XCOM Enemy Unknown

[greydan]

[DISCLAIMER] This thread was originally about the demo, which didn't show the mechanics in a good light

I'm too washed out to get clinical about these 'features' and how they undermine the tactical foundations of XCOM, I just wanted to vent

Move or shoot and then move or shoot again

Spot an alien? keep on trucking

A progression of knee high walls

Skills on cooldown

Nonexistent facing - overwatch 360 degrees for the win

Recruits all have the same stats

Small, high-survivability squads

One base

Binary choice of missions

Scaled-down economy (200 simoleons for helping the chinese? whtf?)

Please, someone tell me it gets better, that these simplified elements add up to substantive strategy gaming

[EDIT] To answer my own question: Yes!

[TychoCelchuuu]

So, the game apparently does get much better: the demo missions are 3 out of the 5 tutorial missions, and after that the game opens up a lot more, the maps get larger, it turns into more of an X-COM game. As for your criticisms:

Move or shoot and then move or shoot again

I don't know how I feel about this. I don't think it's an improvement, but I can't tell if it's much worse or an acceptable simplification. I'd have to play much more X-COM to decide.

Spot an alien? keep on trucking

Yeah, this is pretty annoying. I think in the full game there will probably be more aliens, so maybe you can't be as cavalier, but it's certainly missing the horrendous brutality that we have come to know and love.

A progression of knee high walls

I don't really mind this (the original X-COM had tons of these things too) but what I do mind is how cover has been simplified down to percentages and stuff instead of being actual cover like in the original.

Skills on cooldown

I really miss all the inventory micromanagement but I can definitely understand the argument for getting rid of all of that.

Nonexistent facing - overwatch 360 degrees for the win

This strikes me as very weird. They seem to want to transition the game from being about facing to being about cover. I'm not sure I like the change.

Recruits all have the same stats

I didn't notice this, but are you sure? If you click on the little question mark thing near the bottom left or hit whatever hotkey it is, it brings up the soldier's stats like bravery and whatever. Are those the same for everyone?

Small, high-survivability squads

This is by far one of my least favorite changes the new game has made. There's an upper limit on how brutal a game can get with your soldiers when it gives you so few of them.

One base

I don't mind this so much as I mind the absence of base defense missions; apparently they've replaced "other bases" with "have satellite coverage of other areas" which seems sensible enough to me.

Binary choice of missions

I hope this was just part of the 5 mission tutorial thing.

Scaled-down economy (200 simoleons for helping the chinese? whtf?)

$200 X-COM bucks for saving China is silly but I can certainly understand why they would want to move the game away from being a Heavy Laser Manufacturing Company and Alien Beatup Force Simulation.

My biggest beef with the game is the move towards cover and % chance to hit as the basis of combat rather than concealment and % chance to fire accurately. In the original X-COM, if you were behind something, you were safe until that thing was blown up, and you were doubly safe because nobody could see you. In this new game, bullets will break the fabric of reality to hit their target as long as you roll a "hit." Cover doesn't actually block anything, even being behind a corner doesn't protect you from being seen or being shot - cover or a corner just add to the % chance that the bullets miss. I don't really think I enjoy the change. It looks silly for my soldier to fire a shotgun out of a window next to her in order to hit an alien on the other side of the wall from her.

edit: on the plus side it does sound like there are a bunch of missions that have objectives other than "kill all the aliens" and often the objectives are time limited or something, so those sorts of things can mix the gameplay up and force you to take more risks which would help bring your casualties in line with the original.

[TurboPubx-16]

I take it that it is okay to rant in here.

The music, voice work and writing are incredibly dry, to the point where I have no interest in playing the demo further. When the tutorial guy or the scientist is talking it's like they put a Microsoft Sam program in a mannequin: "Hell-o Co-mman-der. Wel-come to X-COM. I have ta-ken the lib-er-ty of lo-bot-i-miz-ing my-self and the crew." The character models and animation all feel like knock-offs from what was cool in mainstream games five years ago. The roady-run camera, at this point, is what Dragula was to games circa 2000.

To echo what you guys are saying above, I think it is way cooler to simulate bullets flying through the air and just seeing where they land to determine whether or not someone got hit. Is it possible to hit an alien that wasn't your intended target, or do bullets that miss just disappear in midair? In this game will you ever fire a rocket, miss, and have it hit a gas station that you didn't even know was there, causing a chain of explosions that blows up a fifth of the level's total geometry? For me, the original game wasn't about the strategy so much as it was about the potential for the systems in the game to interact in ways that were hilarious, tragic, and always chaotic. If this is a straight-up strategy game, a Starcraft as opposed to a Company of Heroes, then count me out.

One last thing: why does this tutorial teach me how to move my guys to cover like ten times but fails to mention that my sniper can't move and shoot in the same turn?

[Donk]

I'm willing to give the new mechanics a chance with the full game, the demo is very limited. It has few abilities to choose from and the missions are guided and simple. I've played the demo twice through and I really liked the flow of the missions, mouse navigation and view control and having hotkeys for your actions is a god send. I've read people are having performance issues and mouse lag but I didn't get that.

One issue I found funny with the voice acting... isn't Dr. Vahlen supposed to be German? I thought her accent sounded German anyways but when she actually speaks German in the tutorial mission, you hear the words are supposed to be German but the voice actor obviously has never spoken a word of German in her life and all I could think was BONGIORNO.

[Nappi]

I have never played XCOM before, but I was intrigued by the demo. However, I feel like I will have to find out what a typical playthrough of the game is like before I can actually buy the game.

For example, how important is it to keep your veteran units alive? How easy is it to actually finish a campaign? Any word on an easy mode for complete newbies like me in the new game? How brutal is the save system? I can't think of a worse thing than sinking 10+ hours into a single game just to find out that I had fucked up my chances early on.

[Sno]

You guys are making this game sound uncannily like Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, Julian Gollop's 3DS game.

Which is fine.

That's probably fine.

That's not X-com, but i guess it's fine...

[youmeyou]

I too never played the original so I'm approaching this with incredibly fresh eyes. Plays to me like Frozen Synapse with a ton of atmosphere and immersion layered over. Which would be great.

Nappi, I think it's pretty important as this does remind of me of Ghost Recon (the original) in that the more veteran units you have the better you will do.

is there any way to capture the humanoid aliens at the last mission? I had my sniper kind of dumbly standing directly in front of him not knowing what to do exactly. weird that command would tell you to capture and then not give you an option unless i'm missing something.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Re: the spoiler - no. And fie on you for saying that Frozen Synapse doesn't have much atmosphere. That game is nothing but atmosphere and tactics. It has been stripped to the basics.

[youmeyou]

Clearly we have different definitions of what atmosphere means. I would think stripping something to the basics would remove its atmosphere. It's got about as much atmosphere as a computer lab. It's a cool style, but I don't exactly feel immersed.

Cheers for the answer.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I meant it was stripped to the basics of atmosphere and tactics. You could strip away the atmosphere by replacing the graphics, sound, and writing, and then you'd be down to just tactics. Everything about Frozen Synapse screams its cyberpunk setting at me with unusual fidelity, from the excellent soundtrack to the way none of the vatforms have names or any personality beside the blood that spurts out when they die.

[brkl]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/25/some-things-you-should-know-about-the-xcom-demo/

[Faegbeard]

My biggest gripe is the move twice; shoot once thing, it seems like such a dumb system for a variety of reasons. Also classes and weapons restricted to classes annoys me to no end. There's a bunch of other, smaller things that I think are silly but I can deal with.

[TurboPubx-16]

On the most recent episode of Rebel FM they discussed a preview build of the game and in doing so alleviated my most serious worries. It sounds like projectiles do not disappear if they miss their target, in fact they will continue traveling and will hit things-you-totally-want-them-to-hit/things-you-really-don't-want-them-to-hit. Also, on the most recent Gamers with Jobs, someone mentioned that he fired a rocket to remove just enough of a wall so that his sniper could get line of sight on, and ultimately shoot, the smallest corner of an alien's head. That sounds like XCOM to me. If only the levels themselves were randomized, then I would be absolutely sold. And while I'm wishing for things, bring back time units too.

[Lu]

The demo seems to do a pretty terrible job at actually demoing the game. What shithead would let me select my research project, but then end the demo before I even see the fruits of said research? Mean!

Fruits of salad research, mmmm.

[malphigian]

If the demo isn't selling you, maybe let Jake Solomon sell it to you:

"You're the general!"

"'I'm going to get all my people killed."

"Yeah, you will."

[Gwardinen]

He has surprisingly great comedic timing.

[TychoCelchuuu]

He has surprisingly great comedic timing.

I imagine he was there for more than three minutes, so it's possible they cut out the 4 hours of bad comedic timing and kept the few instances of great comedic timing.

[Orv]

No, he has great comedic timing period. Jake Solomon is fantastic.

As for anyone still hung up about this game, there is something like 20 solid hours of gameplay footage out there now, in a mix of singleplayer and multiplayer. Judging this game based entirely on the demo, which was terrible and in no way representitive, is doing yourself a disservice.

[Lork]

Hey, so I just made of them internet videos about X-Com that you guys may find interesting. It's about the incredibly clever design of X-Com and why I don't think you should be worried about the things mentioned in the OP. You should still be worried though, just not about that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue-FSchUpBQ

[Orv]

I have to disagree with the statement that "XCOM goes the extra mile and is as hard as it appears to be". It's hard because it's hilariously bullshit and chance based, as anyone who has loaded a mission with a rocket launcher pointed at the door of the Skyranger will tell you.

[Lork]

That's kind of the point, though. It's a game where you can fail spectacularly due to hilariously unfair situations like the one you described and still have that be totally OK.

[Orv]

Which I guess is my concern with the "It's not XCOM!" complaints. It removes all the terrible, unfun systems (TU, the worst inventory system since Tetris, inexplicable alien competency) and leaves all the random chance and strategic play.

[TychoCelchuuu]

The TU system is not unfun Not being able to shoot before moving in the new XCOM strikes me as endlessly frustrating.

[Gormongous]

I thought about getting a copy today (there's a Best Buy in the nicer part of town that can easily be tricked into breaking release dates if you order online and choose the "pick up in store" option), but the game's Steamworks, right? So I'd go through all that trouble and then have to wait until Steam unlocked it at midnight. Not worth it, I'll save it for the weekend or next.

[Orv]

The TU system is not unfun Not being able to shoot before moving in the new XCOM strikes me as endlessly frustrating.

Except you can shoot without moving?

And yes, TUs were shit.