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

[SmartCheetah]

http://kotaku.com/sounds-like-aliens-will-invade-your-base-in-xcom-enemy-1418358925

Interesting.

I bet it will be just another boring map, resembling the "surface" of your base or something. That's why the "ant-farm" base concept is retarded. But oh wait, it looks cool!

Anyway, I'll get the game just because I want to make AAR of it.

 

[Zeriel]

Is it really that different from the originals in that aspect?
It might not be as pronounced, but it's happening as well. It certainly is on lower difficulties, once you have psi on your hand.

What keeps the challenge level (or at least a sense of "danger") in the original is that there is geoscape and tactical complexity they of course had to strip out of the new one for the sake of stockholder meetings. Sure, there is very little individual challenge in the later part of the game once you understand how to abuse it, but you still have to deal with lots of things going on at any given time, including "concurrent" missions and base defense that isn't scripted. Base defense in particular is interesting because it preys on the habits of efficient players (i.e why would you have any good soldiers/tech at home to defend against an alien attack when they are all out in the field balling on pussy UFOs?).

 

[Average Manatee]

Is it really that different from the originals in that aspect?
It might not be as pronounced, but it's happening as well. It certainly is on lower difficulties, once you have psi on your hand.

What keeps the challenge level (or at least a sense of "danger") in the original is that there is geoscape and tactical complexity they of course had to strip out of the new one for the sake of stockholder meetings. Sure, there is very little individual challenge in the later part of the game once you understand how to abuse it, but you still have to deal with lots of things going on at any given time, including "concurrent" missions and base defense that isn't scripted. Base defense in particular is interesting because it preys on the habits of efficient players (i.e why would you have any good soldiers/tech at home to defend against an alien attack when they are all out in the field balling on pussy UFOs?).

That rarely happens in the original X-Com. As soon as plasma cannons and the hyperwave decoders are up, you've basically won the game. You can shoot down anything less than a battleship without risk and battleships almost always fail their mission if you destroy the earlier waves of craft. And if need be you can shoot down a battleship with 4 interceptors, rarely losing more than 1.

 

[Raghar]

That rarely happens in the original X-Com. As soon as plasma cannons and the hyperwave decoders are up, you've basically won the game. You can shoot down anything less than a battleship without risk and battleships almost always fail their mission if you destroy the earlier waves of craft. And if need be you can shoot down a battleship with 4 interceptors, rarely losing more than 1.

When you have enough shields and enough firepower on your base, you can repulse battleship without much problems. Actually I didn't bothered with these decoders. You can win without them.

 

[Average Manatee]

That rarely happens in the original X-Com. As soon as plasma cannons and the hyperwave decoders are up, you've basically won the game. You can shoot down anything less than a battleship without risk and battleships almost always fail their mission if you destroy the earlier waves of craft. And if need be you can shoot down a battleship with 4 interceptors, rarely losing more than 1.

When you have enough shields and enough firepower on your base, you can repulse battleship without much problems. Actually I didn't bothered with these decoders. You can win without them.

Shields and base defenses are a useless waste of research and money compared to plasma cannons which defend the entire planet and shoot down every UFO without loss, and the decoders that let you detect them the instant they appear. You can win X-Com without any research other than Avengers and the Cydonia research, doesn't mean playing that way is a good idea. In conclusion, you suck.

 

[Raghar]

I won TFTD.

 

[Average Manatee]

TFTD isn't that hard. In fact it's easier than X-Com in many ways. Once you know that the stun bombs demolish crabs the difficulty is all downhill.

 

[Space Satan]

Another huge flaw of new X-Com is that they removed weapon diversity. Lasers are just weaker version of plasma. Modders get it right - they made laser more accurate and does not requiring reload but weaker than plasma.

 

[Average Manatee]

The bigger problem with weapons was that there was no armor to reduce damage, only HP bloat. In the new X-Com the difference between a sniper with a sniper rifle and a sniper with a laser sniper rifle vs a muton is... nothing. Both will take out the target in 2 shots. In the original you wouldn't dare try to use standard rifles or pistols vs a Muton, their armor would reduce damage practically to zero.

 

[Hornawkawk]

Another huge flaw of new X-Com is that they removed weapon diversity. Lasers are just weaker version of plasma. Modders get it right - they made laser more accurate and does not requiring reload but weaker than plasma.

Yeah. If you're smart you'll skip all of the laser-related research since it's a waste of time, funds, and resources, and advance directly to plasma.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

HP bloat is a crap mechanic and I'm amazed that we can't get past it in this day and age. Fucking pathetic.

 

[Average Manatee]

HP bloat is a crap mechanic and I'm amazed that we can't get past it in this day and age. Fucking pathetic.

If consoletards reviewers encountered armor that could reduce damage to zero they would rage and complain that the game is impossible.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

That's the entire point of having different weapons though; some are more efficient against soft targets, some against hard targets and other have different modes of operation. It shouldn't JUST be a question of whether or not your weapon deals two additional points of damage or not because that kind of bullshit leads to the situation which kneecapped my fun in Enemy Unknown at what was supposed to be the high water mark.

 

[Brinko]

So the new enemies are just humans. I'd be shocked but with this games reputation nothing could shock me unless the final mission is going to mars and making every female squad member an alien fuck slave in return for peace.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Lawl... Exalt.

How much do you want to bet that they'll be like the Reaper-controlled humans in Mass Erect?

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

HAHAHAHA I JUST NOTICED THAT THOSE ENEMY HUMANS ARE PRETTY MUCH WEARING THE CLOTHES THE CHARACTER IN THE BUREAU ARE WEARING!!!! NICE ONE! DAY ONE BUY!

 

[Infinitron]

http://gamebanshee.com/news/112451-...lt-enemies-revealed-trailer-and-previews.html

It looks like XCOM: Enemy Within will introduce a new human threat to the gameplay mix of the original XCOM: Enemy Unknown, as showcased in this new "Security Breach" gameplay trailer.

A few press outlets have had the chance to try their hands at fighting this new faction for preview purposes, like Kotaku:

Seriously, their suits are quite dapper. In other news that's probably more relevant to you: they're also incredibly aggressive in all manners of the word. In both character and battle behavior.

The Exalt are hellbent on using alien technology for technological advancement (and a bit of what sounds like world domination) and they don’t care who dies in the process. In Enemy Within, they'll hide Cells in random countries, which build towards launching an operation against your team. What that means is: if you don’t attack once you see the threat of a Cell pop up on your radar, they’ll take advantage of your hesitation and board your ship first. Or they’ll attack your cash reserves. Or terrorize people with propaganda. Or undo progress on your active research projects. They suck, basically.P

So you do what any wise strategist would do: you attack first. This means assigning one of your soldiers to a covert operation of your own against the Exalt. I consider the soldier with the bone marrow genetic modification (which gives a boost to health regeneration) but move on to a tried and true soldier before setting out to infiltrate Australia, where a Cell was hiding, to gather intel.

GamesRadar:

The Exalt operate from hidden cells around the globe, which you'll have to spend XCOM funds to track down--funds you could've spent on satellites, equipment upgrades, or other crucial resources. The more Exalt missions you complete, the closer you'll get to discovering their headquarters and stopping them for good. Choose to ignore them for long, though, and they'll send entire nations into panic, causing them to back out of the XCOM project.

What Exalt forces lack in firepower (which isn't much, truth be told), they make up for in numbers. You'll want to send your most experienced units to take them on, as they're quick about surrounding and overwhelming you. You'll have to use everything at your disposal, including new items like gas grenades, which poison enemies, and ghost grenades, which provide a few turns of stealth on whomever they're used on, if you hope to survive their onslaught. As if facing a relentless army of murderous aliens wasn't already hard enough.

Polygon:

"We went through a number of design iterations for the EXALT; we tried cobra-style with weird night vision goggles and webbing, urban camp stuff, all of that," Gupta explained. "We said, 'Okay we can ship this...' but it didn't really communicate what we wanted to about EXALT.

"We wanted to communicate two things with how they looked," he said. "One, that these guys fighting for EXALT, they're not soldiers — you are fighting the believers themselves. And two, it's a covert ops system. These guys were sitting in their offices at the bank, at the PR agency, or whatever, and then the call comes ... and they stand up, go to the closet, push the button, put on the bandanas, and go.

"EXALT have day jobs; they fight as part of a secret society. They are like the Illuminati. These are people that you could have been standing next to on the street and you didn't know they were a part of this power-mad group bent on ruling the world."

Pitting humans against their own kind also fits within the "enemy within" narrative. Gupta said that it would make sense that not everyone would react to an alien invasion the same way. XCOM took their route; EXALT is taking their own.

"Some might see it as an opportunity rather than a threat, and we wanted to capture that," he said. "You [XCOM] are the good guys, but not everyone else on earth is the good guys. We wanted to have this shadow war going on at the same time as the alien invasion. It's very cloak-and-dagger with EXALT."

 

[Dead Guy]

Humans are the new aliens. XCOM: Enemy pretty familiar.

 

[Eyeball]

Sigh. This game really could have been good. High lethality of aliens, easy to use interface, attractive Visuals for the most part, all good, solid features. More differences in weapons, roaming aliens, random maps and a less straightjacketed campaign, that is all it would have taken for it to be highly enjoyable and replayable. As it is, I could not finish it once.

 

[Kitako]

They could easily keep their popamole and let the modder fix it, but noooo... god forbid having proper modding tools. This game could easily be fixed with an editor, instead of simple exe hacks that we got.

 

[whatevername]

I bet Aliens are on some kind of rails, and that's why they haven't introduced random generated maps. Lazy fucks.

The aliens are either frozen in place until you approach the area they're supposed to be in or they spawn there. They don't seem to move before you "detect" them.

The "hardest" difficulty only adds hp to the aliens and reduces yours, but adds nothing to the dumb scripts they call AI. One of the stupid things I've seen was on the 1st mission when I placed all my soldiers on the roof w/ overwatch... Then 4 aliens walked around the corner into the trap and died, 1 per turn, each using the same path. If there was any hint of AI all 4 of them would've moved together as a group.

Oh and all the maps are basically long corridors.

 

[Gord]

There are patrolling aliens (I think they follow some pre-defined path), just not many of them - most just sit at some spawn-point and wait for you to come by.
Might be that the patrols only exist in certain maps.
At least, I had a few cases of previously undiscovered aliens moving into my LOS during their turn (which would promptly trigger their free move).
I also had a strange thing were I spotted some aliens just at the outer extend of my soldiers LOS, without triggering their free-run-for-cover-action, which caused them to seemingly "teleport" to another position on their turn. In some cases I triggered that 2 or 3 times on a row.

 

[Raghar]

At least, I had a few cases of previously undiscovered aliens moving into my LOS during their turn (which would promptly trigger their free move).

This is why I didn't want to play it.

 

[Hornawkawk]

I had previously undiscovered floaters come into view suddenly, have their free move, and then during their turn, they used their ability to position themselves next to my shotgun and minigun troops, who promptly shredded them to tears within their next turn...shit was hilarious

 

[Zero Credibility]

That was my experience as well. Basically, those enemies that do move do so by teleporting along predefined points. And if you squad happens to be on that point, they would just appear out of thin air and do their free move-into-cover animation. Even if they happen to appear in the middle of your formation.