Reunions. Pah. We... well, we can't print what we'd do to 'em, given half a chance, but here's a clue: it involves yards of digestive tract and a toilet. They're always a bad idea. You'll inevitably find out that all those undeserving people you've not seen in years are now much more successful than you.

They've got more money than you. They've got a faster car. They've got more bloody teeth than you. Their teeth are whiter than yours. They can hold their drink better than you; in fact, they can actually hold their drink without redecorating their shirt with it. Anyway. Maybe that's just us.

Luckily, this particular reunion doesn't involve Friends Reunited; rather, the planets, asteroids and orbital stations of deep space. The third game in the "X" series sends you back into the infinite vacuum, where you can fight, trade and empire-build your way to success. There's also a central, evolving storyline which features the ever-menacing alien race, the Kha'ak. Just think of it as an in-depth version of Elite.

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And, like Braben's classic space opera, X3 is very open-ended. You can dip in and out of the main storyline or ignore it completely, instead exploring the vast universe, discovering hidden secrets and taking on the various missions you get offered at space stations.

You can locate the best trading routes (using business newspaper reports to sniff out likely sectors for hot deals), make a living destroying pirates, or become a pirate yourself and hijack innocent cargo vessels. X3 also boasts an empire-building element, as factories can be purchased and business monopolies built up. The depth here is staggering; it's only matched by the lack of guidance given to the poor novice player.

In this respect, X3 is rather akin to putting a learner driver in a Formula 1 car. There are no tutorials here. There's no help to get you going apart from the manual, and you'll spend much of the early stages of the game scratching your head and poring through that, trying to figure out the rather clunky interface.

We even managed to arse-up the very first introductory mission and the game provided no clues as to what had gone wrong, so we ended up starting over again and only realising our mistake afterwards. User-friendly it most certainly isn't, although we found the Egosoft forum FAQs pretty handy for smoothing out the learning curve.

Given some perseverance, however, the X3 universe does reward the player. There's a reasonable variety of missions, tons of ships and upgrades to work towards, and the whole trading and economic side of the game is layered with considerable detail.

The mouse control works well - in fact, we preferred it to the joystick - and dogfights are an action-packed blast, complete with excellently detailed ships and explosions. The graphics are impressive all round, but... yes, there had to be a but... they're somewhat sluggish. Apparently the next patch will help to cure this, but as it stands, even on our pretty speedy PC the frame rate dipped badly too many times for comfort.

X3 is a game of double-edged swords. It has layers of depth, yet it's frustratingly unhelpful. It's graphically lush, but poor in the performance stakes. However, if you can stick with it, the more thoughtful and patient space pilots out there will discover a rather fulfilling deep space experience.