“Origin X” is an intriquing game. It incorporates things I loved about games as diverse as “Solar”, arcade classic Rampart, and more. The game lets your “Create a galaxy, colonize it’s planets, and unleash the forces of gravity and fire in order to protect your civilization from extra-terrestrial attack!” With a description like that, how could I say no? It has a steep learning curve at times, and takes more than an 8 minute trial to come to grips with, so you may just have to trust me one this one, but you’ll be getting an ambitious game with a ten level campaign, and a sandbox mode that offers plenty of experimentation and replay value.
“Origin X” has you zooming down to the planets you’ve colonised to both expand your resource generation and to build defence installations against alien attacks. Having multiple planets to defend simultaneously definitely lends itself to experimentation which helps you learn the strategies you’ll need to excel at the game. More interesting for some, though, is what happens when you return to space, where you literally take control of a comet and use its gravitational pull to position planets with an eye to surviving the next enemy assault. It all takes some getting used to, but it adds up to a unique game that’s likely to be unlike any one game you’ve ever played. For the 80 Microsoft Points, “Origin X” is well worth trying to see if it’s your thing.
Writings of Mass Deduction 