Beyond the Frontier puts players in the role of the pilot of an experimental spaceship. After a brief training session disguised as a systems check, the ship is ready for its maiden flight. But in the tradition of countless theme park rides, something goes very wrong, and the ship is thrown ... somewhere. Somewhere far from Earth. Somewhere crawling with aliens who want to--no, it's too horrible--put the players into debt!
The alien Telladi happily repair the damaged craft, but insist on payment for the service. So players must scratch together some credits by becoming a tramp freighter, flying between floating space factories trading various and sundry goods like energy, food, computer chips, etc. (The Telladi also front players a little cash to get started, increasing the debt owed.) Besides paying off debts, hard-earned credits can be used to purchase upgrades to the ship such as weapons, shields, and extra cargo space.
Stargates lead to other solar systems (54 in all) with more opportunities for trade. Along the way, five other alien species appear, including the evil Xenon, as well as countless pirates. It's completely up to players what career they pursue in this new realm. They can trade, even save up money and build factories of their own. They can smuggle illegal goods at high risk and high profit. They can become a bounty hunter and kill pirates for a living, or turn rogue and be one of those pirates.
But the game isn't entirely without plot. Getting home is the overall goal, and more clues to how this can be accomplished appear the deeper players progresses in the game. But a good number of pirates and Xenon must be dealt with before that pretty blue planet called Earth is ever seen again.
Beautiful and strange
X's most striking aspects are its lovely art and sound. The solar systems are full of bright stars and glowing dust clouds. Every view is like something the Hubble telescope might see. Lilting, new age music gives the game something of a 2001: A Space Odyssey feel and adds to the sensation of being lost far from home. The music and gorgeous visuals make even mundane tasks like docking with a rotating space station exciting and full of wonder. The space stations and factories, though, tend to be somewhat blocky and simplistic. There's not much to see inside, either. Usually just a docking bay or maybe one other freighter.
An intelligent system of supply and demand makes trade as challenging as combat--perhaps more so--because prices fluctuate in response to trade, so players can't just follow the same route all the time; the credits will dry up. Yet, while realistic, the economic system is also tedious at the start. It can take hours of trucking back and forth before enough money is saved up to buy even one little laser. Back and forth, back and forth, blah blah. It's like a talky, no-phasers episode of Star Trek.
Because combat is only one aspect of life in X, the ship's controls are somewhat simple as compared to dedicated-combat sims like latter Wing Commander titles or Freespace. It's nice how players can choose, basically, how much or little fighting they want to do. Some fighting is, of course, inevitable.
Hardcore space-combat heads will probably find X slow and frustrating. But people looking for a game that takes them away to another world where they can really live, at least for a while, will enjoy X's otherworldly immersion.
