f13.net

Seriously. Firaxis.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/01/05/february-cover-revealed-xcom-enemy-unknown.aspx

(http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f27/taolurker/XComTrap.jpg)

I don't know if anyone is left at Firaxis that can pull this off.

If they can pull it off, I will forgive them for every shitty thing about Civ V forever.

This. Hopefully it's not some lame mod like Colonization ended up being.

And this:

Damnit I missed that part. Now I want to punch a puppy.

It's turn-based strategy. I can't get worked up over it being on a console when Japanese companies have been doing TBS games (some squad-based, even!) on consoles A-OK for close to two decades.

So has America. Just not recently.

It means a godfuckingawful UI at the very least.

Eh, console thing doesn't bug me.  Games like Xcom actually work really well with a controller, maybe even better actually.  Still, doesn't mean they wont make a PC version.

Twitter made me aware of soemthing TRULY MADDENING.


They ditched the hyphen. D: This relaunch is BS.

（╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

I'm looking forward to it. I have been playing a lot of X-COM: Terror from the Deep recently. I also like CIV:Revolution and CIV:V.

You're planning on getting it on Steam, aren't you?

:why_so_serious:

That is where I repurchased all the originals  :oh_i_see:

The console thing ruined it.

The hell you say.

I still have my PSX version of X-COM: UFO Defense. It was a superior port compared to the original PC game. The only caveat was you'd better have the PSX mouse, or you were probabaly going to blow yourself up when setting blaster bomb waypoints. A lot.

It even came in a Saturn jewelcase. I mean, how cool is that?

It'll be hard for Firaxis to make a UI worse than their normal standard but I'm sure they are up to the challenge.

At least someone is aknowleding that X-Com was a great turn based tactics game, not a herp-derp IP to slap as a title on a retarted FPS.

:oh_i_see:

That's a big fucking caveat.

Why?

Not this argument again.  :oh_i_see:

Every time.

Because you touch yourself. That's why.

Gee, if we had the console argument, you'd get things ruined for you all the time.

Also stopped reading at "console".

I had no issue with the deus ex or syndicate console games - but this is silly.

Totally off topic, someone should make MULE for consoles - that could actually work.

I would play the hell out of that.

Why?

Deus Ex & Syndicate are good because of interesting level design, not because of stat management, complex controls, or anything that will get ripped out on a console.

Making UFO for consoles is as silly as making Rainbow 6 for consoles.

I actually played X-Com on the PS1. I didn't have a PC in those days (Amiga FTW!) so I picked it up as well as the PS1 mouse. Worked a charm.  :thumbs_up:

Damn this thread just killed 5 hours today while I fired up on my old save game...  :ye_gods:  :heart:

I don't see any reason why X-Com couldn't work on console except that the developers would likely see the need to consolize it.

At its heart the tactical part of X-Com isn't particular different from Tactics Ogre or Fire Emblem or whatever, and some of the people who worked on X-Com made a spiritual successor on the GBA. Now that said I assume the thinking will be that console implies dunce players and the game design will have to be "streamlined." But mechanically I don't see why X-Com wouldn't work.

There is no technical reason you couldn't do a real rainbow 6 game on a console either. As you say this is really about me not trusting developers to design a real X-com game than anything else.

Also me not owning a console and having no real desire to play it on a tv ofc.

So your argument is basically "hurr, consoles" then?
Allow me to retort:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactics_Ogre:_Let_Us_Cling_Together
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Tactics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgaea

Yeah, pretty much that.  More I think about it, Xcom probably would have been better to play using a console controller rather than mouse.  It was really easy to miss click shit in that damn game.

Unlike Rainbow 6, which is an FPS, and you'll never ever make a FPS that doesn't work better with a mouse as the controller.

That was why the Crysalids kept getting me.  I was always licking them.

I dunno, I was waiting for http://www.xenonauts.com/xenonauts-overview/ myself, but I guess I can keep an eye out for this as well.

Short interview and a screenshot.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/01/09/first-screens-and-details-of-xcom-enemy-unknown.aspx

Two comments:

1. I prefer when grid-based tactical games make the grid obvious rather than trying to obscure it.

2. Dem textures!

That is pretty fugly but I assume art isn't all done. And yeah, if there isn't a way to explicitly draw all hexes they need to add that stat.

Looks like the UFO series.....

Same, but no mouse.

I *hope* all art isn't done, or else the aliens have turned into 80lb geeks w/ horn-rimmed glasses.

This is exactly how x-com should look.

As long as every single piece of terrain is destroy-able, I'll be happy.

I'm 99% sure it will not be.

What I found in X-COM was the controller was great for everything but rooting through inventory and setting blaster bomb waypoints. There the mouse was a lot easier to work with.

Other than that, the PSX version was outstanding. Also, it still plays on the PS2...

Now I"m getting in the mood for a new campaign. Just don't know where the time will come from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_Black

Why would the MIB (who are tagged as enemies on that screen) be trying to kill the other government-sponsored force trying to kill and control aliens?

Or are you suggesting the chrysalids got 'em.

Perhaps they are going with the MIBs being a human front for the aliens.

You know?  I'm looking forward to this.

I like the art style and I am ok with Firaxis doing their streamlining the fun thing.

Me too. Just read the game informer preview and it sounds just fine. Turn based game can actually work well on a console unlike many other games which have to be dumbed down for it (hello DA2). This looks to be a faithful version of the original classic.  single player TBS games are hard to come by these days.  Cant wait.

See, DA2 did not have to be dumbed-down.  But it was.

My wife prefers DA2 to DA:O, which is an illustration of what you are up against.  It's not really the move to console that causes the lowest-common-denominator effect, but rather the dollar-signs in the eyes of publishing executives.  "What do you mean, some people didn't like the combat in Mass Effect?  Well, make it more likable for them!"

They look like Silent Storm graphics, which is fine, really. Just the fact that there's an actual XCOM / JA game coming out that is not some real-time abomination is awesome enough for me!

I have no issue with people making games that are dumbed down, but it grates when you spoil a perfectly good ip by doing it. Rainbow 6 is the obvious example here, neo-R6 might be a perfectly good game, but why piss off R6 fans by calling it R6? Same for DAO vs DA2.

I'd hope they don't plan the same for UFO, but despite firaxis being involved I guess I'm just not very confident.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/37030/


Something I may pick up in the meantime.

That's not a very assuring Metacritic score.

Since when metacritic matters jack-shit? Just watch some gameplay vids on youtube.

Metacritic is at least a decent early indicator of whether or not something may be worth really digging into. I'm not saying it's the first and last thing you should look at, but it's a passable canary in a mineshaft.

ITs doing a dam fine job of being X-com like. Slightly indi, good fun, almost a clone with some things simplified.

The review scores don't arise out of a vacuum though. Titles by Serious Business Publishers are always scored higher than equivalent titles without that backing. So you can't compare this to, say, an EA title getting a 68 score (which would indeed be a huge warning sign that the game is worse than a turd in a box).

I really don't understand the console rage.  I'm a PC gamer first and foremost, but even I came to grips with the fact that devs are always going to target the consoles as their primary platform.  That's just how it is.  Suck it up and just hope for a decent port.

trololol

Does a very good job of looking like the original x-com.  But when I own that why would I buy this instead?  What makes it stand-out?

Also: If the original X-com were released today I think it'd be lucky to get a 68 metacritic.  It's not an FPS, action RPG or RTS.  The greater gaming community seems to have little patience for TBS or other "thinkers" anymore.

Go and read the actual reviews. One guy gives it a 3 because "omg grafix suck" and another guy - who on a pubbed review spells "consern" - scores it low for being "too hard."  None indicate that the game is unfaithful or broken.

I stopped paying attention to metacritic after Empire Total War opened in the mid 90s when it was released completely broken AI-wise (AI couldn't even load armies onto transports). Rich publishers rig all the highscores while for smaller houses like Paradox not even great games like M&B Warband can get above 80.

So I actually put some time into UFO: Extraterrestrials. A few things stand out:

- The game comes pre-packaged with an "Ease of Use" mod that some forumer called Bman created. That alone is an enormous red flag, but hey.
- There is practically no documentation. There's a .pdf manual and a UFOPedia, sure, but they don't actually explain much aside from telling you what the bits of the UI are. No soldier stats are explained, and there are next to no tooltips.
- There are no hotkeys. Aside from hitting A to toggle between crouching and standing and I to open your inventory, everything seems to be mouse-driven (I say "seems to be" because there is no mention anywhere of hotkeys in any documentation, or what they are if they do exist). You can't hit 1-8 to select your soldiers or hit a key to cycle firing modes like in Fallout or Jagged Alliance. To attack an enemy, you have to drag your mouse down to a weapon, click the weapon, drag your mouse back up, finagle it a bit until you can get the enemy targeted (there is no visual indication of whether or not an enemy's on another vertical level), and then you have to select your firing mode (aim, snap, burst). You must do this every single time.
- Even with everything mouse-controlled, the mouse control itself is kind of iffy. There seems to only be about a 70% chance of actually selecting a soldier when you click on him or her, and the rest of the time the game will instead register it as a movement command and merrily send your soldier off to waste all of his AP to move. The grid snap-to is also very iffy, some times registering a square to the north as a square to the east instead.
- Aside from movement, crouching, weapon projectiles, and death, there are no animations in battle. None. It is extremely unsettling and surreal; I can deal with shitty graphics but good god give me at least some basic animations.
- Enemies are inconsistently challenging. The basic humanoid grunt enemies are very powerful, but relatively inaccurate. They'll likely knock unconscious or kill a soldier in one hit, but they take a while to land a shot. However, the smaller floating Larvae that ignore terrain restrictions, have a sight distance twice that of your soldiers, and fire 2-3 gas grenades per turn with alarming accuracy. The grenades will do about 50 damage when they hit, leave a cross-shaped cloud of gas that lingers for about ten turns, and the gas will do an additional 45-50 damage whenever a soldier ends or begins his turn in it. Your average starting soldier has about 58 HP. As far as I can tell, the only things you can really do when faced with a mission with more than a couple of Larvae are to pray your Reaction kicks in and you land some shots at something you cannot see in the very restrictive fog of war, or to reload a save until the mission has fewer of them in it.

In all, I can see where there's a decent game in all of this under the suck, but from everything I can tell, that "decent game" is pretty much just regular old X-Com (which, I must admit, I have not actually played a whole lot). And if that's the case, I can't imagine why I wouldn't just go back and try to get into X-Com instead.

I played that a while back and I remember being unimpressed. The AI was unremarkable indeed.

I could be misremembering but a lot of that reminds me of the criticisms I had of the original X-com, too.  I certainly recall those goddamn Floaters being able to fling grenades with pinpoint accuracy.  Ditto the whole "sometimes I select things.. sometimes I walk a soldier across the goddamn screen" and "what fucking level is he shooting at me from?"

But it *has* been a while.

Gameinformer Preview with copious screenshots (http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/01/26/advanced-tactics-exploring-xcom-39-s-combat-part-1.aspx).

Holy shit, I got a gaming boner.

Um, that doesn't look bad.

Is this a wind up ?

 :ye_gods:

Based on Firaxis's web site, it looks like GameInformer is getting a shitton of exclusive content on the game. Link to their X-Com page (http://www.gameinformer.com/p/xcom.aspx)

More like a deadly unit of Protoss lurk inside, but
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/dont_give_a_fuck.png)

That looks pretty goddamned awesome. Been playing the original a bit recently (especially when my internet connection was down last week)...if they can not fuck up the good bits and add some more new good bits in, it could be a helluva game.

Reading through the GameInformer stuff is giving me wood.

*Please Don't Fuck It Up*

I'm wondering what console(s) this will be on....

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YRHDomoLb-A/TLod5-GaCbI/AAAAAAAAAkE/FH5cpb9_XZ8/s1600/_nooooooooooo.jpg)

That preview really got me interested. I find the mention of a perk system the most intriguing part. The preview refers to a "sniper" who takes advantage of a perk called "Dammed Good Ground." That makes me wonder if you hire your soldiers from various different class pools - maybe some perks are class dependent? I wonder about the acquisition of new perks. Do you think they come from equipment? or as a soldiers becomes more skilled/accomplishes achievements, he has a random chance to pick up another perk? Really want to know if they plan on releasing this for the current gen of consoles, or see it as a next gen console title (only because I want to try and guesstimate when this sonofabitch might come out.)

It's coming out Fall 2012. I'm going to assume it'll be on the current crop of consoles which won't make a bit of difference because I'll be buying it on the PC.

Looks great. Is it multiplayer?

From what I was able to gather, nope, no multiplayer to speak of.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/farnsworth_argue_dome.gif)

I'm thinking Silent Storm.

PC Release to have Secure*Com IV, an always-on Origin connection, GFWL and Facebook link!

 :drill:

Enjoy your DRM, you will, young Skywalker. :why_so_serious:

"Perk" makes me think of Fallout Tactics. Which I will probably now end up replaying again.

I looooooooved that game.

The Gameboy sequels were good just never quite as good as the original.

While those screenshots are good, anyone who has played XCOM will instantly recognise, that moving your soldiers through a petrol station is usually fairly suicidal.

Very true!

Anyone else tried playing the original on Steam recently?  It was really choppy for me in whatever version of DoSBox they're using and the normal CTRL-12/ CTRL-9 for frameskip and CPU cycles didn't affect anything.  Any tips?

Yeah, that was my thought exactly when I saw the pic of the guy standing between the gas pumps. I was like "That motherfucker is going to go sky high next turn."

Wow, that looks really sweet and turn based?  My stars!  *clutches the pearls*

I will be keeping an eye out for any video on this.

Try dropping the latest version of dosbox into your x-com folder to replace the old one.

Oh my. That's about 1000x more interesting looking than the FPS.

I edited DOS box .conf stuff. Ill post it later ( When im home ).

Here is a leg up though: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf


What?

I'm containing my usual irritation and sticking multiplayer into everything.  Like how 3D was stuck into everything back in 2000.

Ah, ok. Carry on.

Link this game to your facebook profile! Post on your wall about your in-game achivements!

How about I link your ass to my foot's profile?

Your avatar has never been more appropriate.

How come this looks awesome?

I know, right ?

But let's remember that X Com isn't about looks.  Dear God, I want it to have Gameplay and terror out the wazzoo.

And then I want to launch a blaster bomb into the aforementioned wazzoo.

And watch little wazzoo bits rain down.

Fully destructible wazoos.

 Follow-up to the Gameinformer preview - again with screenshots (http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/01/28/advanced-tactics-exploring-xcom-39-s-combat-part-2.aspx)

Seems they implemented suppression fire as feature...very nice.  :grin:

to be fair, do you remember Laser Squad?

I do not, and this is XCOM. :why_so_serious:

Or UFO: Alien Invasion.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/cat_wag_tongue.gif)

lol.

SPROING again.

Yes, it looks good. I even like the UI in that.

HOPEFULLY! There will be less "Round One: Open ship door. Entire team just died to a grenade" moments.

I am eager for a whole new generation of people to learn the harsh lesson "Thall Shalt Not Fire a Blaster Bomb Whilst In The Skyranger." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyYlmXhJXvo&t=25s).

Why.  Why would you do that ?

Sure, trees get in the way and sometimes walls and buildings, but in the plane ?   

Mad.

Yeah because the aliens never used mind control and made one of your characters do that killing half your team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF1Ug2UDhnM

I finished XCOM (or XCOM 2, perhaps) by mind controlling one of alien guards and shooting the Queen. Ahh, good times.

The best part is when the rocket goes off, and the mouse stops moving for 30-60 seconds.  You can just imagine him just screaming "FUCK" over and over again  :awesome_for_real:

You find out the Psionic defense with training and anything below 90 gets labelled 'Fodder'.

My Commander was 90/90 + and went into alien bases with nothing but a pistol and a psiamp.

Good times.

Heh.  Reminds me of a game I watched my roomate play.  He had a guy with absolute *shit* scores that he hadn't gotten around to sacking yet for reasons I don't quite remember.   Bravery below 20, crappy strength, accuracy was something ridiculous like 30 and no throwing skill.  Shit ton of movement and endurance, though. 

Base invasion: Sectoids. There's only 4 or 5 guys in the base, including Mr. Chickenshit.  Sectoids manage to MC a few of his guys who off each other, leaving only Mr. Chickenshit with a laser pistol and a psi-amp and someone who panics, despite having a bravery of 50.  Mr. CS proceeds to clear the damn base himself, resisting all MC attempts and panic attempts while also managing to MC several Sectoids.   We're both in awe and he runs the guy through psi training to discover - hey - he had a natural psi ability of 80.  :drill:

Things like that are what I miss in current games and why I wait eagerly for this reimagining.

I wouldn't know, none of my guys ever died in my games :oh_i_see: :awesome_for_real:

XCOM: Enemy Unknown first look - in-game footage and interview (http://youtu.be/3uHHmTSDCvA?hd=1)

I am now officially excited.  :awesome_for_real:

So instead of an AP system, it basically uses a D&D/Tactics Ogre/Final Fantasy Tactics-style system where you can choose to forego an action command to do a double move instead.

I'm cool with that.

Saw that this morning. Gamer boner the size of Oklahoma.

I really like the refinements. They seemed to have knocked off not only the obvious rough edges from the original, but found some more to boot.

All I see watching that is X-com. This is a good thing.

Wow that looks amazing.   Instant buy.

Still not out 'till next year, right?  The Mayans will have killed those of us who remain after the rapture with black holes and Higgs-Bosun particles through our cell phones before that.

Holy Fuck.

That looks really, really, really good.  The Base stuff in particular was really nicely done.

Everything in the video seems really...superficial.

In what sense ?

Your face is superficial!




 :heart:

Well, he is correct. But superficial in a sexy cam alien headshot is awesome kind of way.

I'd rather have the time unit resource management, but lol console gamers are retards.

Still looks awesome, just doubtful it'll be very deep.

I'm hoping that can be switched off.

Says Fall 2012 at the end of the video, so hopefully we'll get a few months of fun before sweet, sweet rapture.

I can only pray they don't cannibalize the game and remove shit to make it DLC. Get an edge on the greys and save the world in style! $10 for extra Action Points for all squad members! $15 at release for 3 new mission types and the formidable Alien Plasma Rifle!

Same.  Or at least a slider that lets us chose are level of vanity.

The Bunker stuff looked great.  I wonder how much 'choice' we'll have in a campaign setting, more limited options and increasing difficulty to add to replayability.

I don't really think switching from an AP system to more of an SRPG-style system means it'll be a shallow gameplay experience. Carefully inching forward so you don't end a movement with 22 TUs when you need 23 to make a reaction snap shot (or with JA2: "Hrm, it takes 4 AP to run to this wall, but it takes another 4 to jump up and two more to crouch again, but what if the game turns me a certain way I don't want to be facing when I get to the top? Then I have to spend another AP to turn, so how will THAT affect me...") can add just as much tedium as tension, in my opinion.

I don't see anything wrong with ensuring that you can still take an action after moving.

Am I the only one that has never played the original X-Com?  :oops:

Looking forward to this game, looks interesting.

Never to late Thrawn! You can pick it up on steam for 5 bucks, it runs on my win 7 machine. The Fiancee got sucked into it for an entire sunday about a month back. She certainly seemed to enjoy it, having no prior exposure to it (but alot of love for SRPG games in general.) The graphics are obviously what they are, but the sound design holds up remarkably well.

*edit* If you do end up looking to pick up, Id caution against getting the pack. The first is by far the best, Terror from the Deep is like what FFH is to CIV4 - a total reskin and added content, but essentially the same game. Everything after that is not good at all, in my opinion.

I already have the pack from like two holiday sales ago, just never played it.  :-P

Instead of being negative about it, you can be positive: "So the game already was great and didn't need much fixing, so here's what we're doing instead."

See, that was pretty easy.

Giant Bomb also has a nice writeup (http://www.giantbomb.com/news/xcom-enemy-unknown-on-making-old-things-new-again-action-figures-and-perma-death/4020/). Some interesting bits:

Indeed. At least ten inches and day one buy.

Hey this is great. while i dont dig the base building aspect much, this is shaping up to be a great game.

Base building was one of my favorite parts of the original.  Well.. until I figured out the optimal defensive layout.  After that it was just waiting for the general stores and hangar to complete.

Was I the only one who looked at the layout of the base in the vid and thought "dude, there's way too many access points from the hangars. They're going to get invaded and people are going to get wasted."

I have the nagging fear that there are only ever going to be four squad members on the ground, and that such a small number will either make getting them killed an impossibly remote chance or an instant mission failure every time.  Being able to put sixteen people on the ground meant each one was expendable enough that they could die without crippling your force and causing blinding rage, having only four just can't preserve that arrangement.

Also I would be sad if there were no more suicide rookies to check doors while carrying primed grenades and such.

That would be sad.  Skippy the unlucky intern was a staple of everyone's squads!

The number is supposedly limited to six. 4 is starting amount, or something like that.

copypasta from relevant source (http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/games/892298-xcom-enemy-unknown-preview-and-interview-ufo-conspiracy)

12 to 14 is "obscene amounts"? :ye_gods:

Oh be fair, it was.  You know as well as I do that on some of the nighttime missions you sent Ensign Fuckstick out on purpose to get shot and flush out the enemy.

And let's not even get into how bad a Chrysalid was inside a full Avenger.

The Avenger holds 26 people so yeah  :awesome_for_real:

I just feel sending 6 operatives to tackle an alien invasion is a little bit underwhelming to be honest.
Starting at 4? Wow man, this isn't Space Cops. We're dealing with a global threat and SIX is the maximum we can spare per mission?

Well yes, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. :grin:

But honestly, what rk47 says makes sense, we're dealing with a global threat here. On the other hand, since the aliens have the technology to come all the way over here, chances are they'd have a weapon that was able to kill off either the entire human population, or just blow up the entire planet, so I guess some sacrifices of realism must be made. :grin:

The main reason the Avenger was so big was to allow you to carry tanks.

I'm completely wrong man, they should cut it down to three. One can tank, one can dps, and one can heal. Allow inter-crew romance and choose wife at the end of the game. Also, perma-loss to chrysalid egg should be the ultimate emotional engagement.

"Shepard- I can't..."

"Ash, NO!"

*Ashley bursts into a Chrysalid*

"She's gone, Shepard."

Commander Shepard has gone berserk!

I pretty much never sent more than 8 and a tank anyway.  Trying to maneuver 12 or 14 or more around the map was:
1) Usually overkill resulting in 4 to 6 of them just hanging out in the back of the ship
2) Tedious as shit
3) Actually made missions take longer than they needed too

As far as size of the crew on a mission I'll wait to play the game before getting my panties all twisted up about it.

I have a feeling they're going to streamline all the variety out of the game and with it all the depth and emergent gameplay that was the hallmark of X-Com.

Its tough to pay more than that in this economy.

I dunno, I always sent 12 and a tank and liked that I had automatic reinforcements for when I'd lose someone.  (Or Ensign Ricky.)

I don't see it as removing a lot of flavor so much as making it that much more mandatory I pay attention and not be stupid.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with this.  If they were playtesting and found that because of all the extra things characters can do, the game became unplayable, addressing that is important.  I'm a bit more partial to smaller but more powerful squads for my tactical strategy games anyways.  I loved Xcom, but it did get fairly tedious in the later half of the game with all the shit you were trying to move around and keep track of.  I'd say 8 might have been the magic number, but 6 seems fine as well.

I haven't followed all the info released on this game.  Have they confirmed or denied if there will be tanks and/or other vehicals in game?

Game's definitely a day 1 buy for me. I don't have a problem with smaller group sizes, either. JA2 and the Silent Storm games all had a group size of 6, and that worked fine even on large maps. I think I did a two-pronged assault with two teams once in JA2, but it just became too much of a hassle with only half of my people actually doing interesting / worthwhile stuff and the others just finishing off wounded enemies or standing around for reaction fire. Fewer players also means more tension when the enemy has overwhelming numbers.

I didn't use Ensign Redshirts in my X-COM games, I was obsessed with not having anyone die. Well, before chrysalids and ethereals started appearing... at that point natural selection was inevitable.  :awesome_for_real:

You're dealing with a global alien threat as the leader of a multinational black ops organization funded clandestinely by nations all over the world. It makes sense in that way that you're not rolling into every battle with dozens of troops.

Though I guess the new game subverts that in a way, since everyone at least looks like they're pretty heavily armed and armored.

Yeah, my X-Com games typically had squads of maybe 8 tops as result of playing Laser Squad, JA and such, so this is not a problem for me. Having more units tended to draw out individual rounds too much for my liking.

Another reality check :

You know when you got to later levels, you just sent your Commander in alone with a psi-amp and a pistol.

Suck it up Pussies.

Steam has all the previous X-Com games on sale for $2.49 each today, if anyone is interested in any of them.

Fark... more money to a Dead company...

I understand the reasoning to drop it to 6 but looking back at the last 7 or so posts the variety of play styles people had in XCom was part of it's charm.

With a cap of 6 it might be less like XCom more like JA2 or other games people mentioned.

Not that I wouldn't buy it anyway...

A lot to like, but still have major reservations. The squad size thing is irksome, especially if they leave out mobile weapons platforms. Those were my favorite! And, shockingly, I have a problem with the console-ized UI. I would literally pay an extra $10 for a UI created for kb+m. Fuck deep drilling into multiple menus and back out again because the fucking 360 controller can't right click. The only way I would play this on a console was if there was a robust multiplayer setup of some kind (XBL parties are just too easy and convenient!).

As someone who spend a lot of time recently with the originals ( Terror from the deep being the best ) I do not mind smaller squads.

Same here.

I'm really curious if this has any of the original games' charm. The first one was lightning in a bottle, and TFTD was just more lightning (or maybe underwater lightning).

All the reviews I saw at the time said TFTD was just an exact copy of the original placed underwater so I never bought and played it.  What changed to make it superior?

When considering awesome, "more of the same" is awesome.

Nothing.  That was fair criticism.

Trouble is, being underwater had charm, which was implemented well and, well, it was more of the same.

So I like it.

Also, drilling fucking lobstermen.  DRILLING THEM.

Unless you have a limited budget because you're a broke-ass college student for whom that $50 is a good deal of supplies for your major.

Seems I made the correct decision at the time.

I finally bothered to read a preview and discovered this game has only scripted missions. Pessimism is truly the only way to survive in the world of modern gaming.

Define Scripted for me in this context ?

Guessing that refers to combat maps being hand-made rather than randomly put together by the game. On the other hand the devs claim there's enough of those made they won't repeat (often)

It's from a Finnish print mag so something may be lost in translation, but they say that "every mission is pre-scripted, and the AI works according to a tight script", and "however, the order of the missions is randomized for every playthrough".

I'm not hugely worried there.  The missions in the original didn't have much in the way of bulk and your mind just filled in the blanks.

Apart from the Terror Sites, the AI would usually just wander around randomly.   Even there, they would wander around randomly, making more Chrysalids, the cheeky wee fuckers.

As long as they don't do anything like the chaps in TftD who would find the smallest cupboard on board the luxury liner and HIDE THERE FOR 28 FUCKING TURNS.

They were practicing for Doom 3.

Heh.

Yeah, that was fucking lame too.  Waiting in a wall until you're back is turned and the fuckers have a lightswitch for the corridor in there.

If I was a lone alien being hunted by X-Com troops I'd hide in a cupboard too. The old games had an internal consistency that was admirable.

Don't get me wrong;  it was a sound tactic.  Many was the Ensign who died under the claws of a lobsterman wearing someone elses nightie.

Release date (Oct 9, 2012), order bonus (Guile Hair German soldier guy) and some special edition info announced.

http://www.2kgames.com/blog/xcom-enemy-unknown-release-date-special-edition-and-more (http://www.2kgames.com/blog/xcom-enemy-unknown-release-date-special-edition-and-more)

As long as it's on Steam I'll be happy.

Yep. This thing looks like a great evolution on a number of fronts. I just hope it has the "one more turn" feeling of the originals.

Guile Hair Soldier Guy was the best!

Still looking forward to this. It looks like it'll play more like Silent Storm than X-com (in the tactical view anyway), but that's fine with me.

Aye, Silent Storm was aces until the destructible terrain meant you'd trapped your team down a hole and had to reload the entire mission.

True Story.

Silent Storm was awesome until the stupid mechs showed up. <3 I miss that game.

Exactly. God, it was great. Then it's mechs and I just stopped playing. I couldn't finish it. Ruined what had been an awesome Dirty Dozen style WWII action game.

I still don't understand what was so bad about the Panzerkleins. I just took a sniper or scout with a high-powered rifle (instead of the suppressed ones everyone else favors), shot the pilot, and then stole the mech.

 :headscratch:

It wasn't that. Thematically, it was just goofy.

Ah yeah, I can imagine that being a bit of a stretch thematically.

I ought to reinstall it some time.

If you hated the mechs, the laser rifle gifted to you from the aliens will really fuck with your mind.

E3 trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNyhyzjYCks

I'm getting the impression they're a bit heavy on the cinematics, for a strategy game...

Gameplay cinematics can be turned off according to some RPS article or other.

I'm looking forward to this.  I don't think it is going to jump to the top of my favorite games or anything, but it looks pretty good and there isn't anything else similar I'll be playing to compete with it.

Yeah, I'll take some of that.

Yeah, that looked great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISGvkdzBn3Q

A few minutes of game play.  Looks good to me.

That Jetpack equipped sniper makes me happy in the pants.  :drill:

I will admit to being a little confused as to the turn based/real time aspect of it.  The trailers make it look like a mix.

From what I understand, everything is still turn-based. However, the closeups are when your guy is moving/an alien is moving and *something cool* is supposed to be happening. I think.

There was an interview where one of the devs clarified that you had something similar to time units, and that sometimes you'd react to alien movement if you had reserved units for that purpose, etc.

That's what I remember, too, Slack.  From one of the earliest gameplay  vids.   It's still TBS but there's roles for squaddies now rather than leaving them wide-open, also so they can get different cool skills.

Yep, aside from squaddie (wants to autocorrect to squad die   :why_so_serious: ) customization, it sounds like turn based xcom, but shiney.

I think they do some sort of animation, idle, thing even when its not the units turn. I think.

If someone is laying down suppressing fire or the like the animation seems to play constantly, no matter whose turn it is.  Probably other similar idle animations going on.

But how will I keep track of my ammo ???!

 :why_so_serious:

On this thread, since it happened this weekend:

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/silent_storm_gold

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRZsye4n684

An hour or so of guided demo by the 2k staff.

e: Sorry that was the wrong link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azurpE8B5VQ

The video I get is 7 minutes?

http://en.twitch.tv/2k/b/330155062

I'm really liking the looks of that.

I REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLY like the look of that.

Those maps are tiny. Like, smaller than UFO:EU small.

Agreed to all three of the previous comments.

Never played the original to compare it to though.  Have it on Steam, but never played it.

This needs to be out now.

+1

Just don't get too excited.  It will doom the game to look good but turn out terrible if people start to really look forward to it and talk it up.

NO! I don't have enough time to play the games I have now...take another 6 months at least.

I am not sure that a lower amount of deadspace is a bad thing. The video made me angry though. Because i went to steam and found out that I could not pre-order yet.

One of the biggest complaints, post-UFO, was that the maps were too small to make any effective use of terrain-oriented tactics. The game rapidly becomes frontal spam all the time, every time. You can even see the potential in the first map they showcase; a team of four snipers + tank would have wiped all the aliens without even leaving spawn.

Aye, small scripted maps are going to have to be scripted really well if they want to avoid that problem.

They made a comment during the first mission that the map isn't scripted.  The Aliens have multiple spawn points and then perform patrols.

Although I agree that the two maps shown were small, I'm not going to get worked up about it as I have no idea if that's the standard size or just these were chosen because you can do them in 30 minutes with commentary.

Personally, I thought the game play looked really, really good, like exactly the cross between XCOM and Silent Storm I was hoping for.  I thought the customization & RPG elements for the troopers looked about right for nameless squaddies and emotionally invested veterans.  I am really looking forward to this, I am not sure what the hold up with opening Steam for pre-orders is, I assume pressure from other retailers?  Regardless, the day it goes up on steam I'll click the button and buy it.

Yeah, I'm such a turn based strategy/rpg fan I'll get it too. Just not going to proclaim an erection like so many others here.

One should not let the past besmirch the present, rather take the offerings of the present in good graces.

Has there been any word on whether there will be modding of the PC version?

If not, I'll get it for the 360, solely so that I can play from my sofa without upgrading to a PC that would actually make full use of my TV.

I'm really torn as to get this for PS3 or PC.

No multiplayer that I know of means maybe I should sit on my couch to play. But I am very much a PC gamer...humm hummm....



What platforms are you guys getting this on?

If it's via steam, PC. If no steam, I'd rather have a physical copy and I'll buy it for the PS3 down the line when it goes discount.

:why_so_serious:

This is why I mentioned not wanting to upgrade my PC for that purpose.  :awesome_for_real:

There will be multiplayer, but I'm not sure in what form that multiplayer will take. I'm probably getting this on the PC.

Well I guess, my thought is I'm not seeing any reason not to lay back on my couch with my big screen and play this. It seems well suited for consoles, and there does not seem to be many reasons to get the PC version over it.

Edit: isn't the multiplayer just a sandbox PvP type match system?

If the game has any modding potential at all, PC is the right answer.

I'll be getting it on the PC for a number of reasons. The first of those reasons is that I don't own a console  :awesome_for_real:

Getting pretty excited about this, soon to be getting a new PC too :grin:

Got to play the first two missions  this morning. Map size didn't seem to be an issue.

I'll be getting it on pc mainly because moving a cursor to a precise location felt awkward with the stick.

How did you manage that ?

Probably PAX.

PC for sure here.  Strategy games are too UI intensive for the gamepad.

Wow this looks really promising. 

Pax had a hands on which included the tutorial/introduction/start sequence for the game.

Map size was fine and the game played and felt right with the exception of course of the difficulty in using a stick compared to a mouse

more game footage from PAX stream (http://www.twitch.tv/2k/b/330605570)

* a couple of quick multiplayer games at 0:53 and 1:56
* demonstration of PC user interface at 3:48

I want to play it. Also never let that Greg guy demo it again, he's rubbish!

OMG that game is going to consume my soul. I just looked at the multiplayer.  :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods:

I was not so sure about this until I saw the gameplay vids but it is looking like it has shaped up really well and I am really looking forward to getting my sweaty paws on the game when it does release.

I don't know if this is a 2k employee or a guy off gamespot but he has a collection of all the official realeased Xcom vids and some of the dev chats for those looking for more on the game all in one stop.

 http://www.youtube.com/playlist?annotation_id=annotation_723981&feature=iv&list=PLA478234F90271B44&src_vid=gWU9wxlIxig (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?annotation_id=annotation_723981&feature=iv&list=PLA478234F90271B44&src_vid=gWU9wxlIxig)

Yeah that looked fantastic... oh so much time will be lost.

Please come on steam so I can pre-order it. I am desperate, I bought JA 2 to try and sooth the feeling, but no luck.

I've been hopeful about this title since it was announced.  I'm glad to see it looks like it is actually shaping up.

From Q&A session at PAX (http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?131541-PAX-Prime-XCOM-EU-Stream-Q-amp-A) it sounds the digital retailers are going to be announced this week (the session was held last Sunday) This includes Steam:

Since I can't really watch the vidoes here -- what's the multiplayer like? Head to head? Xcom v Aliens? Co-op v aliens?

Head to head; you put together your squad from both aliens and marines as you see fit. Each unit (for marines at least, dunno about aliens) can be customized in terms of armour, weapons and perks -- depending on the build they cost certain amount of points which is deducted from total poll. So you can do stuff like having couple of v.strong units, or larger number of weaker units, or any combination in-between.

So far most of the multiplayer tends towards one or two powerful units and some lackeys.

My only concern is that the late game and multiplayer might end up with a bunch of superpower units and luck rolls, rather than more regular tactical play. Time will tell.

I'd love a co-op version, two seperate squads v. aliens (or vice versa). On the other hand, I loved Xcom and if it's even, oh, 75% as fun as the original I'll pick it up.

Isn't that how you ended up your X-Com games?

I know everyone on my squads were flying around in flying powered armor and I had at least two blaster-bombs with which i would carpet bomb the majority of the enemy area.

That's how my games ended. The two blaster-bombers back at the landing craft could fly a bomb across the map, through a hole in  battleship, and through the fog of war, up an elevator shaft, and into the control room if I wanted.

I basically had fast scouts find enemies, and those guys rain death from above.

Also, there's always that one guy with the insane psy stats who could mind-control anything.

Yeah, I just wish games didn't end like that - it's the bit I enjoy least.

Plus it'd be worse for multiplayer than single player in such a sense.

There's more stuff from PAX for the desperate keen.

Day 2 (I think): http://en.twitch.tv/2k/b/330728983 (0:45 MP, 2:47 SP)

Day 3: http://en.twitch.tv/2k/b/330851810 (0:16 MP, 1:55 SP, 3:17 MP)

So, I'm thinking, f13 XCOM multi-player league, ala Blood Bowl?

Who is with me?

Absolutely.

Though you can't play cross platform, so it'd have to be PC.

I'd be in for some F13 multiplayer - a lot more polished but the mutiplayer reminds me of Incubation from back in the late 90's and that was a hell of a lot of fun.

Digital pre-orders are up!

Steam has some pre-order bonuses.


Also for AUSSIE BUYERS!!!!


Via the XCOM forums, that post. It worked for me. $37.50 instead of $70!

So ordered.. now the internal debate on doing ironman first game or not.  I'm not crazy enough to try insanity.

Eesh, $50. I was sort of expecting it to be around $30 instead. Guess this one'll have to wait a bit.

I'm tossing up normalish difficulty and Ironman, or classic with self-limited saving. I'll probably not go ironman first off, as it would suck to fail about 20 hours in and have to restart on the first go.

Good point.

FFS, X-Com *and* new Football Manager at the same time. :ye_gods:

Preordered. You fucks better start preordering from steam as I could use a copy of Civ V.

Do TFTD. Its simply better.

EDIT:

BASTARDS!

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1725660/dirtyhacks.png)

It's climbing pretty fast, if linear the bar will easily reach the end.

Yeah, I'm in that same boat. It does look like X-Com will be a few weeks before FM2013 since they haven't even given a firm date on FM yet.

Have they done something like this pre-purchase meter before?  I got a vaguely kickstartery feeling when I saw it.

Not seen it before. But can see the logic. Makes people post telling others to preorder.

Meter is already half way between level 1 & 2 so seems likely you will end up with all the prizes.

Okay, sold. Dithering on whether chance of getting Civ V thrown into the mix is worth pre-ordering from Steam or saving £7.50 and ordering from GMG.

Bought!  :heart:



(http://i.imgur.com/4tSq4.png)
If the 3rd reward unlocks I will donate my copy of Civ to the first F13eer that asks nicely! :grin:

So please please please
Let me, let me, let me
Let me get what you're offering
This time.

I will probably have an extra copy of Civ 5 too, will let you know closer to the date[waiting to pre-order]

It's slowed to a crawl over the last few days and is only 77% of the way to the 2nd goal.  Not many kids want turn-based strat, it would seem.

No biggie to me, I own Civ V already and only wanted the elite soldier pack but thought I'd give an update.

I suspect it'll get past the tf2 milestone within a week, then slow some more but pick up again in the final week.

RPS Preview seems enthusiastic (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/13/hands-on-forty-hours-with-xcom/)...


Also, elsewhere: Part 1 of a guy failing the first mission (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KPGHW1A2hI).

 :awesome_for_real:  :heart:

Longest month ever.

As excited as I am for this game I am almost as excited for the Let's Plays it's going to generate.

I am still torn between Xbox and PC for this.

I'll probably end up on the Xbox simply because I know it will run the game.

Kind of glad I'm so busy right now that I wouldn't be able to play it anyways since it makes the decision to not pre-order much easier.

But if you preorder you get the soldier customization DLC for free.

/dangle bait

Nope, if I wait until I finish school I can just pick it all up in a Steam sale for half the pre-order price probably.

As much as I'm dying to play this one, it will have to wait for a steam sale. Kickstarter kicked the shit out of my wallet.

Wish I had budgeted for this one, though.

Yeah, I enjoyed watching a Let's Play of X-Com Superhuman Antartica Challenge.

Mildy amusing

I think I will generate enough entertainment for myself, by watching myself trying to play it on Ironman Classic, on the first playthrough.

Yeah, I'm more excited about playing it myself. Watching others play... all these videos are making me tear my hair out. "I ran my rookie out in the middle of the aliens without any support, and he got an unlucky hit and died. Oh well! That's XCOM!"

I have become very excited about this game. I really want to play it now.

Lots of previews going around today. This one provides a pretty decent overview:

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/4mw519/xcom--enemy-unknown-first-contact-preview

Wow, this has now turned from a "hmm, wait and see" into a "damn, I can't really afford this right now but I'm going to buy it as soon as I can anyway" for me.

At least it's a reasonable £30 on Steam :)

That video made me want to play it so bad that it resonated backwards in time and got my younger self to wonder why he suddenly wanted to play Xcom.

I'm torn between Xbox and PC. I want it on PC, but if I get it on Xbox I can not only play head to head against my actual "drink beers with in real life" friends (none of whom will get it on anything else) but I can drag my Xbox along and harass my brother into playing it.

Without letting him into my house, because that always ends up with me watching his kid.

IGN has a preview up too, quite short. Guy opens with "sorry if I seem funny, been up to 3am the last few nights playing this thing".

This could be my favourite game since the 90s, or a huge, huge letdown.

So the steam rewards are motoring up towards Civ 5, and we almost certainly reach it before the game is released (possibly in the next week or so). Good news for all!

I wish there was a demo in the works, but it seems rather unlikely we will see one before release.

Pre-ordered on Green Man Gaming for £22.50 (with this 25% coupon code GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G ) after seeing some of the initial reactions on RPS and places.

Yep, same here. GMG's been pretty solid for me overall (even allowed me to get games on Steam that would otherwise be unavailable in my region... btw, fuck you very much Bethesda)... I assume I won't get the preorder goodies, but that's ok.

You will still apparently get the Guile haircut goodies and soldier customisation.

Yeah you still get the pre-order bonus. Just no TF2 hats, or whatevers.

Not sure if there are many aussies interested here, apart from maybe Megrim, but:

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Competition/315859,play-xcom-enemy-unknown-before-the-rest-of-australia.aspx

Atomic are having a little competition with the reward being a preview evening. I think you have to be in Sydney.

For those that pre-ordered on Steam the TF2 hats/badge are supposedly unlocked now.

I want this game to succeed so bad. We need a bit of a revolution where RPGs go back to turn-based combat, none of this real time pause crap, and I think this game will provide a good model of how we can make that happen.

DEMOOOOOOOO available on Steam!!!

Button is there, but not actually available, as yet.

While I obviously agree as a first-gen fan of TBS; I think the strength of support will be in the 2nd gen 'kids' who played the tactical stuff on the gameboy/game gear/etc. Wasn't Final Fantasy turned based for combat, too? I'm still a bit shocked TBS has faded so much when both the 'old school' and 'slightly more recent yet at this point also old school' gamers were weaned on TBS and RTS was a pc gamer thing.

Yeah, I'll just keep hammerin' it  :grin:

Now it works, and it's about 5.8 GB  :ye_gods:

Let the downloading begin.

The "Big games" were all action-based and lent themselves very easily to multiplayer setups. MP seems to be the key to blowing a genre up and nobody had eloquently produced a way to multiplayer in TB games without dragging them on forever.  These multiplayer skirmishes are a great step towards that but may take too long for folks who just want to hop in and hop out at-will.  We shall see.

This game cannot come out soon enough.

Played the demo. Liked it. I think I will buy it. (eventhrough it lags a little on my lappy)

Wow.

Fun demo, but yikes is it short.

If you want to muck around in the second level a bit more then don't kill the last enemy and let them kill you instead. It will give you a replay option.

Totally sold on this after the demo.  Gameplay feels great.

Too scared to download the demo.  If it's as good as I think then the 2 week wait will become excruciating.

Yeah, the atmosphere of the original is there, at least for me, and the eerie (and sometimes kinda scary) atmosphere of the assault/battles was one of the main highlights of the original game, so that's great. From what I read (I haven't kept myself up-to-date on this title), you will only manage a single base in this game, and apparently the aliens will never attempt to raid it. Also, while the two tutorial missions were obviously easy, it seems that the game can become VERY unforgiving, especially at the harder difficulties.

Gamespot streamed a 2 hour gameplay session, yesterday (2nd tutorial mission and other stuff):

Click here (http://www.gamespot.com/shows/now-playing/?event=xcom_eu20120924&tag=Topslot;XcomEnemyUnknown;XcomEnemyUnknownLive;WatchItNow)

How to change difficulty:


Make it a bit more of a challenge.

Also some keyboard shotcuts I've sussed out:

I tried the demo last night. Mmm, turn-based tactics with a heavy emphasis on positioning and line-of-sight. Nice aesthetic, and it seems the relatively simple mechanics will lend themselves nicely to more difficult scenarios than the hand-holding demo missions.

Preordered instantly.

Already knew I was getting this but man did the demo whet my appetite. I may have to start getting extra sleep now to make up for the "one more mission" up til 2am behavior that sure to follow.  Love the atmosphere and tension the structure brings.  To me that one of the missing ingredients that turn based strategy games can have that real time can't seem to reliably develop - tension.  The atmosphere of games like System shock, bioshock or even first and last latest Deus Ex bring tension b/c you have the one man alone sneaking about bit, but once the combat starts you lose that.  X-com turn based battles force you to balance you competitive instincts to run and gun on in to win vs preserving your squaddies so they can develop, patiently using cover and overwatch and realizing there may be all kinds of nasty surprises waiting for you in the darkness.  Plus, mind control. :awesome_for_real:

So, towards the end of the second demo mission,

Has anyone found a way to do that? Or is it just gitty-gitty-gat-gat and hope the loot roll at the end of the mission turns out OK?

Capturing has always been a part of X-com, so you can research. But its also always been one of the hardest things to do as the game goes on. You needed stun and freeze type equipment, and I assume that's true in this one.

Really glad that's in though, I half figured they would just magically: "You did not kill him, hes just knocked out" it at the end of a mission.

Why did I play this demo? October 9 cannot come soon enough. I just hope that Gamestop has some kind of "pick up on the 8th/midnight pickup" thing going on because that will be required. Something tells me I'll be suddenly ill on Oct. 10.

There's stun sticks (needs research) and mind control in the game. They covered this in one of the play-throughs linked earlier and I was really excited about it.  Capping when you can't kill a fucker is sometimes a lot easier than reloading after one rounds a corner on you and hoping you don't die in the next turn.

Passable demo, but my two biggest concerns remain; console-port ui (bleh), and small maps. Rest of it seems ok, more akin to a skirmish board-game now, but this isn't a bad thing.

It's not a console port: pc was developed from the start side by side. There are some hotkey issues, but I found it pretty natural after playing it over a bit. Also the lead dev is a pc gamer and has said a number of times about how it is his preference.

Also the demo is not especially indicative: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/25/some-things-you-should-know-about-the-xcom-demo/

It doesn't have to be a port to have a UI that is designed to work well on a console (that conversely carries some issues on the PC), just being built together is enough to give a game that. (Haven't tried it yet myself.)

I agree. Though personally I can say it didn't feel this way. The things I found most annoying were virtue of the demo, more than anything else.

I say this having watched way too many previews, but in the full PC version you can change keybindings, there are very few cutscenes, that commander dude doesn't talk much, the game is harder (demo is on easy difficulty from a tutorial mission), you can double click on rooms in the base to move around, etc. As for the more general 'design' thing: I like the less is more interface, I didn't find I was missing information at any point.

For better or for worse they have really locked down what can be done in the demo, and I think as a result it might give some false impressions.


There are a few larger maps that I've seen, plus some of the similar sized ones (to the second demo one) are more engaging when there are more enemies on them.

Tutorial mission pissed me off, just because it forces you to put troops in absolutely idiotic positions with no fire support. :P

Actual playable mission made me hate the UI a bit, but was fun. I forgot how cautiously I play XCom.

Huehuehuehue, ok right. C'mon man, seriously, look at the xbox gameplay and then the pc. The ui is identical, except they just re-labelled the buttons. Even the internal logic of cycling through targets with a locked camera, confirming selections, large center-of--screen popups, its all console design.

Not that I'm saying its bad - perfectly playable - but calling it "developed for pc" is marketing horseshit.

You can click to select units with the mouse, there are hotkeys to select specific units, etc.  It's clearly console-friendly in ways, but it's hardly console-only.  I found the UI pretty reasonable playing through the demo.

Graphically the UI is the same, but the PC version has a lot more keyboard shortcuts and can do quite a few things the console versions cannot. That make it pretty distinct to me.

I haven't had any "why do I have to scroll with the arrows?" or "why can't I just click that?" moments like I would normally have with "console" UIs.

The keyboard shortcuts in the demo version are hidden, and sometimes unavailable due to tutorial hand-holding (you can't rotate the camera in the first mission until they tell you how, for example), and can't be rebound, but these are demo and tutorial influences, not PC elements that carry over into the full game.

October 9th is so fucking long from now.  :awesome_for_real:  :drill:

I remember the original Xcom not having a stellar demo as well and not fully showing the games depth.  Just one random mission, although it did make me buy the full game with a full fear of chrysalids

It's out October 12th here. Luckily I get to play it tomorrow night.  :grin:

Cool, did you win the contest?

The nerd-rage will be strong with this one.  :grin:

Yeah, will hopefully get a good chance to see how it goes.

I thought the demo had flaws, the geoscape for example was mostly just an afterthought and the mission select portion of it made little sense.  The UI has been commented on but things I wanted to do intuitively weren't possible, however when I figured out what they intended it was smooth enough.

That said, demo, and it showed a lot of demo cliches, like the excessive hand-holding, cut-scenes and locked down features but, that was fine really.

The thing that sold it was having one guy get his cover blown away and then next turn using the rocket launcher to frag two aliens at once, or another squaddie reaction shotgunning a thin-man and then next turn tossing a grenade through a window killing the remaining baddies and thus ending the mission.

Some minor complaints: First, since swapping weapons does not cost an action and you cannot move and shoot some weapons on the same turn when you move someone equipped that way they should automatically swap out to their secondary weapon rather than force me to do swap->move->overwatch->end turn->swap->fire->end turn->swap->move->overwatch & etc.  There is no reason that can't be contextually handled.  Secondly, disembarking from the transport was an integral part of the X-Com experience and it's lack is disappointing.  Disembarking at a terror mission was one of the most stressful and dangerous parts of the whole mission and really built those experiences from the first moment, starting out deployed is, well, meh.  I can't count the number of times a squaddie got half-way down the ramp and took a plasma bolt to the face from an unseen enemy, trying to get out of that kind of tactical situation efficiently is, to me, what made X-Com really shine.

Sure, on unopposed landings it made deployments rather tedious but that caution from step 1 really ramped up the intensity.

The thinking behind no deploy surprise robots is that with a smaller group of soldiers such losses are less fair and can have bigger consequences.

It'd be nice to have, but the combat now seems to balance that by being much more tactical and engaging, so I can live with it.

Yeah, with a max squad size less than half of the original game it means no fodder to absorb those ramp losses.  I'm ok with the loss of deploy even though I agree with Margalis on it being so integral to the tone of the original.

As for map size, watch some of the demo plays linked earlier. Specifically seek-out the terror mission play-through.  There's larger maps than they're showing.

No deployment off the ramp means I can't accidentally fire a tracking missile out the back of the lander and destroy half of my troops still sitting on the ramp.

Heh.

"That goddamn squaddie was one level up and in the lander.  How the fuck did he overwatch my best troop in the back of the goddamn head"

Good times.

Well, offloading from the ramp became pretty trivial as soon as you just threw 2-3 smoke-nades. Hell you could create a path of smoke to the nearest cover if needed. So not sure I will miss it.

So I played a bit of the multiplayer tonight. It was pretty fun. It was set for 45 second turns and 7500 points, so it was pretty much impossible to play with 6 units (which I had), and I don't think 70 seconds (which is supposedly what the ranked games will be, with 10000 points) will be much better.

Custom games with longer turns and more points look like they will be really great though. I'd be pretty interested in setting up some sort of league if there was enough interest.

We all hate you until the 9th (or 12th in Europe). :)

Yeesh, I thought the 2 minute BB turns were rough at first...

According to the forums  (http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?141201-Livestreaming-XCom-Demo-modding-(7-40-PDT-)) you can mod the demo to change the scripting, remove cutscenes, change weapons on your squad, fight other alien types, etc...

More specifically here (http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?140536-Demo-Editor-I-just-Made) is the program someone made to edit the demo to play against other enemies.

*edit* Updated link

(http://i.imgur.com/Bljcm.png)

Civ 5 for everyone soon!

Re Demo: I played it and wasn't too fond of it. Game feels....gamey. It's all about cover, and cover isn't cover, it's just 20% bonus to defense. Old UFO had a shot going on a straight line to you, and hit your soldier, something in between, or another alien. Remember when one of your guys shot a friendly in the back? In this game you cant even target anything but aliens. And shot clip through the environment. How did they manage to regress technically?

Zones, it's a demo so maybe its different in the full version, but: They feel..gamey again...second mission is one long pipe. And it looks well, unremarkable and plastic. Nothing like a real world/city.

Soldiers: I loved the mini-game of outfitting them individually, now its a class-system. Heavy Weapons guy/Grunt/Medic. Seems fine but: Normal soldor carries 1 grenade, not 2, not 3, no smoke grenade, nothing fancy like the demolation charges of old UFO. Medic has med-pac option to use and well, no grenade. It's...class A can do this, class B can do this.

AP system made you choose...do I shoot or do I run? Now you can do both, but only in the order of Run than shoot,and the range is always the same. Again, a system designed to simulate limited time got replaced by something...gamey...Move..Shoot.

Geoscape, it doesn't really exist anymore. You can select to have a base in Europe or Northern America, Asia. Depending what place you pick you get a sort of bonus (cheaper costs, better planes, etc...)
Instead of sandboy world to build several bases, freely, you have a single one with gamey bonuses.

There are no alien base attacks. Remember the scare of aliens coming to your own base? And seeing the base layout you made yourself when constructing in battle? It's all gone.

UI, its very consolised. No free moving camera, just switching between soldiers. Confirmation checkboxes for everything. Press 1 to shoot at selected Alien. Click "OK" button to confirm.

More here when I sobered up.
Besides, I am not saying the game "sucks", I am saying it's quite different to the original UFO and many aspects that made it so special and addicting are gone.

The demo is very different to the full game.

It's even different to the tutorial in the full game. And the version I was looking at was just the preview build, which has had a few bugs and etc changed. As per your extended points I'll try give you a better reply later when not mobile. But generally speaking I think that UFO had a lot of mostly frivolous options, or ones that were not really strategic but just ways you could shoot yourself in the foot. EU has added a lot more in tactical play in my view, and the geoscape might be more 'gamey' but I also think that has some positives.

X-Com, the laser rifle manufacuturing sim!  :grin:

What.. you mean I wasn't the only one who crafted 100,000 laser rifles in a manufacturing base and sold them regularly for cash flow?! I'm SHOCKED!

No base attacks is kind of disappointing, but the base layout removal isn't.  There was a definite "Must build" order and a definite "must use" layout.  Doing anything beyond 

hanger - hanger - hanger
lift tube
actual base

Was pointless and just asking for your soldiers to get needlessly slaughtered. But when you did it you could defend the whole base with one blaster or rocket launcher and a crew of 3.  The sum of the mechanics made the base attacks nothing but time wasters.

I'll confess I've been a bit disappointed by the class system forcing gear options, but not by the removal of APs.  It remains a turn based tactical and more in-line with more modern games like the FFA series.  APs were a throwback to the old wargaming and mini systems and having to remember "Must keep at least 30/25/19 APs" at the end of a turn was maddening.. particularly when you misclicked and wound-up exposed and at 0aps.   

I've been replaying TFTD recently and even more maddening is how I forgot "heavy" weapons steal APs off 'weak' characters at the start of the turn.. so often it's "oh, you turned around, no firing for you THIS turn!"

Gonna SirBruce a bit:
I think the shots clipping through the environment is a drawing thing and not a real thing, I had several shots hit my cover and eventually destroy the cover without hitting my squaddie.  I don't think 'bonus to defense' is an accurate way to describe how cover works in this game, it certainly doesn't describe my experiences.

Also, not being able to target your own troop when firing does not mean you can't shoot someone in the back on a bad shot.  I never targeted my own guy in X-Com unless trying to heal them and managed to frag plenty pf them so, uh whatever.


Not only a demo but a tutorial mission.  I mean, really?  Sure, it's a limited exposure but you're really premature with this one.

i'm not so much bothered by move->shoot as I am by the lack (or my not understanding) of facing and FoV.  But, TU's were a shitty device and it was good to get rid of them.

This is a complete fabrication.  You have more control of the camera now than you ever did in any previous X-com.  Rotate, pan, zoom, and elevation, it's all there.  You only ever had pan and elevation previously.  I think you should read the tips in the Tutorial, it's why they are there.  Also, you always only ever switched between soldiers.  You had an active soldier and then you moved the camera, it's exactly the same but better.

As far as the Geoscape goes the only thing missing is multiple bases and radar coverage.  Well the radar coverage is being handled with satellites now so whatever and I am not convinced that multiple bases was a good thing.  It certainly added nothing fun.  Base invasions though, that I am going to miss.

The number of base invasions that actually occurred in my numerous games I could count on one hand. I never bothered to set up the bases to optimize defence because it simply wasn't worth it. Oh look it's the attack battleship lets shoot that sucker down and then loot the corpse. So in sum it doesn't bother me that base defence missions are gone.

Why can't it be October 9th yet!

Once you got the Plasma Defenses (and then the fusion defenses) and the pad that repelled the ufo up for another shot, there was no such mission as Base Defense.

That was always quite lol.

Base defense missions were horrible, best avoided.

Yep!


It only takes one mission to change your mind.  Like, OOOOH FOR EXAMPLE, your Skyranger is flying out to a crash site when your base is discovered then invaded with only your wounded commander and 4 squaddies to defend it.

 :mob:

Loss of a base sucks.

DEMO: I was a bit put off by picking a country/area, rather than the direct spot I wanted my base. Also, the globe and travel time was...well, my computer loads fast. Barely had seen it.

This seems weird, if you're going to use the xcom name, it seems daft not to have this - even if it has no gameplay impact.

I'd be more upset if they turned the game into a FPS.  :awesome_for_real:

But it really had no impact.  Sure I picked fun places for my bases like Miami Beach, NORAD or whatever but its pretty minor.  Even for radar coverage it really made no difference because the long range radars covered huge areas and the later tech radars made even those obsolete.

Well, interceptor travel time was impacted.

I didn't play the originals, but the demo was fun.  I'd like to see how the console versions happen, as a nice turn-based strategy game like this would be great fun from the couch. 

Verbal flogging incoming, I expect.

Civ V is unlocked now. If you pre-order now it's Civ V and Xcom for the one price. But you get Civ V now.

Interactive trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93M_fLmmecU

Pretty cool idea for a trailer.  Some of those failures were pretty fake but it was a good way to show that tactics matter.

So who wanted that copy of Civ 5?

Yeah.  I suspect we have quite a few to give away.

I'll have a copy if anyone wants to spare one, though it's not really vital.

So I played the demo. Was horribly dissapointed, even though I liked everything released  up to that point about the game

- Gui. Horrid. no words.- I cant immerse in tactical elements where I have to struggle with counterintutive, unresponsive, console gui
- Camera. - fixed camera in 2012? really?
- map - tiny
- bugs  - never finished demo as game keeps freezing ( it just game i  can alt tab in and out and  do other things fine

 :grin:

Good One.

I'll be cheeky and say yes - but put me bottom of the list because there might be people who really, really want it. (In return, I do have a spare copy of DX:HR going. Or the lesser known Sanctum)

Get the game for 34$. Green Man Gaming has another promo:


I can confirm the promo worked for me, and will supposedly work for the US, though I am in Australia so I'm not 100%.

Forgot to check the thread for a while.

lamaros if you still want Civ 5 give me your steam name and I get in touch with you!

Ooer! I sent you a pm, though the name is the same as here. Danke! and many other words of kindness.

I'll probably buy it and enjoy it, but only once it's on sale.  Lots of little niggling details felt off to me, but one of the biggest things was no reconnaissance by fire...  In the old game if an alien was in the gas station I sure as hell wouldn't shoot the alien; I'd shoot the pumps.  Seems like that's gone now.

In any case, anyone got an extra Civ 5 burning a hole in their pocket?

Quite sure full environmental destruction is in.

I might have completely overlooked it, but how do you choose to fire at anything that isn't an alien?  I know you can do it with explosives, but didn't see any way to do it with rifles.

You cannot. That is actually one of the grips I have about the game so far.

Exactly.  Once I got alien weaponry I made my own doors wherever I went.  Looks like that option has been removed.

Does it even track projectiles so you can potentially hit something other than what you aimed at?


Back when UFO came out I was grumpy about how you lost the aiming view from laser squad that meant you could aim left or right of centre (mainly you'd use it for enemies half visible around a wall) , or manually set an arc for spraying a burst of automatic fire.

Yes, it does. Free aimed things (grenades, rockets) will have a risk of missing the exact target you give them, while guns will hit other parts on the map when they miss, this could be other units (who take damage), or terrain (which might be destroyed, or set on fire, etc).

However you cannot free aim at the destructible terrain with guns - you can only target enemy units.

To be fair there isn't much point letting people free aim at walls with normal guns.  Has anyone tried it by haxoring in the bigger guns in the demo?

I'm not really off put by 9mm guns not knocking down walls :)

I have rockets and grenades. Do we know that there is no form of explosive device?

This is a pretty good video that covers some of the general fan concerns regarding the UI, free aim, etc.

http://au.pc.gamespy.com/pc/xcom-enemy-unknown/1226273p1.html

Aside from destructible terrain, free aim just makes the game feel more open; things like shooting petrol pumps are way cooler when you spot the explodable thing the scene, rather than it appearing on the list of shootable things.

Probably not the end of the world - but just hard to see why you'd choose to do it that way.

I don't think we've seen the heavier weapons yet but you certainly can do that with rockets and grenades. so, uh yeah.  Whatever, when I was in the shit I totally shot my way through walls with my 5.56 NATO Ball.

Truthfully I am not too worried. Free aim made a lot of things pretty trivial. You just blew up all the cover as you advanced with scouts. Worried about a tough entrance? Blow it up!

...and whatever happens it'll be better than apocalypse.

 But my expectations have dropped from 'actual UFO remake' to 'mildly diverting tactics game'. Admittedly this is better than 'heretical console abomination that will corrupt all future discussion of xcom', which is what I feared at the start.

Yeah.  Like I said before, this looks really good, but I don't think it's going to precisely scratch the itch I needed scratched.

There's always Xenonauts!

I think you will be more than pleasantly surprised.

Launch trailer. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJLFNYhq1YM) Ok, but not amazing trailer.

Never underestimate the power of f13 to hate games.

Preloads available.

I'm barely containing my excitement for this, and this preload is not going to help me one single bit.

Just noticed this as well.... Now the painful wait will really begin.

Does this include people who bought from GMG?

GMG should email you an activation code to add it to steam. I got mine and I am downloading now.

Ah yea, got it now. Hnnggg.

Preloading now. CANNOT FUCKING WAIT.

Anyone know any good ways to fall asleep for 2 days?

Lots of Ambien.

Pre-loaded. Not available to me until the 12th. Different release dates for digital content make me stabby.

*anticipation dance*

I'm slightly shamed to say the part I'm really jazzed about are the custom armor bits.

Only two days

Release dates based around physical media delivery for single player games make me a bit stabby in general.

*stares at completed code on drive, stares at EBGames stores, debates burning them all down*

That and different regional pricing for digital content. *mumbles about rip-off*

Not only is it only out on the 12th here, but they done fucked up and made the 12th start at 10am, not midnight...

We are not amused.

They didn't fuck up, they just didn't choose your timezone.

For instance in NA they chose the midnight on the 12th... Eastern. So I get the game at 9PM on the 8th.

Constitutes a fuckup to me. I don't live in Europe.

Are we there yet?   :why_so_serious:

We have to wait one more day?

There are now a bunch of reviews out, for those still on the fence.

I don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread yet, but once you beat the game you unlock a slew of new options to change how the game is played in subsequent playthroughs, a lot of them to make it work like old X-Com:

That's sexy but also annoying that they force you to beat it first.

I can sort of understand wanting to lock it behind an initial victory in order to limit the risk of completely overwhelming people unfamiliar with the game with a bunch of difficulty options with no in-game context.

Besides, it's almost a guarantee that some mod or modified .ini file will be available to unlock it within 48 hours, if not sooner.

Yep. As noobish as it might sound, I'll do my first playthrough on normal difficulty and mess with classic difficulty and other difficulty mutators afterwards.

That's kind of what I've been waffling on all day. I sort of want to do Normal first to get the hang of how the game's different from the original X-Com and then move on to doing the majority of my play in Classic Ironman, but I've been hearing from a lot of sources that Normal does little more than teach you habits that will just get you killed in Classic.

The ability to change difficulty on the fly means I'm starting in Classic.  If it gets too rough I can dumb it down but the tutorial/ demo showed me I need some harsh lessons or I'll totally get in to bad habits.  More than once on demo plays I had a guy standing out of cover and unable to even overwatch at the end of his turn, or left my sniper with his ass in the breeze for support.

Hmm yeah didn't know about the changing difficulty thing. I guess I was too used to JA2 and "choose your fate at the start, and you'd better not choose ironman-expert your first time through!".

Now that the press embargo's lifted, reviews are pouring out, and they're pretty much universally positive, which I'm kind of shocked at. Lots and lots of 9/10s and 4.5/5s. I haven't seen a single overly negative review.

I'll be starting on Classic Ironman.  If that's too much of a punch in the junk I'll dumb it down, but I always played the original in an ironman style so I don't think the trauma of losing favored soldiers is going to ruin my experience.

I am very glad to see that the UI has gotten some PC love since the demo launched (and apparently since the press-preview copies went out).  Recent demos by whats-his-name Jake at Firaxis have shown a good number of improvements, better use of the mouse and more information presented in particular.

Review synopsis from neogaf

So, as someone that never really played X-com before but has much love for the squad based tactical RPG: I should be buying this now, right?

Yes.

I mean you can try the demo if you're on the fence, but...

Yes.

I think the combat, at least from the demo, reminds me more of Fallout 2 than X-Com but yeah, if you're a fan of the genre than this seems like the best in years.

I'm sure this will be a good game, but can we not start listing the views of 'professional' games 'journalists' in a manner that suggests they have any credibility at all.

This is getting 9s from everyone, because everything from a major publisher gets 9s from everyone. Hopefully it will be the broken clocks' time to shine.

It's x-com. Seems like a pretty tried and true formula. Some hate about the ending; destructoid was the closest to say 'it's not perfect' but it seems pretty good. Giant Bomb has a 1 hour quick look of a decent mission midway through the game. They're on the x-box version, but supposedly the UI has been improved for PCs since the early reviews due to feedback. I'll find out in about 10 hours!

Eh, read the RPS review or something. Going off numbers is for suckers, as everyone knows. The content of the reviews is pretty much universal, whatever the ratings are.

The Ars Technica review (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/10/review-xcom-enemy-unknown-is-a-credit-to-the-name/) at lease mentions several negative points amidst the gushing praise., unlike the Eurogamer one which I can't even be arsed to link it's so sycophantic.

I don't know why I bother to read game reviews any more tbh, I trust the opinions of you guys about a million times more.

I really don't have the money to spend right now, should not have clicked on this thread.   Preloading now. 

The RPS :words: does go into the negatives on the game, and several of the reviews I've read have similar criticisms. IGN's is kind of amusing because it's basically one long whinefest about it not holding the reviewer's hand enough.

I always find it amusing when they say things like "the original game was much more tactically deep". I'm sure there will be a lot of things I dislike about this remake (camera issues aside I figure nearly all of them will get sorted with .ini fiddling and mods, though), but to call the original tactically satisfying is way off the mark for me. If you give someone 10 choices but 9 of them are nearly always wrong it's not more tactically deep that something with two meaningful ones.

Very tempted to vpn so I don't have to wait another three days here, but I will be strong and hold on!

Demo actually made me jump the fence  (e.g. I decided wait till its goes for $15 sale )  .Though some videos make it look much better than it is in demo. Firaxis burned me hard with civ5 though  (which got stellar reviews as well)

The demo is not indicative.

Preorder through GMG or something, because you will probably be waiting a long time for the game+preorder stuff (which is sadly vital in my view) to come down below $20.

With the code GMG25-EVFWS-4Z4ZN you get 25% off, so it'll only be around $30-35.

Plus you get a copy of Civ 5 to gift to someone. :P (Trying to see if mine will get back filled - if so I'll hand it out to someone here)

You may not want to dumb it down even if its hard. Normal has dumbed down AI and the enemy is generally progression limited[I.E. they get stuff once you get stuff]


Probably. The UI and general "feel" is the best for any tactical squad based game I've ever played [and I have played a lot] just from the demo.

In addition to this, it has multiplayer so you've always got somewhere else to go after the main campaign.

That being said, i would not suggest getting to attached to your guys.

If you really want to wait and don't care about the first two tiers of the preorder bonus i will be playing the game in about 2.5 hours when it unlocks and will happily give you my opinion and if you really want Civ 5, i have a copy already so you can have mine.

2k guy is livestreaming before the release: http://www.twitch.tv/2k

Man the game looks fun. So jealous.

2 hours. I have not once ever been so hyped for a game

Its not midnight EST? The one time I want east coast bias...

Steam claims it'll unlock in "approximately one hour".  So it's either midnight on the East coast, or maybe an hour later.  Here's hoping for midnight!

Unlocks in 8 mins. (Edit: Updated!)

Unlocked for NA.

Loading now. Happy in the pants.

"corrupted game files" on boot up... Verifying Cache now.

Still giving me the same error. Also says "game unavailable"

I almost ran out of space, had to recreate steam's clientblob (my bad) and now seeing if it'll update off the preload or if I need to do 100% reinstall. It's "updating" but the time remaining has been steadily growing..  :facepalm:



Yeah someone says verify game files and restart steam to try to get it to work.

Good plan - seemed to work.

I'm unpacking, I turned off the clock that was counting upwards and now stare at the tiny blue line in the hopes it means something.

Just restarting steam works, it'll re-install whatever is missing.

Smooth sailing.  Just completed my first extraction mission on normal.  Abductee rescued.  6 aliens killed.  One wounded.  No casualties.  Promotions all around.  Got a sniper now, yay!

Jesus, this tutorial goes on forever.

Yeah, I'm kinda regretting playing with the tutorial.  I sort of wish they just had some tooltips or popup info boxes instead of explaining everything with a cutscene. 

I think I'm going to take the advice of some of the reviewers and restart the game after the tutorial.

What? What? From GMG?

Time to get on the case then.

Only if you preordered, and only from Steam.

Started a new game in Classic Ironman, sans tutorial. Asia as my HQ.

First mission was on a train platform, and my starting location fucking blew. Very poor cover for the first turn, a height disadvantage, and my second turn got me into the train itself with more widely-available cover, but also three Sectoids a car down. Managed to take out one, but my pointman got injured. Three more from a second crashed alien probe moved around and managed to get off some really lucky shots, killing two of my guys and sending the other two into a panic, one turn after the other. Shockingly, one recovered and managed to take out the Sectoid that sent the second guy into a panic, and all that was left was one last Sectoid that was too far away to reliably hit (25% CTH), but the distance to good cover to get closer or flank it was too far, and it kept Overwatching. It took a while, but I managed to take out the final two Sectoids with two gravely injured squaddies.

I think my positioning and maneuvering were sound, but the RNG for shot CTH was just not on my side.

Only if you pre-ordered, but GMG had it in the end too. As did amazon.

I kinda wish I had done that, but so having fun and don't want to abandon my squad yet.

I'm really torn on spending money to upgrade now vs having no cash partway through the month when I suddenly need more gear or soldiers.   I've been managing losses reasonably well (no more than one per mission and only about 50% of missions with a loss), but I have come back with 4 injured soldiers needing 5-15 days to recover and that's rough.

I'm awaiting explicit confirmation that those who pre-ordered from GMG in September will get Civ V too but their Twitter feed indicates that's the case. Keys sent out on the 12th in EU though - which is ridiculous as I won't be playing it then (if at all) because I'll have XCOM.

EDIT: Explicit confirmation recieved.  :drill:

Welp, catastrophic failure.

After my rocky first mission, my second mission went almost perfectly. Gas station map, lots of cover and methodical sweeps by my fresh squad of four rookies. Six Sectoids dead, only one troop with minor injuries. Third mission was a UFO I shot down. By this point I had a four-man team of Assault, Heavy, Support, and Sniper, so I took them into the UFO mission. Not a lot of good cover heading up to the downed ship, but I offed a couple Sectoids without much hassle along the way. My Heavy took a hit, but it wasn't bad, so I just kept her a bit further back and on overwatch near my Sniper on an overlook above the ship. My Assault sighted the big alien in the ship (whose name I forget), and managed to tag it with his shotgun. Sadly, it managed to crit my Assault through his heavy cover to one-shot him, but was taken down by overwatch fire from my Support and Sniper shortly after.

Next up were a couple Sectoids to the west, and I send my Heavy and Support around, hopping from what cover I could find to try to flank them while my Sniper lit them up from a safe perch. My Heavy went down (but not dead!) from a hit in Hunkered Down cover from a very long distance away, but my Support got one-shot the next turn trying to reach her. She bled out shortly after, and my Sniper started to panic. He was flanked before I could regain control. I'm down to a bare minimum of soldiers now, and my only remaining non-Rookie is still in the hospital for another 10 days.

I think it's about new game time.

Other than a ton of cutscenes of the transport ship, I'm enjoying it a lot. I stayed up playing "One more mission." a bit too late.

I am getting absolutely massacred in UFO missions and I don't quite know why.

No matter what strategy I try I just get picked apart by Sectoids and the UFO commander. I'm stuck with 33-45% CTHs for pretty much anything I do while Sectoids seem to be able to snipe me from halfway across the map in heavy cover or while I'm Hunkered Down. I've been constantly moving from cover to cover, Overwatching at least half my squad when I can, and avoiding Dashing whenever possible. I'm almost afraid to flank enemies now after seeing the ridiclous amount of misses I've had while flanking with 70-95% CTH, only to have the flanker immediately get killed afterward.

Was doing okay until I hit the "assault the alien base mission" and moved in far too fast.  Thought I had it under control, but it was bigger than I expected and I stumbled upon a bunch of those spider-like aliens and got slaughtered.  Time too call it a night.  Definitely a lot of just-one-more-mission goodness here.

There's a guy streaming impossible ironman on twitch. He has been going for 6 hours by my reckoning (since it launched, basically).

He's still redoing the first mission. Best he's done is about 4-5 missions before he's lost the game and had to start again.

He might not be a great player, but he's not absolutely awful. The game provides a bit of a challenge.  :grin: Plus his inability to realise he's not good enough for this is oddly compelling.

So you enjoy watching people fail? I don't think it's hyperbole to say you're a horrible human being. :grin:

I'm heavily disappointed with the interface but it doesn't get in the way.  Why can I zoom by holding down the mousewheel instead of using it for instance?  Functionally it works but it's still retarded.

Can't you rebind the keys??


Also I just got told I get backfilled a Civ 5 copy, on the 12th.

Seeing how calapine was nice enough to give me a spare, I figure I should give out this spare to someone here on f13. Let me know if you're interested.

There *are* key rebinds but I didn't explore them this morning to know if you can rebind zoom functions.  I've been using G & T for the in & out, which are the defaults but unintuitive.

Played through the tutorial this morning - good lord it's long.  I see others recommend restarting w/o it so I might do that tonight.  Took a bullshit loss by a thin man firing long-range into partial cover in the tutorial rescue mission, but I was only upset because it was the first soldier I'd customized.  I should know better than to do that with squaddies.   Played through the crash mission with zero losses and my HW from the tutorial and sniper both hit Sergent.   Wow are snipers OP on the outdoor maps.  Give them squad sight and their kill count just skyrockets.  

Got in to my first real mission right before I left for work.  So much fun.  

ed:   Just finished reading the ars review.  I disagree with the UI complaints, but the UI is definitely snapper than it was in the demo.  Not sure I see what they mean about "oversimplified" base building yet, either.  Seems to be pretty much the same as before, with the exception that you have to build a lift on every level.  As I noted earlier, bases were pretty set in stone in the original.  At least here there's added depth with adjacency of rooms.

Also- the 1st armor upgrade forces a choice between it or a grenade.  That's a hell of a wrenching decision, with grenades being so incredibly useful. 

Baby woke up at 11:50, I thought, "Good timing".  I would rock her back to sleep and I would get to play for an hour or so until it was time to feed her at 1.  Sadly, by the time everything was unpacked I only got through the first tutorial mission before she was up again and hungry.  I hope tonight I can get a few hours in between bedtime and the 1 am feeding.

The game seemed snappier though, none of the stuttering or slowdown I had noticed with the demo on my system.

I'd never take the armor upgrade over a grenade on a rookie... and still prob not take it on any others. On the harder difficulties the grenades are even more vital in my view.

Scopes however: awesome.

You can apparently.  For some reason they chose to use mouseup/down for changing levels.  That's really just 1 thing out of 100's though.  The interface is functional just unpleasant.  The loadout screen for instance is a bunch of excessive clicking, instead of the simple drag and drop every PC game uses.

They did a better job than BL2 though, so it's not like they failed completely.

I only put it on my sniper so far.  She's kept out of the fray enough that she'll never be in grenade range if I'm doing things right.  I did debate it heavily on my Heavy Weapons guy, though. In the end I decided high explosives are the better survivability loadout.   Haven't seen scopes yet, sounds nice.   I now have visions of my Sniper w/ Squad Sight + a scope taking a headshot on a supressed alien. Buahaha.

Restarted after the tutorial and played around with ironman classic.  Was doing great after losing a rookie on each the first two missions I did the next 4 with no casualties, just a few wounded.  Makes some mistakes with base construction and not having enough engineers to make any of the things I was researching but all in all was doing ok.  Once I got to my first terror mission the wheels fell way the hell off.... half the squad got zombied and the rest were easy pickings after that.  After I get some sleep it will be time for a restart.  Maybe not ironman it afterall.

And yes sniper with scope and squad sight is amazing, guy had 15 kills before that disaster at the last mission. 

Same here.  I have a bad habit of reloading when things don't go my way, so it's nice not even having the option.  I've had 3 guys killed so far, and many, many wounded.  Unfortunately my squaddie sniper got killed before he could make corporal, so I'm without a sniper and have yet to see what squad sight can do for me.  Can't fucking wait.

My money problems tell me I'm doing something wrong.

Me too.  I can't afford all these fucking new games.

If someone comes across a legit review (or has one of their own) regarding the PC vs. PS3 versions, please let me know.  This really looks like a game I want to play from the couch on my PS3, but all the reviews so far have been for PC. 

I lost all my progress to a UI bug that locked me out of even the menus while insisting I reload a fully loaded gun. ><

Beyond that and the subsequent discovery that auto-save is disabled by default (buh? Not even pre/post mission save checkpoints like everyone else by default? You know, in case of crashing?!), I've really liked this remake. It's well done, and early game UFO breaches are still awesome. Shitty city maps that are 90% cars however can fuck off and die. No XCOM command, I'd really rather not fight aliens on that bridge full of improvised grenades. Or fight them at a goddamned gas station BECAUSE WHO GETS INTO A FIREFIGHT AT A GAS STATION.

Gas stations were a classic part of the old X-Com and always hilarious fun.  I'm sad that it's a map itself rather than a set piece, though.

I play super-cautious, which is why I only had the one BS loss.   I'm going to do terrible in Terror Missions; but I always have.  My guys surviving is a greater priority than random Civvies who can't save the world.  We're fighting for the species here, people. A little collateral damage is to be expected.   :drill:

I haven't read any that were written specifically for the ps3, but I also haven't read any negatives about the console versions in any of the reviews.  I know I'll be picking it up for my ps3 for the same reason; it looks like a fun game to play from the couch.  My concern mostly was for the multiplayer element.  I like to play with f13ers and I know most here are getting the PC version.  I ultimately came to the conclusion that I probably wouldn't play this one multiplayer much though, and it shouldn't influence my decision.

Steam big screen. ( or whatever )

Well, this is a lot of fun.  This was the first game to drag me away from GW2 for an entire night.  Tutorial is a big long and hand holdy, but I've never played X-Com before.

Makes me wish I would have played the original way back when, but I'm not sure I was patient enough then for squad member death.  Dealing with death and injury adds a little something to the experience. My heavy is a giant EXP sponge, mostly because he hasn't even gotten nicked yet.  One of my guys got greased already due to a lucky long range shot.

Is classic just the game but without the tutorial?

Classic difficulty?  No, it'll still start the tutorial unless you turn it off in advanced options.   In Classic the aliens are smarter, better shots and (based on comments in this thread) aren't gated in what tech they use by your own research.

You can opt to skip the tutorial when starting a new game on any difficulty.

In normal the Alien AI will look at how many baddies are actively engaged against you and pull some back if it's greater than some magic number it also won't dogpile on panicked troopers.  Additionally, strategically it won't go after low morale countries unless it's out of other options.  I understand that normal also starts you out with some free base facilities.

In classic all bets are off, funding country going down the tubes?  That's the prime target.  Got a low will squaddie?  Oh, yeah time to panic him/mind control.  Impossible just ratchets that up another notch while nudging the rng in the Aliens favor.

The aliens dogpile in MY normal game. :P I had six sectoids trying their hardest to murder my heavy last night.

What I think changes is that in normal the aliens won't pull new troops in (like, if there are two floaters in the back field, they'll hang out on patrol instead of rushing forward when you're engaged), but they don't pull troops out. Sectoids just naturally retreat when they start taking losses.


As for the first XCOM: awesome game, but we rose colored glasses a bit with it. I personally like the 4-6 troops thing a lot more than the clusterfuck breaching and 4 minute turns of the earlier XCOMs.

Not sure why i keep reading review people nostalgic for X-COM: Apocalypse, that was the worst one in the series. Whats wrong with people?

Oh god, Apocalypse. OH GOD. I mean, I get the stockholm we all suffered from TFTD terror missions. But Apoc.. dear lord.

Secretly after how well this XCOM has turned out I'm hoping they're redoing TFTD next.

TFTD was my fav, and Yes, terror missions.

The game itself is just awesome.  Lately I just play games for a bit here and there.  This game has me wanting to play all day long.

TFTD was ok, but those 2-[3?]phase ship missions where you had to find the last diving suit dude hiding somewhere... urgh. Ditto deep sea missions (it's dark, you'll be eaten by a tentaculat)

Must resist the urge to buy.
Must resist the urge to buy.
Must resist the urge to buy.

This game is a lot of fun. Just like the orig xcom, brutal on 'classic' difficulty. I find myself save-scumming at least once every two missions. Things definitely get easier once you get a few levels, especially the 'ignore first reaction shot' for assault class is an absolute literal life-saver.

Don't ignore sensor packs for snipers, either. They're awesome!

I started on classic difficulty ironman but things went pretty far south since I didn't understand the importance of protecting the skies and rushing max satalites at all times. I think I had done about 6 missions but I actually lost 4/5 men on my first terror mission, well 3 died and one I left behind because he was a rookie who had missed every shot so far so fuck him.

I had to move down to newbie difficulty while learning how to not have countries abandon the council. Its still pretty hard? I've stabilized at four council defections and I've just about got a sat over every remaining country. I've got infinite money so now it all comes down to collecting alien salvage. I want to up the difficulty but considering that I'm still losing troopers occasionally I don't think I'm that good at the game yet. Looking forward to a second playthrough where I don't wrong foot everything to start off.

CAVE.
CAVE.
CAAAAAAAVE.

This season has been so brutal, but so much fun.  This game will likely push everything to the side for a good two weeks.   Hooray for no sub MMOs.

I think lack of cashflow is going to be the downfall of my initial Normal mission -- I'm doing okay on troops, but still haven't been able to deploy more satellites, and panic levels are rising.  Going to keep playing it tonight and see if I can turn it around or if the world burns.  Definitely learning a lot about mechanics along the way.

Let me introduce you to an old Army phrase;  "Embrace the Suck".  This isn't a game where you're going to keep most of your men alive.  Getting a guy to colonel is a precious and rare thing.  If you're coming back from missions with either no one dead or at the very least a LOT of wounded troops then it's too easy for you.  Life is cheap in XCOM land.  Embrace it.

Godamnit ppl stop posting how fun this game is.

And why is there a hard hat with a light on it next to me!

I caved...

I managed to hold out on Borderlands 2, but this just looks too great.  Hopefully I'll still manage to get the preorder dlc.

I actually made it to month two in Classic Ironman game #6. I've only had one total squad wipe so far, and it was on a horribly bullshit bomb disposal mission. Should've taken more rookies there, instead of a crack squad. I still have some vets left over, and I just got a Sergeant sniper in return for saving Germany in an abduction mission, but I keep taking hits every now and again from Sectoids and Thin Men from across the goddamn map, which means half my squad gets put into the sick bay for two weeks after every mission.

I'm in Quinton's boat right now though; not enough money. I'm likely going to lose India and Brazil, and I can't afford to keep building power generators and satellite uplinks in order to keep my satellite coverage up.

When I inevitably lose this game, I'm going to either start a new game on Normal Ironman or do Classic non-Ironman to try and refine my tactics to reduce casualties.

Computer games you can lose.

Holy shit I must be 18 again.

He is talking ironman to be fair.  You can lose a lot of modern games if you play that way.

I'd say I'm bad enough to qualify for beating it on noob mode. Also I did so much damage to myself in the early going not understanding satalites and how bad abduction sites fuck your standing with nations.

I had already lost Mexico, Brasil, Russia, India and the ungrateful fucker Austrailians by the time I turned the difficulty down. My best two guys are Colonels but nobody else is close to them. One is a 20 mission survivor with 30 kills and the other is of course a sniper with 44 kills.

Can't wait to do a "this will fail playthrough" but this time I think I'll just make sure I understand all the game systems first. Plus I'll get to turn on all the fun old x-com randomizer options.

If no-one has claimed it, I'll call dibs on the Civ5.

This was the high point of last night's XCOMing... just before the alien base assault mission that completely went to hell:
(http://frotz.net/misc/xeu-terror-good-end.jpg)

For anyone who missed the original and wants to see how it played/looked and how it compares to the new one.

http://lparchive.org/X-COM-UFO-Defense/

Everyone should probably read the prologue page just to remind yourself how brutal that game could be.

All yours. Though if you preordered through GMG you'll probably get sent a code on the 12th too.

Its all good, we can start a Civ5 giveaway daisychain.

The name (default. I swear I didn't touch it).
The nation.
The class (with base ability).

So perfect.

I had a pair of Ukrainians as some of my most successful early operators, the hardest thing I have done so far was having one let the other bleed out because the mission was in jeopardy and saving him would have probably gotten them both killed.

I fucking love the memorial wall, such a good touch.

Dunno, I really liked Apoc. I think part of the hate is because it moved away so far away from UFO/TFD in style and focus. On the other hand it introduced a lot of new mechanics and gameplay elements. It was just a different animal. It probably would have been more popular if Microprose started a new franchise for it, or simply called it a spin-off.

TFTD was great, but I admit was too hard for me. I didn't like the research changes. (Interrogation of aliens only worked if you discovered certain techs before, without the game telling that a tech or which one is needed.)

Welp, lost Classic Ironman #6.

First terror mission, and most of my good vets had come out of the sick bay, so I took them and a couple rookies along. All was going pretty well until my Sergeant Heavy got gutted by a cryssalid after he, my sniper, and one of my rookies all failed 75%+ CTH shots against it. Even with that I could've managed to win, but the rookie near the Sarge panicked and got gunned down by a near-dead floater. My other Rookie had been taking care of some floaters around the back of the department store that was being attacked when one of the civilian zombies that turned into another cryssalid came scurrying out. The Rookie could outrun the thing, causing it to have to double move to keep up to her, but both my Sergeant-rank Sniper and my Support who had fallen back to reload after taking out the first cryssalid and the last floater failed their reaction shots and then Sniper failed a 91% CTH, 100% crit Headshot in the next turn. A zombie that had been shuffling about then proceeded to explode into another cryssalid, taking out my second rookie. My Sniper and Support started booking it back to the extraction zone but got overtaken one after the other.

South Africa pulled out of the council with Egypt following, and I'm down to only two healthy Rookies with four more troops (some vets) still in sick bay for 7-18 days. There's still two weeks til the council report and some more money.

I think it's time to give either Normal or non-Ironman Classic a shot.

I'm not sure what the cost of putting off the alien base invasion mission is -- I'm guessing advancing the storyline mission series is how you possibly win -- but doing so, selling some random bits of debris, launching more satellites, and doing side missions has resulted in panic levels going down and having more trained soldiers and better gear, so I think I'm doing something right.

The PS3 demo is on PSN.  It's functionally the same demo as the PC version, with worse textures and frame rate.  The game controls decently with a controller, but the text is harder to read on the TV.  I might have to just Steam this one.  Maybe try it on Big Picture one day.

holy xcom crack. That is all.

It seems to scale the number of abduction missions way down after you take out the base, or at least it seemed to for me.  I was in a near critical state, having lost two nations, and on the brink of losing 4 more and heading into a death spiral when I took it out.  That by itself mostly reset panic, and since then I've only seen a bare handful of abductions, and it's back to being manageable again.

Yeah, finally taking out the base seems to have taken some pressure off, but my first UFO landing encounter after was a little dicey (flying discs.... ergh).

This game is scary.  Started up again around 8pm planning on taking a break for dinner after a mission or two and now it's 1am...

But... but... it can't possibly be scary because there's no Time Units, no free aim and it's got a Consolized interface!!!!

 :why_so_serious:

Reading all your posts is seriously making me consider using a VPN to get my game activated early.

It really seems like you shouldn't follow the "quests" too closely.   Getting sats up seems to be the biggest priority.

X-Com version of the Nexus launched. (The same site that hosts Falloutnexus, Skyrimnexus, etc etc.)

Let the modding begin!

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/

Edit: I also would ask all US-F13eers to show they solidarity with the rest of the world by refraining from playing the game until it is released in all other places! I am sure the common bond of kinship & camaraderie here is stronger than cheap thrill of blasting some sectoids. Right?   :why_so_serious:

Second the crack reference as i did basically the same thing; said "I'll play for an hour" at 10 and had to force myself off at 1am.  Paying the price for it this morning but it's worth it.  I'll sleep when those alien bastards are dead.

FInal mission from last night was when i was trying to capture the last alien on a map, a sectoid; sprinted an assault trooper up to him, then whiffed the stun gun 70%; trooper takes a plasma bolt to the face but is still upright.  Next turn, goes for 70% stun again, another miss.  Knowing the odds up my guy surviving another round are next to none, had to then order my sniper to headshot the sectoid out.  I was carrying on the imaginary conversation of how that played out in my head :)  That was basically when i knew it was time to take a break.

When do workshops become available? I can't launch any more satellites (2 currently) cause I don't have enough engineers for another uplink facility.

Someone else can confirm, but you need 6 engineers to build them: pick a mission that rewards engineers early on.

Cool, thanks.

Being sick I haven't been able to sit down and plow in to this for more than a few hours. (Boo.)  But I've had to check a number of times to make sure I was on "classic" difficulty after some of y'all said you were having problems.   My panic levels are rising and I desperately need to get another satellite launched, but nothing terrible yet.  Is that what everyone was referring to?  The missions themselves have only cost me a few rooks and a squaddie.

Though I did get my first terror mission last night before I decided I was too sick and tired to play anymore.  Well.. actually what decided it FOR me was starting the mission and mis-clicking as I was nodding-off so my Lieutenant walked right in to the middle of a floater swarm instead of suppressing them. *reload* :why_so_serious:

If you're reloading it's going to be a lot easier! :)

That's the only reload I've fallen in to so far. I save at the start of every combat mission in case I crash during or need to log off.  This one I'm going to give myself just because I was half-awake and medicated.

Any way to get a sniper? I lost mine on the third mission and now all my guys are going assault and support and stuff. Also, LMG Ammo??

I played a bit last night before bed and found myself mentally barking orders at my dudes. "Rookie! Get over there and medpack the sarge. Sniper, up that ladder, reload and then get into overwatch. Okay, Yeti, your turn, put some goddamn lead in that sectoid - NO YOU COCKSUCKER LEARN TO AIM. Fuck. You, in the blue, rush the fuck up there and bail that asshole out. I don't care that you're out of cover, fucking do it! Run and gun, go go go!"


... I'm probably fucked anyway, as I've neglected satellite coverage and all of North America is one pip away from telling me to go fuck my alien-hugging self.

Absolutely! *stuffs another sectoid corpse into a closet* We're totally waiting for the rest of you!

So yeah, this game is a ton of fun. Depending on the difficulty, you need to follow the quest or not. On normal, the main quest stuff gates enemy tech. So you won't see big baddies until after the base for example. On classic and impossible they'll truck on teching without you.

I had a horrible mindfuck of a late game council mission last night(no actual plot was involved, just an RNG mission in spoilers):

Sounds like it did fuck you over lol.

I'm so lost on how the soldier XP works.   Does anything other than shooting stuff give XP?  Does getting wounded hurt xp other than being unable to sortie?

Kills give XP. I've never leveled from any other action, so I don't know if healing and such just gives low xp, but from the officer training school talent (+25% xp from kills) I'm assuming only kills grant XP.

I've seen no penalties for wounded in normal game modes. After winning there's a mutator you can enable that will give you permanent penalties for being wounded in some way.

Also: almost every fucking officer school ability is amazing. DO NOT FORGOT ABOUT THEM.

This fucking game is so good. I've only got about 90 minutes in, still haven't even gotten the tutorial training wheels off yet, but yeah, it's the bomb. Classic ironman, have not done a mission where I didn't lose at least 1 guy. Surprised the shit out of me when one of my rooks gets panicked and starts firing directly at the fucking back of my highest leveled rocket launcher equipped soldiers. Luckily she missed but FUCK ME, that was a nut cutter.

Lost an Alien Abduction mission on Classic Ironman.  Lost as in, no survivors.  It came down to my wounded Assault trooper and the last Sectoid.  Got back to base and spent my last few bucks on ordering more rookies.  It's still early so I hope I can recover losing all my best soldiers but there is a lot of yellow on that threat board and I have no money for satellites and it's 11 days until the member nations pony up more cash.  I guess I can sell some alien artifacts to help bridge my funding.

Man, there are some shit panic rolls that make you go ::xcom::

I wasted 11 mutons taking no damage. Last muton uses his panic check ability. My lead squad member freaks the fuck out.

DUDE. Why are you scared? The squad has pretty much given no fucks so far on this mission. You're not even under fire! Wuss!

This is perhaps the most tactically interesting change from the original. It used to be "sell all corpses after original autopsy."  Now they have a purpose and it's frustrating!

Though you should *always* check the grey market after a downed-ufo mission. Damaged parts have no research value and a very nice resale.

Heh.

You may also wind up with a stockpile of things like Thin Men corpses that you can sell in a pinch. You kill a ton of those bastards.

Always keep about 10 corpses on hand in case of.. let's just say in case of council missions and `needs` in the engineering department.

I made myself an hour late to work today (salaried job FTW!) because I wanted to play "just one" mission before leaving for work.

This game is way too much fun. I was also up way too late last night as a result.

So far my only real gripe about the game is the UI. It's painfully obvious it was designed primarily for a 360 controller, and KBAM control for it just feels so awkward. As I don't have a 360 pad, I have little choice but to make do.  :|

My game unlocks in 28 hours.

I just have to make it through today without VPNing...

I've hit a bug a few times where I haven't been able to select any character and thus have to save and restart.  I'm not sure if it's a button I hit or the game just wigged out after a mid fight cut scene.  Happened 3 times so far.

Other than that.. I'm so addicted to this.  Got to love it when you decide to do something risky (overextend, go for the shot instead of running, etc) and get punished severely for it.

Hang in there, VPNing to get early unlocks gets Steam accounts completely banned I have heard.

So it looks like hits and misses are predetermined.

Yeah, I didn't realize that until later in my game (I do like that they clearly flag parts that have no value and parts that might have value but haven't been researched yet).  Selling broken Alien furniture and whatnot massively improved my cashflow.  Straight from the Warehouse 13 to Ebay.

It seems the random number seed is saved for each level, if that is what you mean, yeah. Only really comes in to things if you're savescumming particular shots.

Shot down my first alien ship.  Securing the wreck was almost a defeat.  Thought I was going to lose my whole squad when the sectoids started hitting from crazy distances.  Rookie put down the last sectoid covering my vets.  My suicide assault man took out the other alien (dont know what it was) at point blank range.  Total victory snatched from the gaping maw of absolute defeat!  My injured squad gets some time off to enjoy those new promotions!  Hopefully there will be time after work to see what was found and sell off damaged alien stuff.  Thanks for the tip!

Does this matter?  You can always cheat if you really want to.

That playthrough is fucking awesome.

I'm hear to declare that this game is amazing, fun, and that anybody who truly hates it is an asshole. Its also just as fucking god damn brutal as the original.  I made the mistake of sticking the difficulty to 'Classic', since I'm a veteran.  I'm having my ass handed to me on missions.  This is a wonderful adaptation of the originals style of game play, while smoothing out some of they very bad rough edges of the original.

And yes, much like most recent games, savescumming doesn't work.   :oh_i_see:

Solution to that is to swap weapons. At least that's what does it for me when I get sort of locked up. That bug and having to fiddle with the key bindings a few times to get them to stay the way I wanted them to have been the only gripes so far. Not sure what it is about the UI that has people so pissed off. Working fine for me just using mouse for everything but camera controls.

Welp, two play sessions, two hours of play and I think I'm going to have to start my Classic Ironman over. Last two missions have been almost complete and utter failures. Try to stun a alien and miss both times (once had a 70% chance and missed). Last mission lost EVERYONE. Got sent to a bridge in Argentina where there were some sectoids, some thin mints, and three fucking hover cyberfuckers. Promptly got surrounded, suppressed and facefucked. This was just after I got three recruits each with a speciality class including a sniper - who turned out to be goddamn useless with the rifle but killed a cyberfucker with his pistol because of the minimum range of the sniper rifle being shit.

I... Love... This Fucking Game.

I was not prepared for how good squad sight was for snipers. Snipers in general seem pretty broken, right up there with the hilariously good assault class. Who needs suppression when you have 100% crit snipers that hit 80+% from across the map? One support for medkits is okay, I guess. Wow, was I ever wrong to take 'can attack after moving' in my first game.

Sadly, I've run into some major bugs:

I lost my classic game to a save game bug. I was clearing out old save games but the games I was deleting were mislabeled, so I lost my save.
There is a specific tile on the 'highway overpass' that flickers constantly; I tried right clicking to walk over it and the game decided my guy actually wanted to jump down into sectoids.
On the upper ramps of the large UFO, the default camera distance is outside the ship so it constantly resets itself to outside when you tab units.
There are a lot of times where the automatic reactive fire within 4 tiles assault ability fails. Notably, when berserkers auto-charge when hit and also the initial 'must get under cover' free movement of aliens during discovery.
There is also some weirdness with the double fire, if the first shot destroys the cover, the second has the same hit chance as if the cover was still there.
Crit immunity from hunker down doesn't work.
And three major things I discovered that you might want to know:

It's worth it to start satellite production in the first month (create 2-3) since they take 20 days and also put your first 2 extra satellites in south america so that you can save up during the first 2 months and then instantly interrogate/autopsy. Saves a ton of reesarch time.
I captured too many guys early and don't have enough fragments to research, you can't sell alien weapons in this one so be aware there's no benefit to your 14th plasma pistol/light gun, the shards are more useful.
The steam vent layout is random for your base, and it's worth restarting to get one on 1st or 2nd floor so you can go power generator -> steam generator. The number varies as well. I got 1 in my new (normal) game, but had 3 in my classic. This out of all things left a sour taste, since it's so critical to success and also early and random.

Yea, this is fairly standard. I remember it being the same way in JA2 to prevent save-scumming (though you could still get around it by doing actions in a different sequence).

Haven't had this one, but a couple of times now I've had one where the game stops during "Alien Activity" periods, and just never returns control to me. Game doesn't actually crash, just .....seems like it gets stuck in a never-ending loop or something. Only way out is to force-close the game. :|

Also, I'm getting more and more skeptical about the correctness of the hit percentages... I've missed too many 96% shots now to trust it!

About one in 25? ;)

So far the only problems I've had were the weird flickering cursor on one bridge VIP map and a replicable CTD when trying to Suppress a Muton with one of my Supports.

I'm counting myself lucky.

I just don't get the need or motive to impliment this on the developers' side.  I've never understood how anyone can cheat someone other than themselves on a single-player game by toning down difficulty.   I had chose to restart a game early on because I apparently lost the number seed lottery really badly on a particular mission.  No amount of reloading and re-planning tactics could stop my squad from missing the first 12+ shots fired no matter what the percentage chance said.

That said I'm loving the game and for every bad decision they've made on the game they've made three good ones. 

I have squad sight on my awesome sniper dude, but I don't think I've ever gotten it to work right. I park him behind full cover somewhere in overwatch and move my supports/assaults/heavies up in an arc (overlapping fields of fire, leapfrogging, etc.). But he seems to only be able to get a shot on a dude occasionally, even if the dudes are in full view of my forward team.

Do you tend to leave your snipers in the far corner of the map or something? I usually pick a somewhat-elevated position close to the Skyranger.

Also, I think I've gone too much the opposite direction; I've neglected capturing plasma rifles from Thin Men/Floaters, and as a result my damage output isn't scaling as fast as enemy HP. I've got two supports with light plasma rifles, one laser rifle on an assault and a laser sniper rifle on my sniper, but the other two schlebs (usually a heavy and another assault or a rookie) are both toting the starting projectile weapons around.

(The one good side to this is that, if a projectile-wielding dude gets mind controlled, it's not the end of the world.)

Stunning sectoids seems pretty pointless after a short while, but getting a complement of 4-5 plasma rifles off of the aliens is invaluable - those things cost $100 each plus a ton of fragments.

Quite.  I've not seen one done with quite as much imagination and enthusiasm.

1. Never put your sniper on overwatch (well, not never, but don't just do it habitually) until the last action of your turn, you will get more options to use them if you keep them open (sorry if this sounds too simple, I've been watching a few people on twitch who constantly make the mistake of moving and overwatching their soldiers while the rest of their team is yet to take an action).

2. You'll want them to be in a position with good lines of sight over the map. Generally that means an elevated position, but for some maps you'll have to give up specific areas if they just aren't covering where you need them to. Also, if you're in a pretty safe position on the map full cover isn't necessary, and it might open your sight lines more.

Game owns.  On reflection I even like choices they made to simplify systems such as getting rid of time units.  You have fewer choices but they're more meaningful so there's no more micromanage-2-win edging your guys one tile for absolutely optimal play.  Makes the squad missions pleasingly energetic.

A first big niggle is the camera.  It's a huge bitch to control in large buildings with flickering walls and grabs control away from you too often.  I've lost one dude just clicking somewhere I thought was the roof only to have him go off on a merry voyage to a lower level to get spit-roasted by crappy sectoids.

I ran in to a pathing bug last night that was pretty frustrating, myself.  Had an assault that was poisoned and down to 1 heath.  The nearest support char wouldn't path to her because of two alien corpses in the door he was standing in, one on each side of the door.   It either thought one was alive or simply wouldn't let the door open.  I had to dash her out of cover towards the other support and leave them both out of cover for treatment.  Very, very frustrating.

Also; my terror mission. Holy crap was that a white-knuckle experience.  I didn't expect Chrysslads to be even MORE terrifying than the last game, but those fuckers are damn hard to kill.  Particularly if you still have the starter weapons.

I'm about to write this game off as a loss, though.  Panic levels in South America, China and Africa are all 1 tick from abandoning the council and I'm not seeing enough UFOs to shoot-down for missions.   My steam vents were on the bottom level which - now that I know they're random - pisses me off even more since I can't build satellite uplinks without a LOT more power.

I'll take this a step further and say, don't put anyone in overwatch until you've done all your movement.  Then go back through and put people in overwatch if you have nothing else you would rather have them do.

After losing horribly in my first Ironman Classic game I restarted and am playing much more conservatively.  What that means is I will pull someone back from contact pretty regularly if they aren't in good cover or don't have a > 50% chance to hit the target or there are several enemies who can get a shot at them.  Also, even if you have a good shot on an alien without moving, you may want to evaluate moving before shooting anyway just to see if you can improve your position (provided the alien isn't in overwatch) with better cover or support from your other troops.

Snipers seem to be a bit OP but I think all the classes have ability choices that can really change the game.  For example a veteran support with +3 tile move up there for changing the way you play.  Being able to cover huge chunks of the map in one go really helps the tactical situation.

Also: If you wipe-out the very first mission on Ironman, it asks if you want to restart the mission.  I'm guessing that got added in after someone had a very frustrating start.

Hehe quite possibly. However, yesterday I missed two of those during the same mission, over two sequential turns, which made me facedesk and promptly proclaim my woes at the top of my voice so all my neighbors would know of my plight.

The thing about probabilities is it's not just you.  A 98% chance it hit is 1 in 50.  If everyone who plays each gets 2 98% chance to hit opportunities per mission then it's a ~4% chance to miss one of them.  If there are 1,000,000 people playing one map per day then 40,000 people will miss a 98% chance at least once.  400 will miss both shots.

If everyone plays two maps per day then someone will miss all four opportunities every few days!.  This progression continues with more people playing and more opportunities occuring, and what this means is that there is someone somewhere who is going to miss MANY 98% chances to hit during his/her entire play through (and there will be quite a few people who make every single one) and probably rant on a forum somewhere about how the game is rigged and broken.

It's probably not going to be you, or anyone reading this, but it could be.

e: maybe a more interesting example is missing 5 75% shots in a row.  (1-p)^n means that for 1,000,000 samples about 1000 of those will miss all five consecutive shots...  It's easy to think it's a broken system but people really don't get math and then like to post about it in all-caps.

Snipers are meh until squad sight, and godly when fully leveled. Assaults are always good, but I tend to swap out the shotgun for a rifle since laser/plasma rifles do more than enough damage. Supports are crazy freaking good in general. Take the +3 movement skill early on. They will wind up being a key part of your breach and reaction teams. Heavies are mandatory (HEAT rounds and Rockets/Heavy Plasma make all the mean shit like discs and pods later on manageable)

Really, I like all the classes besides low tier snipers. Who suck, badly.

I forgot to mention I had my first map where my Sniper could climb up and perch last night.   "Damn Good Ground" perk + Squad Sight = half-dead Muton with just the starter rifle.  :ye_gods:

I unlocked the snipe twice and plasma sniper rifles at the same time. I am death incarnate.

Squad sight is slightly OP.  I was on a realllly long map, with a good elevation point.   My squad infiltrated a UFO, and the crystal dude popped up.  My sniper who was about 5 screens away shot him, through a tiny doorway, and 2 other openings.


Actually there's one advantage to overwatching a sniper right away.  If you overwatch the sniper, she will instantly pop any revealed enemies before they can get into cover.  At least in normal it works since they don't go into cover until discovered.

I'm aware that it works like this, but that doesn't mean I have to like it! ;P

Dude. Assaults. I run them up in greys faces and double tap them.  :drill:


I have a question, maybe this got cut. But how can I, other than mouse, move around my base ( I thought it was more free moving than this in videos ), and also, previous videos shows you being able to zoom into the modules and see whats going on. Was that cut? Clicking on most things is just a list now.

Weird, I ignored the +3 move perk. Why would I want a guy who's forward out of contact with the team? At least, until I get stealth suits, and even then, it's my assault class that is forward, since I run and gun directly in. Maybe i'll try it next game.

Mostly Yoru the squad sight helps because on a leapfrog, your snipers are in the back and when edge forward to trigger sight of a new unit, you can fire on it with your sniper who is already stationary, probably get a hit, and then have the option to back the guy off or rush forward. Otherwise, the enemies will get a turn to fire at your dudes before your sniper can get in it (except with a pistol...).

Far better to just move them last, move them up in a sprint if no one has seen an enemy yet.


It's just a list, I don't think you can move around the base.

Huh, I distinctly recall zooming into some guy on a tread mill in an earlier video. Guess it got cut.

I have the +3 move and 3x medkit perk on my medic support. It's great because it also applies to the initial movement radius, allowing your medic to move-and-medkit in a single turn over a wider area. I've had this save the lives of soldiers who got poisoned by a Thin Man while low on health. If it'd taken two turns to scoot over and heal, they'd've been dead.

Okay, if it applies to the initial movement that's different. I read the perk as it increasing the run distance. There are a few descriptions that are very vague, like 'bullet swarm' which I just thought enabled 'fire and move' when actually allows you to fire twice in a round? I like holo-targeting but that one's a no-brainer if true. Mayhem "confers additional damage to suppression and all AE abilities"? What other AE abilities? Does that include rockets? grenades? How much damage? I took it, and turns out it adds 2 damage to everything. Phew.

Has anyone figured out how to use a grapple? I couldn't. It's also a shame the flying is janky as fuck, they really did a one-pass on mouse selection of tiles and shoved it through QA because it's basically broken if you're in a higher floor view than the base.

Yeah +3 move is great for Support-Medics.  It was a no-brainer pickup for me for the reasons Yoru went in to. 

I have Holo Targeting on my Heavy and it's GLORIOUS. Particularly if he's suppressing someone that the sniper has a clear line of fire to.

I'll agree with BW on the Assaults being great for running up and wtfpwning people.    Saved my heavy's ass last night when the last Muton form the previous pack I mentioned was left with 4 health and flanking the heavy.  Run & Gun  -> POW IN THE FACE.  Dead Muton.

The Team synergy aspects of this are just FANTASTIC so long as you develop the squad and learn how to make them work with each other.  Much better than the original where 1-2 "super soliders" who'd lived forever and had uber stats would do all the heavy work and killing while the rest of your team would mop-up.

Had this bite me in the butt during my first base assault. Was in a long room with 4 troopers left and 1 floater left who was in run and gun range, so i ran up to him to max my hit percentage and right when i get there the fog of war revealed 3! chryssalids and 2 drones who promptly surrounded my poor guy.  He was able to still off the floater, but of course was killed and zombiefied immediately.  Which left me with 2 heavies and a sniper vs 6 ; if it hadn't been for the heavies ability to shoot twice in a turn, i would have been toast.  Finished the base clear with those 3 but lesson learned.

Yeah, its a risky move, if you cant see beyond your target. But if you have two that can work in tandem, with a sniper backing them up... Its Rambo. No idea if this will work in the later game.

This is fine to do with Opportunist, which removes the aim penalty for overwatch shots. But in general don't do it (you can't double tap like that either). Squad Sight + double tap is brutal. Gunslinger and Double tap allows you to help out in a UFO breach party as well (the huge ones have shit outside sniping LOS)

You don't need opportunist with this method.  When the target is discovered it's not in cover.  If I don't use overwatch, they usually run out of LOS.

You have a huge penalty to hit with overwatch is why. Taking a 20-30% penalty isn't usually worth it imo, they'll show back up in their next turn and you can take the overwatch shot then.

My snipers can't hit shit during overwatch without opportunist. What would be an 85% shot (in the open, long range) five dudes will reliably miss.

SO FREAKING GOOD!  :heart:  :heart:  :heart:




Sadly poor Neil bought the farm shortly after taking that.

R.I.P N.D.T.

I'm suspecting something may be wrong with my game.  I went through the opening mission, no problems.  Start the second mission, pick an easy one.  Land and the scientists start babbling about how the aliens have 'evolved again'.  Wait, what?  Again?  What do you mean, again?  That implies that they'd already evolved once before or something, and this is the second time we've ever seen them.

Then four aliens with like sixteen health each fly in and proceed to one-shot the entire team through cover from across the map.

That... doesn't sound right!

Hmm, there's a patch being downloaded, I wonder what it did?

So, I've become an unstoppable Juggernaut at the end of the game. In fact, I don't think I'm going to even finish this game since I roll through everything. I guess that's normal mode for you. I'll definitely have to replay in classic for a bit more difficulty, thin men went from terrifying to 'meh' even in the early game, since single shots were no longer fatal and I could kill them in one hit. I kind of wish there was a difficulty somewhere in the middle.

I really need to plan for my classic mode building plan this time though; I ended up doing poor planning on the satellite network and power system. I also think more workshops earlier would have been good, and I think I can probably ignore the laboratories as well. Everything seems gated through engineers, I'm not sure why you'd go the science route. Not having the early building is going to hurt. I think I'll probably go africa, and dump my second satellite in the US, start building 3 (if I can afford, otherwise 2), power, satellite station, then dump the 2 in south america for the research. Or, maybe just mix and match for maximum dollars. Definitely going for laser rifles first, though. So many choices!

One thing I do wonder, do they increase the monster numbers based on the number of guys you bring? Or are the 2 extra just gravy? If the numbers are static, I'll probably rush for more squaddies.

Edit: Someone suggested this as a start:
1. Base: Europe.
2. Build 2nd Satellite.
2. Build Workshop (this is why we're in Europe)
3. Build a 2nd Sat Comm adjacent to the first.
4. While Sat comm is building build 3 satellites.

It looks like my first playthrough may have hit a major snag.

I took a very hard abduction mission in Canada because it was the most critical fear level of my three options. I was all proud of my newly developed laser sniper rifles and pistols. I bring the majority of my A squad with a few rookies filling in the slots for my injured A-teamers.

And then the game decided to field three mutons. I have a feeling that my nigh-indestructible A-team may not make it out of this one, no matter how many reloads. The map has 3 thin men, 3 mutons, about 5 or six floaters, and an unknown quanity  of sectoids. All of my cover options are fucking cars and the mutons have plasma grenades.

This is on normal.

I may have to start a classic ironman game tonight and radicalthon it.

The way I handle unstoppable numbers (I once got 3 squads of mutons and 1 overseer in a small UFO) is to simply put everyone on overwatch out of range and then pull back your scout. If everyone is behind full cover with no sight lines (not on the edge) the enemies will advance up until they can see you, allowing them to get into assault range and for you to pepper them with reaction shots. It works pretty well, though it's fairly tedious. If you're on the overpass, you're pretty fucked. I hate that map so much; a narrow car-lined alley with no full cover and too much forward distance to move from car to car. You know if you have autosave on, you can load before you deploy and get a new map? That might be the way to go.

And all cars are bombs; whose bright idea was it to have cars do as much damage as alien grenades (6)? Totally dumb; they should do no more than 3 damage when they explode.

Yeah theres... a few bugs.   Like last night my game paused on the graveyard map for a second and suddenly there were 6 floaters that spawned right on top of my team after I moved the 2nd char.  Not near.. RIGHT ON TOP, and then the game ended my turn and destroyed my team.   I reloaded and it didn't' happen again so it was a definite bug.   Glad I opted not to do Ironman.

Einstein should totally have snowy white Guile hair.

This is a new map to me. It's a bar and grill with a large parking lot. Fortunately, my godlike sniper has the "toss the camera" skill, so I managed to spot the asspounding before stumbling upon it. I may have to send my crazy Aussie assault soldier in to lure the mutons back into sniper and heavy fire overwatch doom. The big problem is that the hard cover is very limited as the building is about 75% of the map.

EDIT -- I may have to move up the western edge, take out the thin men and breach the building, effectively flanking the mutons and floaters.

Man, I love this game. So excited to have a weekend here where I can play for hours. Bonus points since my kid is enjoying it as well.

Well, after six Classic games where I couldn't get past even the first month, my seventh is doing absolutely stellar by comparison.


Of course, now the game's starting to really lay it on me. I'm getting almost nothing but terror missions now.

Yeah, last night I had three instances of a pack of aliens just spawning in the middle of my units. Not the usual thin man scripted spawn, just "three floaters.. NOW!" and sectoids and whatnot spawning in a location they couldn't possibly have moved to(well behind my sweep and clear, etc)

The last mission also bugged out on me in my normal game. It's supposed to spawn some stuff to open the way, never does. I had to wiki how the mission is supposed to play out because I couldn't figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.

From the 2K forums:

No, Jake Solomon definitely does it in the Gamespot Quicklook video on youtube.  He zooms in to look at the commanders swank office, which is not something that's clickable.

I tried, I couldn't find any key combination that does it.  It seems silly to take something like that out unless it was buggy and causing crashes.

Your prayers are answered! 2gb patch:

There are a bunch of things not mentioned, and one of them is that you can now zoom in and out of the base with the scrollwheel.

A 30% penalty is offset by them having zero cover.  It's a flanking shot which gives a big bonus.

So I'm not crazy! ( About that, at least. )

Bah, have to rename a new set of movies to stop the HORRIBLY LOUD AND UNSKIPPABLE splash screens on startup now.

I think you should be able to disable them by commenting-out the relevant lines in XComEngine.ini:

StartupMovies=Logo_2KFiraxis
StartupMovies=UE3TechLogo
StartupMovies=LogoLegal_PCConsole

Is there anything in particular I can do to make sure a squaddie is promoted to sniper? I have a bunch of assaults , heavies , 2 supports and no snipers!

I also love the fact that grenades are actually useful in this game vs original xcom.

Kill all the others and whisper softly at the machine. "See, you should have been a sniper, then you'd still be alive, motherfucker."   Eventually the rest of the squad will let the rookie know.

Yeah, this is sometimes true (why I said not never), but because this is entirely random it is often better to be in a position to choose. Such overwatch shots are taken at a penalty, and might not be on the unit you need to target or any number of other things. They might also double up with other overwatch shots from your other units. What good is having two snipers reaction shot a sectiod that was within spitting distance of your assault guy already when there's a muton revealed later in the turn that might kill your other units?

So yeah, there are some times that it is useful, but as a general rule it's not smart play because you are ceding control of your decisions and acting habitually. If you have any desire to take it to the hardest difficulties this won't work, every decision needs to be reasoned.

Last mission before I finally turn off the Xbox and head in to work:

The rookie on the team panics.  Turns 180 degrees and point-blank shoots the Heavy standing right behind her, dropping him with a critical wound.

Fortunately she's the one carrying the medikit, so she can immediately patch him up, saying something about how "Medikits fix everything."

(I half expect to hear she's been murdered back in the barracks some evening, with a note reading "Medikit THIS, bitch!" pinned to her pj's)

Grapples work in one of two ways: Vertically, you stand directly under the ledge of something grappleable (e.g. a building or a balcony) and hit grapple. This basically teleports you up onto that ledge or balcony, but costs a move to do so. This means you can grapple + shoot or grapple + dash; I usually do the latter, as grappling tends to leave you in the open up top.

Horizontally, you seem to be able to grapple across to ledges/balconies within about 8 tiles laterally that are within 1 level of your own (one level up or down). Works the same way as the above.

I've used a grapple successfully several times. I have one on my best support - a Corporal with the double-shoot-in-Overwatch perk. I was on a map with 11 (!) fucking mutons and 1 berserker. My entire team is holed up on a roof, overwatched. One by one, mutons and berserkers climb a pipe and, the moment their wrinkly pink heads peek over the lip, they get a hail of plasma and laser to the skull.

Except for one asshole. One asshole sits in the middle of the street and begins systematically blowing the fuck out of my cover. Somehow he has LOS on my guys, but we don't have LOS on him.

Now, I can't leave the roof without being entirely surrounded by the remaining 4-5 mutons and probably losing 2 or more high-ranked dudes.

But I can grapple. I hit the grapple button and see grapple boxes all over the roof of a higher building across the alley. Grapple Girl spidermans her way over and then unloads hot plasma death into the muton below, who is foolishly standing in the open in the middle of the alleyway. One crit later, and he's adding some nice weapon shards to my collection.

So which is more delicious: beans or weapon shards?

Bean shards.

So I've run into my first Sectopod in the worst possible way to run into one. I'm smack in the middle of a horrible clusterfuck of an alien supply transport, with 5/6 of my squad already pretty heavily wounded only two rooms in after slogging through nine Heavy Floaters, a Cyberdisk, its drone contingent, and two Sectoid Commanders. The worst part is, two of my higher-rank vets are convalescing in the sickbay while my two flat-out best guys (Assault and Support) are halfway done with Psionics training. So half my squad is my B-team of Lieutenants and a couple Sergeants, with three of my A-team Colonels leading them.

I'm in a big supply hallway with two walkways on the outside of the ship and a walkway down the center, I had my squad split into three: Support and Heavy down the left walkway, Heavy and Assault down the right walkway, and my second Assault hopping from cover to cover down the center with my Sniper perched up on a ledge with LOS down the whole shebang. I accidentally overextend my right hallway Heavy by one single tile; he Dashes one space past his normal move, but since it's into heavy cover I don't think much of it... until he reveals a Sectopod, two drones, and three normal Sectoids. His move ends my turn, and my Heavy gets mowed down by the Sectopod. He'd have lived if he hadn't gotten hit by some Floater fire earlier.

Not knowing how I'm going to take that thing out, I maneuver my mostly-healthy Support on the opposite side of where my Heavy died; my Sniper's Squad Sight gets him access to the Sectopod, and he crits with a Headshot for 16 damage. I pull my Support back, set up firing lines with my Assaults and last Heavy, and Overwatch. The Sectoids come in and get mowed down, but the Sectopod and its drones don't move. One of my Assaults moves up enough to get the Sectopod back on the scope and he beans it with his laser shotgun for about 7 damage. My Sniper sets up, takes aim, and wipes out the last of the 'pod's health with another crit from his Plasma Sniper Rifle. His Colonel-rank ability kicks in, letting him shoot again if his shot killed an enemy who was out of cover or flanked. Both drones go down immediately after.

It's going to suck losing that Heavy, but it was his time. He had a tendency to get wounded in most every mission and those wounds finally ended up taking their toll; his Will was so low from repeated injuries despite being such a high rank that a single Muton's Intimidate could send him into a panic, even when he was full health. He was turning into a liability, but I wish I could've just benched him into a quiet retirement instead of having to take him along because he was the ONLY Heavy I'd gotten through normal promotion (the other one was a mission reward).

Colonel Shaun "Diesel" Smith, you will be missed.

Yeah, they  managed to add a new word to the xcom dictionary of stuff that makes me cry with the sectopod.  I hate seeing those things more than chrysallids, and that's saying a lot.  The tentaculats from terror from the deep still are at the top of that list though.

NEVER. SPRINT. SCOUT.

If your scout is not sitting in blue and overwatch, and you are on classic mode, you will regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

Learn from my mistakes.

Archangel armor on an Assault is just about the best thing ever, by the way.

Even in Normal mode you can really hose yourself this way.

Yah, I like sprinting ahead and running into a squad of crysallids or mutons.  FFFFFFFFFFF.  

Opened the door into a UFO and all of the sudden there's 3 floaters overhead. Uhhhh, OK.  So long my brave support guy, I barely knew ye.

Game unlocked at midnight last night for us Euros etc. I didn't manage to stay awake, however getting up to make my other half a cup of tea at 5.30am before she left for work meant I've played for a couple of hours already this morning.  :awesome_for_real:

2 days of reading all your gushing praise left me with high expectations, and I'm happy to say that they've been completely met so far. This shit is gonna be addictive. I'm still only in the tutorial and I'm attached to my squad already!

The random.... pauses in the.... dialogue in cut-scenes are........ amusing.

Snipers get a magical scouting grenade thing that I find useful, since they can chuck it a good long ways.  In the opening round I'll have a sniper move up into cover and throw one, and it reveals enough of the battlefield that I know whether or not I can safely have the rest of the squad run forward.

I like tossing it into buildings/wrecks or down alleyways. If you have two snipers, you can also use it to have a forward sniper set up a rear squad-sight sniper to wtfpwn some unaware aliens at extreme ranges.

I'm still working out the mechanics of this, but it appears Satellites give you extra cash per one hoisted?  How the hell did I miss that?   Month 3 and I only *just* got enough power and cash to build an uplink and launch 2 satellites and suddenly my income jumped, despite China and Japan dropping-out.   :uhrr:

Wish I had more time to sit-down and grind through an entire game. Still working on the 1st and only just got skeletal armor and my sniper hit Colonel.

Yeah, satellite coverage gives you cash and a bonus (engineers and/or scientists) for each country you put them on, as well as lowering the panic level. Plus, if you manage to get a satellite over each country on a continent, you get the same bonus as if your base was there. (You can also get a Satellite Nexus facility that can have 4 linked satellites rather than just the 2 per uplink).

I've been playing impossible a bit. It is strangely much harder at the beginning than the state I'm up to now. I think I may have screwed my game with some poor strategy layer though - keeping away from tech tree spoilers has meant some less than ideal research so far.

Such a fun game.

I finally got a sniper with squad sight and he dies a mission later.

Fricken picking which terror mission is the devil's choice....and of course the mission to the country with the panic level that i need to bring down is the hardest one.

Holy fuck 5 mutons make me cry.


God bless Firaxis for making the levels less of 'send everyone in different directions to play hunt the alien' and more a directed experience.

Totally agree here.  I've had a few "Oh, fuck this" moments uncovering a spawn of aliens on top of another spawn. (Funnily enough, at the Bar & grill map last night I, too, had 5 Mutons.  3 out and 2 in.)  But it makes the gameplay so much more directed than the old "Send teams of 2-3 in EVERY direction and hope one team doesn't get wiped."

Expansions ( DLC, now I suppose ) Hopes: Terror from the deep ( Submariner stuff ). New Hybrid classes.

Satellites do FOUR things

1) They give you cash per month
2) They give you Engineers/Scientists per month
3) If you have them over an entire continent you get the continent bonus

4) Satellites prevent aliens from doing things in the nation with the satellite.

Notice that if you have a full continent of satellites you never get an abduction there? Its because your satellites intercept them and you can shoot them down.

If you have satellites over the entire world you will never have abduction missions.


They are at a penalty, but the penalty tends to be less than 20%. So if you can force an enemy out of any kind of cover you're better off with overwatch.

Early on, moving so that enemies lose sight on you and must move through and overwatched area is a very efficient way to kill them.

Overwatch is almost TOO efficient when you have the snipercam and squad vision.

My Aussie Assault soldier was about one turn from finally capturing an Outsider. The Outsider decided to move. I had left my Goddess-like sniper on overwatch. Whoops. She pretty much put the kibosh on THAT capture attempt. It was an amazing shot, however. And now she's a Colonel. So that's nice.

I had thoroughly buttfucked my first playthrough with the tutorial, so I decided to start over on Classic Ironman with the tutorial disabled. Started with a base in Europe and went on the first mission thinking it would be a toodle.

NOT A TOODLE.

Thank FSM you can restart the first mission instead of having to take what it gives you. I had to play through it FIVE FUCKING TIMES last night because I got wiped out four straight times by soldiers that couldn't shoot, panicked or otherwise just sucked monkey ass, all equipped with the dirt basic assault rifle that is balls. Finally, on the 5th attempt, I get some shooters and win with only 1 loss and no other injuries. Got 2 promotions, one to sniper and one to heavy. BOO-YAH. Nothing like fighting 6 sectiods with 4 green recruits armed with pea shooters and cheesecloth for armor. The second mission was a walk in the park. Kill 4 sectoids, which I did in less than five minutes, which meant I also got another promotion to support. In one mission sectoids went from ZOMGCOMINGRIGHTFORUS to MEH.

I'm sure my next mission will be Night of the Living Thin Mints.

I'm pretty sure the overwatch penalty is much larger than the light cover penalty. I can count the number of times an overwatch of mine has hit (twice), and the number of times an enemy overwatch has hit (also twice). I've stopped bothering with it now unless the turn is over.



You're crazy, grenades are SO MUCH WORSE in this version than the original XCom. Smaller AoE, less damage (comparatively), you may only carry one, you cannot rig them to blow when your guy is shot, and you cannot throw them across the map.

Even so, I still use all my grenades every mission - but they are certainly less useful than XCom grenades.



Been playing Ironman Impossible, the second mission (abduction) tends to have in excess of 12 sectoids, which basically makes it non-winnable due to soldier attrition. I'm trying to figure out the best time to bail from abduction missions to minimise score loss.



Is anyone else regularly missing 96% and 97% shots? All the others are fine, but I've only hit once with a shot rated at 96% or 97% accuracy. Also I totally get the gripes about the interface, I feel like the mouse is being poorly substituted for another from of control, which is pretty annoying.

A lot of overwatch shots happen at long range and thus they miss.  If you're actually forcing the enemy to move into the overwatch then the range is controlled.

Finally made it through the alien terror base for the first time.  I was woefully under gear for the fight, but got pretty lucky in the enemy doing some odd things.  Now is a much different story, new discoveries are coming quickly .  Is it strange to skip laser tech nearly entirely?  My early lack of scientists really hurt, and now I am rolling out some plasma tech.  Am I going to miss anything important?  

Laser does less damage, I'd skip it totally if you can do plasma.

Plasma it is!  Are there any useful techs unique to laser? 

Lasers may be easier to manufacturer, though (e.g. don't need to stun as many aliens).

Sorry Sophismata, grenades are amazing.

They do three things:

1. Rarely miss.
2. Destroy cover and massively improve other shot %.
3. Do a fixed amount of damage (great for capture attempts).

On impossible, especially the early missions where pretty much every enemy shot is a dead rookie, they are vital. Only my snipers have scopes, and once levelled support gets metkits.

Once leveled, Support gets Medkits AND grenades!  :drill:  (Or stuns if you really need to cap something.)

I'm finding Support; if leveled properly into a specific role; is nearly as OP as snipers.  +3 move, Supression and deep pockets!?  Hello my little capture machine.  I wonder if the stun launcher is in, or if I can only use the improved sungun  from The Foundry project.

Support is handy but so far on my Impossible playthrough I'd say I've got more milage out of mine with smoke grenades than anything else. Though she hasn't leveled much, so I only just got suppression.

I'd have to say the classes work pretty well. Almost every mission that I haven't been able to field one of each I have noticed the loss a fair amount (thank god for Heavy rockets - I have complete disregard for the Dr's words about exploding the enemy). Though the Sniper with squad sight (never get anything else!) and the Assault unit (only got one, damn rng) get most of the kills.

Any advice for someone starting brand new?  I've played the demo twice, but not sure how best to start my base. 

I go for the steam vent early.  The thermal generator takes some strain off power needs.  Satellites will be a key to income, make sure you build them early too.  You can have more than one building project going at a time!  Most of my buildings with adjacent bonuses have been column stacks.  I tried to keep most of it on one side of the map so there was room to rebuild in better formations on the other side when and if the pressure eases, or at least there is room for the new stuff. 

Build satellites early, but don't launch them until just before the end of the month. Use them on key priorities that are about to leave the council.

Build satellites early, but don't build them until you have a few engineers, leave them to the last possible moment - so they finish just before the end of the month, but not too soon that you don't get the engineer discounts.

Build your next uplink early so that you can add another two or three satellites in the second month.

Get the OTS and the extra squad members as early as you can.

Don't waste money on equipment unless you are absolutely using it. Don't sell stuff on the grey market until you need the cash for sure.

More game-y advice: If I was doing an impossible ironman I'd replay the first mission until you get it flawless, and then restart the game until you get a good steam square.

Also Megrim: I got my Civ5 code (in gmg, under 'keys') so if you haven't got yours and would still like it let me know.

So this unlocked here today and a couple of hours ago I started it for the first time. However either the game is really buggy with the current patch, or it just doesn't like me or my computer... the first tutorial mission was fine, but I had to kill the game five times with task manager while I was trying to do the second one. The first thing I learned was that every time I used reload, the only command the UI accepted after that was "End turn", after which even ESC stopped working (and it didn't really end the turn). So I decided to avoid reload for the time being, but then I found out the same thing happens when I'm supposed to target something with the rocket launcher... I get the tutorial note about targeting, but at that point nothing works except, well, reload command  :ye_gods:

I'll try it with a different computer tomorrow, but from a quick look around the forums it seems that this is happening to some other people too.

I absolutely love my supports, but I bring 2 heavies at all time entirely for HEAT.

Blaster Bombs yes, Stun Launcher no.

Also, support tends to be the weakest of the classes, though the +3 move is very nice.

My Supports do really well. I have three of them; my main one is a mix of both trees (who also turned out to be psychic), one is full field medic, and the third is full down the right-hand tree, with the exception of getting Dense Smoke instead of Combat drugs. Each one does really nicely, and light plasma rifles are probably their best weapons, freeing up both inventory slots for other things instead of SCOPEs to boost their middling Aim. Smoke grenades are lifesavers, and they're arguably better-suited for suppression than a Heavy.

Also, remember that "Second Wave" stuff that was talked about a few pages ago, where beating the game would unlock extra options to enable for your next playthrough? Well...


And finally:


Ugggggggh.

I thought I saw a screenshot with the second wave options button...

For enabling it, see here: http://xcom.the-craftsmen.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=132

I agree with you; as I said, I often use ALL my grenades in EVERY mission.

This does not stop them being much worse than the XCom 1 grenades.



I've done the first mission a bunch of times, and I usually complete it with no casualties. Unfortunately, any soldiers wounded in the first mission are not available for the abduction mission due to recovery times. Best I've come out of it with was three healthy soldiers + one wounded, which was a good place to be for the abduction. Sadly, the abduction mission spawned 12 sectoids in one small area and the other 3 on my flank, and since plasma fire often destroys your cover it didn't go too well.

The most effective strat is turning out to be retreating once you find the aliens and letting them come to you one at a time, but it doesn't always work. Still, if you can force them to double move instead of shoot you've saved a life. Finally, light cover is a death sentence.

Link doesn't work.

I can't stop playing this. I'm very glad I got an XBox controller though, means I can swap between sitting down with mouse & kb and standing up using the controller when I've been sitting down too long (anything over an hour and I get uncomfortable)  :awesome_for_real:

Only playing on Normal and restarted a couple of times to get the early months right. My first game I didn't find how to build satellites until 3 months in. Since they weren't showing up in engineering I assumed I needed to research something... then I found the other tab on the engineering window. 2nd game I didn't twig that my steam vents were all on the bottom level until 3 months in. Third game is going great!

Choosing between Snapshot and Squad Sight on snipers is the toughest skilling choice for me. I've got one sniper with Snapshot and it's really, really useful. Many times he's saved the life of some other squaddie by being able to run into LOS and pop a shot off on a threatening ET. But Squad Sight is also the bees knees! If Assaults & Supports weren't so useful I'd take 2 Snipers every mission! I love that the game is full of these choices, where both options are good ones and you end up finding yourself being both glad of the choice you made and also wishing for the other option at the same time. Great design.

And I almost never use grenades... I want those weapon fragments dammit! I can probably get away without having to use them on Normal though, I'm sure they'd be more liberally thrown around if I was on a harder difficulty :)

Fuck me, Classic is hard and/or I am bad at games.  :awesome_for_real:

My second playthrough was going well with 4 promoted soldiers (1 of each class). On an abduction mission into the construction site, I took a heavy, sniper with squadsight, a medkit support and a rookie just to get the rookie a level. Rookie runs out, gets in full cover and discovers 2 of the 6 sectoids on the map. Promptly gets shot, but not enough to kill him. I run my support up to him also in full cover thinking to heal his wound the next turn. However, a couple of sectoids have shots on my sniper so when the time comes to heal him, I choose to fire at one instead. Next turn, the sectoid comes around the corner, blasts the rookie to death which then makes my heavy and sniper panic. The heavy shoots the sniper for 5 points of damage. Next turn, the sniper buys it with his 1 HP, as well as the doctor. Then the heavy gets into a shootout with the last sectoid and loses, despite most of his shots being over 50% to hit.

From there it went downhill until I didn't have enough troops to field a full squad, ignored all the missions because of it, and promptly lost the game on the 2nd month.

It's way too late to start another game, but damnit, I REALLY REALLY want to. This game is fucking incredible. Easily game of the year.

Protip for multiplayer: stick with soldiers. They have more options and more customisability than the aliens, plus the aliens are finicky to control and can bug out.

Psionics is extremely strong, and a fantastic counter to mutons.

Classic beat'd.


Now on to slogging through Classic Ironman again.

I do, unless it's a huge ship mission or an alien base mission where distances are too short to make them useful.  At that point I go to my formula of 2 assaults, 2 supports, 2 heavies.

But yeah, once you get archangel armor, put 'em on your snipers immediately.  Zip those bitches up to the highest ground you can find and you'll get cheap kills all day long.  Both my snipers are colonels, and with double tap and squad sight, nothing lives once my assault/scout troops have flushed it out.

Impossible still bugged. New soldiers have more health than my veterans.

I put a lot of the 'problems' some people have been having down to the last 10 years of game design.  ( was reading the forums at GameFaqs yesterday, lots of rage there.  Most games have been far, far more forgiving than the 90's games were and rewarded aggression over defense.  You have to play very defensively to be successful in X-Com. 

Lost another 3 countries in my 1st game last night.  At this point I'm going to write this one off as too much *effort* to attempt to reconcile while still learning. I only have 17 engineers and 2 satellites.  I'll come back to it.

Exactly.  I'll spend two turns on a regular basis having half of my squad reload while the other half is on overwatch.  I get the feeling the CoD generation doesn't have that kind of patience.

Unlocked for me last night.

Yeah, this is good. It had me up till 3pm.

I like everything they've done in the strategic game. Still think they went a bit too far in the tactical game. That said I really like the class and skill system.

Oh god the cinematics and the tutorial are awful. There is absolutely no charm or wit in any of them. Also why are all the guns about 6 sizes too big for the character models.

And I'm really struggling to see the point of the shotgun.

I spent 35 mins clearing a UFO map only to find that there was just the one sectiod out there, and all I had left to actually do was charge the outsider and kill it. True story.

I'm getting cocky - haven't failed an impossible mission so badly that it's caused a reload for about 6 missions. Yet to see cyberdisks, though. Also I am about to fail the strategy level...

Ninja edit: The shotgun is a boss. I dunno why you wouldn't use it.

The rookie bug is pissing me off though. My reward sniper has the most health of any unit on my squad, and unfortunately I've lost so many now that I have to take some of the newbies with me.

Does invading the base early increase the difficulty ahead of schedule?


It will make far more sense later.

I was going to post a bunch of my tips, but I see a guy on the 2k forums already did it for me.

Here are a bunch of things I endorse. No major spoilers.

There is a caveat to the above post's #7 though.

Get close enough to use it on anything and you will struggle no more. It is a one-shot kill on most things especially early.

Is there a way to send two interceptors at a UFO?  I have played for eight hours straight this morning and I'm about to dive back in.  I may start a new game, every country is going red and I'm on a slow slide to defeat.  Learned a lot though.

Has anybody on the PC with more than 99 saved games figured out how to fix things so the list of games works properly again? I tried deleting some but that ended up deleting the wrong games including the most recent saves (fortunately I made a backup of everything before attempting).