Pissed about an X-Com FPS? Firaxis hears ya...

[Ironwood]

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

[tgr]

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.

[Malakili]

Short interview and a screenshot.

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

[Margalis]

Two comments:

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

2. Dem textures!

[Ingmar]

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.

[KallDrexx]

Looks like the UFO series.....

[Amarr HM]

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. 

Same, but no mouse.

[Merusk]

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

[eldaec]

Short interview and a screenshot.

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

This is exactly how x-com should look.

[Teleku]

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

[jakonovski]

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

I'm 99% sure it will not be.

[Shrike]

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.

[Simond]

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

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

[Merusk]

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

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.

[UnSub]

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

[Murgos]

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.

[Xilren's Twin]

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.

[Yegolev]

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!"

[Zetor]

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!

[eldaec]

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!"

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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


Something I may pick up in the meantime.

[koro]

That's not a very assuring Metacritic score.

[rk47]

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

[koro]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

That's not a very assuring Metacritic score.

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

[cironian]

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.

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).

[Big Gulp]

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.

[tgr]

trololol

[Merusk]

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


Something I may pick up in the meantime.

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.

[Speedy Cerviche]

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.

[koro]

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.

[Amarr HM]

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

[Merusk]

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.

[HaemishM]

Gameinformer Preview with copious screenshots.

Holy shit, I got a gaming boner.

[Ironwood]

Um, that doesn't look bad.

Is this a wind up ?