The game includes a built-in benchmark to help you tune its performance on your system. It's also kind of fun to watch. We are now using it as part of our graphics card benchmarking suite here at PCstats in fact. We experienced no stability problems with the game on our review setup, though there were reports of a corrupted save-game problem which was fixed in the 1.1 patch.

I would not hesitate to recommend X2: The Threat to any fan of space games as long as you are prepared to devote some serious hours to it. This is not by any means a pickup-and-go-game, as by far the most enjoyable aspect is the 'sandbox' universe that opens up once you complete or diverge from the main scripted missions.

X2 does some things that I have not really seen done before in a first person space sim, like the ability to control fleets of vessels, and you have to admire the thought that obviously went into the game. It almost approaches the scale of a massively multiplayer game like EVE online in terms of the number of things to do and see.

X2 is one of those rare games that may not get top reviews but contains a huge amount of gaming goodness if you are willing to dig for it. Also it's about $15-20 cheaper than the typical shelf price of PC games these days, so you can't argue with the value.

A few hints and tips

It's essential to know the array of shortcut keys built into the interface. Unfortunately, some important ones are not mentioned in the manual, such as the ability to press the ESC key upon docking with a station, which transports you instantly to the station menu so you do not have to park your ship manually each time.

Also, why dock manually when you can use the autopilot to do it for you. With the basic navigation package for your ship, you can dock using the command console interface. Much faster and less nerve racking. Use the 'J' key to enable the time distortion to make long voyages pass quickly.

The various remote control packages for your ship's control panel only need to be installed on your active ship (the one you are currently piloting) in order to be used. The manual does not really make this clear.

If you are planning to make a career as a trader, get into Teladi space and pick up the Best Buys and Best selling Price locator programs as soon as possible. These will make profitable trading considerably easier to manage.

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