get involved yourself. It can also mine, haul its own limited cargo, and as you progress through the campaign (everything is unlocked for you at the beginning with freeplay), more and more functionality becomes available to you. But being the X-universe, there are some tasks you’ll want dedicated ships for, trading being one of them. Now, for reasons known only to Egosoft, a lot of trade goods can ONLY be done via a trade ship, which is where the squad mechanic comes in. To compensate for the fact you can’t switch-out for another ship, you can acquire a small ‘squad’ of ships, piloted by NPC captains that you recruit. You then order these NPC’s about. Ok, that’s fine, except that not only is the interface poorly designed, but the AI itself is a bit well, derpy. Don’t take my word for it, just go online and you’ll see what I mean.

Station complexes are huge now, and a lot of travel is done by hyper-space lanes, which you can see in the background

You can get out of your ship now and walk around. In fact the whole cockpit is rendered, with your view representing a more life-like POV. That includes annoyingly placed HUD elements and consoles obstructing part of your view. But hey, it’s kind of cool that when you want to navigate menus, etc…, your FOV shifts and you find yourself consulting an actual console for information. Plus one for immersion, but it can get tiresome quickly. The actual walking around stations is pointless, and one of the least optimised parts of the game. Moving around is sluggish, and there’s nothing to do but talk to people and open crates for random bits of loot that you sell for meagre profit. The fact that there isn’t really an option to just sit in your cockpit handling stuff like this harks back to CCP forcing the early ‘Station Quarters’ segments onto players. That didn’t end well either.

There are a few saving graces. Playing with a gamepad (360 controller for me) actually makes everything less cumbersome, and the natively programmed bindings work pretty well. Considering you’re going to be travelling around not doing much for a lot of the time, the gamepad was a revelation. The only thing it doesn’t quite do well enough is dogfighting – the precision you need while dogfighting is slightly beyond the capabilities of the gamepad, however if you put it down and start moving the mouse around, the switch-over from gamepad to Mouse and Keyboard input is almost instantaneous, so you don’t have to keep going into the menus to change over. Quite a few times I would fly around with the controller, and then if I was in a dog-fight that was particularly tricky I’d just put it down and start using the mouse. Enemies defeated, I’d pick the controller back up again and away I went. It’s a shining beacon of smart-functionality in a sea of otherwise bizarre design choices.

The Albion, in the docking bay of a random space station. These walking around segments basically look the same, no matter where you are

I could talk about the bugs, the poor optimisation generally, and host of other technical flaws we’ve encountered, but you probably know all about those already and they, at least, will be fixed at some point. But X: Rebirth has a far deeper problem. If the rumours are true and there was going to be a console version of this game, then that would explain a lot of things. X: Rebirth is at war with itself – there’s a conflict going on between its ancestry – which is clear to see – and the way it’s currently trying to present itself. Some of it works, most of it doesn’t, and combined with the fact that it’s clearly not finished (Which is remarkable, given they’ve been at it for 7 years), overall it’s not a great experience. It’s pretty boring, actually. If you pre-ordered and paid full RRP for this, then I feel sorry for you.

X: Rebirth will get better over time, and anyone who’s open-minded enough to look past the ‘X’ branding and see the ‘game’, may even find many hours of entertainment. That’s not to say those of us who wanted a newer, better Albion Prelude or whatever are in the wrong, but Egosoft made the game they wanted to make. The fact that it’s not the game we wanted is more on us then on them, but considering Egosoft were making such a radical departure they could have at least made sure it all worked properly. One to come back to in a couple of months, perhaps, and if you’re still deadest on picking this up, then try and wait for a sale or something at least. Sorry, Egosoft, but better luck next time.

The game’s greatest asset is its visuals – credit where credit’s due, Egosoft have done a wonderful job at reimagining the visual nature of their universe. You’ll see a lot of wonders in your travels, and sometimes it can be tempting to just stop and watch the universe tick over. Until your game crashes.