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

[Disgruntled]

Like what I see with the added content. But the strategic stuff will determine how soon i can go for a second playthrough. Felt like I worked out an optimal route by the time i finished so Im not keen on going through the motions if its just a few extra toys to play with.

 

[felipepepe]

They are adding the needed map variation and soldier equipment/skill variety, it's is a step in the right direction. If they made so that aliens didn't need to "discovered" before starting to act, it would already turn nuXCOM into quite a good game.

 

[Metro]

And imagine you just have to pay $30 for the privilege! Although maybe they'll have another snafu and sell it for $2 huehue's like they did with the Civ 5 expac.

 

[felipepepe]

One could hope, problem with 2K stuff is that they are very slow to drop prices... if they ever drop.

 

[Disgruntled]

And imagine you just have to pay $30 for the privilege! Although maybe they'll have another snafu and sell it for $2 huehue's like they did with the Civ 5 expac.

Id pay for the above alien fix and a more sandbox style strategic meta.

But then I only bought the original on 75% sale... multiple bases and some branching would get me to cough up 30 on release without a blink.

 

[Gord]

I fear it's some Facebook shit, like that death wall they released some time ago. Reading "offline" as "out of the game". Would make no sense otherwise.

It's only refering to the multiplayer part, which I had forgotten about completely. No Facebook shit hopefully.

The changes look nice enough to warrant another playthrough, but I'm still unsure about the long-term motivation. Probably not that much better.
Meld sounds very gamey and artificial indeed. Might have been better to reduce the efficiency of overwatch a bit.
Incidentally I didn't use it that much anyway, it was more fun to use the abilities of your assault-class soldiers, combined with squad-sight snipers.

Still, I won't buy it at 30 bucks. I can see me paying 15, if the not-yet-revealed stuff turns out interesting as well, but no more.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

NO. RANDOM. MAPS.
Fuck, Firaxis. They did it in 1993, its TWELVE years,.

It's 20 years

 

[Space Satan]

 

[Gozma]

Sounds like they are going even more RPGish

I need to hear some of their PR shit that understands the game has fundamental flaws in the 3 man spawn/fog of war creep system and how rote the first couple of months are vs. how degenerate the lategame is. Just giving the player even more raw firepower will exacerbate everything that's wrong with it but they are trying to sell the expansion with the smell of powah-uppah

 

[Zeriel]

I fear it's some Facebook shit, like that death wall they released some time ago. Reading "offline" as "out of the game". Would make no sense otherwise.

It's in the section for multiplayer. It's so you can kit out your squad for multiplayer matches while your network cable is unplugged, you pessimistic autist. I don't understand listing that as a feature, though, considering I'm pretty sure I can already do that.

Man, I enjoyed the first playthrough and had some fun in the second, but it really started to drag there.
Definitely couldn't bear more than that.

The multiplayer is really, really good if you can get past the bugs and limited map selection. Or it was when people were still playing it. So I can see more than 40 hours, but over 200 is a bit much.

 

[felipepepe]

Guy uses flamethrowers on a pile of hay, nothing happens...

 

[Gord]

Hey, it's turn based, give it a few turns...






...to probably see that nothing will happen then either.

 

[Space Satan]

Sounds like they are going even more RPGish

I need to hear some of their PR shit that understands the game has fundamental flaws in the 3 man spawn/fog of war creep system and how rote the first couple of months are vs. how degenerate the lategame is. Just giving the player even more raw firepower will exacerbate everything that's wrong with it but they are trying to sell the expansion with the smell of powah-uppah

I suppose sectoid mechs were implemented to make late game more challenging...but it seems with your own mechs it'll be way easier.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, my impression of it is "LOOK AT ALL THIS OVERPOWERED SHIT, COME HAVE A BALL!". Which is unfortunate from a challenge standpoint, but original X-COM endgame was very much the same way, so I'm willing to forgive them somewhat. The advent of ridiculously overkill gadgets to mess around with is a pea in the same pod with Blaster Launcher, for instance.

I'd really love to see some more flexibility in the multiplayer, though. Throwing all this crazy shit in there could make for some great times. A large part of what made aliens so dissatisfying in XCOM's current iteration of multiplayer was that you didn't have access to some of the greatest units (say, Sectobots).

 

[Name]

Seems like they are only going to upgrade the campaign storyline in order to corporate new gameplay elements, with the story itself remains basically the same.
Which means we have to replay the campiagn again.
If it's true, it's kind of lame.

 

[Gord]

Well, that's what you do when playing the game, did you expect some kind of freeform mode?
Although I wouldn't mind if the whole structure of the campaign would be less rigid...

 

[Name]

I was thinking a proper expansion like in old RPGs or RTS games.
But they've gone the Civ expansion route: add bunch of new stuff that should have been in a patch.

 

[Zeriel]

New enemies, tech trees, entire game systems should have been in a patch?

 

[Vival]

I was thinking a proper expansion like in old RPGs or RTS games.
But they've gone the Civ expansion route: add bunch of new stuff that should have been in a patch.

Which ones are you talking about? I remember the better ones expanding the the normal game like the one for gothic 2 for example. I wish they had done something like that for Jagged Alliance 2 instead of Unfinished Business.

 

[Space Satan]

Release date - 11-12-13, from trailer. Now, is it human date with day-month-year or kwanzanian month-day-year crap?

 

[Space Satan]

And more info:

• Still no randomly generated maps, and from the sound of things, we won't be getting randomly generated maps in the future, either. It sounds like randomly generated maps were just too difficult to get working, and the idea was scrapped early on in development of Enemy Unknown.
• The overall thrust of the campaign will be similar to Enemy Unknown. Most of the details Gupta was talking about involved the ground game, and enhancements to the troops in the game's turn-based combat. Gupta did say that there would be changes to the larger global war-game, but didn't elaborate on them.
• The endgame will remain largely unchanged, though the new alien units will now appear aboard the alien ship. Generally speaking, the "arc" of the story will remain about the same, provided you get to the endgame.
• Both MEC troopers and genetically enhanced soldiers won't function quite the same as psionic soldiers—you'll have to send your soldiers to their respective lab to get "converted," but there won't be a test for aptitude.
• Generally, Gupta sounded confident that a new Enemy Within playthrough will feel fresh. I mostly get that sense because when I asked him how fresh a new playthrough would feel, he said, "It'll feel pretty damn fresh."
• Fortunately, Enemy Within will open the door a bit more for modders. Gupta said that they've put more of the game in the easily editable .ini file that modders often tweak, and less in the harder to access Unreal script. While he couldn't say much about future plans to open the game up further (nor about the potential for Steam Workshop support a la Civ V), the sense I got was that it'd take a significant amount of work to re-jigger things and make the game as moddable as some (including me) would like.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

And imagine you just have to pay $30 for the privilege! Although maybe they'll have another snafu and sell it for $2 huehue's like they did with the Civ 5 expac.

o god. If they do that again, Felipepepe grab one for me and I will SHOWER YOU WITH CARDS! :patriot:

 

[SmartCheetah]

Gosh, too bad they ain't adding Map generation or AT LEAST map editor so you could make more scenes by yourself using the available assets (I could already see those huge community packs)

Also, what I think could do great for this particular UFO wannabe game, is adding classes for eg. sectoids. Few different skills/weapons randomly given to every spawned sectoid? That would make things very interesting. Also, some kind of "veteran" units, so you could actually fight against stronger brother of XX sectoids you killed already.
I'm not sure why they can't introduce stuff like that into their game. :-/ Most of this stuff is hard-coded, so you can't even mod it in

 

[felipepepe]

This is a game that mods could easily fix, had they more control... community mod packs, random alien equipment, remove the "only act after discovered" triggers, and change the resources balance and you'll have quite a nice game.

 

[Gord]

I did get aliens without triggering them.
They would still get their free move and it didn't happen as often as I'd liked, but I did see patrolling aliens.