XCOM - Thoughts and Encounters.

[soldant]

Simple question to the lovers of the original xcom...

Is this the game we've been waiting for?

It keeps the all important asymmetrical warfare element and unforgiving difficulty. Your mistakes or oversights are fatal. The Geoscape is fairly well implemented and not a useless afterthought. The conflict escalates as you progress. There is a very real possibility that you will lose. In short - yes.

But if you believe that time units are our lord and master of now and forever, then probably not. This game does some things differently thus if you wanted a pure, carbon copy of the original and nothing more, you might be disappointed. Personally I'm happy that there are no more time units - it makes movement and actions a lot less ambiguous (how many TUs to move over there? etc).

[mrmud]

It keeps the all important asymmetrical warfare element and unforgiving difficulty. Your mistakes or oversights are fatal. The Geoscape is fairly well implemented and not a useless afterthought. The conflict escalates as you progress. There is a very real possibility that you will lose. In short - yes.

But if you believe that time units are our lord and master of now and forever, then probably not. This game does some things differently thus if you wanted a pure, carbon copy of the original and nothing more, you might be disappointed. Personally I'm happy that there are no more time units - it makes movement and actions a lot less ambiguous (how many TUs to move over there? etc).

Honestly, time units are not the problem.
The problem is that cover and no bullet trajectory simulation makes combat less interesting and that the line of sight model is poorly implemented and even worse not properly shown in the game. You cant see what your soldier will be able to shoot once you move him to a location. You have to hope that the game will be nice to you (turns out, its often not).

[Ubik2000]

Played a few missions last night - I've never played an XCOM game, and my only real experience with tactical games I can remember is Freedom Force (which I definitely played the hell out of), but I decided to start 'er up on Classic. No Ironman though - I feel like I need to ask the forgiveness of RPS hivemind, but while I understand the appeal of just barreling along heedless of the consequences, I just know losing my favorite guys would make me nuts, and frankly Dark Souls is about all the masochistic gaming I can stand at one time. Maybe for a second play-through.

I need to figure out what balance to strike with the saving though - this honestly seems like an important question for playing this game, and I'm struggling with it. I haven't been saving mid-mission, tempting as it's been. I've lost a few rookies, and I've tried to let that go, and my Heavy was critically wounded and the infirmary for a month, and obviously that's just the cost of doing business. But I've restarted missions when I've lost vets; I had a last minute TPK during the bomb disposal mission (damn Thinmen dropping from the sky) that I restarted, no question. I'm cutting myself some slack because I'm brand new to the series and inexperienced in the genre, but I am going to need to make a conscious effort to expand my definition of an acceptable win. In a way, Ironman mode is tempting just because it takes that burden off of me.

Not 100% sold on the controls. I actually thought about seeing it they were more intuitive using my 360 controller - heresy I know, but it hasn't quite clicked for me yet. And I'm seriously considering restarting without the tutorial - will that turn off the "More Info" box that pops up every time I want to go into Overwatch?

Other than that, I'm having a fabulous time customizing the uniforms!

[Squirly]

Having only played the demo (I hate all of you playing already. All of you.) I can definitely say that I'll be playing this with my 360 controller. The PC interface isn't terrible, but it doesn't feel like it gives me any major advantages or perks compared to the controller. In terms of user-friendliness it's about the same but in the end I can take the controller, lean back and put my feet up on the table. It's not an FPS and it's TB so twitch gaming isn't necessary. Take your time. Drink your coffee. Smoke a cigarette. Whatever.

[Eviljace]

right coming up to the end of the 3rd month on ironman classic and its not going to bad(i think)

the good : only lost one man so far and my main team are upto majorish rank
scope is a must have for rookies
flush out is one of the best skills ive come across so far
the bad :
argh need engineers badly
argh need monies badly
too many scientist's
euro base bonus is the worst and i know that now

[Spider Jerusalem]

i absolutely hated the mouse feel on my first few missions, so i switched to my ps3 controller. it's sad how much better the game feels with a controller.

[Ubik2000]

Yeah, the base bonus was one of those things where I was like: I KNOW some of these are better than the others, but I have no idea which. I picked Europe (everything other than Europe and North America were in red...was that also down to the tutorial?), but I suspect that was a bad call.

[TillEulenspiegel]

Is there any way to stop the camera from angling down when it reaches the edge of the map? Holy crap that's annoying. Or to maintain the zoom level when switching between squad members?

Seriously, I can deal with all the other interface quirks, but this is the worst camera behavior I've seen for years.

[Drake Sigar]

Yeah, the base bonus was one of those things where I was like: I KNOW some of these are better than the others, but I have no idea which. I picked Europe (everything other than Europe and North America were in red...was that also down to the tutorial?), but I suspect that was a bad call.

An article I read seems to suggest you can get all the bonuses. Total satellite coverage gives you the bonuses in that area.

[arathain]

There's large elements of the controls that I don't have a problem with, but the camera controls are just kind of odd, and definitely frustrating at times. The zoom level constantly resetting came up on the Three Moves Ahead podcast, and apparently that's just the way it is. You have to constantly reset the zoom to where you want it.

This led me to another problem. I find the middle mouse drag a little clumsy, but I found T and G zoom in and out. I got into the habit of tapping them a few times whenever I wanted to change the zoom. Now, apparently R is a shortcut to have your selected soldier reload, and being right next to the zoom keys, it's easy to slip if I'm not being attentive. Now I have a soldier wasting a vital turn standing still and changing a 3/4 full clip.

[Jockie]

Is there any way to stop the camera from angling down when it reaches the edge of the map? Holy crap that's annoying. Or to maintain the zoom level when switching between squad members?

Seriously, I can deal with all the other interface quirks, but this is the worst camera behavior I've seen for years.

It's incredibly annoying on some of the UFO maps where it will zoom above the ship every time it switches soldier.

On another note, I just totally wiped on the (spoilerish)Alien Base Assault. Only playing on Iron Man Normal, but I'm basically screwed now. I'm blaming this one on the RNG which has basically made every soldier who lived past their first mission into a heavy, meaning I don't really have the tools for pushing forward in a level effectively (plus my ace sniper got smashed through a wall by the first Berzerker I met while covering the teams rear). Once grenades start flying, suppression and mass overwatch won't cut it anymore. So yeah, all my vets just bought it, including my veteran of 22 sorties (with his 37 kills). I think starting again might be in order, but I'll try some rookies out with my expensive as hell gear and see how that goes.

[squirrelfanatic]

After familiarising myself with the basic controls on normal difficulty, I started a new game on classic with iron man mode turned on, no tutorial. Although I have never played an X-COM game before I feel that it could work out juuuuuust fine, because I have had some time with JA2 (no iron man mode back then, so there's that).

Holy cow, the first mission already gave me the creeps. The difference in difficulty became immediately apparent when two of my soldiers freaked out after one of them was hit and was hovering at one HP. At least they didn't shoot each other which I heard is pretty likely to happen. I just hope that the game won't instantly flick the "screw you" switch at one point and destroy me because I made a bad decision in building my base or research priorities.

[TillEulenspiegel]

The zoom level constantly resetting came up on the Three Moves Ahead podcast, and apparently that's just the way it is. You have to constantly reset the zoom to where you want it.

I've just discovered that clicking another soldier (rather than pressing tab) will maintain the current zoom level. So that's something. But only until you use up their actions and it automatically switches, which screws up your zoom level again.

Another note: the camera only behaves strangely at the edge of the map if there's a wall there. Presumably as a lazy way to prevent clipping. On outdoor maps, it's fine.

[Sparkasaurusmex]

Disable Mouse Lag
If you feel some slight mouse lag, this may remove the issue:

1. Open XComEngine.ini
2. Search (CTRL+F) for “OneFrameThreadLag=True”
3. Replace the word “True” with “False”

http://www.gamefront.com/xcom-enemy-unknown-ini-tweaks/

[aoanla]

But if you believe that time units are our lord and master of now and forever, then probably not. This game does some things differently thus if you wanted a pure, carbon copy of the original and nothing more, you might be disappointed. Personally I'm happy that there are no more time units - it makes movement and actions a lot less ambiguous (how many TUs to move over there? etc).

To echo the other guy: turning this into the "everyone who disagrees that new XCOM is unambiguously better than the original loves time units and just wanted a carbon-copy of the original" is a gross misrepresentation of the position.
I certainly wanted changes from the original (I'm actually not too bothered by the move-fire mechanic, but I'd have actually preferred a move to Frozen Synapse style "simultaneous turns", as they would have increased tension somewhat), but the changes that the new XCOM have brought are simply not the ones I wanted. From playing the demo, I am annoyed by the apparent limitations (supported by reviews) that, for example, your soldiers can nonsensically have only a single grenade (ignoring later perks) *or* a scope; it seems from the reviews that rather than making the Interception minigame beefier, they've made it much less interesting; there's no free-aim (which, actually, wouldn't have led necessarily to a blasted-earth devoid of cover - free-aim was just as useful in the original for making your own entries into a structure, and removing all cover would prevent your team moving up effectively in an advance); and a host of minor presentational niggles.
Now, I do see good things (I like the satellites for coverage, although I am one of the minority who really did run more than one "proper" base in the original game, so I'm a little sad about the single base; I like idea of the pressure of the simultaneous missions where you can only pick one; I like the soldier perks giving you more reasons to differentiate different troopers) and things I don't mind (the team limited to a max of 6), but the things I dislike about this remake are not things I dislike because they're different to the original game - they're things I dislike because I dislike what they were changed *to*.

As it is, I'm probably going to pick up XCOM when it's discounted some time...

[b0rsuk]

If you would have preferred something like Frozen Synapse, you should check out Laser Squad Nemesis. It's a tactical combat game like X-COM by the creator of X-COM. It's low budget and little known due to small marketing, but a very good game. Especially in multiplayer (6 well balanced sides).

There is a lot to like about this game: simultaneous turns, each shot is modelled, terrain destruction, varied and interesting units (one of aliens has a queen which recycles corpses by eating them and laying eggs, marines have bases instead). Things like reaction time are actually measured in seconds (or fractions of them).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDWzEMvBYCU
This video is just a replay so it's not a good representation of typical gameplay, but I don't think there's anything better.

It's mostly for multiplayer, but it does have a short campaign.

[aoanla]

Aye, I really should pick up Laser Squad Nemesis some time - it's been on my list for a bit, but I keep never quite picking it up. Thanks for the additional recommend!

[Cosm]

Got destroyed on my first Base Assault. Is there any rush to do them? I probably should have waited and leveled my guys up a bit more first, but I wasn't sure if there was some sort of time penalty. *sigh*

Even worse, I had to kill them myself. Chryssalids zombified three of them, and I aborted with two left thinking it would save their lives at least, but uh... nope.



Sorry comrade.

[Jockie]

Goddamn it. After my wipe on the Alien Base, I invested in a bunch of the best noobs money can buy. I took them through 3-4 missions with minor casualties and was back up to a decent roster.

Then I had a UFO landing with a Sectopod inside (the first I've met in fact), he whittled most of my guys down and precipitated heavy medkit usage to stay alive. After him the mission basically turns into attrition. Then sadly the appearance of a Berzerker (plus the usual back-up) ended up with chain reaction panic deaths. My beleaguered squad was down to three, limping along on low health, but they're the best I've got left.

A flying Disc appears, before what I assume is the final room (usually manned by little but a couple of weakass outsiders). Its first shot hits my support (Cpt. Steven Fletcher after the Sunderland centre-forward), who in turn panics, turns around and blows away my Assault. My stoic heavy doesn't give a crap, he has the double shot on hit perk and unloads into the repair drone, takes it out, then crits the Disc for half its health. Fletcher's still crying in the back, and watches on as the Disc then proceeds to shred my Heavy. Just Steven 'I'm being re-nicknamed Pissypants after this mission' Fletcher left. In the most anti-climatic battle to the death ever, both he and the disc miss each other for the next two turns. Then it gets bored and grenades him to death and I have another wipe on my hands.

So yeah, I have all the tech in the world, but nothing but rookies to handle it.

I'm starting to think I might just be rubbish at the game, because I haven't found Normal particularly easy going, it was going great until the wipe in the Alien Base.

Also, I think Asia and Africa have the best perks personally, 30% more cash per month or half priced foundry/Officer training upgrades - both of those things are great.

[DarkFenix]

Not sure about the Asia perk, 50% off those things is nice, but the officer training upgrades are pretty cheap anyway and the foundry has so far seemed of limited use to me (some upgrades are great, the rest you'll just ignore). 30% extra cash is fantastic though, it still leaves you short on cash (particularly if you're no good at managing panic on the world map), but not as short.

I think my tip for the alien base would be this. Take your time before the mission. Finish some research, level up your troops some more, gear up to the teeth. Not too much time of course, the enemies in the mission will be harder, but making sure to do the mission properly takes precedence. I lost 3 vets in my first campaign on that mission, limping to the finish line with three half-dead guys. Second time round I geared up properly and lost one vet to sheer bloody bad luck.