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

You're all still working through this tripe? there's fuck all replayability.

 

Depends on how you play. Upgrade your assault dudes and they can completely destroy too, storming into close range and decimating almost anything instantly. With crits they can do nearly/as much damage as snipers and are far more mobile. That's why they're far better on terror missions, if you can't keep your snipers isolated and protected, you don't have time to turtle with them and "set up" for one round, plus crysalids will cause serious problems.

 

Snipers are actually better on terror missions because on most of the maps are really tight and have all the enemies on ranging patrols that will eventually wander into your field of fire. So you can just turtle up somewhere with a good field of fire and let everything plow into you - getting the enemy free move on their turn instead of yours lets you get both a round of overwatch into them (and snipers get super overwatch) and then a full round of shooting. Heavies are good on terror missions for the same reason, plant your feet, overwatch then rocket or bulletstorm shoot-shoot/shoot-reload. Pretty much necessary on impossible - there are terror maps where another 1-2 cyberdisks wander onto you every turn for the first 4 turns or so. When you have chopped down 4-5 spawns or so you can start hunting the leftovers without causing any shitstorms. Saving civilians is pretty much a matter of luck. If a drone decides to wander off and turn into a serial killer you can't do much about it given the way the game works. If you save at least one civilian panic won't go up.

Lategame altogether is pretty much designed as a "wow my RPG men are so great, so much cool broken stuff" victory lap like most RPGs, ghost armor for example.

 

Talking about Terror Missions:

I finally won my first terror mission in my fifth game.
Its just me or Assaults are the best class for Terror Missions? Essentially because shotguns are awesome vs Chrysalids, and Run & Gun allows you to essentially run away and shoot the fuckers until you stumble into a wall or more enemies. I won because I (wisely) brought two assault squaddies, whereas my sniper did fuck all and got killed.

 

Good fixes, but lol at the last "feauture"

 

Are mods still disabled?

 

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Ground control to DOCTOR DONG
Ground control to DOCTOR DONG
Take your stim kit and put your psi suit on



Can you hear me DOCTOR DONG
Can your hear me DOCTOR DONG

What a bizarre ending.

Surprisingly decent game all in all. Not sure it's anything to write home about, probably won't bother replaying it but I have a weird nagging itch to do so. Doubt I'll enjoy it much if I do, though.

 

I wrote up some thoughts about it. I'd be interested in some proper codex trolling opinions.

http://thebaneofqueequeg.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/xcom-enemy-unknown.html

I should probably declare that Firaxis have paid off my mortgage in return for the review.

 

I kinda got bored of this game during the first mandatory mission in alien secret base (the one with skeletal key if there are more later). The map is huge and there isnt much enemies there, and those that are dont present much of a danger. Its more about resource conservation as I ran out of health near the end. Cant be bothered to restart it...

 

Nice review, can agree with most points.
I think there are a few things that work a little bit differently than what you wrote, but honestly I'm not 100% sure about them myself:

Armor does add to hitpoints, but it seems that armor hitpoints and body hitpoints are treated differently internally. At least my heavy armor guys didn't need hospitalization after losing only a few measly hitpoints.
While I would prefer a threshold mechanic (possibly with modifiers against different attack types), it's at least better than only increasing the soldiers hitpoints directly.
Some weapons also give an aim bonus (yeah, boring, I know).
It's a bit sad that they have cut the ammo/damage categories from the old ones. OTOH, different ammo types became largely useless in the old one after you had laser and plasma weapons. Why keep on using the conventional shit when you have the new shiny laser/plasma weapons. But YMMV.
Are you sure about static damage? I thought it was randomized (but within a very small range).

I'm a little bit concerned about replayability, as well.
What I'd like to see is a DLC that adds some more different aliens (although the ones they have are largely well done, imho) and maps and then randomizes which aliens are going to appear in a campaign. Say in a given play-through you get to meet 10/15 different types of aliens.

By the way, I didn't feel overly forced by the game to follow the story. I took several breaks to improve my squads and research new tech before continuing with the current story mission.
In the end, the old one wasn't that different, I think, at least if you already knew what you had to do. At some point you would need to do a specific task to further the story. Of course, nuXCOM is much more "in your face" about it, so I understand if some feel restricted by that.

 

Yeah, you might be right about the armour thing, thinking about it, but I'm not sure. I know that some soldiers only got hospitalised if they took a fair bit of damage - but I thought that was just a kind of "the first 3 points are superficial" thing. You might be right though, it might only be if the armour points are used up.... hmmm...

The static damage was something that did occur to me after I'd written it. If anybody knows for sure then I have access to an edit button. It just seems a lot less variable than the first game, when a soldier can go down in one hit, or it can take 3. That's probably tied up with the armour thing as well.

I also know what you mean about the initial weapons - but I just have a bit of a soft spot for an auto cannon with incendiary ammo firing on full auto. I missed it. It's a shame that it's "you have an assault rifle now, maybe we'll let you carry a grenade too", rather than "here are 20 weapons, choose away."

And the being forced to do the story was mainly to do with shooting down the overseer ship - as that directly affects your monthly rating. Plus, don't the way the terror missions work impose a kind of time limit because you can never keep everybody happy? The original game did have plot pre-requisites but, like you say, it was all in the background rather than "DO THIS NEXT!!!!"

 

Once you have a satellite up over every nation you seem to stop getting choice missions for the most part. Don't think I got a single one once I had 11 up (three countries already defected), ended the game after a couple of months of everyone being at one terror.

 

There is a loading game screen tip that says this. So, it's confirmed. You get hospitalized only if you lose more HP than the armor adds (not sure about the vest/chitin, but I'm fairly sure every extra HP is the same).

 

God knows why I can't brofist, but consider it done.

 

Oh yeah, good times...
Someone else has mentioned it already, that the reason they didn't include that is likely the way cover works. Full auto explosive rounds would probably do away with cover quite fast.
In terms of choice, I think that esp. snipers and heavies need some more weapon options to choose from.
Assault and support get several fairly different weapons that are more than just better versions of previous ones.
You have the rifles, there's even a reason to stick with small plasma instead of normal plasma rifle, due to the aim bonus, and of course the different shotguns.
With snipers or heavies it's just "pick whatever is the most advanced (and available) right now".
Also, why not at least give us more than one type of grenade? Smoke is a special option for support, but why no incendiary and flash/stun grenades?

 

What's the difference between the shotguns? Aren't they just "this one does 4 damage, this one does 5 and this one does 6?"

 

Ah yes, poorly worded by me. There's a difference between shotguns and the other weapons, the different shotguns internally are just enhanced versions, I think.
Also, I'm not saying there's a huge amount of choice for the assault class, only that there's more choice than for heavy and sniper.

 

You know what I found annoying? I thought they took the amorality of X-Com (and game-narrative stuff like sending low-stat rookies out to be scouts and doorkickers) and went straight nasty American political pulp with this one, like assuming that interrogation is torture-unto-death. The original game made it pretty clear that at least stuff like Sectoids and Floaters were ex-people that had been converted more or less to biological machinery. I'd imagined that a captured sectoid (a quickly vat-grown clone of one of what, ten individuals I think?) would be mostly confused to be outside of its envelope of programming-training-indoctrination rather than generically defiant. Hell they even had enough diegetic psychology to panic and berserk

 

Good man, nice article, exactly how i feel. Disappointing on the tone, so friendly but somewhat objective, i like a more aggressive tone You should write more

 

24 hours after uninstalling I've pretty much forgotten that this game happened. I did kind of like it. Honest. Oh well.

 

I'm guessing that the same will be true for most people, it's certainly true for me.

 

I uninstalled too but I cannot deny the game put me into grok mode, first time I got it from a game since I played DC:SS. If there is a good expansion I will play it for sure.

 

Ye, I was severely hooked, played the shit out of it, completed it two times, and then done. Replayability is too low, the saddest fact about this game.