X2: The Threat

YX2 claims to be an Elite clone, and it certainly has some of the features of the original game. For those who don’t know, Elite was a game originally written for the BBC micro in the late 1980s by two students in Cambridge. You can get shareware versions of subsequent releases of Elite for the PC and Amiga here.

X2 does indeed have some of the features of Elite. Unfortunately, the game feels like a copy and implementation without the spirit of the original. For example, I do not like the layout of the various stellar systems. They are distressingly two–dimensional. The links between stellar systems are so clearly based on squares on boards. X2 was a great opportunity for some interesting innovation, and that opportunity has been completely chucked for the sake of safe game design. So much for a homage to Elite.

It’s worth playing, but I’m not excited by it. It’s uninspired.