The game just released. Looks like it is getting pretty good reviews. I pre-ordered on steam, but I am in the midst of a move and the gaming PC is not accessible so I can't play for a week yet. Anyone here play it yet?....what are your initial impressions?
I find tactical combat a bit too easy on Classic. Sometimes you can get caught with an unfortunate series of events, but my kill/death ratio seems to always be somewhere between 20:1 and 30:1. I guess things are moderately challenging early on, but once you get to the end game the only things that are even somewhat challenging are if you somehow aggro multiple sectopods.
Basically aliens need to move around more. Most missions they just sit there, so you should never be caught badly out of position. Since you basically always have the initiative, you should always be winning fights by just having snipers murder anything that threatens you.
Good reimagining for an AAA Title. Fairly polished for a firaxis fresh release (enough bugs though to not make ironman mode a reccomendation for first playthrough even for those who don't like saveloading...). Fun game. Some stuff a bit to much streamlined to my tastes (Feeling of linearity is the most glaring thing I find a tiny bit lacking compared to the original XCOM 1. Nothing deterring from the overall impression of it beeing a solid strategy game.)The good thing about being streamlined is it taking less tendium which means less wasted time which is of concern to me currently (basically reduced the original to the fun parts but cut a tiny bit to wide in the effort in a few places imo)Worthy of its price (which is considerable given its an AAA Title).Could imagine 2 Player deathmatch being fun. No time to test yet (That clearly is the biggest addition compared to the original title. Kudos for also reducing MP to a workable frame for an X-Com Game). So many stellar games coming end of this year. So few time...Very much anticipating stellar mods from the community given the efforts allready present with the demo and the game without an official editor yet.my 2 cents
Squad Sight snipers are quite OP at the moment and make the late game too easy. For more challenge and more fun force yourself to not use them. Either use snap shot snipers or don't use sniper.
There is definatly somethings I miss from the old xcom, but overall this new one is a good game, not perfect but still good.
Hope they support it with free updates and or DLC with more missions/levels etc..
And what about the mod tools? Heard there might be some mod tools at some point?
Probably not considering how their files are organized. A lot of the game data is either buried in the .exe file or downloaded from Firaxis's servers.
So I've decided, based on how fiddly it is to get your movement cursor on the right level, I'm not very fond of the terror ship layout. You think you're going to run along the top level, instead your soldier decides to vault down to the cargo bay. Nice job, dude, you've wasted your whole turn.
... what do you mean d/led from their servers? didn't know you need to be online to play.
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and yeah... the camera sucks indoors (for ufo at least). best thing to do in that situation is to flip the camera around so the soldiers end up going in your direction... that way you can see which floor they'll end on.
Well, crashed terror ship seems to have it beat by a long margin. I don't know what's going on but my movement cursor is furiously stuck on the wrong tile even though all I'm doing is picking through the rubble strewn behind the rear hatch. I'm going to be here half-an-hour just getting my guys to some cover on the first turn.
See here, the movement cursor is hovering somewhere partway off the deck.
I was able to get around the problem with the controls by using my classic Xbox controller instead. Just goes to show how much polish was put on the console controls.
Finally got to try the game.
Initial impressions were very good with downward slope due to repetetiveness and the bugs.
Oh my, the bugs - line of sight all wrong, shooting through walls, etc, simplistic "in cover" system, mind control bugs, bugs, bugs...
The camera, expecially when navigating large UFOs is awful-to-horrible. Sometimes you just cant select a particular square you want to go. Gamepad was clearly given more love than the mouse.
Textures are washed out, everything screams - "7 years old console hardware". The loading screens are unbelievable - what is my Core i5 @ 3.8GHz doing all that time?
The base is nice to look at, but getting in important info is a pain.
Everything in the game is dumbed down and simplified - movement on the main globe map, inventory management, maps are smaller, enemies are "triggered" and before they do nothing.
Some of the changes actually make sense, but repetitiveness kills the late game.
Despite all that, I had good fun with the game.
Most hilarious was the first character that survived the tutorial, named "Jesus Vega" and serving as heavy - he was next to immortal, but now he is sadly dead, with 20+ missions and 50+kills. That said, I never reload the game, no matter what. That said, I have never lost a mission yet, on hard, but have so many dead.
Otherwise nice remake, would mark it 8/10 if the bugs are fixed (which I doubt will be), as it is it's 7/10 or so.
PS snipers are really, really overpowered, the maps are too small, and AI dumb to flank them.
There is no 'hard' setting, do you mean classic?
The 'bugs' related to the LoS system and shooting through things are largely display bugs, not actual bugs in the LoS, though there are a few odd ones on specific maps where the visual representation doesn't match what the game actually sees.
Glad you enjoyed it though. I mean 7/10 is still a pretty fair assessment I think. I have it at 8 myself, and expect it to get to 9 after patch/mods, but will have to wait to see for sure how that goes
After having played it for some time i wanted to see the original and figured out it really is much more complex. Actually me too would have liked to have the same amount of complexity combinde with the new fancy graphics and effects. This is still a great game though and i am having much more fun than with everything else right now. But how pathetic is it that you cant find anything better today than a many-years-old recipe, reuse it only in a superficial way and still be awesome? It seems to be the samewith games as with movies: The modern technical advances have made special effects more important than artistic creativity.
The original is more complex, yet also incredibly tedious.
I'm really not sure that the additional 'complexity' actually adds much to the game play overall, but some people like cheese and some people like crackers.
Some people like both of course
What I absolutely hate are those scripted "introductions" of units - they do nothing until they get into your LOS, then they start to jump around like circus clowns. Enemies should of course execute their own tactical plans even if you don't see them - in the original UFO, you could sometimes just see SOMETHING moving through the grass, and these moments added to the atmosphere immensely.
This modern nonsense detracts immensely from the overall impression.
I dislike the cut scenes, but the 'move to cover' mechanic is fine. If they didn't have it the combat would be way way too easy. Also realize that the aliens have the same spotting distance as your troops. If they had better range, ala the OG, the combat would be very very punishing I fear.
But there are mods which do exactly that I think
Actually there are two reasons why these mechanics exist and none of them have anything to do with "it would be too easy otherwise".
1. Developers were to lazy/had too little time to code proper AI that would do what you do on their own turn, as in move from cover to cover and overwatch (well on classic and impossible at least; on normal or easy they should only dash from cover to cover).
2. They tried #1 and combat took too long for modern console gamers. Don't forget this game was made for consoles first and PC second. Console gamers are not known for their abundance of patience (and so are many younger PC gamers).
No, what they did was take the easy way out. They let only players move (there are alien patrols that move by teleporting around and never into cover) as that is faster and "more interesting" to players and then give aliens free move to move into cover.
On first look one could say it is almost the same as in both cases you will run into aliens in cover on your turn or you will get overwatch shots if they come into your LOS during your turn like you get now when they move to cover in their free move.
When you look at it second time, you figure out they can never get overwatch shots or any shots at you during your move or their move when you first meet. Also it makes flanking, btw a great mechanic which makes the game more interesting, a game of luck and not skill or tactics because each flanking maneuver could trigger a new group of enemies.
Ahh, I see, you were on the dev team?
Right, because AI programming is a simple affair afterall. Must be that the devs are lazy and dumb...
Yawn... this line of hogwash again? OH NOES!!! ITS A CONSOLE PORT!! I'd ask for your evidence of this, but I know you have none.
Correct, that is the mechanic they chose to implement.
Flanking is all luck... *sigh*
No skill or tactics in avoiding/risking triggering another mob... *sigh*
I don't think the system is perfect myself, but I think that as the mechanic they chose it works quite well on the harder difficulties. You really do have to plan your advance/flank unless you want to risk triggering another mob. And you cannot typically just engage most of the tougher enemies in a cover vs. cover firefight and expect to come out unscathed. The mechanic forces you on some maps to risk a flank move which may just get you killed by blundering into more enemies (even if they don't get to kill you on your turn...). Becasue sometimes you only have half cover to work with, and not a lot of room to maneuver. So unless you can rocket them all to death (limited by the number of heavies you bring), you have to actually fight it on their terms instead of your terms.
I've had several missions where there simply was not a 'clean' approach to the enemies already sighted, and they were willing to trade 25-35% shots with me. That's generally a losing proposition for the player. I've had missions where after a couple turns of trading shots and trying to find a clean flank to move around another group 'patroled' into the firefight and changed the balance of power such that a withdrawal or charge was required to improve the situation.
The alternative, ala the OG, was an enemy who moved randomly and sniped you from the darkness. It's easy to just say, 'well they should have improved on that'. Maybe they looked at it and decided it was too time/labor intensive to improve on that and created a different mechanic instead. I don't know. I do know that the TU style game play had it's own flaws inherent in it, and games like JA2 and the various XCOM clones suffered from generally poor AI to begin with.
When an enemy is in cover, you don't have to engage them. You can pull back as much you want and dare them to jump into your Overwatch zone. Of course, quite often they don't.
If you do engage them, then don't pull any punches. Use those grenades or the rocket launcher and try to obliterate what they're using for cover. 'cause quite often they will do the exact same thing. Okay so you're limited in how many grenades and rockets you can carry, but it's all about evening the odds.
You may only get one or two aliens out of a group of three after using a grenade, but that's one or two less aliens firing at you on their turn. Against aliens who already get an innate defence bonus, you're better playing aggressive and getting burned for it than playing defensive and getting nailed with opportunistic plasma bolts that can wrap around corners.
That said, triggering two extra groups by moving forward is a total pain in the bum. So often, falling back and waiting for the aliens to make a move so you can ambush them on non-triggery ground is a better plan.
The issue on some maps is that there is no where to fall back to, and/or that the cover is only partial in the positions you'd like to occupy.
And also that occasionally your cover starts to burn and you have to leave it before it explodes
But those are the challenges you need to overcome. Some maps are simply easier than others due to their layouts.
I had to abort 2 missions in a row last night because I simply got swarmed early (from regularly paroling alines, no teleporting or me running too far ahead). 1st Abduction mission on the 'rooftop' map (at least that's what it looks like to me). There is no hard cover which doesn't leave you open to an easy flank on that one, until you move out of the initial position. Set up the squad (2 Cols, 1Maj, 2 Capt, 1 squaddie) and moved up to a viewing position where I knew I should trigger one group.
It was heavy floaters, and my reaction shots all missed. Alien turn... a muton and zerker show up on the left flank. The heavy floaters pop out and chuck a grenade which destroys all the cover I had, and take a couple shots. A cyberdisk and drones patrol over to the north west...
My turn. I have 4 men out of cover thanks to the grenade and maybe a couple of the shots. I have one man double flanked, I have one man in cover, but also flanked. I can see 9 aliens, including a zerker who is close enough to reach a couple men on his next turn. I am flanked by 2 mutons and one of the floaters. I have a cyberdisk ready to advance on me as well. I could not envision a scenario where I was able to take out more than maybe 3 of the enemy, and I had no cover to fall back to. So, everyone ran to the retreat zone, and I boogied out.
Next mission, terror... Moved up, took some cover around a van and another car. Spotted a group of heavy floaters, took one out, but really had no where safe to advance due to cover issues, and not wanting to dash into the unknown. Set some overwatch, and hoped...
Alien turn. 3 more groups of HF a cyberdisk and a group of mutons patrol into view... Not all of them advance on me so I figure if I can take down 3+ of what I can see I may still have a chance, my cover was still good, and I wasn't flanked, but I couldn't really get any flanks either without run and gun into areas where I might not be able to withdraw from. Of course, the first squad sight shot crits a floater, and then... everyone else decides to miss, including my rocket (that sucked the most, if that had hit it would have destroyed cover and whittled down the floaters there). Alien turn... most of them start shooting at civilians, but then 2 decide to 'nade me, which causes the van to blow up immediately, which kills 2 squaddies and leaves the rest of the squad wounded, and further out gunned.
Immediate retreat at that point as well. 4 vs. 12... with everyone other than the sniper having taken 5+ damage...
But, not to complain about it, I found it quite thrilling actually, and none of the situations were caused by teleporting or me making an obvious mistake, just that some situations are seemingly 'unwinnable'. Though in that 2nd one... if my rocket had hit where I aimed it I think I would have been ok. Instead of just one floater down I would have had 3 or maybe 4 down and they wouldn't have been able to 'nade my position.
Then my next mission against an abductor went off without a hitch, well I did get one squaddie shot up pretty good, but he lived Of course on most of the UFO maps you have much more room to maneuver than some of the city maps. Heck I even had a mission later on where the sectoid commanders came storming out of the ship after I thought I had cleared the rest of the aliens, so I moved up a squaddie to get a flank, and bam! 3 Mutons who where camping out in the ship joined the action. That one I felt was a sure loss, but I resisted the 1st mind control, and was able to establish a better position behind cover, then the 2nd commander MCed my stud Assault Col, and I figured it was game over since I couldn't really even run back to the DZ and get out.
I was able to overwatch lock the MCed guy though (which is probably a bug, but meh, not like I could even kill him since he had 20hp and was immune to crits), and trade off some shots with my sniper at the aliens while keeping another squaddie on overwatch to keep them from flanking me. After 3 turns of that the MC dropped off and my stud Assault was able to start dropping them since he had the best position before he got MCed.
End result there was 3 dead squaddies (one might have been a cpl), but the mission won and some much much needed alloys recovered
@Uberlicker:
1. You don't have to be on a dev team to understand basic concepts.
2. Well lazy was probably too strong a word and I didn't only mean the programers but the whole team including their management. They decided it was too much work to do it properly so they came up with this bastard solution.
3. It is a kind of console port. The game was developed for consoles at the same time as for PC and they made one game, not two. And the game always has to be made for a weaker/worse system with worse controls in this case. Also if you followed pregame videos and interviews there is one with Jake Solomon where he talks how his 1st focus was to make sure the console version was done and complete and only then he went to the PC team and asked them how are they doing. Yes totally not a console port. Now you are going to tell me next that Skyrim didn't make all its menus/inventory/spells&skill selection for consoles first and PC second.
Any game that comes on PC but is not based around mouse is a console port, no way around this.
4. Yes that was the mechanic, and it was worse that it should have been because of two reasons I stated.
5. Luck in flanking is in activating another group or not. No skill around that, just blind luck.
6. The system "works" as you say because they designed and balanced the game around it. I am not talking about that, I am talking how it would have been better if it was designed around real alien movement and real AI. All you said would also apply if it was designed properly, and it would also have more options and more tactics. This was a simplified version of how it should have been. I guess many liked it. Good for them.
I want more and better!
What you have to consider is that a console release opens the game up to a wider market. Having seen it in action, I think it works well on console. And there's no way the person I was watching play would have gone for the PC release. If you like console gaming, you tend to get all your games on console and don't bother with a gaming PC.
But there are some serious limitations with console games - being fixed to a certain specification does not encourage developers to get ambitious, and a platform than has been around for seven years is showing its age when it can barely stack up against today's mid-range PC. But of course, they can sell it at a huge profit.
The graphics are not the problem with Xcom. The graphics and details outside and inside the combat are good and nice. The whole control system was made for consoles and then ported to PC with just little modifications. Then many design decisions were made around the idea of making it as simple as possible, also something more standard for consoles then PC.
It's called standardisation. That means that if you have a controller for your PC you can use that in much the same way you would use a console controller. Do you know how many games that come out for PC and don't have decent controller support? Plenty, and it's because some jerk decided that they want us to grope along the number keys to activate several quickbars full of abilities.
Design decisions for games are usually more concerned about engaging the player, that's why many parts of the interface are streamlined and cut down, to get you on to the next mission asap. Getting to the good part of the gameplay is a worthwhile goal whether your game is on console of PC or both.
The first two XCOM games were ported to console from PC so it's not a huge shock to find that this new XCOM game has been designed with a console release in mind from day one.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but do you actually know this, or are you just assuming it was done this way. The 2k Forums were full of this statement as well, yet no one could actually validate it.
Anyway, I think the PC controls are fine, and hotkeys are assignable, honestly, this is just such a nothing complaint I don't even understand why people bring it up.
Standard for consoles or not, the 'simplification' or 'streamlining' or whatever you want to call it, makes for better game play in my opinion. I don't want to have to deal with all the tedious and, frankly zero value added, micro of the OG. So you only can bring one extra item. Big deal, makes the choice meaningful. In the OG you just loaded everyone up, dumped crap in the transport, ran out, ran back if you needed more/different, ... How was that a 'fun' design decision?
That said, there could have been (and hopefully will be) more depth in general on the strategic side. There could be a longer tech tree, there could be more alien UFOs (then again, the number of missions you do can be a PITA as well, the OG suffered from feeling like grinding at times), there could be an improved panic mechanic.
Not to say what they gave us doesn't work. It does, and on harder difficulties it is, indeed, very difficult depending on what missions are thrown at you and where. On the other hand, it is a game you are supposed to be able to lose! Yet people complain about some of these mechanics which cause them problems. The tools are there to deal with the issues, only sometimes the RNG is pretty cruel about it, and (ala FTL...) you wind up in a really horrible situation. More so on Ironman, but frankly, save/reloading is just cheating as far as I am concerned Hey, it's your playthrough though, enjoy it however you want
I think you want more and different. Better is far too subjective a word to use in this context. Maybe the mods will give you what you want. Maybe they won't. If you truly dislike the combat system I doubt there will be much of a fix for that, but who knows, maybe it is possible to add TUs somehow...
The controls are not based around mouse, that says it all. What platform has no mouse? Consoles.
UFO1 for its time had OK UI. Would I want xcom to have that UI? No. But I don't want these streamlined also. I want to be able to click with a mouse and everything works normally. I want unit icons that I can click on and not need stupid tab. I want to be able to click on a unit and that it works 100%. I don't want bugs with mouse targeting where I cannot click to move my guys into cover because it just doesn't want to select that tile.
I don't want to play with UI each time I want to fire rockets near the edge of map. And other stupid problems that games based around mouse don't have.
And last but not least, I don't need TU. I want aliens to spawn on the map at same time as us and all move normally during their turn using cover. I want them to set traps for us and really try to flank us. And all of that once they are aware of us there. When you engage some aliens others around should have some chance to hear the fighting and come join.
I guess I'm lucky then, I have not had any mouse issues as you describe. Or I'm slightly more tolerant of having to rotate before I target or whatever else it is that I do to avoid some of the issues you mention. In any case, there are other games out there with similar UIs (or worse) which are clearly not also consoles.
I just don't get the whole 'Console Port!!!' rage I guess. The UI may look or feel Console like, but it still works, and while improvements to it are always welcome, I'm unconvinced that it was 'dumbed down' because of the Console versions. Is there anything in particular you cannot do that is based on the UI and not on the underlying game design?
The alien 'movement' is a bit wonky, but the alternative is probably much worse. Due to the combat mechanics it is difficult if not impossible (in some situations) to overcome a 2:1 disadvantage. There are also simply maps which cause faster activations than others. There is also something about the difficulty level determining how many ETs can be active no matter how many you've sighted (Classic and Impossible have no limit). I really don't have a problem with the spot aliens, move to cover mechanic, but the alternative of walking into ETs already overwatch camped would probably just not be much fun.
Also, have you done much battle with Sectopods? Those things will rip you up if you're not very careful.
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