How is this game? I wanted to pick it up since it looks awesome, but I haven't heard good reviews about it.

It was a disaster when it first came out, but they have been fixing it up.  Until recently it had terrible performance issues for me, but now I am running a monstrous machine so, I might be overcoming it now with brute force more than anything else.

I'm not that far into it yet, so I can't really give a proper assessment.  The UI is a disaster, which was the biggest problem with the previous X games.  It is more similar to the previous X games than I initially expected, which may be a good thing.  With lots of patching it can probably be made as good as X3, but it isn't really there yet (I haven't gotten to a lot of the most important aspects of the game yet, so I'm not sure my assessment means much).  I wouldn't recommend it right now unless it's on sale.

By the way, is there a way to get into the beta for 3.0?  I have a feeling by the time it's release I'll only be playing Elite, and won't care about this anymore.

X-Rebirth is way lacking compared to X3:AP. It has much better visuals, but often poor performance. It also lacks a lot of the functionality that X3 had. I still think it has potential, and I am glad they're working on it, but for now it doesn't hold my attention. I keep checking back in with each major patch.

Depending on what you're looking for in a game, I humbly suggest X3:AP with the mod Litcube's Universe.

X-Rebirth failed mostly because it was such a huge change from other x games, The X community wanted more complex game with a better UI instead they got something resembling a bad console port of a very simple mini game type shooter.

How is this game? I wanted to pick it up since it looks awesome, but I haven't heard good reviews about it.

Depends on lot on weather you have played the old X games if you have you will probably hate it, on the other hand if you have never played them will probably enjoy it.

But as mentioned above you may want to wait for it to go on sale and be aware if you are buying the retail version as after you have installed it Steam will download about 2GB of update/Patches.

By the way, is there a way to get into the beta for 3.0?  I have a feeling by the time it's release I'll only be playing Elite, and won't care about this anymore.

Think you have to apply through Egosoft forum.

X-Rebirth failed mostly because it was such a huge change from other x games, The X community wanted more complex game with a better UI instead they got something resembling a bad console port of a very simple mini game type shooter.

That last part is both horribly accurate and depressing