X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion

Is there any info on the price yet?
Judging from the overprived "Elite Soldier Pack" Crap DLC (5 $/€ for basically some new skins, "classic X-COM hair" and helmets, yay!), it will probably cost around 15 bucks.

 

What is funny, they realize that the Disruptor Launcher the dlc supposedly rewards you with needs fixing (as in, it's possible to play a few games and not see it at all), yet they choose just about the stupidest way to come about.

 

Got to give them some brownie points for being consistant.

 

I just lost my game after I failed in a Terror Mission in South Africa. Guess what, kids? CHRYSALIDS ARRRRGH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. Fucking Council surrender monkeys. Will try again, probrably will do better because I CAN SEE SHIT now.

I was coming to say this. Alien weapon variety is even worse than the original game. In the original, aliens used plasma pistols, plasma rifles, alien grenades, small launchers and blaster bombs, in addition to things like Psionics and Chrysalids. So far I only see them throwing plasma bolts at me, with one or two mutons throwing some grenades, and the Thin Men spitting some poison. Never seen Sectoids attacking me with psi, can they even do it all? Oh yeah, there's none of the Blaster Bomb horror anymore. There's a serious poverty of explosives in this game. Compare to the absolute fun and deli

I think the fact that the player always begins in a magic LZ outside the combat zone with the Skyranger away from the mission kinda of takes some elements and tension from combat. In the OG, ensuring a safe LZ was Priority One. The only moment with as many casualties as entering UFOs were LZ arrivals. You have to get out of the Skyranger, scout all directions towards trouble, dispatch any trouble, protect your leaving soldiers with smoke grenades, brighten any dark areas with flares, leave your soldiers behind cover and on reaction fire to stop any oncoming aliens and not bunch up your troops too much to protect your team against grenades and blaster bomb massacres.

Also, the player always start in one of the borders of the map. In the OG, a important part of the scouting WAS finding the map border, because you knew plasma fire would't come from there, allowing you to advance towards other directions. Since your skyranger start was random, it meant having to truly watch your six and advance in all directions as possible while leaving enough men to engage the enemy.

More later.

 

Regular sectoids don't, but you'll get sectoid commanders later who can mind control your guys which is bad news. There are multiple enemy plasma weapon types but they don't dramatically change how they behave, just damage. Sectoids use plasma pistols, thin men, early mutons, and I believe floaters use light plasma rifles (Same damage as a laser rifle but +10 accuracy). Later mutons will use full plasma rifles, and elite mutons will use heavy plasma rifles.
There are also muton berserkers who aren't nearly as fast as chryssalids but do crazy amounts of damage if you're unfortunate enough to have soldiers get mauled by 'em.
Explosives are lacking but sectopods can fuck your shit up. They've got a ridiculous area of effect explosive doodad which can ruin your day if it connects anywhere near your guys. In one mission I had 4 or 5 soldiers get nailed by it, damaged, and all their cover destroyed in one turn. Was spread out enough that a grenade wouldn't have done that but was lined up perfectly for that attack I guess. But yeah there's less variety.

And not having a dangerous LZ is the case most of the time but once in a blue moon you'll get a situation where your first non-dashing move away from the skyranger will spot 7 goddamn aliens or some such, which can be a massive pain in the ass if there's no/very little cover near the skyranger.

The smaller maps are kind of a bummer though. Supposedly it's to prevent situations where a single sectoid is hiding in a closet somewhere dragging the mission on but it feels less dangerous when you know the map is a rectangle and you start at one end advance toward the other.

 

Yup. DLC just adding "New stuff" to the list would've been cool with me. A presumably scripted 3 council mission series sounds pretty bad.

 

It may've just been myself, but I noticed that making your rookies do certain things makes them morel likely to turn into a certain class. e.g. killing enemies at medium to close range (especially via flanking) makes them into an assault, getting them to heal people (especially stabilizing a critically injured teammate) makes them more likely to go support, killing people at long range makes them more likely to go sniper.
It may've just been myself, I admit, but following these steps seemed to work about 8 times out of 10.
Of course, I'm not willing to try it anymore seeing as I'm going up against fucking cyberdiscs and Mutons and using rookies is practically a fucking death wish. I should probably just bite the bullet and buy that Officer School upgrade.

 

Sounds like bullshit honestly.

 

They already got it "fixed" by the way, whenever you spend more than two turns (give or take) with no alien in sight, the "mysterious sound wave" (dunno how else to call it) comes about and show you the general direction of the nearest active spawn point to trigger.

 

Don't forget you can get the blaster launcher almost at the start of the game, just like how Bioware likes selling bonus weapons for their games

 

What does the blaster launcher do in this game anywy? I finished it before I got the thing needed to research it.

 

negligible more damage, 100% accuracy without needing line of sight, same useless range.

 

How?
Even then, heavies would still be shit.

 

I found them pretty useful so far, early game the rocket can help, later on the anti-robot perk is quite nice, too.
Might be though that their usefulness is getting smaller late-game.

 

Slingshot kinda sounds shitty tbh. No new aliens, weapons, or equipment, and only three fucking maps? Plus, they aren't even considering adding accents to voices instead choosing to add more stupid armor variations. I love how my African guys sounds like some white dude. How hard is it to add 10 measly voices? Disappointing shit. Now we get a VIP character I don't give a fuck about too. Yay...

 

It equips in a heavy's rocket launcher slot, it paths to anywhere you want to shoot it in range (like it will go around a corner, that kind of thing, not UFOD-style waypoints), I think it is always accurate unlike a normal rocket, and does 50% more damage (so 6 for shredder shots and 9 for normal ones). It's pretty good and I appreciate having it when I bother to make one, but it's really expensive in several ways (takes research, two UFO navigation items, tons of weapon fragments, money), you only get it by showing you don't need it (after taking down a battleship) and it's in with so much more broken endgame shit like ghost armor it's really pointless. It does probably need to be moved around somewhere in the game power-growth curve. Or failing that it should be completely retarded like the original blaster bomb and have like 300% rocket range and cause a 15 tile radius explosion

 

Firaxis got butthurt and now applied some internet check on startup that prevents mods from taking effect (or they just screw up your game).

 

Really? What the fuck?

 

Probably more proof of Firaxis sloppy execution of everything, 'cause I think you can pretty easily change multiplayer-relevant shit just in the .ini files.

 

I faced a guy with 10000 (maybe just 1000) in defense, offense and will in multiplayer yesterday. 1% to hit him, 1% to mind control him. Fun times.

 

That's probably a good reason for implementing that check then...

 

I kinda wish they had left the original ‘plot’ and set the game post-invasion in an alien-controlled world. Just say that the funding is coming from the resistance in that country, and that the terror level is the current risk of that country’s resistance movement being found/wiped-out.

The gameplay would be exactly the same, but being a small resistance would make the four-man parties seem slightly less ludicrous. Would also explain why every soldier in the “last, best hope of mankind” is a rookie mook who can’t hit the side of a friggen barn.

Every time my tiny crew is sent to the trashed army base, I have to shake my head at the silliness. What the frak can my rookies do that their tanks couldn’t?

I'm quite sure that I've had packs come at me out of windows and doors.

Yeah, that’s heaps more shallow than the original game where you walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel.

Good call.

Yeah, that's why the original game was never a Playstation game. Never ever.

Honestly, after the pain they caused me in the early game, I really enjoyed the later missions where I got to just rain hell down on them.

 

That would be awesome. Already sounds better than the DLC they have announced.

 

Yeah I know it was for the PSX. Was the Playstation version as good though? I know Warcraft 2 wasn't. Lets face it, they simplified the new one for the mass market whether they released the old one for Playstation or not. Civilization Revolution went through a similar change. It begins to get old. I mean, my soldiers can't even crouch for crying out loud. The bugs are fucking ridiculous. The lack of features just pisses me off, even though I like the game, I feel it could have been better. :shrug:

 

I played it on Amiga CD 32 too, and it seemed like the same game to me. This was back in the day when games were ported to consoles and had to suck it up and not the other way around.