You should totally buy it.

It's awesome.

I got the demo off Steam last night, gonna try it out this weekend.

Tried the PS3 demo.  90% of it was programmed tutorial bullshit.  The remaining 10% was utterly forgettable.  It wasn't a good demo at all.  I feel it obfuscated the game instead of giving me an idea of what it was like.

I'm still trying to figure out if I want to take a chance on it.  Seriously, the demo was so bad that even after playing it I still feel like if I buy the game that I'm buying it blind.

I'll buy it during the next Steam sale.

Quote from: Gabriel2;591081Tried the PS3 demo.  90% of it was programmed tutorial bullshit.  The remaining 10% was utterly forgettable.  It wasn't a good demo at all.  I feel it obfuscated the game instead of giving me an idea of what it was like.

I'm still trying to figure out if I want to take a chance on it.  Seriously, the demo was so bad that even after playing it I still feel like if I buy the game that I'm buying it blind.

The old X-com that came out 1 billion years ago (or was it 1994?)
was an amazing turn based squad tactical game. You controlled squads of soldiers and built bases, did research, hunted aliens, etc...

This game was fantastic.


The current 2012 version is turnbased, and from the reviews I read is intended to be just as cool as the old one, but with modern graphics.


I would suggest giving it a try, unless you don't like turn based games.

Man did I play the hell out of the first one.  And yes, I cheated (saving often).  So what

The new one doesn't grab me though.

It's quite good, but a little dry. Perhaps the game opens up more as you get into it.

Your squad mates seem to take the longest time to recover from even minor injuries.

This appears to be a game where you can easily fuck yourself up if you don't come out of the starting gate strong. Unfortunately you have to figure out for yourself how do that.

I don't understand why some of the customisation options are gated behind a pass code. Everytime a publishers uses one of these, a kitten is crushed by a baby falling off a skyscraper.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;591395This appears to be a game where you can easily fuck yourself up if you don't come out of the starting gate strong. Unfortunately you have to figure out for yourself how do that.

I don't understand why some of the customisation options are gated behind a pass code. Everytime a publishers uses one of these, a kitten is crushed by a baby falling off a skyscraper.

Are you on console or PC?

Mouse controls for some of the missions with multi-layer battlefields are terrible, putting your view above the ship's roof every time you change soldiers (For example). I'd love to able to use my 360 controller for this, would make it so much more player-friendly.

Quote from: Ladybird;591405Are you on console or PC?

Mouse controls for some of the missions with multi-layer battlefields are terrible, putting your view above the ship's roof every time you change soldiers (For example). I'd love to able to use my 360 controller for this, would make it so much more player-friendly.

console. where instruction manuals are a thing of the past.

The camera is shite. Inverted controls please.

It's a decent enough game but it's far to easy for the mechanics to screw you oever and it takes far too long for your men to heal.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;591475console. where instruction manuals are a thing of the past.

The camera is shite. Inverted controls please.

It's a decent enough game but it's far to easy for the mechanics to screw you oever and it takes far too long for your men to heal.

PM me an email address and I'll send you a copy of the PC manual, but it won't help - this is a game where the information is found in the game (Or somewhere on wikia, probably). This is one you're meant to replay, and you're not meant to know what will happen the first time.

(Which I'll grant isn't a good design choice. A "How to play" book, accompanied by a sealed in-universe "What the Fuck" book, would have been neat... but there's no money for that stuff any more.)

Also, "too long to heal"? Bear in mind we are talking a week to recover from life-threatening injuries. You lose good men for a lot of missions, yeah, but in terms of actual time it's negligible.

Quote from: Ladybird;591532PM me an email address and I'll send you a copy of the PC manual, but it won't help - this is a game where the information is found in the game (Or somewhere on wikia, probably). This is one you're meant to replay, and you're not meant to know what will happen the first time.

(Which I'll grant isn't a good design choice. A "How to play" book, accompanied by a sealed in-universe "What the Fuck" book, would have been neat... but there's no money for that stuff any more.)

Also, "too long to heal"? Bear in mind we are talking a week to recover from life-threatening injuries. You lose good men for a lot of missions, yeah, but in terms of actual time it's negligible.

If it won't help, I won't bother, thanks anyway.

The problem with the game is that it's next to impossible to figure out how you're meant to play it overall, not just what the buttons do and what Dr Vanhalen does. For instance following the directives of the main plot mission should not be prioritised but one assumes that's the case because...that's what you do in video games. Unfortunately if you do your pittance of funding will expire quickly leaving you with nothing to buy when you research stuff.
The game spawns random missions which can leave you completely unprepared. If you have been concentrating on researching armour and then you find your interceptors are crap compared to the UFO's that are detected you're screwed. It's too much bait and switch.
The healing time thing just screws the game up. You cannot reasonably expect the player to never take damage and even a couple of points is enough to put them out for a week. Now I get the realism aspect of it, which is fine, but it just doesn't work in the game. You end up having to waste money hiring extra soldiers who are themselves inexperienced and it destroys any kind of squad balance which is compounded by the random assignment of class when rookies rank up. And if those rookies take a couple of hits of damage then they are out too. It's crazy, especially whenh the game spawns your choice of abduction mission: difficult, difficult or very difficult!
And when they say difficult, they aren't kidding. You need to be prepared but you can't be as your best men are healing up. It's a game that seems to want to penalise you for trying to play it.

I think it's pretty clearly a game you're meant to learn to play as you play it. I played through the hand-holding tutorial and immediately started a new game to play things my way. I had countries leave the project because I didn't put enough investment in satellites. That's clearly more important that I originally thought.

There's a bevy of other lessons I'll put to use in a second playthrough, which was what made the original great, the ability to play through it multiple times.

And yes, it's hard. It's about making choices and managing the resources you need to carry out those decisions.

Your complaint about healing, I dunno what to tell you. You get shot by a plasma weapon and you're out for 15 days. I dunno, that seems fair to me. As far as squad balance and stuff, I think the game makes it pretty obvious that you're suppose to have plenty of guys on your roster to choose from for missions, multiple builds, backups et cetera.

I spent at least 15 minutes last night putting together my squad for an escort mission, just picking who would be best. Got a couple support guys for their extra movement, got my assault and a heavy for laying down fire, then brought out my mobile sniper (who has the ability that lets her overwatch and snapfire a sniper rifle after moving). The thought I was putting in just selecting troops to put on my six-man squad for a single mission, I think, says a lot about the depth of the game.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;591571The problem with the game is that it's next to impossible to figure out how you're meant to play it overall, not just what the buttons do and what Dr Vanhalen does. For instance following the directives of the main plot mission should not be prioritised but one assumes that's the case because...that's what you do in video games. Unfortunately if you do your pittance of funding will expire quickly leaving you with nothing to buy when you research stuff.

You're kinda right, but... the game gives you plenty of warning, when it tells you about the base assault, that it's going to be a hard mission and you should tool up beforehand. If you ignore that and charge in... people will die. And it will be your fault.

It doesn't explicitly tell you how to build up your team, but I think it's assuming that players will investigate the base options they have available, train up their dudes, worry that their squad isn't good enough, do research... that base isn't going anywhere.

QuoteThe game spawns random missions which can leave you completely unprepared. If you have been concentrating on researching armour and then you find your interceptors are crap compared to the UFO's that are detected you're screwed. It's too much bait and switch.

It's not bait-and-switch. It doesn't tell you to follow one path, and then throw something at you that you haven't developed. It tells you to follow every path, all at the same time, because it is going to throw everything at you. Oh, you can't develop everything at once? Well, you have to learn to prioritise. And you will eventually hit something that you haven't prepared for. Tough luck.

But hey, that armour will be far more useful for ground missions than the interceptor would be.

QuoteThe healing time thing just screws the game up. You cannot reasonably expect the player to never take damage and even a couple of points is enough to put them out for a week. Now I get the realism aspect of it, which is fine, but it just doesn't work in the game. You end up having to waste money hiring extra soldiers who are themselves inexperienced and it destroys any kind of squad balance which is compounded by the random assignment of class when rookies rank up. And if those rookies take a couple of hits of damage then they are out too. It's crazy, especially whenh the game spawns your choice of abduction mission: difficult, difficult or very difficult!

Buy more soldiers! Train them up, send them out with the professionals; I've definitely got a top-heavy squad, with about eight majors and the rest all squaddies, but I'm trying to send out one or two rookies on each mission, and have them kill steal. I don't think you're meant to play with just one ubersquad.

If you're that worried about the random class assignment, get the upgrade from the officer school, so new recruits come in at squaddie level, not rookie level (It also upgrades any rookies you have when you buy it, too). It's what it is there for.

My favourite dude is my assault guy, who is named after me. He's going to die horribly at some point, I just know it.

QuoteAnd when they say difficult, they aren't kidding. You need to be prepared but you can't be as your best men are healing up. It's a game that seems to want to penalise you for trying to play it.

No. The game simply isn't sitting back and waiting for you to beat it, like most  do these days. The aliens are playing to win.

Think about it like a roguelike. You probably won't win the first time. You're meant to learn what works and replay the game with your new knowledge.

The game tells you how hard the missions are, but when you have the choice of three missions that are all just as difficult...

It takes fucking ages to build an uplink and satellites. Meanwhile half the world goes mental within a month. This is incongruous without adequate explanation. If it's intentional then the game ought to make this clear so you don't sacrifice researching and buying other things (like new expendable soldiers) that you might be better off. It's certainly superficially obvious that you need satellites quickly because that's your source of income, and the notion of keeping the council together seems important. Unfortunately it's not as simple as that and you only find out the hard way.

You end up relying on the gray market which is fine, but you don't know how much of the stuff you haven't reearched you can effectively sell because you haven't discovered what it does and how much of it you need to do things with.