The fanboy in me wants to get it (it would be the first time I pay full retail for a game in 15 years) but deep down I know it will suck, so I'll wait for reviews.
Whats that based on? I am looking forward to Xenonauts more but this looks like a quality game that seems to understand what made X-COM the classic that it is even if it does have elements that I don't like.
Its £29.99 which is the standard price for new games and Steam rarely offers discounts on pre-releases. Its very likely that you will get a free copy of Civ V though (and the obligatory TF2 hat) as well. At the end of the day you could always wait a few months for its first heavy discount.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is many things. It is a strategy game, about base-building and resource management. It is a turn-based, tactical, squad based combat game.
I saw a couple of the vids including the base building vid. It looks nice, the people in charge of the project are the old school players and are very enthusiastic about it. They're using the old school races and what you decide to focus on will mold your gameplay experience....hence more replay value.
Hell I'd play the original again with nothing more than a better interface controls....everything else they updated to today's standards (graphics) would just be gravy....the original game was just that good.
It looks extremely sexy and I have no doubt it is fantastic. Anyone going into it thinking it'll match the original or be better then the original is in for disappointment that is assured.
MightyGodzilla wrote: I saw a couple of the vids including the base building vid. It looks nice, the people in charge of the project are the old school players and are very enthusiastic about it. They're using the old school races and what you decide to focus on will mold your gameplay experience....hence more replay value.
Hell I'd play the original again with nothing more than a better interface controls....everything else they updated to today's standards (graphics) would just be gravy....the original game was just that good.
I have very high hopes for this.
[
You know the original can be had for 5 dollars on steam, right?
You can get all the X-COM games for £8.99, admittedly that includes Enforcer which really isn't worth playing,.
I'm not sure which will be better (heresy I know). The elements that made X-COM great seem to have been replicated here while a lot of the drawbacks caused by 20 year old technology have been solved. Its possible that this may end up being a better game, although that is very subjective given that the original has a special place in gaming history.
Incidentally if you pre-order XCOM on steam you are almost guaranteed to get a free copy of Civ V. Tiers 1 and 2 (soldier outfits and TF2 hats) have already been claimed and tier 3 (Civ V) is 16% done with 3 weeks to go.
My only issues are the smaller team (max 6 I think) and the lack of randomly generated maps and I don't believe the base can come under attack anymore.
Am sure it will be a great game, but I bet 20 years from now more people will be playing the original than the remake.
Thats assuming that whatever OS we are using in 20 years will handle a DOS game. DOSBOX has quite a lot of issues with running X-COM on windows 7 as it is.
20 Years from now (shortly after the release of MW15 part 4 and coincidentally the start of the dub-classical genre of music) we will be busy being annoyed by the young-ins who insist their attention span allows them to play VR games during class. We will talk of the latest president and on how the previous was worse/better. Few people under the age of 25 will remember this game or the original in 20 years (that is unless they release another rendition 16 years from now). Seriously, start asking younger kids about other classics like Dungeon Keeper or Total Annihilation and watch the "derp" physically manifest on their face.
The rookies are expected to live now, and level up. I dunno, it just seems to do away with some of the things that made the original such a cool and well remembered game. XCOM enemy unknown is not loved by it's fans because it taught you to protect your rookies and hold your hand the whole game. It became well known because in the first few months, if you screwed up, you PAID for it, and the consequences got even more severe from that point onward. You could easily force yourself into unwinnable situations by letting countries get captured or by failing to destroy enough alien bases. Heck, you could even have your funding cut and fail that way. That seems to be missing here, but who knows, maybe there's parts to it that I haven't seen yet.
It is no longer "expendable meatshields that die the moment they leave the ramp." the game. Therefore it will earn undying rage from the fans. To be honest, I'll miss that as well. The moment I heard "hey, we fixed it so the enemy won't kill you the moment you step off the ramp." my hopes for the game sank a bit. That was one of my favorite bits, trying to get off the ship alive, since it was a deathtrap if you stayed on it too long. Added a lot of tension. Just give me an option of who stands where in the ship and I would've been happy, so the best guy who's stuck with a rocket launcher and heavy ammo doesn't have to be the first off the ship EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Smaller teams, and an emphasis on cover kinda have me worried too. I think it will still be a good game, but I have doubts that it will be able to stand up to the original. It's going to take one heck of an amazing game to top the original after all.
I fel embarrassed, i have never heard of the original, and i only heard about this one because of a trailer on Kongregate (gaming site)....But having just watched the full traier (and reading the comments on here) it looks/sounds awesome!
And not having and preconceptions should make it easier for me as well i think.
not that i wont be buying the original if this is good...
MrMoustaffa wrote: The rookies are expected to live now, and level up. I dunno, it just seems to do away with some of the things that made the original such a cool and well remembered game. XCOM enemy unknown is not loved by it's fans because it taught you to protect your rookies and hold your hand the whole game. It became well known because in the first few months, if you screwed up, you PAID for it, and the consequences got even more severe from that point onward. You could easily force yourself into unwinnable situations by letting countries get captured or by failing to destroy enough alien bases. Heck, you could even have your funding cut and fail that way. That seems to be missing here, but who knows, maybe there's parts to it that I haven't seen yet.
From the previews that I have read all those elements are still in there. There is even a wall of remembrance for your fallen troopers. I was reading an article on Rock Paper Shotgun where Jim Rossignol said that he was suprised when he had 3 missions in a row where no one died.
The smaller squad size is a slight concern for me but it does allow the game to be more detailed (soldier and slien skills/abilities) and it focuses the game a lot more than having 16 guys spread over a large map.
The original and X-Com:Apocalypse are both good so long as you can disregard the now terrible graphics. Also, if you play X-Com:Apoc, try to avoid going into missions and selecting the real-time play mode, your soldiers will waste a crap ton of ammo and this proves extremely difficult on larger maps when you are spread thin.
The original and X-Com:Apocalypse are both good so long as you can disregard the now terrible graphics. Also, if you play X-Com:Apoc, try to avoid going into missions and selecting the real-time play mode, your soldiers will waste a crap ton of ammo and this proves extremely difficult on larger maps when you are spread thin.
For Apoc use aimed shots with everything, even machine guns, and you will soon get weapons what don't require ammo making your starting weapons effectively worthless. I really like Apoc's real time mode, it allows the game to progress so much faster (it still takes a long time to complete though) without seriously altering the X-COM experience..
The original and X-Com:Apocalypse are both good so long as you can disregard the now terrible graphics. Also, if you play X-Com:Apoc, try to avoid going into missions and selecting the real-time play mode, your soldiers will waste a crap ton of ammo and this proves extremely difficult on larger maps when you are spread thin.
Meh, i can deal with terrible graphics, with old games its all about the gamepley (actually, it is with most new games for me as well, good grpahics are just the icing on the cake). Appreciate the tips
The original and X-Com:Apocalypse are both good so long as you can disregard the now terrible graphics. Also, if you play X-Com:Apoc, try to avoid going into missions and selecting the real-time play mode, your soldiers will waste a crap ton of ammo and this proves extremely difficult on larger maps when you are spread thin.
For Apoc use aimed shots with everything, even machine guns, and you will soon get weapons what don't require ammo making your starting weapons effectively worthless. I really like Apoc's real time mode, it allows the game to progress so much faster (it still takes a long time to complete though) without seriously altering the X-COM experience..
It is a much more interesting base though, with several 'unique' buildings with special bonuses. You can also build satelites (and I think hangars) to extend your coverage of the world.
Its quite a poor demo. Heavily scripted and the control system is atrocious. I don't think that the actual game will suffer from these problems but the demo did not give a good impression.
It is broken into 2 sections, movement and combat. This really breaks up the flow of the game. There are also too many needless key presses which further breaks up the flow. Rather than simply clicking on a target you need to press the space bar, select the ability that you want to use, the target and then press the space bar again to perform the action. It feels very consolised and its quite annoying to use.
The control system on the PC was supposed to have had a lot of work done to it though so hopefully this is an issue that will be fixed on release.
Hmm, thats annoying. Is combat turn based then? I got the impressino from the trailer that the campaign map was turn based and the combat was real time...?
Palindrome wrote:Combat is turn based. Its not time units any more though. Each trooper gets 2 standard moves/1 more and 1 action/1 action (sniper shots etc).
That's what I read back then in the previews and what stopped me from actually waiting for this game. :(
"the problem was that people couldn’t map time units to the way that they thought about the battlefield, and so it became a real frustration for people" -- Jake Solomon
Herpderp.
Kind of like the "ramp rape" was removed because it was "a real frustration" for some people as well, I guess. I wonder what else fell victim to pandering to casuals.
Palindrome wrote:It feels very consolised and its quite annoying to use.
"Console port" ... that's how my flatmate described it to me, too. Apparently, there also is no minimap anymore? And unlimited ammo? Man, in the classic, I was preferring lasers for the sole reason that they were the one type of weapon I could just zap around not worrying about running out of reloads.
I'm going to give the demo a try myself as soon as I find the time, but from all I've heard so far it is, for me, too different to the X-Com I know. Maybe it's just a generational thing. I'm sure it won't be as atrocious as MoO3 as far as sequels go, but the brand name alone isn't enough to convince me. Only serves to reinforce my bias towards "remakes", regardless of whether it's movies or games.
At least they got the looks right, judging from some of the screenshots. Maybe the "visual familiarility" will help me forget the differences, and maybe some of the game's new features will actually be fun.
"the problem was that people couldn’t map time units to the way that they thought about the battlefield, and so it became a real frustration for people" -- Jake Solomon Kind of like the "ramp rape" was removed because it was "a real frustration" for some people as well, I guess. I wonder what else fell victim to pandering to casuals.
To be honest the new system plays very much like the original with reserved time units, the only real difference is that your troopers actually run now
The 'ramp rape' was extremely annoying and I won't miss it in the slightest. It served no purpose what so ever and was the result of flawed game design. I have had virtually my entire squad wiped out in the first turn by invisible enemies, most of my troopers never even left the skyranger, that is in no way fun.
Palindrome wrote:To be honest the new system plays very much like the original with reserved time units, the only real difference is that your troopers actually run now
Well, I'll see how it feels and if I can "adopt" to it - but I know already that not being able to combine different actions the way I want will be a feature sorely missed. Ultimately, to me the interview sounds like it was dumbed down in favour of players who are unable to plan ahead and may be overchallenged by the "traditional" squad tactics. Actually makes me think this is what led to the squad size cap as well...
It's no secret that games have become more and more casual, and somehow it's sad when something like X-Com becomes less complex because of it.
I also read that this remake will support modding, so perhaps the fans will provide a more "purist experience".
Palindrome wrote:The 'ramp rape' was extremely annoying and I won't miss it in the slightest. It served no purpose what so ever and was the result of flawed game design. I have had virtually my entire squad wiped out in the first turn by invisible enemies, most of my troopers never even left the skyranger, that is in no way fun.
Okay, I admit this is entirely individual preference. And I didn't like it when it happened either (which was very rare) - but as someone else mentioned, the mere risk made things feel more dangerous, and thus more exciting. It's why potentially frustrating games like FTL feel so refreshing to some!
The original one was mostly save/RNG/save/RNG.
Fun, to be sure; but it was not "hardcore" as people seem to imply. It just did not pull punches from its use of RNGs.
The new one seems to allow the same style of interaction, for those so inclined.
It almost cannot have a worse "minigame" for intercepting aliens, either.
I enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles, and it had a similar battle system to this - though very, VERY much simplified.
It is one of my favorite changes, actually, outside of the UI.
I tried google, but all it suggests is "random number generator" which I think is not what you mean ...
Either way, to me, missing TUs would seem to mean that the "style of interaction" is utterly alien (do-ho-ho) compared to the tactics you could pull with the original. Standing up to shoot from behind cover, then kneeling down again? Yep, won't work anymore. Not moving at all and just firing your gun as much as you can? Well, you can still do that, but you're just going to waste a "move action" and you won't be able to shoot more than you'd have done if you moved.
Maybe I missed some important enlightening info about how actions work in all those previews and reports and interviews, and it's not as bad as it sounds, but for now it all reads incredibly dumbed down to me, with lots of options no longer available because they were considered too complex for the current gamer generation. I guess I'm just being rather pessimistic, but I've been burned by overhyped remakes way too often. :/
It is exactly what you think it means. The challenge of the first game was 100% because they used a RNG and did not pull the punches from its use. YOUR skill did not matter anywhere near as much as people remember. Your team's skills were even a craps shoot until you got past 5+ missions of dealing with the mean RNG.
If you did not save during a mission, each one would take dozens of tries, no matter how "skilled" or "tactical" you and your team were.
And yes, you can shoot from cover in this one.
You can have two shoot actions in this, also. Generally used for a stronger shot, but I have not seen anything show it isn't both.
TU's were an artificial result of the tech at the time. Having team members with more TU's will be no different than ones that can move farther or shoot more, for example. The fact that you CAN break up a move action to fire, makes TUs seem just silly now.
Just finished it. Not thrilled but not sad either. But I definitely think it's too pricey.
On one side: at least it's something new. I don't want the same game with different graphics / few updates.
It depends on how some ideas are executed. Are there any more statistics linked to the soldiers or is it only 7-8 levels with one skill on each? Is every rookie sniper always the same? Are there many scripted heavy missions? How about replayability?
I didn't like that I could see them going into overwatch.
It's more about position and cover (like every game nowadays).
Anybody know if day/night mechanic is still in? Seems like no, because spotting is not a main issue now. You always know where the enemy is even if both you and him are hiding. It's no longer look-around-fest or patiently-go-through-every-single-little-black-spot-on-the-map (TM) like the original.
Palindrome wrote: There is a seperate action/combat menu. you can get away without pressing space but it requires pressing a small 'ok' icon.
Double tapping keyboard number works. Or double clicking the icon. Got used to it very fast.
kirsanth wrote:It is exactly what you think it means. The challenge of the first game was 100% because they used a RNG and did not pull the punches from its use. YOUR skill did not matter anywhere near as much as people remember. Your team's skills were even a craps shoot until you got past 5+ missions of dealing with the mean RNG.
I don't see how that is supposed to be a problem? You've got a similar mechanic in all strategy games and even pen&paper. "MY" skill was about using my squad, its equipment and its time units in the most efficient way. Sure you can miss with two shots just as you can miss with one, but your chances are better.
kirsanth wrote:If you did not save during a mission, each one would take dozens of tries, no matter how "skilled" or "tactical" you and your team were.
I never saved and reloaded during a mission, and I did not have the problems that you are describing here. But maybe that's just because I learned after the first hurtful encounters that I should avoid the bigger UFOs until I had better equipment.
I don't even remember if saving during a mission was actually possible... Either way, sometimes squad members just die to stupid stuff like bumping into a Chrysalid after opening a door with their last TU. That's all part of the game, part of the risk, and part of the fun. Sure it was frustrating when you lost a particularly good soldier. But the very knowledge that this could happen made it exciting!
kirsanth wrote:And yes, you can shoot from cover in this one. You can have two shoot actions in this, also. Generally used for a stronger shot, but I have not seen anything show it isn't both.
So how exactly do these actions work, what is possible by combining them, what actions do you have available? Obviously not as much as with TUs, but how exactly are people limited?
kirsanth wrote:TU's were an artificial result of the tech at the time. Having team members with more TU's will be no different than ones that can move farther or shoot more, for example. The fact that you CAN break up a move action to fire, makes TUs seem just silly now.
Now your wording sounds weird. If it truly offered similar possibilities, they wouldn't have needed to do away with TUs in the first place. From the interview, their very reason to abolish time units was to make stuff more streamlined, with the game deciding for you what you can "break up" and what not.
Macok wrote:You always know where the enemy is even if both you and him are hiding. It's no longer look-around-fest or patiently-go-through-every-single-little-black-spot-on-the-map (TM) like the original.
I probably sound weird for saying so, but I'm even going to miss this.
Thanks for the "review"!
The problem is in execution. As example I think D&D games at level 1 are worthless, especially if combat is involved. The bad guy rolls a '20' and you roll a new character. That is how the original x-com started.
Saving mid-mission was possible, but regardless it gets back to your examples. The game did not only kill you for dumb stuff like you imply. It (and apparently this one too!) kill you for doing everything RIGHT. Oddly, that is not a bad thing to me. However, there needs to be a actual means to progress through this besides RNGs, which is what the first 100% relied upon.
The weird wording is basically saying that the current model is basically TUs in real time.
The first two points seem contradictory, and to some extent are, or at least can be. You are describing gameplay that I imagine from something like Dark Souls (which I love!). "Don't do that stupid gak and you won't die!" That is not the game we are talking about. In Dark Souls, if you played perfect, you won perfectly. And it was tactical and strategic.
X-COM, my first mission was against cyber-discs.
Don't get me wrong - I loved the first game. It's just one of the ones I put on a list as having aged badly and am psyched is being redone by people that seem to want to remake a modern version of the first one, instead of just reskinning it.
Macok wrote:You always know where the enemy is even if both you and him are hiding. It's no longer look-around-fest or patiently-go-through-every-single-little-black-spot-on-the-map (TM) like the original.
I probably sound weird for saying so, but I'm even going to miss this.
Wait, really?
That's not right from what I saw - unless maybe you mean the multiplayer?
I have window 7 64 and I can't even get the demo to work. What I am hearing though is not good, they apparently went all skyrim with the ui for consoles sake and that has me super pissed. I'm sick of these bland cross platform made by committee f***ing games. At least it's not a free to play micro transaction scam but I'm sure that's how the sequel will go.
Lynata wrote: So how exactly do these actions work, what is possible by combining them, what actions do you have available? Obviously not as much as with TUs, but how exactly are people limited?
Well, the typical actions are: shoot, use item (throw a grenade), go into overwatch, hug cover, suppress enemy, reload.
Soldiers are divided into categories along the lines of: Heavy, sniper, assault etc.. Every time soldier gains rank he gains a skill (or can pick from two skills available on his "level").
Skills shown in game are one use only.
After moving twice you can still shoot (assault).
Shoot bazooka (heavy).
The whole idea looks decent. Definitely less amount of "micro" (stand up, move, look around, pick shooting option, target enemy, have 1 too few AP because you had to turn again, start crying) and more "macro" so to speak. No idea how fun it will be in the long run. 4 guys in the squad at first. Up to 6 with upgrades.
Soldiers automatically look around covers while taking cover. No more running into the open, dancing around and walking back.
FYI: Maybe I worded things with perception a little off. It's not like you see every position of the enemy from the start. But if a Sectoid is behind a cover you know he's there. No more crouching behind a wall and being invisible.
Opening doors lets you see the whole room. You know if there is a enemy just next to the door.
Everything has 360 LOS and can see/be seen from cover. At least that's the impression I got from the demo.
Opening doors lets you see the whole room. You know if there is a enemy just next to the door.
I'm not sure about that, the demo is too heavily scripted to tell but the tutoral mission at least has hidden enemies in the same room and the 'campaign' mission doesn't have large enough rooms for aliens to hide in. I think I have seen a preview video wherea previously discovered alien has hidden within a room.
I must be the only person that liked it. I hate the dumbing down of any game but at least its a turn based strategy game. They don't make them like they used to. I think its being judged too harshly. Yes I will miss the inventory system, yes i liked standing, crouched stances, but i will get over it.
I will say the whole time I played it i thought of how a remake of chaos gate would look like this and got a little hard.
Oh no. I did like it. I definitely wouldn't if it was just original with better graphics.
The demo, however, as something that should hook you up, kinda sucks. It doesn't show why the price is at the whooping 50E and no preorder discount. For me at least (aside from nostalgia maybe).
I really hope it's going to be good and earn a ton of money. I love turn based strategies with customable forces / experience etc.. There aren't many great games like that on PC and big success of this one could lead to similar projects.
For those who might want to see some gameplay, OXM has a quick 5part series up on youtube. I would link it here but Im on my phone. A search for XCom OXM should deliver though.
Its just not the same as Civ 3 i suppose (its a dumbed down version from what i can tell), still fun as heck though so its going to get a lot of play time...
Alright, so I finally got to play the demo. In some ways, it's better than I expected, in others I feel my fears vindicated. It's certainly not the X-Com I know, which makes me sad because I think it could have been. On the other hand, it's still fun. Ironically, it actually reminds me more of "Incubation" rather than the Microprose classic it wants to be a spiritual successor to.
I'm on the fence on whether to actually buy it, but when it drops in price some day I will very likely cave in at the latest. For the moment, I've got enough other games to keep me busy.
What I like:
+ assault rifle graphics (very "chunky" and reminding of the original game)
+ new X-Com logo (looks very professional and keeping to the flair; love the latin motto)
+ looking/shooting around corners
+ combat felt very dynamic (I really liked the use of cover or how your people kick in doors and smash windows - nice job on all the animations)
What I dislike:
- silly voiceover in the opening (it's fine if you want to do a narration, but for the love of Mother Earth, don't use the "dark drama voice" when you want to do stuff like politicians or news reporters; felt way too forced)
- redundant action confirmation (ever heard of tooltips? but I guess console UI is to blame here)
- mouse reaction felt extremely sluggish compared to my other games (console UI again?)
- still dislike the whole TU system being replaced by a "walk+shoot or just run" approach
- unable to freely turn the camera (you can only watch from 4 angles)
- no mini map
- no fully destructible environment
What I'm unsure about:
- new X-Com logo on people's breast (as good as it looks, it's too "complex" to serve in this function - classic logo would have been cool here, would've preferred the new one to appear only on bigger stuff)
- new Skyranger (generally it's a very good design, but it has little in common with its predecessor and looks more like a tiny shuttle rather than a fully-fledged aircraft ... had to be done due to the smaller squad size I guess)
- base personnel uniforms (honestly? green pullovers? way to kill the sci-fi flair)
- faces in the engine (not a problem in the actual game, but in the cutscenes ... ehh, they could've done better I think)
- no ammunition management (removes a layer of tactical complexity, replacing it by an inflation of something that used to be the sole characteristic of laser weapons)
Ultimately, I think it'll be a fun game, even though it fails to catch the tactical complexity of the original. The overall visual design, to me, somewhat hits the "awkward spot" where you are kinda reminded of the original but it still feels different, like with various Hollywood remakes these days.
Also, lol @ some of those posters in the German level.
PS: Can you actually capture an alien in the demo? I half-expected to be able to knock one down with the rifle butt, yet was sadly disappointed at such an option apparently not being available.
What I dislike:
- silly voiceover in the opening (it's fine if you want to do a narration, but for the love of Mother Earth, don't use the "dark drama voice" when you want to do stuff like politicians or news reporters; felt way too forced)
- redundant action confirmation (ever heard of tooltips? but I guess console UI is to blame here)
- mouse reaction felt extremely sluggish compared to my other games (console UI again?)
- still dislike the whole TU system being replaced by a "walk+shoot or just run" approach
- unable to freely turn the camera (you can only watch from 4 angles)
- no mini map
- no fully destructible environment
Apparently the voice over is restricted to the opening couple of levels and the occational significant event.
The UI is indeed poor
You can rotate the camera (the Q and E keys IIRC)
Not sure about the mini map
I read a preview where a muton destroyed an entire building to get to the trooper hidden within it so that sounds like the terrain will be at destructible to a high degree. You can also smash up downed UFOs.
I don't think you can capture an alien in the demo, I read that you need a special grenade to do that, the updated equivelent of the thermal shock bomb.
Palindrome wrote:Apparently the voice over is restricted to the opening couple of levels and the occational significant event.
The UI is indeed poor
You can rotate the camera (the Q and E keys IIRC)
Not sure about the mini map
I read a preview where a muton destroyed an entire building to get to the trooper hidden within it so that sounds like the terrain will be at destructible to a high degree. You can also smash up downed UFOs.
Oh, I wasn't referring to the liaison officer's (?) voice, just the couple sentences in the intro about how X-Com was activated. The guy was apparently supposed to be some government agent, but he came across as if he tried to narrate a bad horror story on a campfire. Sheesh. The guy you hear during the missions was alright, I think.
And yes, I know you can rotate the camera in limited angles. That's what I was criticising. I don't see why free camera rotation wasn't possible.
As for destructible environment ... you can blast through walls, but not through floors and roofs or a building's supports.
"You’ll be able to blast your way through the walls of a building; most of the buildings are designed to have additional points of entry, but full destruction isn’t implemented. Fully destructible buildings have huge implications for gameplay and level design that have to be balanced. Also, once you discover that high explosives solve all your problems, then there’s this temptation to have high explosives be your ONLY solution. That would have removed some of the fun of the game. It’s much more fun to say “okay, that plan worked. But what if I came at that a different way next time?” - Jake Solomon, Firaxis Lead Designer
I wonder if this means that you can only place explosives at pre-determined points? Or will you at least be able to blast any and all walls? Guess that remains to be seen. It's a shame either way, I liked having that option for total destruction in the original game.
Palindrome wrote:I don't think you can capture an alien in the demo, I read that you need a special grenade to do that, the updated equivelent of the thermal shock bomb.
Ah damn. Oh well, thanks for the info - I thought I could've missed a button or something.
you can blast any wall at any time with virtually any weapon, just like the other xcoms, grenades annihilate walls like they are going out of style. but you cant really completely level a building with a withering hail of explosive firepower like terror from the deep.
The demo really has relieved all of my fears about this game its going to be awesome, I hope that the game supports mods in the future to go full on 16 man death squad xcom walking into certain death.
Just played it, and while I found the demo entirely too linear, the RPS article linked above is good reading. I figured it wouldn't be that linear afterward, but it's good to have that confirmed. I could see the potential for the game just through the demo, and it has me reasonably excited. Still on the fence whether I want to wait for the Christmas sale and get it for half price, or pre-order and get Civ V now.
kirsanth wrote: The problem is in execution.
As example I think D&D games at level 1 are worthless, especially if combat is involved.
The bad guy rolls a '20' and you roll a new character.
That is how the original x-com started.
Saving mid-mission was possible, but regardless it gets back to your examples. The game did not only kill you for dumb stuff like you imply. It (and apparently this one too!) kill you for doing everything RIGHT. Oddly, that is not a bad thing to me. However, there needs to be a actual means to progress through this besides RNGs, which is what the first 100% relied upon.
The weird wording is basically saying that the current model is basically TUs in real time.
The first two points seem contradictory, and to some extent are, or at least can be. You are describing gameplay that I imagine from something like Dark Souls (which I love!). "Don't do that stupid gak and you won't die!" That is not the game we are talking about. In Dark Souls, if you played perfect, you won perfectly. And it was tactical and strategic.
X-COM, my first mission was against cyber-discs.
Don't get me wrong - I loved the first game. It's just one of the ones I put on a list as having aged badly and am psyched is being redone by people that seem to want to remake a modern version of the first one, instead of just reskinning it.
(see the X-COM FPS for an even worse option)
I dunno, I think that is what really put the original up there for me. If you are facing a technologically superior opponent with a numerically inferior unit, you should goddamned well need luck, especially if you want to win unscathed. Even if you do everything perfectly, you should have a chance to have your best sharpshooter get blown to pieces jumping off your dropship. Unless you think it's more realistic that your enemy doesn't see it coming in, what with their better tech, and realize "Hey, those guys are the enemy response team, and they might be a threat, lets focus our fire on them." I guess it's two contradictory schools of thoughts on games - I'm more the Myth and XCom school, where it uses randomness to simulate the fact that gak happens, and then there is the school that "If I make all the right moves I should win every time." That separates decent games from ones that I will still be playing fifteen years later, I guess.
When i first heard that this game was being remade, i did blackflips of enjoyment (well in my mind). I spent far tooo much off my youth playing the original xcom game whilst at college.
But here lies the problem. When a game is really good and you have emotions and experiences tied to it, its very unlikely you will get those feelings with a game thats remade.
Yes we wish for the oldgame with just better graphics... But lets face it most people new to the game (which probably account for most of the market dynamic) wont get on the with old parts of the game that us diehards actually want.
So the reality is that we wont get the game we want or remember it used to be.
Yes i want to preorder it... But i wont. Why? because the old nostalgia for the game just cant be brought back...
brainscan wrote: Yes we wish for the oldgame with just better graphics... But lets face it most people new to the game (which probably account for most of the market dynamic) wont get on the with old parts of the game that us diehards actually want.
I don't, actually. If I wanted to play a game just like XCOM, I'd play XCOM. The reason I'm actually considering buying this is because it's different enough to be a different game.
Pre-order bonuses and high price suck so I still can't decide. I'll cave in eventually I think
Watch Xenonauts, but do not buy it yet, or in quite some time.
I bought the game early to support development a long time ago. They are SLOOOOOOOW to update, but there has been progress.
They're also a bit unwilling to do anything to make the game better, while strangely focusing on aspects that didn't need more to it like the interception.
Also, there are a lot of UI shortcuts in the new XCOM game for keyboard and mouse users. Not sure what's the issue here, maybe more rose colored glasses.
Technically it is against Valves terms of use but providing that you dont use this method to actually buy games in a different region they don't seem to care. Plus you get to play 3 days earlier.
I loved the original X-COM, but I don't really understand people's need to have a new X-COM be exactly the same as the old X-COM.
What I want is a new experience of fighting an alien invasion through turn based tactical battles. This means taking as much of the good stuff as possible from the old game (getting new tech off of aliens, base management, having guys slowly level up then get wiped with a bad move/unlucky shot), and bringing in new ideas.
I love the idea of the new cover mechanic, and love that it makes my guys dynamic soldiers that'll look around corners. And I don't get why you need an inventory screen in order for guys to get loaded up with gear (just letting pick a grenade through the HUD is streamlining that should have been in place a decade ago). And I like that this game gets right into the meat and potatoes of combating aliens, and doesn't end up with a ten turn wander around the map looking for an alien standing in a corn field by himself.
Whether the new game will work or no I don't know yet (stupid staggered release) but whether it works or not it won't be because it wasn't a copy of the original game.
sebster wrote:I loved the original X-COM, but I don't really understand people's need to have a new X-COM be exactly the same as the old X-COM.
Really not? Quite a lot of (older) people absolutely loved the original X-Com titles, so naturally there's quite some scepticism connected to any deviation from that model when they were promised a spiritual successor. You know the old adage of "never change a running system" or "never change a winning team", right? Nobody here was talking about a new X-Com to be "exactly" the same as the original. Terror from the Deep wasn't either. But there's miles of difference between Enemy Unknown to Terror from the Deep and the new game. The loss of time units alone is a major change to a core concept of the game, and probably what I personally miss the most.
To put it simply, X-Com is more than just "human doods fighting an alien invasion"; it is, for a lot of people, sweet memories of a specific type of tactical decision-making and squad-based combat. The differences are even bigger than between, say, DoW1 and DoW2, and that one divided the playerbase as well. How is it surprising that there are a number of players not enthusiastic about the dumbing-down of this remake? (and don't tell me it isn't exactly that)
In essence ->
This means taking as much of the good stuff as possible from the old game (getting new tech off of aliens, base management, having guys slowly level up then get wiped with a bad move/unlucky shot), and bringing in new ideas.
I'm totally with you on that. However, "new ideas" do not always make a better game. If you think the "move+move or move+shoot" is better than the original TUs and don't care about the messed up console interface, awesome, enjoy your game! But maybe some people would have enjoyed the original time units even more, because they did not have trouble planning ahead and still feel there was greater tactical potential in that. So what we have here is a classic difference in preferences, that's all.
Ultimately, I think I would have loved an X-Com that combined some of the remake's new ideas that I feel are a great addition with the time units and interface of the original.
[...] but whether it works or not it won't be because it wasn't a copy of the original game.
That much is true. It's a new take on the franchise, and as I said to me it feels more like Incubation rather than X-Com. "New takes" can be cool, but my personal experience with the concept of "reimaginations" - both in games as well as in movies - has been ridiculously negative. For what it's worth, MoO3 still takes the cake for "bad remakes" though - with the new X-Com I can at least see a certain appeal away from the original game's style, and may some day even end up purchasing it because of that.
I was playing this as work for most of the day (I have a very busy job....) and I have reached the plasma rifle/cyberdisc stage.
It plays quite differently from the original. Missions are a lot faster (usually) and there the strategic game has been speeded up as well. Missions/UFOs don't occur nearly as often as they did in earlier X-COM games. Then again I only have 1 satelite so I will be missing out on a lot.
The combat itself isn't quite as good as it was made out to be, I have not been flanked once and the most common cause of death is exploding car. Thats not to say that it is bad, just that it doesn't quite live up to the hype. Your troops still die a lot, I lost a rookie in each of my first 3 missions, but once they rank up and get get semi decent equipment they are quite durable but even so they can easily die if you are careless
This is on normal difficulty so things will doubtless be more hectic on higher difficulties. Impossible difficulty sounds like it is well named.
Its is a good game and it deserves its 90%+ reviews. It is more polished than the original (but it still has a few bugs/oddities) but at the same time it doesn't quite have the same pace.
Melissia wrote: Played the demo, and I found it to be remarkably well made. It's rare we get such a good quality turn-based game these days.
I didn't lose any troops except when the storyline demanded it. That was frustrating, as I could have done it better.
I haven't had the bottle to buy it because I loved the original so much, I remember playing it on my Amiga and I had to change the disks 6 times between missions. And then my brother got a PC (A 486!) and I bought it for that and didn't tire of it for years... I even liked Terror from the Deep, even though it was pretty much identical.
Let me know how you get on, I'm terribly sceptical about the whole thing..
The people who want new xcoms to be a direct clone of the original with better graphics are the same as the people who keep buying every year's release of Madden and Modern Warfare-- boring. I'm okay with some changes to the game. Sometimes they're bad changes, sometimes not, but rarely do such minor changes "omgwtfbbq ruin the gaem" for me.
Hell, I even withstood major changes which I disliked to supreme commander from one to two (Removing of the flow economy for a more traditional borecraft/command and conquer style economy, for example, and incredibly douchey characters), and despite this I found SC2 to be enjoyable.
But re-releases/graphical enhancements/clones/etc that you guys seem to want just bore the feth out of me.
Oh no, I dont care about the graphics, I want a new game thats good!
I still have the old one on steam, i last completed it a year ago! As a result, I want an dntirely new game that happens to be excellent, not just good graphics.
If thats the case i might as well play the old one. Ive always liked the resource managment side as much as combat, Im hoping for a bigger more complete aspect in that regards. I always liked naming my troops for specific jobs and buying and selling more than i liked the killing.
This game is good, I would recommend it to anyone who liked the original, especially if you can view the game on its own terms and not on 20 years worth of rose tinted memories.
Resource management is quite a lot more complex as you will need to manufacture just about everything that you use past your starting weapons. You only ever capture weapons if you manage to stun an alien (which requires a crappy little pistol with a very short range). Manufacturing requires alloy, elerium, weapon fragments, alien corpses and cash; a lot of prioritising is required to outfit your troops. Its not that complicated but it is more involved than any previous X-COM game.
Palindrome wrote:This game is good, I would recommend it to anyone who liked the original, especially if you can view the game on its own terms and not on 20 years worth of rose tinted memories.
As someone who liked the original, I would even say you'll like the new one more if you haven't played it.
It's not a bad game. Actually it was rather fun. It just isn't the X-Com. It's a different experience, and not having any expectations on how it should relate to the original would surely help.
I felt kind of the same way about the BSG or the V remakes in TV. Both were enjoyable series, but for someone who liked the originals there was always a weird feeling of a "disjointed connection", if that makes any sense. As if one's experience would've been better if that new series would have just been released under its own name rather than trying to milk an existing franchise when it still ends up being so very different in its look and feel. Sometimes it is simply better not to have any expectations at all, and a new game/movie/series evoking memories of an older one will always come with the risk of said expectations being disappointed. Even when it is good enough to stand on its own two legs, it can sort of sour the perception. I don't even want to go into how I think about the new Total Recall or the new Robocop ...
Ultimately, for topics like these, I always tend to think of a statement once made by the CEO of Stardock Games around the time MoO3 was released:
He took the opportunity to deliver some stern words to those entrusted with a series they did not create: "If you're making a game that ends with '3,' or Something: The Sequel, it should be similar to the original game," he claimed. Wardell noted: "Don't go off and say, 'I have my own artistic vision.' Okay, good -- so call it something else. Don't ride the coattails of the people who came before you to launch your own artistic vision."
So what? It's not x-com. Why the feth would I want it to be? I have it on a cd and on steam. I can play that any fething time I want to, why would I pay fifty bucks for the privilege of playing the same fething game I already fething have TWICE OVER NOW, nevermind the underwater remake which was essentially just a clone of the first game anyway.
[/insert hours of incoherent rantings and inane grumblings here.]
... AND THEN I PUNCHED THE SECTOID IN THE FACE!
... ahem. Yes. As I was saying, this isn't X-Com: UFO Defense, nor is it X-Com Terror From the Deep, nor is it X-Com Apocalypse. Thankfully it's neither X-Com Interceptor nor X-Com Enforcer, either.
It's X-Com: Enemy Unknown. Whining about how it wasn't a barefaced clone of the original just... urgh. This is making my headache worse. I loved the original. That does not preclude me liking this game. If you liking the original precludes you from liking the sequel then you... meh, just meh.
edit: in case it isn't obvious, I'm having a sick (as in, I'm ill) sense of humor and attempting a Yahtzee/Zero Punctuation reference with the first part of my post.
Lynata wrote: Really not? Quite a lot of (older) people absolutely loved the original X-Com titles, so naturally there's quite some scepticism connected to any deviation from that model when they were promised a spiritual successor. You know the old adage of "never change a running system" or "never change a winning team", right? Nobody here was talking about a new X-Com to be "exactly" the same as the original. Terror from the Deep wasn't either. But there's miles of difference between Enemy Unknown to Terror from the Deep and the new game. The loss of time units alone is a major change to a core concept of the game, and probably what I personally miss the most.
Terror from the Deep was an awful game. So was XCOM Interceptor. They each made design mistakes on opposite ends of the scale. Terror from the Deep looked to change nothing, and just make XCOM again but bigger and longer. XCOM Interceptor changed everything, and looked to use XCOM as a brand name to stick onto a whole new game.
Apocalypse had plenty of faults, but it did get the design goals right - look to recapture the core strengths of XCOM in a new light.
To put it simply, X-Com is more than just "human doods fighting an alien invasion"; it is, for a lot of people, sweet memories of a specific type of tactical decision-making and squad-based combat. The differences are even bigger than between, say, DoW1 and DoW2, and that one divided the playerbase as well. How is it surprising that there are a number of players not enthusiastic about the dumbing-down of this remake? (and don't tell me it isn't exactly that)
I will tell you that this is not a dumbing down, because it isn't, and that phrase is incredibly stupid. Its a trap a lot of internet people fall into, especially when they like to pretend that something they do is a particularly sophisticated or challenging. But the simple truth is the original XCOM was not that sophisticated, and the strategies needed to win could be figured out fairly quickly.
And all the extra detail - ordering new ammo, dragging gear onto each guy before each mission started, turning guys to face NE rather than N, didn't produce more tactical decisions. It was busy work, entirely understandable in a breakthrough game at that time, but ludicrous nonsense to insist on today.
]I'm totally with you on that. However, "new ideas" do not always make a better game. If you think the "move+move or move+shoot" is better than the original TUs and don't care about the messed up console interface, awesome, enjoy your game! But maybe some people would have enjoyed the original time units even more, because they did not have trouble planning ahead and still feel there was greater tactical potential in that. So what we have here is a classic difference in preferences, that's all.
Sure, new ideas don't always make a better game. But what's important to realise then is that if this new game sucks, it will suck because the new ideas didn't work, not because it changed things from the original XCOM.
And TUs are the classic example of a fiddly mechanic that produced little tactical sophistication. Dropping that, and moving the player's attention away from counting individual squad member's TUs to a combat model in which success comes from squad members properly supporting each other as they move through cover and seek to deny the same to the enemy, is what good, focused game design is all about. Focus player attention on strategies that actually make real world sense.
I will agree that the interface on the PC sucks. Hopefully it's the kind of suck that you just get used to after a while (which would be something it had in common with the original )
That much is true. It's a new take on the franchise, and as I said to me it feels more like Incubation rather than X-Com. "New takes" can be cool, but my personal experience with the concept of "reimaginations" - both in games as well as in movies - has been ridiculously negative. For what it's worth, MoO3 still takes the cake for "bad remakes" though - with the new X-Com I can at least see a certain appeal away from the original game's style, and may some day even end up purchasing it because of that.
Maybe you should consider buying it because a company has taken a risk on investing a AAA budget into a genre that was considered dead in the commerical games world?
Maybe if XCOM sells well it might just encourage other companies to stop making FPS games and look into things that are a bit different?
And yeah, MoO3 is hands down the classic example of a game that just did not understand why its predecessor was fun.
Melissia wrote: What was MoO3? I think my mind may have erased that from my memory...
Master of Orion 3, in case you're serious.
That game was so byzantine in it's logic, and so poorly explained in the manual and interface it was incredible. When it came out I was contracting in a small country town, and had the time to fight through the poor presentation to figure the thing out, and stopped after about a week when I realised 'I actually understand how this thing works now, and the problem here is that even once you figure out what you're supposed to do the game is not fun'.
That not fun, hateful week of my life actually changed my thoughts on game design a lot. I realised that what made MoO2 so much fun was researching a new toy, sticking it on a spaceship of mine, and then using it to blast an enemy ship. For all the tactical considerations, much of the fun basically comes from getting a new toy and using it.
MoO3 had gave you a bunch of new research items discovered every turn, and each one was a step in expanding a powerful economy. As a tactical consideration it worked just as well, but it wasn't fun because it didn't give me a new toy.
XCOM has a similar concept. I'm getting this game tomorrow. As well as a lot of other issues, an important one for this game will be whether getting laser guns and then plasma guns isn't just important, but fun.
I'm holding off on picking it up. For one, I could never get the demo to work so that was a big downer and of course made me paranoid that I'll hand steam 50$ to get a useless game. The other reason is the los system seems really messed up in the videos I've watched and there seems to be a lot of issues with models clipping through terrain.
sebster wrote:I will tell you that this is not a dumbing down, because it isn't, and that phrase is incredibly stupid. Its a trap a lot of internet people fall into, especially when they like to pretend that something they do is a particularly sophisticated or challenging. But the simple truth is the original XCOM was not that sophisticated, and the strategies needed to win could be figured out fairly quickly.
Well, we can only agree to disagree on that one, because taking away TUs and reducing the system to two actions is dumbing down for me. Hell, the interview all but directly implies this even from the developer perspective:
"The reason was, and this was one that actually quite surprised me, we had time units, and when we studied players, everybody was getting really frustrated because what people wanted to do in the game was they wanted to make a plan [...] So the problem was that people were getting frustrated, they were never planning past their first unit because time units don’t really map to what you see, they’re not a direct map to what you see and how you think about your soldiers, and so people would basically break down and they would basically only plan for their one active unit, because they actually were never quite sure what they were going to be able to do. [...] Because you could have a rough idea, but the problem was that people couldn’t map time units to the way that they thought about the battlefield, and so it became a real frustration for people." -> testers were "frustrated" because they were not planning past the single unit - that is not the fault of TUs but the fault of testers. Were you "frustrated" back then during UFO Defense?
Call me cynical, but to me, this is Fluffy Business Speak for "today's gamer isn't used to complex games and incapable of planning ahead, so we just made it so that people wouldn't need to be able to count to ten and simply invented a system where players can move a set distance and then either shoot their lasers or move again.
Same goes for certain other design decisions such as having infinite reloads because apparently, stuff like keeping ammo consumption in mind or planning loadouts is boo-boo as well.
You go ahead and denounce TUs as a "fiddly mechanic", but "that's, like, your opinion, dude". May as well switch to real time while we're at it - after all, that'd be even less fiddly, no? At least that way you would not have to bother with a console UI where you have to separately confirm attack actions just because the game thinks you need a tooltip every time you want to shoot a rifle.
Yeah, I'm still pissed because I had expectations. Goes back to me thinking I'd like it more if I hadn't played the original.
sebster wrote:Sure, new ideas don't always make a better game. But what's important to realise then is that if this new game sucks, it will suck because the new ideas didn't work, not because it changed things from the original XCOM.
If a new idea was to drop a feature of the original, then ... I don't see how you can deny a connection?
sebster wrote:Maybe you should consider buying it because a company has taken a risk on investing a AAA budget into a genre that was considered dead in the commerical games world?
Maybe if XCOM sells well it might just encourage other companies to stop making FPS games and look into things that are a bit different?
If they would have honored the original just a little more closely, I would have done that. But removing what was - to me - a key feature of the "look and feel" of the original, and in addition to that forcing a silly console interface on me, does not warrant this kind of support from my wallet. Call me crazy, but I don't necessarily need an AAA budget to have fun with a game if the concept is good enough, and can put up with crappy graphics quite well. It's why I put money into stuff like FTL, Cortex Command, Mount & Blade (even before it was cool [/hipster]) or Prison Manager. Depending on the type of game, graphics are important, but in this case ... no.
For me, rewarding Firaxis for taking away TUs would actually send the wrong signal to other companies which I hope would stay "more true" to the origin of a franchise. Maybe the massive split in public opinion, coupled with the profits the game will likely still make on its own, will make other developers think twice about this?
Crablezworth wrote:The other reason is the los system seems really messed up in the videos I've watched and there seems to be a lot of issues with models clipping through terrain.
In spite of my criticism, I will say that clipping was never an issue for me, at least in the demo. Maybe it was just because that was the demo, or because I was too immersed in hunting sectoids. But yeah, if the demo doesn't work for you ... damn. Try another time, maybe? Is it a problem with your specs? :(
I don't miss time units. For me, the turn-based aspect has more to do with what you don't know about your enemy than what you don't know about yourself. Time units are something that took a long time for me to get a sense of in the old X-Coms and when Jake Solomon said that stuff about time units frustrating people I felt like he was talking straight to me. Maybe I am dumb, and I'm sure that is what my enjoyment of Enemy Unknown clearly implies to some gamers, but the two-action system still took some learning to "get out of my way" just not nearly so much. I got a feel for it just in the first five hours of playing it and I noticed that my play was really improving because of that. Clearly, game mastery isn't as steep a prospect in Enemy Unknown. Whether that indicates "dumbing down" is a matter of perspective. As far as my experience has gone so far, it feels more like streamlining.
Lynata wrote: Well, we can only agree to disagree on that one, because taking away TUs and reducing the system to two actions is dumbing down for me. Hell, the interview all but directly implies this even from the developer perspective:
"The reason was, and this was one that actually quite surprised me, we had time units, and when we studied players, everybody was getting really frustrated because what people wanted to do in the game was they wanted to make a plan [...] So the problem was that people were getting frustrated, they were never planning past their first unit because time units don’t really map to what you see, they’re not a direct map to what you see and how you think about your soldiers, and so people would basically break down and they would basically only plan for their one active unit, because they actually were never quite sure what they were going to be able to do. [...] Because you could have a rough idea, but the problem was that people couldn’t map time units to the way that they thought about the battlefield, and so it became a real frustration for people." -> testers were "frustrated" because they were not planning past the single unit - that is not the fault of TUs but the fault of testers. Were you "frustrated" back then during UFO Defense?
Call me cynical, but to me, this is Fluffy Business Speak for "today's gamer isn't used to complex games and incapable of planning ahead, so we just made it so that people wouldn't need to be able to count to ten and simply invented a system where players can move a set distance and then either shoot their lasers or move again.
It isn't. It's recognising that the most important part of game design is to focus on what the game is supposed to be, and pulling away all the fiddly nonsense. I mean, sure, it'd be a more difficult, more challenging experience if the interface was in pig-latin, but it wouldn't actually more a tactically sophisticated game.
And it's the same thing here. If you have a system that has players counting out a player's move square by square, turn by turn, then they'll focus on that first and foremost, and have less time spent planning out how other guys in the squad will move to support him. Strip that away, have players focusing on the real tactical challenge of the game.
I mean, would you rather say 'oh, I lost my best soldier because I counted six tiles to that wall, but it was actually 7 and so I didn't have enough TU to shoot', or say 'I lost my best soldier because I got too concerned about having my troops in ideal cover, and let them spread out too far'.
Same goes for certain other design decisions such as having infinite reloads because apparently, stuff like keeping ammo consumption in mind or planning loadouts is boo-boo as well.
This one is such a myth. In the original X-COM it tracked ammo supplies, but it was total non-issue, because lasers were unlimited ammo and heavy plasmas carried so much ammo that I think I ran out once, ever. And that was hacking my way through a snakeman base with like four dudes, just because I could.
In this game you actually reload, which is something that only blastar bomb launchers did in the last game.
You go ahead and denounce TUs as a "fiddly mechanic", but "that's, like, your opinion, dude". May as well switch to real time while we're at it - after all, that'd be even less fiddly, no? At least that way you would not have to bother with a console UI where you have to separately confirm attack actions just because the game thinks you need a tooltip every time you want to shoot a rifle.
If they could get a real time interface working better than it did in say Apocalype, or much, much better than that dodgy hybrid in the Jagged Alliance games, then it'd be a good option.
And yeah, the PC interface has problems. So did the original. The original can be let off because of the time it was made, but that doesn't mean we should pretend that it's a better interface.
sebster wrote:If a new idea was to drop a feature of the original, then ... I don't see how you can deny a connection?
Then the new game would still suck because it's feature was bad, not because it was a different feature than what the original game had. How are you not getting this?
If they would have honored the original just a little more closely, I would have done that.
See, it's language like 'honored' that makes it clear this really doesn't have anything to do with whether or not a new game is fun, and everything to do with preserving the idea of XCOM buried under ten years of memories.
I mean, I'm sorry, but I just can't see that kind of thinking as being a useful way of talking about games at all.
For me, rewarding Firaxis for taking away TUs would actually send the wrong signal to other companies which I hope would stay "more true" to the origin of a franchise. Maybe the massive split in public opinion, coupled with the profits the game will likely still make on its own, will make other developers think twice about this?
Boardgames became more and more of a ghetto industry as they worried about the sacred cows of a shrinking fan base. More units, more rules, more dice, on and on. They're now in a renaissance because they stopped worrying about that stuff, and focused on streamlined rulesets that put the tactical choices up front.
TUs are just freaking counting, dude. What matters is deployment, flanking, support, suppression, real tactical stuff.
I don't miss TUs in the least. aside from anything else your troops can actually run now
I don't really have anything bad to say about the tactical game, I wold even say that the tactical game is better than the original.There are still some annoyances, cover being extremely abstract, the extrme lethality of cars and that all infantry enemies spawn in squads. The UI is still clumsy and more than a little annoying (why can't overwatch be on the same hotbar slot for every trooper?).
TUs are just freaking counting, dude. What matters is deployment, flanking, support, suppression, real tactical stuff.
Asyou could reserve TUs for a snap/aimed shot in the original there is little practical difference between the two games its just that the new one uses a more elegant solution.
As one who didn't play the original XCOM, I can't really comment on differences/similarities. But normally I despise turn-based combat, unless it's in the form of Steel Panthers/Carriers at War.
Not this game. The turn-based combat is something I really enjoy. It forces you to think about your tactics/moves, not to just zerg an objective.
I have noticed it's got a rather steep learning curve to it (I've already had to restart a campaign), but I suppose that might be due to me not experiencing the first game. I've found that researching story-line items isn't that high of a priority, armor and weapon upgrades are the way to go right off.
Man, I'm tempted to get it before it goes on sale now that I've played the demo a couple more times.
I looooved apocalypse, and UFO defense was nice, too. But the new one is great, too, and stands out against the others in a way that Terror From the Deep couldn't.
It seems far more common with adult gamers here than in the US, most my American mates play PS3 or XBox, I think its because we had the Amiga 500.
It was on old PC, way back before proper PCs were common, according to my missus they were almost unheard of in the states, i'm sure you know about it though, did you ever know anyone with one?
They were totally awesome by the way.. blew everything else out of the water until proper PCs started showing up.
I have my PC on my 55 inch LED so sometimes I like to be able to sit back on my couch and rock a gamepad. It worked either way, but It feels like the interface was designed with the pad in mind.
Manchu wrote: I have been playing all evening and am really enjoying it.
I had an Irish Major with three times as many kills as any other soldier. When he bit it, I nearly lit a candle for him IRL. Seems like X-Com to me.
You are sorely tempting me! Dammit, I just bought a game.
I'm being totally honest. I clicked the "View Memoriam" and thought about giving a eulogy even. "Make no mistake, squaddies, Kieren 'Zed' Connolly had the right stuff." Right now, my game is all about whether his panicky protege, the Frenchwoman Juliette Durand, can ever fill Major Connolly's shoes.
I know! I remember being soooo invested in my characters in my original playthroughs. I renamed all of them to people I knew and it was kinda creepy. I would rename them again when they got ranks so I could see their rank in the list of names. Ahh, good times.
Heh, had an American Captain that single-handedly survived one of the Medium-UFO shoot down missions. Racked up something like 20 something kills before some random car blowing up ended his rampage.
I really love the design aesthetic of this game. It's the perfect balance between silly and scary. I nearly dropped a brick when I first saw mutons but they're not gross in the slightest compared to many video game monsters.
And I'd love to have a model of the new Skyranger!
That's a good point. When launching into my first counter-invasion mission, I was like "and they sent five of us?" But we rocked it. Maybe someone will mod the game to include DoW voice acting. You take down a floater and your heavy says "For the Emperor!"
So have any countries left the Council in any of your play-throughs so far?
Only got a chance to play maybe 10 hours total, haven't lost any countries yet.
I have noticed that the Japan-based missions are significantly harder just because of the close-quarters. Although, I prefer them to the ones based in the cover-less wooded areas or the car-minefield streets.
Anyone had any clutch moments? Where an XCOM agent totally saves the day?
I've yet to really pull one out of the fire. Best I've seen is an assualter take out a floater that was running supression one of my heavies even though her shot was only at 22%. It was just a quirky bit of fortune when it happened but she and the heavy were the only ones who got out of that mission alive. That's when we lost Connolly, by the way. *choke*
Still waiting for friday. At least I got it for ~30 bucks instead of 50 Euros (what is Steam thinking?).
Those three days are a big pain in the ass. I honestly don't remember when I was so hyped about a game.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Are all the voices really American? That seemed to be the case in TB's playthrough.
Yes, although the science officer and the engineer sound like they are voiced by americans putting on an accent. There also aren't any localised details in the maps themselves (aside from the tutorial mission). A terror mission in Nigeria looks very similar to a terror mission in Japan.
Palindrome wrote: A terror mission in Nigeria looks very similar to a terror mission in Japan.
Hey, they're just "honoring" the original.
Well, I hope that this one does well enough that we get a follow-up based on Terror From The Deep. You don't have to worry about missions looking too different at the bottom of the ocean.
All of the missions are randomly generated as far as I can tell. You might go to Tokyo for a VIP evac mission one time, and then go back for a terror mission and it'll look different.
I've had overwatch snipers just ROCK alien faces, in addition to support classes running through multiple overwatch's to administer some much required aid to a hurting squadmate.
Just wait until you get the 'in the zone perk' which makes flanking shots (and shots in the open) essentially free. One of my snipers wiped out an entire squad of elite floaters in 1 turn of overwatch and direct fire that way.
Ok you lot have talked me into.. Ima play TFTD while its downloading.
I don't like the idea of only having a 4 man squad to start with, I always liked to take ten guys and a tank!
I love the resources side of things though so I'm glad its slightly more complex.. I always enjoyed playing with my stores like the stock market, endlessly keeping my engineers building laser rifles so I could flog them at a profit and making loads of cash.. it was like CIV 5 with mind control!
I have been playing this all morning and freaking love it sofar. Lots of cool gear and armor to choose from. I will say I don't like how the shiv takes one or two points of damage and its got to be repaired for ever. Takes too long imo, maybe there is an upgrade for it.
I think you can only sell loot from missions (i.e., alien junk) but Council nations will randomly request stuff that you build (e.g., satellites, laser guns).
The items you can sell, and correct me if I'm wrong, are items that you need for the research tree. Then again, I don't know if you could just calculate all the pieces you'll need for every research item you want and just sell the rest.
I'll have to check it out, if only because I'm super poor all the time.
Some items you can sell freely (they will say under their description). Damage UFO components are a good example. Its quite annoying that you can't sell outdated kit, I have lots of laser and light plasma weaponry choking up my stores and I could really use the money.
There is an accelerated repair tech, you need to capture a live elite floater (or it may be a dead one). I haven't even bothered building a SHIV, my squad is good enough as it is.
Does anyone know if you can capture a cyberdisc? Or if the alien base is the last mission?
Okay, so I woke up yesterday having drank a couple liters of wine and some whiskey drinks, and apparently drunk me ordered the game.
It's not terrible, I don't mind the TUs disappearing. I don't like the inventory system at all. I kind of screwed my first game by not realizing that you needed set numbers of engineers to start building things - that is also not a change I like. I did what I always do in games like this and stacked scientists. Didn't work out well. My second playthrough was classic on Ironman, and I got to like mission 6. It was a friggin bloodbath the first few mission.
I can't grasp why wearing a nanoweave vest stops you from carrying grenades. It's obviously not a weight issue as your heavies can carry a machine gun, a rocket launcher, a pistol, and one of the other items. It's just an arbitrary power restriction, which I dislike - that is why I said I dislike the inventory system.
Had my first run-in with a large UFO this morning before work and it was a sonofabitch. Having two Muton's in every room I have to clear is re-god-damn-diculous. Good loot though.
Well, aside from my losing game where nearly every country left, my winning gme (played on easy-- yeah, I know...) had South Africa leave because I failed two interceptions there.
Spoiler:
That overseer class UFO is fething badass! Took down two of my fighters equipped with plasma cannons, and almost took down my firestorm equipped with EMP Cannon as well-- and I used both dodge and aim boosts! I'd hate to see what it's like in Apocalypse.
Manchu wrote: How long does a play-though usually take you?
Uhm. I don't know? I've only finished once. The first time I played I was doing it on Classic, and I basically got destroyed by the seventh deployment. I'm guessing ten hours for a particularly fast play through? Considering I completed it on easy difficulty.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As an aside, I really recommend to people that they capture as many thin men as they can, and then capture and interrogate a muton for plasma research credit. Research light plasma rifles.
Light plasma rifles have the exact same stats as laser rifles, BUT... they also give +10 to aim, making them extremely useful on low to mid rank soldiers. And thin men are easy to capture, having only three HP they're always vulnerable to the stun gun ,and when you capture them, you get a free light plasma rifle.
Actually, I'd say interrogate as much as you possibly can. The research credit bonuses are huge! For interrogating a muton you get 50% off time to research plasma weapons, for example. For a muton elite, it's 25% on all weapon tech. And so on and so forth. You don't necessarily need to capture any enemy after you interrogate them unless you want their weapons, though.
The thought of interrogating a Muton makes my XCOM agents nervous. Although, having half my squad using laser rifles makes thinning the ranks that much easier.
Thanks for the research heads-up, I'm going to go home and capture me some Mutons.
On easy mode, yes. I only had two failed missions that entire game, and both of them were interceptions on the overseer (although I nearly had a team wipe when I went to check that UFO when it was downed).
If you want a longer game and more replay value, you play on classic. I just played on easy so I could finish the story, gonna play another classic run (my first classic run failed miserably) later.
I have probably played it for about 20 hours on normal difficulty now and I am still finding stuff to research. I think there in't much more to go though as I am probably building the thing that will lead me to the source of the invasion.
impossible isn't impossible, its just very unforgiving I'm stuck on it on the first mission I fight a big walker mech on, I just cant slag the damn thing with its like 45hp.
When you up your arc throwers to capture drones, can you capture the other robots as well?
The thing with the difficulties is, on easy the moment you get a story mission, you can just go do it and its done, on higher difficulties you are in a constant fight for resources to actually have a chance of attempting them
I bit the bullet and picked it up. Seems decent so far, not thrilled with the interface (very console). They really need to fix the line of sight, I'd say a third of the shots I'm taking I have no line of sight at all, it looks really wonky.
This is my first XCOM game as I didn't really have ready access to a computer until about 2002. So far I'm loving it although my first couple of playthroughs ended pretty brutally (well, not really, but when everyone except the rookies are dead it's pretty rough).
I've been playing Normal with Ironman enabled. Having real problems with the Chrysallids and juggling the missions. How long do you have to counter an alien abduction or one of the special missions? So far the rescue civilians mission for me is the hardest.
Ironman mode autosaves regularly, you cannot have any save other than the autosave. Basically, ironman mode is-- you screw up, you live with it, because you can't retreat back to an old save.
lord_blackfang wrote: Hm, first time a game of mine got patched before I was even allowed to play it. Can anyone tell me what's changed?
The majority of the patch was new video clips, it seems. It will now play them in 1080 when it can.
There are patch notes up on the 2k forums though, and they list a few game changes.
I've found that the easiest way to play is to choose 2-3 continents to spend time defending. It's taken me two play-throughs to figure this out, you can't save everyone. I stuck with Europe, North America and Australia. Was hard, spent a lot of money on satellites and Interceptors, but I'm sitting pretty on something like 400 monthly income and my 6-man squad is Majors/Captains with a couple of Captains as fill-ins for casualties.
Just started on Light Plasma Rifles...should make for some pwnage when I get them done.
Had a throw-the-controller moment last night. Having suffered through a few instances of serious under-performance (how does a sniper shooting with 75%+ chances to hit miss that often?), my squad launched into a difficult mission and did brilliantly. After promoting everyone back at base, I went to install a satellite over Egypt (which was in the red, panic-wise) only to slip up and put it over a grateful but already safe China. My last save was halfway through that difficult mission. I feel like this team is just not meant to have things go off without a hitch.
(how does a sniper shooting with 75%+ chances to hit miss that often?)
I swear I thought it was just me. I have had mine miss with 90% chance before. It's funny but my two medics are the best fighters, snipers wiff more then hit.
I have discovered a good way to find out how good your guys are; have one of them mind controlled. One of my Colonel assault troopers managed to take out 4 other colonels. I will be reloading that game
When one of your units gets mind controlled, use your sniper to disable their weapon. It'll buy you a turn to get everyone at least in to cover, if not the hell away from them. If you're lucky, they'll just switch to their pistol instead, which will do one to two damage.
Although ti's not quite as good for the heavy weapons carrier for obvious reasons.
Had a stupid fight inside one of the large UFOs last night.
Squad makes its way up to the downed ship, leapfrogging 2x2x2 through cover. As soon as my assaulter gets past the first shield/door all hell breaks loose.
Six, yes six, of the jump pack guys appear, jumping all over the place and behind my squad. One of the bots accompanied by the little bots flanks me from the right (all 2 of my sniper shots wiff).
Through some gratuitous usage of hi-explosive I secure the flank, and waste 5/6 of the jumpers.
I was swearing and sweating the whole time. I love this game.
What I more had in mind is, now that Firaxis has proven that turn-based games can be awesome on consoles (not totally concerned with PCs really), someone else should kick it up to something just as difficult but a bit more visceral. Can you imagine?
As I have just gotten the achievement for completing all the autopsies I suspect that I am near the end of the game.
The tactical combat is fine, aside from fairly minor LOS issues I have nothing bad to say about it.
The strategic combat falls quite short. First of all missions are too rare, I have only played about 40 missions in my current game. Virtually all the missions are reactive, there are only a couple of story linked missions that you initiate yourself, a few alien bases would have been welcome.
There isn't enough to research and/or the research speed is too fast. For example there are only 3 researchable rifles (2 are plasma), 2 sniper rifles, shotguns and heavies and only a single pistol and rocket launcher. The end result of this is that you can get near optiumum equipment by about the mid game.
Hopefully the inevitable expansion will fix these issues at least to some degree.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: But the warhammer version XCOM already exists. Its called Deathwatch
The research speed isn't that fast. It really depends on how many scientists you have stocked up. And scientists are bloody rare.
It's really damned fast if you interrogate every enemy you can-- you get research credit that reduces research times by as much as half, and frequently they STACK with eachother.
Just finished my first base. Enjoying the game so far.
Soldier classes are quite balanced and every one is useful.
Assault and Sniper drop aliens like crazy.
Although at first I disliked smoke grenades they make my assault ridiculously hard to kill. Plus triple medkit is so good.
Heavies are kinda behind, but situations like a single rocket to three bunched up Crysallids (that spawned just next to my guys), makes me really glad that I brought one.
Colonel rank heavies also have the ability to suppress entire groups of enemies at once, granting holo-targeting and suppression on each of them, AND damaging them all.
I have finally received my copy and in between various kid related activities today found twenty minutes to get this bad boy loaded up for a proper go tonight.
Anyway, I'm running it from disk on a pretty high spec machine and It's telling me that it's a two hour plus install?
Is this right? I had something similar with Diablo 3 recently when it loaded 1% in about 10 minutes then installed quick retry much instantly after that.
It's possible that I have somehow latched on to a steam download but I have a good connection here so find it unlikely.
notprop wrote: I have finally received my copy and in between various kid related activities today found twenty minutes to get this bad boy loaded up for a proper go tonight.
Anyway, I'm running it from disk on a pretty high spec machine and It's telling me that it's a two hour plus install?
Is this right? I had something similar with Diablo 3 recently when it loaded 1% in about 10 minutes then installed quick retry much instantly after that.
It's possible that I have somehow latched on to a steam download but I have a good connection here so find it unlikely.
Picked it up for the pc after one xbox session at a buddy's house. Fairly decent fo sho. Good tile games are so much fun. How much value I got for the $50 will depend on the replay value - crushing it again at a higher difficulty and diving into the multiplayer. I haven't bothered to look into multiplayer as I just got the game last night and immediately put in a 6 hour shift.
I'm pretty much blazing through it on default difficulty, and thinking of restarting on the next highest (classic, i think) if things don't get tougher soon. There's been generous use of medikit, but I've only lost one man so far, and have over half vetted including a captain - about 25 men on the roster. Been choosing missions that give me vets. Should I be patient - will they get tougher? I'm pretty good at tile games - should I just restart?
I run one of eachclass when I can, and fill the rest out with vets or rookies depending on the mission difficulty, available soldiers, and considerations about who needs to get some experience. Two assault is pretty boss though, Time for another shift...
Manchu wrote: I'm being totally honest. I clicked the "View Memoriam" and thought about giving a eulogy even. "Make no mistake, squaddies, Kieren 'Zed' Connolly had the right stuff." Right now, my game is all about whether his panicky protege, the Frenchwoman Juliette Durand, can ever fill Major Connolly's shoes.
Last night before I went to bed I looked through the memorandum and read the names of my best troops, and then got to some grunts who were whacked in their first or second mission, and when I couldn't remember how they died I felt a little guilty
Seriously.
Also, the French soldier I had was terrible, and when she died I think she was probably as relieved to be out of her hell of panic and missed shots as much as I was for not having to witness her failure any more.
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Manchu wrote: So have any countries left the Council in any of your play-throughs so far?
On my first play through, and I let South America go from early on. I figured I wasn't going to get satellites up there any time soon, and I'd rather have all of Europe, Asia and North American than worry about Brazil and Argentina.
Also, I had a choice of infiltration missions, and one choice was Perth so you know I'm always going to defend my own house over some Argentian
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Frankenberry wrote: Anyone had any clutch moments? Where an XCOM agent totally saves the day?
I completed a tough mission, and while I got out with 4 of my 5 guys alive they were all wounded for a minimum of ten days. And they were my only experienced soldiers at that point.
So sure enough I get a landed alien ship, and because I didn't realise how important 10 engineers was compared to 9, I didn't have any laser weapons or carapace armour. So in went 5 rookies, and the only nw tech they had were nano-weaves, to their almost certain doom... who then promptly smashed their way through a dozen aliens with only one wound and no casualties, and they managed to capture my first outsider to boot.
I painted them white, and dubbed them the 1st Guards regiment.
Time moved on, and the meatgrinder resumed. Only one is still alive. Poor heroic bastards.
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Bromsy wrote: I can't grasp why wearing a nanoweave vest stops you from carrying grenades. It's obviously not a weight issue as your heavies can carry a machine gun, a rocket launcher, a pistol, and one of the other items. It's just an arbitrary power restriction, which I dislike - that is why I said I dislike the inventory system.
The inventory system is a bit contrived. I wish there was a little more scope to carry two or three bits of kit per guy. It'd just be a little more interesting that way, I think.
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pretre wrote: Wait, so the whole game takes 10 hours to play through?
Is there a lot of replay value?
That seems reaaaaaallly low. I spent days on my original X-com games.
It's meant to take about 20 hours for a play through. I'm playing through on classic and while I'm guessing I'm about halfway through the game, I've been playing at least 10 hours.
I can't speak of the replayability, though.
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Crablezworth wrote: I bit the bullet and picked it up. Seems decent so far, not thrilled with the interface (very console). They really need to fix the line of sight, I'd say a third of the shots I'm taking I have no line of sight at all, it looks really wonky.
It's actually a graphic glitch, rather than a gaming glitch. The game logic is that when a guy moves up to cover he doesn't just sit there, he leans around the corner to shoot. So even though when the shot is taken it looks like the target is behind the wall, he's actually behind the wall sometimes, and other times leaning out to shoot. But the graphics just show him still behind the wall.
They should fix it by having the animations for leaning out get used for each target when they're shot at, but it is only a graphics glitch, the actual shot is there, if you get my meaning.
Unless you mean the shots taken on overwatch that fire straight through cover - that's a gameplay glitch that is meant to be getting fixed. I thought the PC version actually did have this fixed.
People on the 2k forums are saying Classic mode has a 10% penalty to shots taken by your guys. Which is a bit cheap, but about standard for turn based games.
Every time it's my sniper turn to shoot, I find myself talking to the TV:
Me: Now, I'm asking you as a friend not just ordering you as a superior officer, to actually make this shot.
*POW*
Sniper: That did not just happen.
Me: So we're not friends, huh?
I find snipers either have good games or terrible ones. And when they have good games the mission goes smoothly, and when they have terrible ones the mission is an ugly, bloody grind where the only person to get through unscathed is the useful fething sniper.
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Manchu wrote: You have the right direction but what really needs to happen here is a Necromunda license.
Please stop stealing ideas from brain.
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Palindrome wrote: I don't like heavies, the heavy weapons are very inaccurate. I tend to take one for suppression purposes but I rarely take 2.
I tend to take 1 sniper, 1 heavy, 2 assault and 2 support.
Yeah, I find a heavy with the suppression bonuses really useful, but a second one not so much. I'm finding assault the most useful (there's nothing a run and gun combined with a rapid fire won't solve ).
At this point I'm taking two assaults whenever I can, and one of the rest, with my last slot generally being rotated between a second sniper or heavy.
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Melissia wrote: Colonel rank heavies also have the ability to suppress entire groups of enemies at once, granting holo-targeting and suppression on each of them, AND damaging them all.
Suppression works with holo-targetting? Well that opens up even more options...
I'm typically running 2 Assault, 1 Heavy, 1 Support, and 2 Snipers.
I'm very happy and how great the game came out. My only beef so far is the difficulty leap between Normal and Classic. the difficulty of missions is ramped up big time with more enemies and harder to hit/easier to get hit. However the more issue is you down start with the officer school, so expanding beyond 4 guys is really rough. I'm finding 4 guys in classic just get creamed on about the 3rd mission with a total wipe.
Yeah, the tutorial mission is by far the dumbest thing in the game. I mean it does its job right in teaching the combat, but it's so freaking frustrating!
Yeah the tutorial is just dowright annoying with it's hand holding and doesn't represent the game well. The game is very fluid and extremely addicting.
I avoided the demo and started up the single player campaign with tutorial and fecking love this game. I think I'm still in the tute as my options are limited but even though it feels quite scripted ATM its a real blast.
Key moment was not realising the assault trooper gets a shotgun and deciding to shoot an alien at short range through a car window. Kapow!
I'm naming all my troops after ex's and near misses/wishes. It has created a real love/hate relationship wih my squad that I maintain is not creepy at all....honestly!
You'll be able to tell if you are still in the Tutorial notprop, if when you hover your mouse over something red (ie. you cant do it), it will eventually tell you 'Blocked by Tutorial'....should let you know if you are blocked, or just dont have the money/scientists/engineers yet....
Also, yeah totally not creepy, so long as you dont start ramboing the exes and painstakingly protecting the near misses...
Manchu wrote: Maybe it's just confirmation bias? Every time it's my sniper turn to shoot, I find myself talking to the TV:
Me: Now, I'm asking you as a friend not just ordering you as a superior officer, to actually make this shot.
*POW*
Sniper: That did not just happen.
Me: So we're not friends, huh?
Catching up on this thread, wondering if I should get XCOM for the PS3 (apparently I should!) and I read the above and laughed out loud quite loudly at work - thanks!
The first tutorial mission is awful, but the whole tutorial explained everything you needed to know about the game.
I don't have any problems with one of my snipers.
He's so broken I actually sometimes don't take him not because I want to train others, but because it's unfair to the aliens.
*Shredder rocket and two sniper shots* Those mutons were supposed to be elite -_-
pretre wrote: It felt like a bad horror movie. "NO! Don't near the guy who's face is all shadowed and is holding a grenade as big as your head!!!"
Deathshead420 wrote: Any thing warhammer like that would be kickass. Even a BFG game with this kinda of cinematic turn based combat would be cool.
Honestly, you could reskin this game as is and it would fit perfectly as an inquisitorial/deathwatch themed game of escalating black ops campaigns. Chrysalid are already genestealers and Mutons are already Orcs, might as well just put some bows on it and sell a few million copies. I'd buy.
I know I'm a bit late to the thread, I'm absolutely loving the game. I spent my first week trying to bullhead it through classic mode but I always got wrecked by the time the first terror mission comes around. Once, I had my guys run up to cover only to find a group of crysalids hiding around the corner and they had already gotten a few civies that were next to them. Having three crysalids in your face out the gate sucks. Having floaters jump in as backup while you're trying to deal with them is even worse. I had to back up to normal for the time being. I'll be back to try classic again later.
My favorite class by far is the assault. The shotgun is absolutely ridiculous! Upgrading with increased defense per enemy and free reaction shots when an enemy moves close by makes crysalids so much easier to deal with (damage from far away, by the time they get close they get murdered by shotguns). Run and gun makes them death machines, extending out to the flanks and killing the supporting xenos. Only gotten bit by that once when I went to kill a buffing sectoid and ran into a squad of floaters. Poor squaddie didn't survive that one.
Snipers are great for UFO missions, but everything else is hit or miss because of the unpredictability of open terrain to fully utilize them (like UFO missions typically get). But when a sniper gets going... wow...
I do have one reply to an earlier post though:
Lynata wrote:
-> testers were "frustrated" because they were not planning past the single unit - that is not the fault of TUs but the fault of testers. Were you "frustrated" back then during UFO Defense?
Yes, I was incredibly frustrated with TUs in UFO Defense. I absoutely hated it when I moved a trooper into position only to find out that I had miscalculated and I was one or two TU short of performing the action I wanted to do. It got to the point where I had to slowly step them one square at a time just so I could possibly have a chance. The fact that the TU usage differed based off of units for movement and shooting made it even more frustrating. I'm SO glad that is gone!
I don't miss time units either. TUs got so tedious and boring that I ended up going in real-time mode in Apoc more often than turn-based, simply because it was often both more fun to watch AND more effective anyway.
YotsubaSnake wrote:Yes, I was incredibly frustrated with TUs in UFO Defense. I absoutely hated it when I moved a trooper into position only to find out that I had miscalculated and I was one or two TU short of performing the action I wanted to do. It got to the point where I had to slowly step them one square at a time just so I could possibly have a chance.
Wow. Okay, I guess it all just depends on how we as gamers "tick" and how we approach a problem like allocating resources (which TUs basically were - just like planning a financial budget). I miss the greater freedom, but if you like this version more ... enjoy! At least we all got something out of the franchise, then, just at different times.
For what it's worth, it's not like there is a shortage of good games right now, so I may as well be happy for y'all instead of continueing to bitch about my personal expectations. Much of what I am looking for has become fairly unpopular in today's world of gaming, anyways.
Been playing it every minute of free time I had since EU release.
My only real complaint is that fighting the interface is harder than fighting the "x-rays". I honestly do not believe they playtested multi-story maps at all. Anyone who played 2 turns in a large UFO would tell them to scrap the whole thing and do it again.
lord_blackfang wrote: My only real complaint is that fighting the interface is harder than fighting the "x-rays". I honestly do not believe they playtested multi-story maps at all. Anyone who played 2 turns in a large UFO would tell them to scrap the whole thing and do it again.
Sounds like they captured the multi-story interface from the original nicely.
lord_blackfang wrote: My only real complaint is that fighting the interface is harder than fighting the "x-rays". I honestly do not believe they playtested multi-story maps at all. Anyone who played 2 turns in a large UFO would tell them to scrap the whole thing and do it again.
Sounds like they captured the multi-story interface from the original nicely.
Actually, it feels like an improvement from the original. My biggest complaint is the pathfinding. The troops will take some of the most akward paths at times, like on the subway level if a clear hole has been blown in the side they'll still run 5 squares to the nearest window to jump through.
beat it today, kind of mixed about it
the ending is kind of silly imo, fairly hard on classic difficulty but that is mostly due to them giving you long stretches you cant really run all the way through with no cover options (difficulty to be annoying not to be difficult)
Not enough aliens (imho) not enough weaponry (imho) the critical missions have entry costs to sort of stop you from blowing through the game in record time, its not sandboxy enough, not enough tech to really specialize in one thing or another to add more variety.
That being said there are already mods under dev and I really enjoyed the game.
lord_blackfang wrote: Been playing it every minute of free time I had since EU release.
My only real complaint is that fighting the interface is harder than fighting the "x-rays". I honestly do not believe they playtested multi-story maps at all. Anyone who played 2 turns in a large UFO would tell them to scrap the whole thing and do it again.
There are times when the game quite nicely figures out which level you mean and adjusts... and other times when it guesses the wrong floor and you adjust to the right floor, and then the game starts saying 'no I'm pretty sure you want the floor I suggested' and the 'up one floor then computer automatically goes down one floor' argument begins.
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YotsubaSnake wrote: Actually, it feels like an improvement from the original. My biggest complaint is the pathfinding. The troops will take some of the most akward paths at times, like on the subway level if a clear hole has been blown in the side they'll still run 5 squares to the nearest window to jump through.
Well if you were able to run through windows without cutting yourself or getting a bill from the owner, wouldn't you do it whenever you could?
But yeah, the pathfinding is a little annoying. Not really because it's that bad that often, but because there's no option to set way points. I mean, there are times when the way you go is pretty important, and there should be an option to pick out how you move.
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Macok wrote: The first tutorial mission is awful, but the whole tutorial explained everything you needed to know about the game.
I don't have any problems with one of my snipers.
He's so broken I actually sometimes don't take him not because I want to train others, but because it's unfair to the aliens.
*Shredder rocket and two sniper shots* Those mutons were supposed to be elite -_-
Wait until that sniper gets double tap and a plasma sniper rifle. Pretty much my only answer to Reapers at this point.
Thanks! Have to admit, to me the graphics appear to be in the "uncanny valley" between the original's pixel charme and the remake's fancy 3D (and it seems to miss destructible terrain ), buuuut I've bookmarked it. For the time being, MWO still keeps me super-busy, and I wanted to give Democracy 2 a try soon, but I will keep this in mind.
Sidenote: For some reason I had to think of Cadian Guardsmen whilst looking at the Battlescape screenies. I blame the green dropship and the helmets.
Been looking at Xenonauts lately, too. Apparently it changed a lot from how I remember the first pictures years ago.
sebster wrote:But yeah, the pathfinding is a little annoying. Not really because it's that bad that often, but because there's no option to set way points. I mean, there are times when the way you go is pretty important, and there should be an option to pick out how you move.
Well, if you're unsure you could simply move them step by step and ... oh, wait.
(for what it's worth, this could be solved even without returning to Time Units by implementing an "undo" button, or at least give you the ability to cancel move orders via Esc - as long as you did not spot a new enemy, of course)
Lynata wrote: Well, if you're unsure you could simply move them step by step and ... oh, wait.
(for what it's worth, this could be solved even without returning to Time Units by implementing an "undo" button, or at least give you the ability to cancel move orders via Esc - as long as you did not spot a new enemy, of course)
A single move option with the ability to set one or more way points along the way undoes all the issues, without adding the fiddly mess of a TU system.
But I think we've pretty much had this conversation already It's okay, I understand you like being able to tell your soldiers to turn 90' to the left, then take a step forward, then another. I'd rather get on with worrying about how to flank the alien menace before he flanks me
And no, of course I didn't let my soldiers advance like that all the time - but it was nice to have the option. I suppose it's less atmospheric than the remake's more "cinematic" approach, but it never really bothered me.
But ... yeah, waypoints (hold Shift or Ctrl + click LMB to set?) would be another good solution, though I think an undo/cancel would be "safer" - your guys probably don't run the wrong path every single time, so you wouldn't set waypoints every single time .. and then, BAM, Murphy's Law, just when you thought there was no way they could pick the wrong path now!
Either way, all of this sounds like something they could patch in later; maybe mention it on their forums?
sebster wrote: Wait until that sniper gets double tap and a plasma sniper rifle. Pretty much my only answer to Reapers at this point.
Oh, he had double tap VERY fast.
Snipers with ally vision gets the kills like mad and are almost never wounded.
Snipers has the most imbalanced skill tree IMHO. The other route (move and shoot snipers) is very weak in comparison IMHO. Their only saving grace is battle scanner which is ridiculously good. I mean knowing where the enemy is without activating them? I'll take ten! I still use it on my squadsight sniper at the beginning of the round.
When you get the flight suits it gets even more silly.
Flight Suit + Opportunist + Double Tap + Plasma Sniper + Squad Sight + S.C.O.P.E. = God
I hovered about 3 squares up with LoS at a UFO. It ended up being a cargo UFO and I was shooting through the entire hull of the Ship into the back room with the Outsiders lololol. The overwatch shots were just pic.
Now that I have started fielding SHIVs on a regular basis I absolutely love them.
I don't like flying suits, which is strange.
I know it's XCOM trademark armour but my guys happily run around in Titan armour. Add chitin plating or even old school vest.
I like to think aliens feel exactly how I felt when I saw number of grids on sectopod.
I also use ghost armour just for its coolness.
Currently in the middle of final mission. Kinda sad that it's over already but also exited about increasing difficulty level and unlocking all the new options.
I use mostly skeleton armor actually. It's by far the most resource efficient. My A-Team gets equipped with titan and ghost armor though-- assault and support get titan, heavy and sniper get ghost.
Well, I started Normal Mode Iron man.
Bloody hell the difficulty is certainly ramped up!
First Terror mission was a disaster. I had to abort it with my last surviving soldier.
Lynata wrote: But ... yeah, waypoints (hold Shift or Ctrl + click LMB to set?) would be another good solution, though I think an undo/cancel would be "safer" - your guys probably don't run the wrong path every single time, so you wouldn't set waypoints every single time .. and then, BAM, Murphy's Law, just when you thought there was no way they could pick the wrong path now!
Either way, all of this sounds like something they could patch in later; maybe mention it on their forums?
I think it's another task for the modding community. It'll be interesting to see if it really takes off, because there's a lot of potential for modding with this game.
I found my snipers level just a little slower than my assaults. While assaults get wounded or killed more often because they're up in the thick of it, their Run & Gun and Rapid Fire skills means they're scoring the bulk of my kills each game.
But when I got my first sniper to Colonel and deployed a Plasma Sniper Rifle in the same mission the game just turned. Popping two Mutons a turn reliably (and from high ground frequently it was two 100% shots) has meant my sniper started scoring as many or more kills than the rest of the squad combined, and that's with me favouring the rest of the squad with kills to level them up where I can.
Seems like the assaults best choices are at the beginning, while the sniper has his most powerful options down the bottom.
That said, I'm starting to really like heavies now, as well. Gear them up with Titan Armour and a Chitin Vest underneath, then get them the perk that ignores two damage, and just watch them soak damage. My last mission I had two guys like that, with a single assault behind them to flank & double tap targets, and two snipers to do the real killing. I absolutely smashed my way through an alien force that I would have found pretty tough going a couple of missions ago (two sectopods, a muton bunch, a muton elite bunch, some crysalids and some heavy floaters on a terror mission).
Snipers with ally vision gets the kills like mad and are almost never wounded.
Snipers has the most imbalanced skill tree IMHO. The other route (move and shoot snipers) is very weak in comparison IMHO. Their only saving grace is battle scanner which is ridiculously good. I mean knowing where the enemy is without activating them? I'll take ten! I still use it on my squadsight sniper at the beginning of the round.
Definitely. I think its the skill tree with the most obvious choices, apart from possibly Executioner or Opportunist, which are both really good in the situations. Well, and I've probably changed my mind on Disabling Shot and Battle Scanner, because I've found Battle Scanner to be fairly ineffective most of the time, and kind of boring when it does work.
Does anyone know if Disabling Shot works on robot enemies like the Sectopod?
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Well, I started Normal Mode Iron man.
Bloody hell the difficulty is certainly ramped up!
First Terror mission was a disaster. I had to abort it with my last surviving soldier.
Just wait until you try it on Classic. Terror missions are ridiculously difficult there. I hate to imagine the difficulty of impossible!
I started out on classic mode, carefully worked my way up and got to my first terror mission. I'm on the collapsed bridge and slowly working my way up, saving civs up to the huge dropoff overlooking the lower area. That's where I first saw them. A squad of floaters was sitting out in the open, I traded with them only to watch a pair of crysalids and a zombified civilian rush up to my line. There was no escaping at that point ;_;
Second time I got to the first terror mission? I took the inital move to cover from the DZ and watched as a group of crysalids poured out of the nearby building. I was about to contain them when floaters showed up and made a mess of the situation. I barely made it out with two of my guys.
Normal, in comparison, was easy. I swaped to normal just to get a more of a handle on the mechanics after getting curbstomped on classic for a while. I only lost one trooper on the first terror mission due to a misjudge on where the remaining crysalid would go next. She had to sacrifice herself on the beast with a grenade to make sure she didn't zombify. She was a valiant heavy weapons trooper and will be missed ;_;
I'm now back to classic. I get so close to doing well and then the game just kicks me in the crotch every time. It gets frustrating when your troopers miss a target at a 96% to hit and the xenos turn around and TPK you.
Does anyone know if Disabling Shot works on robot enemies like the Sectopod?
The Sectopod has 3 weapon systems so it doesn't seem to work. One of the weapon pods gets a 'disabled' looking particle effect but it was still able to use its beam cannon, at least it did the only time I tried it.
Lately I've stumbled about this little info: Second Wave Its' either something that didn't make it into the game and was dropped or possibly a future patch / DLC.
Does anyone know if Disabling Shot works on robot enemies like the Sectopod?
The Sectopod has 3 weapon systems so it doesn't seem to work. One of the weapon pods gets a 'disabled' looking particle effect but it was still able to use its beam cannon, at least it did the only time I tried it.
I 'disabled' my first few Sectopods just fine, at least I assume I did, because I never even saw the beam (or grenade launcher) until the one time I didn't have a Sniper handy. Lost a lot of good men that time.
Allow me to tell you a story of how the RNG absolutely decided to stab me in the back just now.
Routine abduction mission early in a game. I have one of each class at initial promotion levels, so nothing special. I'm mostly trying to focus on leveling my sniper so he has squad sight. I slowly move my forces up, taking a few hits, but slowly taking out the sectoids as I advance. I move my sniper into a position where he can hit majority of their forces from cover.
Of course, the aliens were having none of that and they focused fire on him. It took majority of their troops, but they finally brought him down on their turn. I would have been disappointed but okay with that result if that were the only thing that happened. But my assault decided to fail his will check and panic. Again, this would normally be okay if it weren't for the burning vehicle he was hiding next to.
....damn, so now I'm left with just a support and heavy weapons guy. The enemy is kinda clustered, I'll just lob a rocket down range to make it easier for my last two guys to mop up and go home. Or that was the plan, as my rocket failed to launch, hit a vehicle near my support and set off a chain reaction of explosions to kill him.
That left my heavy weapons vs the world. The xenos knew it too and they brought the pain. He did not survive long at all ;_;
I would say the tactical layer is superior to the original, though the strategic layer (geoscape, interceptors, whatever) is a bit lacking. Not terrible, mind you, but there could have been more. Man, check out the 2k forums! The amount of neckbeardy butthurt is incredible.
Melissia wrote: The tactical layer of the original was definitely inferior to that of Apocalypse, at least.
Frankly Apocalypse is better than the original in almost every way.
Yeah, I liked apocalypse too. It had its issues (too colorful for my tastes, real-time felt awkward to me, etc) but it was a great game.
And it handled psi-powers a lot better than in the UFO:EU!
I'd love to see an X-Com: Apocalypse Reloaded in the same style of X-Com: Enemy Unknown. Build upon XC:EU and add more features, such as base management/defense, the cityscape, expanded research and equipment choices, etc. Using apocalypse's uniquely original style to fit modern graphics would be quite interesting, and there's plenty of room for improvement in both XC:A and XC:EU.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Yeah, I liked apocalypse too. It had its issues (too colorful for my tastes, real-time felt awkward to me, etc) but it was a great game.
And it handled psi-powers a lot better than in the UFO:EU!
I almost always played real time in apocalypse. The little brainsuckers were impossible to kill for my man in turn based games. I could leave all my squad on overwatch but this little sucker still got through. Maybe this game just hated me
I didn't like aerial combat. It was so random. One time UFO went down smoothly, next time same type downed two fighters and devastated half a city.
Also, the aliens were a bit.. comical..?
The hamster, the worm, the bigger worm, the spitting eggplant, the guy without head that's spitting acid from his neck. It made sense from the big picture but still.
Most mechanics were a big step forward from Enemy and Terror but the fear was gone.
Also, the aliens were a bit.. comical..?
The hamster, the worm, the bigger worm, the spitting eggplant, the guy without head that's spitting acid from his neck. It made sense from the big picture but still.
Most mechanics were a big step forward from Enemy and Terror but the fear was gone.
I think it was just the graphical style. With a different style, they could have been pretty nightmarish.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I would say the tactical layer is superior to the original, though the strategic layer (geoscape, interceptors, whatever) is a bit lacking. Not terrible, mind you, but there could have been more.
I would agree with that assessment and add that its is much better at conveying the story, as little as there is of it. The personal touch with the 3 NPCs is nice.
I have a few issues with it that I also had with Apocalypse. The pacing is too rigid and the game is a bit too long for successive play-throughs. I have probably beaten the original 50 times but I only beat Apocalypse twice, and aborted midway a few times, because at some point is just becomes a chore and the game just won't let you advance until you reach a certain point. There's also no way to get a leg up on the aliens, whereas in the original, if you did really well early on and attained air superiority, you could start dictating the terms of engagement.
Melissia wrote: So because he was unable to gain a distinct advantage and breeze through the game, it doesn't mean it was hard, it just means it was too much work?
Because that's what he was complaining about-- he was unable to get such a major advantage that he could sail through the game with ease.
No, thats not hat he said.
And in fact its the same issue im having, theres no way of even keeping pace with the aliens most of the time, which leads to a major grind to get to the next stage, its very annoying (even on easy weirdly, which i wanted to do for the story and its just holding me up having to do the same missions over and over just to get enough resources to unlock the next upgrade/vehicle/building/whatever, which is then seemingly invalidated when the next enemy shows up, its fething annoying).
being a chore/grindfest is not the same as being too hard.
Yeah, i know, but you cant necessarily do that without researching it, which requires resources/time etc. and that presupposes that there is any more tech to use (there isnt, apart from a couple of firestorm weapons and the blaster launcher), the problem now is health.
The enemy has a wealth of it, which seems to increase every couple of missions (except sectoids/thin men which i still weirdly encounter every now and then) and i have no answer for as my weapons still do the same damage, and i still have the same health as i have the best armour as well...
Well, reading this thread and a couple of vids has all but convinced me to buy the game [when i have more time]. Love turn-based and tactical games and it really fits with my work schedule.
Couple of questions. I'm a pretty good gamer usually IMHO and am happy to be punished *heh* and have squad members kick the bucket (preferably not all the time though), so I'm thinking Iron Man or Classic will work nicely, but which, for my first time playing XCOM?
Dunno. My problem was always forgetting to upgrade my fleet.
Perhaps, i could do with not rushing on certain maps/missions, but there isnt always a better option available (a sectopod glitch-spawning on top of a doorway for example, with only one way of getting a shot at it in no cover...yeah, took losses in that mission). Even if there is, it doesnt help that the enemy is constantly getting better when you are stuck at the same level (the best available as it happens) and therefore constantly being on the back foot, it is annoying.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just Dave wrote: Well, reading this thread and a couple of vids has all but convinced me to buy the game [when i have more time]. Love turn-based and tactical games and it really fits with my work schedule.
Couple of questions. I'm a pretty good gamer usually IMHO and am happy to be punished *heh* and have squad members kick the bucket (preferably not all the time though), so I'm thinking Iron Man or Classic will work nicely, but which, for my first time playing XCOM?
Also, is the tutorial worth doing or not?
Do it, it really is a great game (despite my bitching ).
it depends on whether you are the sort of gamer to go back and do something again to see if you can do it better, or for having a safe option of a reload, in this case ironman isnt for you...but if you are happy to take the punishment for a mistake then go for it (and classic will punish you from what ive heard of it)...
id do it every time purely for the upgraded trooper you get out of it, its very highly scripted, but does what its meant to do very well (teach you the basics) and gives a bit of a leg up for the next mission IMO...
Just Dave wrote: Couple of questions. I'm a pretty good gamer usually IMHO and am happy to be punished *heh* and have squad members kick the bucket (preferably not all the time though), so I'm thinking Iron Man or Classic will work nicely, but which, for my first time playing XCOM?
Also, is the tutorial worth doing or not?
For the first game I'd go Normal Ironman.
You can change difficulty any time mid game so if you feel it's too easy just switch to Classic.
Tutorial is ok. Shows everything you need to know.
As for forgetting to save. There is an autosave option so that was never a problem for me.
Melissia wrote: Dunno,. I LIKE the desperation that the game induces. It's thematic.
I agree. My first playthrough was Normal/Ironman and I won without much difficulty, though the final battle came down to one shot... 41% chance to hit, if I hit I win the game and if I miss I lose the game. Luckily for me, agent "Mr. Clean" was on his game.
I then switched to Classic/Ironman, which required several tries and was generally much more difficult. In the end, though, I prevailed, and had a blast doing it. The added desperation and risk of Classic difficulty really helps you get into the game more.
After finishing the game on normal, I realised 2 things:
1. Interrogate everything ASAP, to get research credits.
2. Get Squad Sight for your snipers, and sit them if fire-lanes to cover your front-line troops. I didn't find the other skill was any good, but I only took pistol-snipers later on.
Oh, and if you come up against a Sectopod, suppress it before moving anywhere near it.
I recommend it Soldarin, I just finished it, I got a good solid 30 hours out of it, so I reckon a euro an hour is about fair, plus, the multiplayer and replay value is there.
It has some flaws, I didn't like the 6 man cap, the inability to buy and sell more stuff (playing with my economy was always the most fun, selling cannons and las pistols to buy avalanches and gak like that) and the occasional in game buy, plus an inability to free target doors and walls or mind controlled units annoyed me, but really all in they are minor gripes really.
Its an excellent game, the missions are really fun and the combat is fast and furious, Levelling your troops and playing with the perks is awesome, and I even liked the sound and the art style. I played for 4 or 5 hours a day until I got it done, and I don't do that often.. It was super addictive and my missus was pissed at me due to lack of attention all week.
mattyrm wrote: I recommend it Soldarin, I just finished it, I got a good solid 30 hours out of it, so I reckon a euro an hour is about fair, plus, the multiplayer and replay value is there.
It has some flaws, I didn't like the 6 man cap, the inability to buy and sell more stuff (playing with my economy was always the most fun, selling cannons and las pistols to buy avalanches and gak like that) and the occasional in game buy, plus an inability to free target doors and walls or mind controlled units annoyed me, but really all in they are minor gripes really.
Its an excellent game, the missions are really fun and the combat is fast and furious, Levelling your troops and playing with the perks is awesome, and I even liked the sound and the art style. I played for 4 or 5 hours a day until I got it done, and I don't do that often.. It was super addictive and my missus was pissed at me due to lack of attention all week.
Women. The fate of the earth hangs in the balance, and all they care about is how much attention they get.
Soladrin wrote: I've been contemplating getting this. But the recent waves of great PC games at 20-30 euros I'm kind of wondering if it's really worth the full price.
I wish it got a steam sale already.
Loving what I've seen of it but I keep hearing it's buggy as feth and not sure if it's too game breaking for a fullprice game...
I've hit some camera issues, but have otherwise not hit many bugs.I think maybe the controls got stuck like twice, so far in 50 hours or so of game play. Hardly "Buggy as feth", it's got some issues but they've been minor and haven't really affected my enjoyment.
This is a really solid product, my only real gripe is that it could use some more variety & length.
Based on all the length comments, I'm probably waiting until it goes down in price a bit. I am rabid about the original, but I also can play it for a ridiculous amount of time.
Finally beat it as well on normal as well. Fantastic game and does the original great justice even leaving out so many pieces of the original. I'll also echo that the ending was pretty meh.
Spoiler:
Maybe it was just me, but the fact that the ending revolved around a psyonics soldier sacrificing himself for humanity, was pretty bleh. You don't get psyonics till late in the game, so it didn't feel anything for that single soldier. It's not like you were working with this gift for humanity for all that long before the last battle. The last mission was pretty terrible too. It was so heavily scripted that there wasn't any real fear since you knew you had time to regroup before you "spawned" the next batch. Not to mention the fact that they gave you an uber psyonics guy that either crushed a whole area of guys or MCed one without issue. Even the two Sectopod went down like a hooker to a Shatter rocket, rift, and like 1 shot of standard fire.
Overall, VERY worth it's price. When I get some free time I can't wait to try some multiplayer.
mattyrm wrote: I recommend it Soldarin, I just finished it, I got a good solid 30 hours out of it, so I reckon a euro an hour is about fair, plus, the multiplayer and replay value is there.
It has some flaws, I didn't like the 6 man cap, the inability to buy and sell more stuff (playing with my economy was always the most fun, selling cannons and las pistols to buy avalanches and gak like that) and the occasional in game buy, plus an inability to free target doors and walls or mind controlled units annoyed me, but really all in they are minor gripes really.
Its an excellent game, the missions are really fun and the combat is fast and furious, Levelling your troops and playing with the perks is awesome, and I even liked the sound and the art style. I played for 4 or 5 hours a day until I got it done, and I don't do that often.. It was super addictive and my missus was pissed at me due to lack of attention all week.
Erm.. It's 50 euros...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Feth it, bought.
This game loves to bite me in the rear at the worst possible times.
I have an escort mission so I'm slowly working my 6 man team through a building to get to the DZ and escape. A few thin men appear, I quickly kill the ones in LOS and set up for the one out of LOS with overwatch.
My heavy, one of my two non-rookie teammates, was overwatching that entry point when the thin man approached from the only possible angle to avoid overwatch. That was unfortunate. Even more so when he manages to critical hit and kill my veteran. Damn, so now I need to really kill him before I move on with the VIP.
NOT SO FAST! A rookie panics and in the heat of the moment, he turns and shoots another rookie. The ensuing confusion of being shot by friendlies causes her to panic as well and pull the trigger. Unfortunately, the VIP was on the other end of the shot.
This game produces scenarios where when missions are smooth, you get the opportunity to do everythign the right way and have little problems. But when they don't go smooth, oh man is it going to be bad.
This game produces scenarios where when missions are smooth, you get the opportunity to do everythign the right way and have little problems. But when they don't go smooth, oh man is it going to be bad.
for this reason, I usually have one rookie in armor and a nano vest who goes last, if I get into a situation where I know someone is going to be shot, I run him out front to make him the easiest target.
Kind of a dick move, but prevents my money makers from getting shot too often
Having put a lot of time into this at this point, overall a really good game. Faithful to the original with a modern feel. However, a handful of complaints:
1) Can't pick your squad member's class. Although it's not a huge deal, in my current playthrough, I have something like 20 members and a whopping 3 assaults. Not the end of the world, but it would be nice if when you lose a support, if your next rookie would be guaranteed to be a support.
2) Tech comes too quickly. Maybe it's just the engineer/scientist in me, but it's a little bit annoying, IMO, to go from ballistic weapons to being able to manufacture laser weaponry in a month.
3) Camera issues. Although you can deal with them, I've had a few times that some squad member decided it would be a great idea to jump out into the open instead of in cover because the camera decided to fight me.
4) Final fight. Kind of a letdown. UD had a great ending (going to Mars to fight the aliens), this one didn't have the same feel of epicness.
5) Squad size. 6 just doesn't feel right to me. Too small to feel like a powerful force, too large to feel like an elite team. Small gripe, and totally personal opinion.
6) Abilities. Lets be honest here, there are some things that you just never take. For example: I don't even know what the sniper has in the same tier as Squad Sight, because who cares? Same goes for a support's 3xMedpack ability.
I agree with 1-5, but 6 not so much. Squad Site is epic, but i did take a sniper with the other ability which lets you move then shoot/overwatch. Preflight suit that sniper got way more kills due to the ability to adjust you LoF and then still take shots. Also I commonly ran a support with 2 smoke grenades instead of the triple medpack. There has been a ton of times the extra smoke grenade has saved my life lol. For a long time I ran 1 smoker and 1 medic.
There are some that are fairly useless though like +1 grenade vs +radius/dmg for Heavies and snipers +bonus aiming against wounded vs no penalty to over watch.
EDIT: Also the most underrated thing I have seen from most players is the use of SHIVs. Once I started running a Hover SHIV I couldn't live without the little guy. No fear of getting it killed, it doesn't panic, can take a serious beating, has 24 flight fuel, and doesn't need cover to still not get crushed by enemy fire. My little hover SHIV should have been a 3 Star General by the time I beat the game.
BlueDagger wrote: I agree with 1-5, but 6 not so much. Squad Site is epic, but i did take a sniper with the other ability which lets you move then shoot/overwatch. Preflight suit that sniper got way more kills due to the ability to adjust you LoF and then still take shots. Also I commonly ran a support with 2 smoke grenades instead of the triple medpack. There has been a ton of times the extra smoke grenade has saved my life lol. For a long time I ran 1 smoker and 1 medic.
There are some that are fairly useless though like +1 grenade vs +radius/dmg for Heavies and snipers +bonus aiming against wounded vs no penalty to over watch.
EDIT: Also the most underrated thing I have seen from most players is the use of SHIVs. Once I started running a Hover SHIV I couldn't live without the little guy. No fear of getting it killed, it doesn't panic, can take a serious beating, has 24 flight fuel, and doesn't need cover to still not get crushed by enemy fire. My little hover SHIV should have been a 3 Star General by the time I beat the game.
SHIVs are great, but they don't get xp (or whatever the xcom equivalent is).
BlueDagger wrote: I agree with 1-5, but 6 not so much. Squad Site is epic, but i did take a sniper with the other ability which lets you move then shoot/overwatch. Preflight suit that sniper got way more kills due to the ability to adjust you LoF and then still take shots. Also I commonly ran a support with 2 smoke grenades instead of the triple medpack. There has been a ton of times the extra smoke grenade has saved my life lol. For a long time I ran 1 smoker and 1 medic.
There are some that are fairly useless though like +1 grenade vs +radius/dmg for Heavies and snipers +bonus aiming against wounded vs no penalty to over watch.
EDIT: Also the most underrated thing I have seen from most players is the use of SHIVs. Once I started running a Hover SHIV I couldn't live without the little guy. No fear of getting it killed, it doesn't panic, can take a serious beating, has 24 flight fuel, and doesn't need cover to still not get crushed by enemy fire. My little hover SHIV should have been a 3 Star General by the time I beat the game.
SHIVs are great, but they don't get xp (or whatever the xcom equivalent is).
If they do, then call me wrong and let me at it!
Maybe they're useful as rookie escorts?
Nope they don't get XP, but they don't need it. They do their job great at being the forward scout bullet sponge and shooting the piss outta things. If they die, no one freaks out.
Soladrin wrote: Any muton I encounter has the special rule: "always hits, always crits".
FML.
That's pretty standard. What's worse is when you open up with 4 troopers into a target that has a 50% chace to hit and the only one that hits doesn't kill (2 damage to a sectoid ;_; ) Then, dispite the fact that all your troopers are in heavy cover, they always hit and either kill or panic your guys. (especially next to car they just ignited).
This is what always happens to me. I can have the most balanced and stable approach feasable and the RNG will just take a dump on your day and completely ruin any chances you had at an acceptable mission result.
YotsubaSnake wrote:NOT SO FAST! A rookie panics and in the heat of the moment, he turns and shoots another rookie. The ensuing confusion of being shot by friendlies causes her to panic as well and pull the trigger. Unfortunately, the VIP was on the other end of the shot.
This game produces scenarios where when missions are smooth, you get the opportunity to do everythign the right way and have little problems. But when they don't go smooth, oh man is it going to be bad.
In general the fan base doesn't seem too happy about it. However I think it has potential. One of the things I think was an improvement for the new XCOM was the addition of the base support characters. While they're paper-thin as characters, that's enough to give a feeling of context to the events I'm driving throughout the game. In the original and this game you can and often do construct your own story through the way the missions play. However, that doesn't really do anything to give you a broader human perspective to what's going on. Having folks with voices, archetypes and basic skeleton of a personality give that perspective.
I think this is a good opportunity create more context. While I've seen complaints along the lines of "WTF, this isn't GTA I don't need some gangster!!!', I like they're that going with a pretty well known archetype here. We've seen lots of stories with "Badass Gangsters" and understand the kind of place they have in the world, so when we see what happens to this dude we can make broader conclusions on how things are affecting the world as a whole, even with little to know time wasted on character development (which is safely outside the scope of XCOM).
The only pitfall is if it's a super-character, mary-sue type situation. However I'm willing to give the creators the benefit of the doubt. If they take an approach kind of like what FFT did, the character joins as a pseudo-member with plot armor (just knocked out when "killed") for the duration of the special missions. When the special missions are over you can recruit the character if you want or dismiss them and they're as disposable and mortal as any other grunt.. just with a unique face.
Guess I'm the odd one out in that I value the option for customisation higher than pre-determined personalities for games such as these. I'd rather have an option to "design" base characters from scratch, kind of like with STO bridge officers. From what I have seen, people always enjoyed giving squaddies the names of friends or colleagues or movie idols ... imagine if you could extend that to the base personnel!
As far as the "gangsta theme" is concerned, it would not bother me at all. As you said, it is a known archetype, and in itself not a new idea even when connected to the alien invasion genre, as long as the focus remains on government black ops, just that they now extend into the underworld. Though I agree about the potential pitfall when that guy ends up as some sort of super soldier better than your own troops, with various unique special abilities. Though I'm sure that many people would enjoy that as well. Matter of preferences, as always.
I had to grin about their explanation regarding the reluctance to expand the tech tree, however.
"Naah, we can't do that. It's all so finely balanced and the slightest addition may tip the scales and totally destroy the gameplay experience ... let's just give them the Blaster Launcher right at the start!"
To be honest, this new character looks like he'll pretty much fall into the same area as Special Characters in 40k. Some people don't like taking named characters and prefer to play with generic grunts they can make their own stories for. There will also be people that will love having unique characters and will the thrilled to take them.
Bottom line, if you like it, take it. If not, you can unlock the new tech and leave the unique character back at base to train recruits or something.
Well, just had my first absolute clusterfeth mission.
>Classic Ironman mode.
>Bomb disposal mission.
>Triggered something like 4 thin men at once, who managed to slow me down long enough for the bomb to go off.
>Last 2 soldiers run to the skyranger
>One of them decided to lost his gak from the poison damage, and promptly shot my favorite heavy in the back of her head.
>I was not amused. fething thin men.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Well, just had my first absolute clusterfeth mission.
>Classic Ironman mode.
>Bomb disposal mission.
>Triggered something like 4 thin men at once, who managed to slow me down long enough for the bomb to go off.
>Last 2 soldiers run to the skyranger
>One of them decided to lost his gak from the poison damage, and promptly shot my favorite heavy in the back of her head.
>I was not amused. fething thin men.
Oh god, Thin Men. They're by far the deadliest enemies in the game, no exaggeration. Seriously, I'm at the end of the game decked out in plasma and titan/ghost/angel armor, going through Sectopods and Elite Mutons like a hot knife through butter. Get a council mission that still has Thin Men hanging around, TPK from like one group of the suckers, this happens *consistently*. Thank god I wasn't doing any iron man run.
Also, no discount on preorder.
