greydan

XCOM Enemy Unknown

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Different accents or languages would have been a really nice touch, that was one of my favorite flavor features of Civ 5.

 

As far as stunning aliens goes:

 

Normally when you kill aliens their weapons explode into fragments. When you stun aliens though you get to keep their hardware (you still have to research the item to use it though). On the harder difficulty levels when you are more likely to be strapped for cash this is extremely helpful...

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And you can sell the live aliens for a tasty bounty iirc.

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Hmm, I got for free on PSN+, but couldn't get into it, yet because of the bloody Steam Sale I bought it again and while it's too early to say I actually like this game, I'm liking it for now?

 

Well, I liked it enough to dream of Mr. T and Rufio fighting the XCOM aliens. Mr. T was captured by the aliens and Rufio snuck in and rescued him from what dream throught the Thinmen looked like. And then Mr. T wrecked everything with a bazooka.

 

Man, right before going to bed I had some new missions, but one of the missions is with a country at level 3 panic and it's classified as very difficult. I will lose this country if I don't take the job right?

 

PS: I'm totally making my bazooka guy look more like Mr. T if I can.

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Not necessarily but it'll very much increase the likelihood they will. You can have a country with maximum panic for a while, it's generally best to get them some satellite coverage before the end of month report though if you do.

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Oof... a couple of days ago I picked up a classic ironman game that I had left off after the 1st alien base mission. Things were going swimmingly until I finished research on hyperwave. Somehow that triggered an ancient curse because when I picked up the game today it was just a string of awful sequences. First up was a terror mission in Kolkata that is on that annoying map with all the tanks (what the hell are civilians doing on a military base anyway?) I ended up having to go up against nearly 20 chryssalids which always seemed to show up in pairs of threes dangerously close to my group. I nearly lost my only heavy that I had received in this campaign who had one point of health left by the end of it. Somehow I lucked out though and only lost a rookie. Unfortunately for me, it turned out that heavy would end up being the lucky one...

 

The mission after that was brutal. It started out with just two mutons that I dispatched easily, but when I advanced up a bit after taking care of them I was suddenly swarmed by 6 mutons on all sides and a cyberdisk (with accompanying drones of course). Unfortunately my support and assault soldiers were a little too close together when I had them fall back and became victim to an alien grenade. My 2nd support was taken out by another muton that flanked him. Both my snipers were taken out by the cyberdisk before they were able to destroy that. At that point my remaining soldiers were in such disarray/state of panic that it didn't take much longer for them to get wiped up without any hope of me trying to save some of my guys by retreating to the evac point.

 

The mission after that was a UFO mission where, again, I seemed to encounter an insane number of mutons and another pesky cyberdisk, and also two sectoid commanders (sure, why not?) but this time I was stuck with my B-team. This mission I managed to barely get through (more space to maneuver through certainly helped a lot), but not before losing half my squad.

 

At this point my strategic game is looking pretty dire. With the exception of that heavy that got injured during the terror mission, I basically lost all my high level soldiers. Three countries are already out (Brazil, France, and Egypt) and both Africa and North America are looking dicey in terms of panic levels. I've researched some of the plasma weapons, but still have a few to go, and I could start building a psionic chamber, so I have a few advantages up my sleeve that should make the game a little less punishing, but at this point it is hard to see how to come back from this. I plan to stick it out just to see how far I can get along with it, but man, today was a nice reminder of how brutal this game can be sometimes! Yesterday this campaign was looking totally rosy.

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In every campaign I always find I get one mission where the RNG God decides to completely screw me over - either all the aliens spawn in one place and I am overwhelmed with little cover to manoeuvre through, or 70%+ shots consistently miss. It's usually a total squad wipe and then the mission after that one will be painstakingly slow and I'll get some bad injuries. It is recoverable, but it always hurts. All you can really do is make sure your B squad has a couple of colonels in it (I always have 2 snipers in my pool of soldiers with squad sight and double tap if I can get them that far. Essential) and have a couple of SHIVS handy too.

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Focus on getting satellites up over the remaining countries over anything else.  Once you everything locked down it's very hard to gain panic anymore, even if you repeatedly wipe.  

 

For that matter, remember if you shoot down a UFO that prevents the panic -- you don't have to do the mission.  Or you can do a half mission and retreat with everyone alive but some XP.

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Started playing this game during the gratis weekend, because... why not. I'm not really a strategy game person, but I like it, so I bought it (the 75% discount also helped ;))

Anyway... it all went great until all my good men died in a single mission. After that all went downhill because I only had shitty rookies which couldn't hit even when their lives depended on them.

I didn't to much planning in this game, it was my first attempt and I just wanted to check it out. Wasted money on stuff I barely used.

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Last night I got an email stating I could download and start playing the expansion, but the reality was the 7 GB download didn't show up until this morning. So it was a bit of a tease, but at least barring unforseen circumstances I can jump in when I get home from work.

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Just got through playing a little bit of EW. Gotta say I am pretty into it, feels like the game got cranked up to 11. It's the sort of thing where it doesn't really fix anything that people disliked about the game in terms of its overall design, but anyone that enjoyed the original is probably really gonna like this.

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I need to get a copy of XCOM for PC. I don't really feel like firing up my X360 and buying the expansion there.

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Some further quick thoughts on the expansion:

 

-Lots of nice minor UI touch ups that are greatly appreciated

-The foreign languages really is nice, I wish it had featured more than just European languages though, I feel like my Asian squadmates got shafted!

-Might be my imagination but the character movements seem a little less stiff than I remember them being

-When you have to make that first decision between the gene lab or the mech lab... that was a nice difficult decision for me

-I wish the amount of meld canisters on a given board was unknown. So far it seems like there are always going to be two, but more unpredictability would be appreciated.

-The new maps are really nice

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The new maps are indeed really nice. There is one with a crashed space ship in the middle of a city that is particularly awesome. I also seriously love the MECs. I find it impossible not to cackle as I flamethrower through a wall killing a handful of sectoids at once. So good! 

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Just getting started in this and man, love being back in XCOM. Surprised they focused on the narrative as much as they are, and really appreciate the fact they're trying to give some of the bland NPC's around the base some personality. Can't wait to dig in this weekend. 

 

Playing on Classic this time and I don't want to muck it up halfway through, should my priorities still be satellites and building a nexus ASAP, or has that changed with these new elements? Early strategies the same? 

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The difficulty level doesn't really impact how much of a priority satellites are (i.e. you can't win the game without them, and they are your economy), but I think you do have to plan a little more carefully than you would on normal. One obvious problem is you are probably going to go through more soldiers, so that's an extra cost you have to deal with...

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Also as far as the new game elements are concerned, there is a bunch of new equipment available fairly early on, and you gain access to the gene and cyber lab pretty early on. Because of the scope of your economy early on, you probably only have the opportunity to build one initially. I built the gene lab which in retrospect I think was a mistake. I botched that run up pretty badly so I'm going to try the cyber lab next time around.

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I'm getting back into Enemy Unknown right now and loving it. Questions about the expansion: on consoles, do you have to pick up an entirely new disc?

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Yeah, people playing the game on consoles got a raw deal. I believe you would have to buy a new disc, and it costs $10 more than what it would cost you on PC. I have no idea why that is the case for any of those things.

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Dang. Well, maybe I'll pick it up at some point down the line. I've still yet to complete a campaign in Enemy Unknown.

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Yeah, people playing the game on consoles got a raw deal. I believe you would have to buy a new disc, and it costs $10 more than what it would cost you on PC. I have no idea why that is the case for any of those things.

 

On console's you're buying a new version of the game that is completely stand-alone, so it costs a bit more. On PC it's an expansion that requires the original to play.

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