Rob Zacny

Episode 188: We Will Be Watching, Commander

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Bruce and Troy welcome Jake Solomon, lead designer of Firaxis' new XCOM, and interrogate him mercilessly. Jake explains his design choices and the trade-offs he faced in adapting and updating X-COM.

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A good episode and it was nice to hear Jake finally explain some of his reasoning for getting rid of some of the more "tension (or rage) creating" aspects of the original game - like Aliens shooting you from beyond your field of vision, or your soldiers being mind controlled by an unseen opponent. Not entirely sure that I agreed with all of what he said but at least he does so in a rational and logical manner. Llittle bit worried that too much has been conceeded to "new" players of the genre (and the consolisation of the control system) but from the sounds of it the challenge is still there. I think I've seen, listened to and read pretty much every preview there has been for this game and although I'm not quite sure it's going to be everything I've hoped for as a XCOM veteran, it certainly looks and sounds like firaxis have made a damn good effort. Looking forward to play the game.

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i saw a xbox 360 controller option in the PC demo, so the consolized interface isn't necessarily bad. for things like camera rotation, controllers are often better than mouse/keyboard.

this could be actually turn out awesome. firaxis is a great developer, but i hate to see them release half-assed civ games because they fail at AI, multiplayer, and balance. xcom sounds like something that they might actually succeed at.

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A good episode and it was nice to hear Jake finally explain some of his reasoning for getting rid of some of the more "tension (or rage) creating" aspects of the original game

I do feel however that most of those things are only rage creating until you figure out an effective counter to them. Most of the things that seem like bullshit (especially to new players) can be overcome with a bit of careful planning.

Except blaster bombs; those things are dumb.

That said I can understand why the new game isn't as brutally punishing as the original, I just hope they haven't swung too far in the other direction.

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Great podcast as usual :)

Though Bruce tends to make himself really “small” once he is talking to “unfamiliar” developers, while he gets “louder” when being among yourselves. I found Bruce’s control critics very valid and saying that it’s due to multiplatform does not make the outcome any better for the PC.

And that is what I’d like to ask here as you both already played the preview version.

While I am really looking forward to play the game myself, I am also pretty sceptical about the controls and the movement mechanics. Tabbing through your soldiers instead of selecting them in an overview and the strange camera controls are one thing. But the levels themselves seem very "distorted". While you can basically can see the clear math “lying” infront of you in the old XComs or Jagged Alliance (and probably Xenonauts, at least it looks like that), in the new Xcom it seems very muddled. "Does it this cover actually help?", "Would this alien be in line of sight if I move there?"

Also the movement system seems odd. Sounds good on paper, but together with the very long distances you can move, chances are that you move past the spot where you would have had Line of Sight to an alien and need to move back again to hit it. With a point based system you could have gone to the spot you thought was right and then just correct it by moving another field. In the new Xcom you basically lost a turn.

And the AI actually needs to "work for you" as aliens might otherwise totally screw you with running into your face. You can walk a long range and still shoot. Imagine aliens would actually do the same. In the videos they didn’t really seem to do it, probably to save gameplay. Same goes for the cover - taking cover might only work if the AI doesn't think about moving where the cover is useless.

I guess this might lead to very odd and not intuitive gameplay elements if you play on harder difficulties and lots of frustration on ironman.

It seems so hard to estimate stuff with these graphics, the movement and asymmetric game mechanics, where I guess the Aliens play with a different ruleset than the player.

So I am really wondering if one of the guys who played the preview version (the demo isn’t very helpful) can say anything about this.

I am planning to play on a classic or impossible + ironman, but that strongly depends on how much frustration comes with situations where you simply were not able to estimate the “math” behind it.

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Thank you for doing this cast, was enjoyable.

Question for Bruce...

During the cast, you seem to imply that the addition of the cover system was a negative for you. You used an example where putting troops in an open field was not a viable option.

Can you explain where you were going with that a bit more? Are you suggesting that the game over-rewards being in cover, that you want to see more open maps or something else?

Thanks in advance.

@Kordanor - you can select your troops with left mouse clicks...

I've seen the AI do some sensible things in some of the preview videos (Retreat from flanked position, hunker down in a defensive position, but then move up to support a group of melee troops). I've haven't seen it do anything I'd consider totally stupid (like rushing a unit out in the open) or rely on cheap tricks to win (like in the original). Time will tell of course, but the AI looks promising.

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Controls are one of those things that bug the hell out of you until you get used to them. (Except, I suppose, in cases of extremely inept design. I don't think Firaxis would give us something that bad.) If the game is good enough, you will get through the control system. A lot of the talk about controls strikes me as the sort of critique that is heard at/before release, but will all but disappear once the game has been out for a while as people become concerned with more substantive critiques.

My concern is about the "two move" system vs. time units. I am cautiously optimistic. Time units make for a lot of strategy, but they also make for a lot of tedium and goofiness. The two-move system seems like it would cure the tedium and keep the missions moving at a brisk pace, which would be a HUGE improvement. But, as Bruce touched on, it shrinks the maps down to a series of cover points. Is that kind of combat going to be fun over the long haul? The reviews of the preview build that I've read pretty consistently say that it is. So I remain cautiously optimistic.

And, yeah, I pre-ordered this game two weeks ago.

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... But, as Bruce touched on, it shrinks the maps down to a series of cover points.

I don't see this as a negative.

In any game where terrain matters (board or computer), the game flows around the valuable parts of the map. High ground and solid full cover points are important and add extra depth as opposed to who gets the first kills in. I didn't get the sense that the map mattered that much in the original beyond having providing places to hide the aliens. In the original (and some prototypes, as Jake pointed out) you could just blow holes through walls with most weapons which would devalue the cover in this game.

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First off: I'm a first time listener of 3MA who has never played the original XCOM.

I picked this episode because I liked what I had seen of XCOM: Enemy Unknown so far. Very interesting discussion (even if it turned into a very specific UI rant and straight up bug reporting at one point). It was fascinating to notice how much our views on some of the subjects differed.

For instance, I really like the tight squad, the cover system and the two movement limit in the new game, because it means that the battles are laid out as sort of puzzles. The limited number of possible moves each turn gives me hope that, one day, I can "master" this game. I was actually under the impression that this was how the original game worked as well. When watching the Idle Thumbs XCOM stream, I was completely put off by the wide open areas (what a waste of space) and the action point system. The game seemed to be much less about solving puzzles and much more about probability theory and simple trial-and-error*.

The faster pace of the missions is definitely big improvement in my opinion. Getting out of the skyranger alone seemed to take 5-10 minutes in the original. I also can't see why I would like to control 10+ squad members.

The controls have never been a big issue for me in slow-paced or turn-based games. I have even toyed with the idea of playing Enemy Unknown (PC) in front of the TV with a gamepad.

I'm sure I had something else to say as well, but I can't remember it anymore. Anyway, excellent cast guys!

*Again, I have not played the original and my impression may be completely wrong.

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I don't see this as a negative.

I don't see it as a negative either, especially after playing the demo. I agree with your comments. Rob called it a "tight" design, and it is.

And Nappi is right-on about the original X-Com, as well. Much of it was very labor intensive, and the strategy involved a lot of unavoidable dead soldiers, no matter what you did.

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What do you guys think about the movement system in terms of errors as I mentioned before?

Lets say you got the following Situation:

oPxxx

ooxxx

ooxxx

oooxx

oooxx

oooax

where o is a wall, x is open space. P is your character and a is an alien.

Can you hit from the current position due to the new cover system? Do you think you can hit when moving one space to the right? While in a point based movement system you could move one space to the right and try to shoot. If the merc then says that he is not able to hit, no problem, just move him one field further. In XCom however your movement is basically done after moving one field. All you can do now is going back into cover and hope (as mentioned before) that the AI is not running into your face and kill you. And especially due to the fancy graphics you wouldn't even see it as clear as in the little symbol map I made.

@Kordanor - you can select your troops with left mouse clicks...

I've seen the AI do some sensible things in some of the preview videos (Retreat from flanked position, hunker down in a defensive position, but then move up to support a group of melee troops). I've haven't seen it do anything I'd consider totally stupid (like rushing a unit out in the open) or rely on cheap tricks to win (like in the original). Time will tell of course, but the AI looks promising.

What I meant was an overview like in Jagged Alliance, where you can actually see all of your units. While it wasn't in the original, probably due to the low resolution and limited space, it was then added in XCom Apocalypse. In the new Ufo you need to tab through all your soldiers to see who can still move, who has still hitpoints and so on.

About the AI I am very sceptical, especially after my experiences with the horrible AI in Civ 5. But what I meant is something different. I meant that the AI probably plays after different rules. Lets say your soldiers can run 10 fields and shoot. The AI will probably only run 5 fields to not break the gameplay. Otherwise most of the cover will be pretty useless. Of course I can't say this for sure as I haven't played the game myself yet.

@Nappi: I can completely understand that it can get annoying to take ages to move your troops and so on and honestly I am not a fan of the old X-Com battles anyways. I always thought that they were somewhat limited in tactics, especially compared to Jagged Alliance. In Jagged Alliance however I was also mostly running around with 2-5 mercs and I think this group size feels more "natural".

However I have to disillusionize you about the "becoming a master in solving puzzles thing". Both games are very dynamic and the situations you face will be extremely random. It's more about learning tactics and movements than about solving puzzles. And I think that this is a very good thing.

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Couple things here, just from time with the preview build.

First, the controls are pretty good but there have been a few times when glitchiness and the snap-to soldier selection have really screwed me and troopers have died because of it. These are huge exceptions to the rule: for the most part they're intuitive and easy. But having just lost my best medic on a normal iron man playthrough because XCOM had just selected another soldier for me without highlighting him, it dampens my enthusiasm for iron man a very little. I might actually suggest playing with iron man and just "house-ruling" iron man back into the game. If you have the discipline to do that, that is, because the game is much better when mistakes and bad luck actually cost you.

As for the perspective and ease of reading the map, there are definitely times I've wished for a LOS display. I've had some troopers move to firing positions that turned out to be complete duds, which is kind of frustrating. But again, these cases are rare. Like, it's happened maybe four times in twelve hours and over twenty battles. For the most part, you get a good sense for the flow of the map and where the sight-lines are. To be honest, I think it's clearer than Jagged Alliance 2 in most cases.

Cover is crucial but I've come to appreciate the map design and the role of open spaces more. The fact is there are a lot of maps where the gaps between cover positions, the movement ranges of your troopers, and the move-shoot or run choices make for some really good risk-reward judgment calls. Especially once you start seeing more high-powered weapons and explosives flying around, and major features of the battlefield literally start to disintegrate. It's true you won't ever want to be out of cover, but I've faced more situations where XCOM gives me a choice between getting to cover and letting two enemies get a shot off, or staying in the open and trying for a high-percentage kill shot.

I haven't played the demo, but from everything I hear, it may not do justice to the game.

Be very, very careful about starting on classic or impossible. Normal has a very slow ramp-up and i found it too easy... and then things really got rolling and suddenly veterans were dropping like flies. And classic is savage right from the start.

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However I have to disillusionize you about the "becoming a master in solving puzzles thing". Both games are very dynamic and the situations you face will be extremely random. It's more about learning tactics and movements than about solving puzzles. And I think that this is a very good thing.

That was poor wording from my part. I meant something along the lines of eventually being able to identify the best solutions out of, say, five possibilities for dealing with one particular situation. By puzzles, I was referring to situations like "Oh, he could take that one out easily, but then that other alien would be able flank him the next turn."

I'm sure that the original XCOM was full of situations like that as well, but based on the little I have seen, I got the impression that it more like "If I move 7 steps instead of 5, I have 7.5% more cover but I can only take one shot at 53% as opposed to two shots at 40%." I don't think I have the time or courage to try to master that kind of system.

I also consider the dynamic battlefield and randomness an extremely positive thing, by the way.

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@ Kordanor

What you describe above is flexible, but it's also a bit cheesy. In the old X-COM (and many TBS tactics games) your soldiers inch forward a "square" at a time until they see something, then you change your plan and do something different based on information you didn't know when you started moving. It really ruins the fog of war, in my opinion, because there is less risk. In this system, you have less discrete actions as a resource on your turn and less opportunity to turn on a dime, making your decisions are more important. Of course, it's all about taste and you definitely give up fine control.

You do not need to tab through your soldiers to see who can move. There are icons over each character telling you how many actions are left ( the pennants under the HP pips in this photo -> http://www.gameinformer.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Components-ImageFileViewer/CommunityServer-Components-UserFiles-00-00-36-50-71-Attached+Files/7801.xcom_2D00_enemy_2D00_unknown_2D00_pc_2D00_screenshots_2D00_6.jpg_2D00_610x0.jpg ).

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Though Bruce tends to make himself really “small” once he is talking to “unfamiliar” developers, while he gets “louder” when being among yourselves. I found Bruce’s control critics very valid and saying that it’s due to multiplatform does not make the outcome any better for the PC.

Korandor, thanks for the comment. I think what you're picking up is simply me being more "professional" in that setting. When I am talking to Troy or Bill Abner or Julian I can call them idiots and have them call me an idiot back, and nobody's feelings are hurt. But that's not appropriate behavior in a social setting when you haven't met someone before, and it isn't appropriate behavior when you've invited a developer onto a show to talk about his game. Those are really two different kinds of shows.

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Question for Bruce...

During the cast, you seem to imply that the addition of the cover system was a negative for you. You used an example where putting troops in an open field was not a viable option.

Can you explain where you were going with that a bit more? Are you suggesting that the game over-rewards being in cover, that you want to see more open maps or something else?

I didn't mean to suggest that. I simply wanted Jake to talk about the changes, and their implications, which he did.

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Korandor, thanks for the comment. I think what you're picking up is simply me being more "professional" in that setting. When I am talking to Troy or Bill Abner or Julian I can call them idiots and have them call me an idiot back, and nobody's feelings are hurt. But that's not appropriate behavior in a social setting when you haven't met someone before, and it isn't appropriate behavior when you've invited a developer onto a show to talk about his game. Those are really two different kinds of shows.

Note that he never suggests calling Rob an idiot.

Just sayin'

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@Bruce

Well, of course I don’t want to ask you to call him an idiot. ^^

Just seemed like you didn’t really dare to stand for your opinion. Especially came to mind when I heard you agreeing to Rob in the background.

Of course I don’t want to and have no right to tell you how to behave and in addition there is also some cultural difference between the US way where you often say “great” when it actually isn’t, and the German one – but that’s another topic ^^.

So…well, just wanted to mention it and maybe encourage you, maybe there is some way in the middle. ;)

@Propbuddha

Yes, I agree, that this way Fog of war gets even more importance and in that regard that’s really a matter of taste. What I am worrying about though is the situation when you have everything lying 100% uncovered before you and then make a mistake just because you interpreted the stuff displayed differently as the game mechanic does. Being screwed by own stupidity and partially even bad luck is perfectly fine and can be fun (let’s just say in dwarf fortress). Being screwed by “faulty” mechanics, unclear display (and bugs) always sucks hard and leads to frustration.

@Rob

Thanks for the explanations! However I can’t really say that there was anything unclear at all in JA2, besides of people on roofs of course. Four times in 4 hours seems quite ok, but of course it always depends on the standards you set. Lots of people have no problem with the Combat of Dragon Age for example and most of the problems you face only occur on the highest difficulty, where everything MUST work and you pause the game for basically every 1/3 seconds (hate real time fights in most games for that reason) to get the maximum out of it.

And I guess the same goes for the difficulty in Xcom, where some things must not happen at higher difficulty. But I have no problem in doing the first couple of missions several times till I figured out which way is the best for what I want to do later. The main reason for tuning it down I could see in the described frustration coming with the display and movement. But I am looking forward to testing that out.

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Rob thanks for that reply there about your impression of the preview build. Having watch this IGN video of Jake and Garth DeAngelis talking about controls in the game, it does look like they hve made more than a few additions and changes to the PC interface beyond what is available in the demo, and from what you and Bruce both said in the podcast, the preview build as well. If you get a chance to watch it (or already have) could you comment?

I think my primary worries from playing the demo are the same as yours - a couple if instances where the game has moved my soldier out of cover, or to the wrong location because the cursor hasn't "stuck" to the square I was clicking on, and the real lack of feedback about what your soldier's line of sight actually is. Like you I've had a few occasions where I thought I was moving to a position where I could fire upon an Alien, only for the game to tell me there was no LoS.

The Demo is...... lacking. There is only half of one mission where you are free to do what you like with your soldiers, and it really limits the "feel" you get for the game. Still I'm looking forward it.

While we're at it, have you looked at or played Xenonauts? I backed the kickstarter for that an, for the most part (apart from the overly complicated air combat system they have added) they look to have captured the classical XCOM gameplay style down to a tee. If you do play it or look into it it would be great to here what you think of the two versions and the differences between them.

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A month ago I was really bummed about all the changes made to the game... mechanics are really important to me and taking out time units fundamentally changes the experience. I went back and played some of the original and I think I am okay with the new XCOM since 2 is better than 1.

I think there is lots of fun to be had with the new game, but in the demo the controls were aggravating. Aiming a grenade with the mouse was super clunky, it took about 45 seconds to get the cursor where I wanted since it jumped around a bunch. (I was trying to land it in the center of 2 aliens behind cover). Luckily the radius of explosives seems to be larger than the reticule so a slight deviation isn't a big deal.

My problem with the controls is that when you select a weapon it zooms the camera back to your soldier. This is really annoying since I select the soldier, pan over to the alien using WASD because the mouse sucks for moving the camera. Then when I select the grenade it pans the camera back over to my soldier, and now the WASD keys scroll between weapons and no longer scroll the map, forcing me to struggle with mouse sensitivity to pan the camera. If they removed the pan back to the soldier and allowed the WASD to only pan the map and not switch betwen weapons, then I could tolerate playing the game with the bad mouse movement.

I kind of wish every class had something you could do when no aliens were visible... the only thing I can think of is grappling onto roofs.

I also feel like there is too much die rolling going on. Even if you have really good cover and are flanking you can still miss all of your shots and then get killed the next turn. I am perfectly okay saving and reloading if I feel like I should have won an encounter but things turned awry... I want to be able to play the whole game without losing a soldier. Thats how I play every strategy game and this game seems like it might make that impossible, even if you play perfectly. I guess on normal difficulty it shouldn't be too much trouble.

I also would like to see line of fire when I plan out a move... with dotted red lines shooting out towards any aliens I can attack from that position.

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I also feel like there is too much die rolling going on. Even if you have really good cover and are flanking you can still miss all of your shots and then get killed the next turn. I am perfectly okay saving and reloading if I feel like I should have won an encounter but things turned awry... I want to be able to play the whole game without losing a soldier. Thats how I play every strategy game and this game seems like it might make that impossible, even if you play perfectly. I guess on normal difficulty it shouldn't be too much trouble.

I'm not going to tell you how you should play your games, but I have to object to your criticism that there's too much die-rolling going on. The approach you describe pretty much rejects in advance any randomness that goes against you, which means you are basically rejecting the entire design of the game and most other games you find in the wargaming and strategy genres.

I sympathize, to a point. You can ask Julian about this, since he and I play board games all the time, but I have impressively bad luck with dice. If the probability is 85% that I'll get a hit, I will actually score that hit maybe 60% of the time. When you do everything right and randomness still renders all your maneuvering for naught, it's pretty frustrating.

But that's not really what's happening here. Taking a huge risk to get a soldier into position to fire an 85% probability kill-shot doesn't mean your soldier should actually land that shot. XCOM, like a lot of wargames, is about consistently skewing the odds in your favor. Sometimes that's not going to work out, and it will suck, but the whole dynamic of the game is built around the steady accretion of these outcomes. So most of the time, your soldier will score the kill and be perfectly safe. but sometimes, he'll miss and, unless you were able to plan for the possibility he'd miss, you've got to watch him get blown-away at point-blank range.

Which is cool! It's why there's suspense!

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I am perfectly okay saving and reloading if I feel like I should have won an encounter but things turned awry... I want to be able to play the whole game without losing a soldier. Thats how I play every strategy game and this game seems like it might make that impossible, even if you play perfectly. I guess on normal difficulty it shouldn't be too much trouble.

Being careful to specify that I'm curious, and not criticizing...

You play every strategy game this way - "without losing a soldier." What's a soldier in most strategy games? Can you play chess without losing a soldier? Is the soldier you're referring to a marker of progress - never moving back on a points track in some other game, or is a soldier a game token that takes on new and more attributes? In the former case, I can see a pile of Europa Univeralis provinces as a stand in for the soldier you cite, in the latter Civ city. Certainly you'd be OK with regiments going understrength in EU, and losing an individual pikeman in Civ, or am I mistaken?

I'm also wondering why you might hope to do so in X-COM specifically, as the game lore has always been as much about total party kills as amazing saves. Is it because your, 'Every squaddie comes back" approach does run contrary to the expectations, and so makes it so much the sweeter?

I'm curious because my approach in the old X-COM was so contrary. I'd role play input glitches as "well, humans make mistakes, don't follow orders, get distracted," instead of reasons to reload saves. I'm no purist about this - a misclick that placed a Civ city on a different tile than I planned would have me reloading quickly.

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@Mikey

I basically played the same way as ShadowTiger in the past (Terror From the Deep, Apocalypse, JA Series). I feel like that I made a mistake when I lost someone, and therefore I want to correct it. Especially in JA that really mattered to me as all the characters were unique. Once you lost them they were gone forever - I even loaded/restarted when they had a stat loss. In Xcom they are more exchangable of course. But with a limitation of so few characters as in the new Xcom they become extremely valuable again individually.

I see it more as a challenge of perfection. Playing as good as possible, keeping all possibilities open.

In JA2 1.13 I made the game as hard as possible and also activated the "no save in combat" mode as it was in the original JA1. What I did was leaving the sector now and then to save. However that means that you lose morale (also your cities) and therefore this is a constant price you need to pay, forcing you to make your moves as good as possible, high risk, your decisions matter.

In games I see as multiplayer games (Civ comes to mind) I used to do the same in the past, but nowadays I completely restart once I made a bad decision. Whether I played 1 hour or 10 doesn't matter. You won't be able to load in multiplayer either. Make good decisions or lose. And that is also the reason why I am looking for the Iron Man mode. I love the challenge and to be "forced to play good". If you can load and save within a mission or combat for me this feels like cheating. Starting it over and over to find the best choices doesn't.

And I guess ShadowTiger has also some kind of longing for perfectionism, don't you?

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Just finished listening to the episode and I was a big disappointed. I really liked Rob's criticisms and respectful tone towards Jake Solomon, specially when bringing up some fair points and understanding Jake's views on some decisions.

Bruce, on the other hand, was very disrespectful and bitter. Calling the game "X-Cover" repeatedly was just plain annoying, not to mention hammering his particular issues with the game while not listening to some technical reasonings.

I felt the same way back in a 3MA podcast about SoaSE: Rebellion, where Kat Bailey spent A LOT of time talking about her particular issues which clearly weren't shared by other hosts.

I love 3MA, but didn't enjoy this episode.

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It's one thing to strive for perfection. It's another to call a game flawed because the twists of fate keep perfection just out of your grasp.

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