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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.

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.

 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..

Meh.

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."

It just isn't the X-Com.

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.

What was MoO3? I think my mind may have erased that from my memory...

 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.

 malfred wrote:

 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.

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.

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?).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

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.

All in all? 9/10.

Here's a video of TB trying to play XCOM on classic mode.
Enjoy

http://www.twitch.tv/totalbiscuit/b/335049943

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.

Once I switched from the m&KB to the 360 pad I didn't mind the interface anymore. I only got to play for about 2 hours last night but i liked it.

I lost guardsman Marbo to a stupid move on my part damn poison clouds.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Here's a video of TB trying to play XCOM on classic mode.
Enjoy

http://www.twitch.tv/totalbiscuit/b/335049943

I dont think that blokes particularly funny, but seeing that pistol miss from 3 feet was amusing nonetheless.

 mattyrm wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Here's a video of TB trying to play XCOM on classic mode.
Enjoy

http://www.twitch.tv/totalbiscuit/b/335049943

I dont think that blokes particularly funny, but seeing that pistol miss from 3 feet was amusing nonetheless.

Oh yeah, the sheer amount of rage in that first mission was hilarious

Does it work with non-360 gamepads?

I have a USB dual shock controller I can use.

 Melissia wrote:
Does it work with non-360 gamepads?

I have a USB dual shock controller I can use.

Its mouse and keyboard or nothing for me.. I think my sausage like fingers have a natural distaste for gamepads.

I prefer M&KB myself.

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.

Well, I grew up on an Apple 2 and the NES/Genesis/SNES, but I've always had an affinity towards typing.