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

[WetWorks]

4 fucking squaddies? What is this shit?

 

[Hellraiser]

Y - scan for UFOs

Scan for shit with our AWESOME minigame just like in the award winning GOTY 2012 Mass Effect 2!

 

[Marobug]

Just what I've been wondering since you signed up.

That is, if you were here when I signed up.

 

[Syril]

The big screens look OK, probably the only screens that i would approve from all the xcom remakes.The other remakes artistic design is usualy shit, while here most things atleast try to be like the old one.

Looking at them i can totaly see myself playing this, now just to see mechanics in action.

 

[Marobug]

Yet I suspect you are reading this

 

[Monk]

Don't read emotional bs like being butthurt into posts just because people don't like the changes being made to a remake. After all the rape I've seen of beloved franchises it's impossible for me to feel outrage over anything.

A better question is why are you guys so butthurt someone is bashing the new game? Some of you are awfully defensive, and most of the defensive posts are pretty stupid. Half of them obviously are talking out there ass without reading up on even this thread let alone all the links. May as well go to bioware boards as this is the exact same shit you get over there.

How can you possibly judge a game just by knowing all the details about it? That would require a brain or something!

The changes that could be made to improve the original are few, it's about as close to a perfect game as has ever been made. The weapons system is a little oversimplistic, with a big bias towards using some weapons, and a big bias towards burst fire. You can grab heavy plasma almost immediately and use that as your workhorse through the game. Enemies seldom burst fire. Damage and death is arbitrary and a laser pistol might kill muton on first shot or you might blast it 8 times with a heavy plasma to no effect. You could add in a lot of features from JA 2 to make the combat better as well, but that would be asking for divine intervention. There's a few annoying bugs here and there but overall it's less buggy than most games and none of the bad points are that serious.

Isn't "emotional bs" what butthurt is all about? "Rape" of "beloved franchises" for me would be not being able to play the originals and having to play the remakes instead. Also, "bashing" may work for or against "butthurt." If one argues that the game isn't worth playing and that the original is still fine, then there's no butthurt involved. But if one bashes by claiming that major improvements can be made to make the original better and that they likely won't be incorporated in the remake, then there's butthurt involved.

Also, your second argument may work both ways, i.e., if there aren't enough details about this remake, then defending it is as useless as bashing it, right?

My point is that if the original was already close to "perfect," then there's no need to be butthurt over plans for the remake or others criticizing it.

 

[Monk]

THIS! IS! XCOM!!!

more screens here:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=458283

Looks fine! I already had fun with the first, so I'll certainly see something new for this one.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

My point is that if the original was already close to "perfect," then there's no need to be butthurt over plans for the remake or others criticizing it.

Well, I played the game when it was released and had a blast. The whole world had a blast. Now, almost 20 years later we should be swimming in equivalent or even better games. Except we're not. Because gaming industry became a joke. Like music industry. Like movies industry. So of course I'm butthurt to see all my major sources of entertainment being turned into shit. And this Nth dumbed down remake of a game, just like the Nth remake of a movie or uninspired music cover pisses me off because it clearly indicates that things are not getting better.

To be over-dramatic, this is akin to the sequence in the original "Time machine" movie, when the hero discovers that the men of the future have let humanity's best books rot in their shelves and became a bunch of morons.

"Rape" of "beloved franchises" for me would be not being able to play the originals and having to play the remakes instead.

Then that would also be you being raped, not only the franchises. As for being free to replay the original, guess what : I'm sick of replaying the original X-Com ! There are only so many sectoïds you can kill in that grocery store before permanent brain damage. It's been almost twenty years. FFS

 

[Gondolin]

As for being free to replay the original, guess what : I'm sick of replaying the original X-Com ! There are only so many sectoïds you can kill in that grocery store before permanent brain damage. It's been almost twenty years. FFS

Too true. I loved X-Com back when I was 14-15, spent weeks playing the shit out of it. Now I can't bring myself to play it again.

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

Of course you don't play those old games now, the interface makes it impossible to stand the tedium of doing things. Once you see interface improvements in a game you want them to be standard. All that gameplay greatness are hidden behind so much manual work to get anything done it takes a special attachment to get over that effort hump.

In thought X-com apocalypse was even more fun that the others, but that seems to be just me and a few friends who think that. Going to cult of Sirius with fully loaded incendiary rockets just to torch their base was fun fun fun.

In the original I remember when the characters got to good, stats over 255 the stats started over at 0 which was kinda wierd. I think they will avoid that "feature" this time, by having no stats

 

[Vault Dweller]

Looks fucking awesome, thanks for posting the link.

I knew you'd stalk infos for your secret new favorite game, VD.

I care because you do.

Anyway, more screens:
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...you-should-care-about-xcom-enemy-unknown.aspx

The screens look pretty good, but it *is* a shame that the mechanics have been dumbed down. It would be cool to be able to take a chance and try to kill both aliens here.

 

[Peter]

Since they're getting rid of action points, and you can only shoot once per turn, I'm getting Valkyria Chronicles vibes from this. Best case scenario is that we get something on par with that game, which would be great, don't get me wrong. Still, it won't really be the X-Com we know and love.

 

[Mozgoëbstvo]

Of course there's butthurt over remake even if the first ones were already perfect. Because we'd like the same X-COM as before, only with inproved graphics and maybe terrain destruction - but only to make it even more deadly and tactical.

Is it too much to ask?

 

[Infinitron]

I think the main the way you could incline the original X-COM is to give the player more reason to use different types of weapons (while still maintaining the 'conventional->laser->plasma->fusion' tier progression, which adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game).

 

[Gondolin]

Of course you don't play those old games now, the interface makes it impossible to stand the tedium of doing things. Once you see interface improvements in a game you want them to be standard. All that gameplay greatness are hidden behind so much manual work to get anything done it takes a special attachment to get over that effort hump.

Wrong. I don't play X-Com anymore because I know the game too well.

 

[EG]

Xcom's interface is fine, baring a few minor inconveniences of the time -- small resolution, making it difficult to compare profiles between soldiers, and little things like that.

I quite enjoyed Apocolypse, but the realtime with pause was so easy to manipulate. Oh, look! That green bastard fired a rocket! Well. Pause. Direct agents away. Play.

Rinse repeat.

 

[zeitgeist]

making it difficult to compare profiles between soldiers

I wonder how many AAA+++ GOTYDCM 9.9 titles with such a horrible UI oversight it would take for the general audience to develop (or rather dust off) the mental faculties needed to simply hold this overwhelmingly vast number of one squad member's stats in their heads while comparing them to another squad member. Would be an interesting experiment.

 

[Marobug]

Of course you don't play those old games now, the interface makes it impossible to stand the tedium of doing things. Once you see interface improvements in a game you want them to be standard. All that gameplay greatness are hidden behind so much manual work to get anything done it takes a special attachment to get over that effort hump.

In thought X-com apocalypse was even more fun that the others, but that seems to be just me and a few friends who think that. Going to cult of Sirius with fully loaded incendiary rockets just to torch their base was fun fun fun.

In the original I remember when the characters got to good, stats over 255 the stats started over at 0 which was kinda wierd. I think they will avoid that "feature" this time, by having no stats

XCom interface is one of the best designed in gaming history.

Holy shit
Sometimes I question myself if this retard is trolling or if he's just a proud ignorant.

 

[Average Manatee]

What exactly is wrong with Xcom's interface?

After auto equipment distribution (added through mods) I can't think of anything big the tactical view is missing. Maybe the ability to hotkey groups of soldiers and order them around together instead of individually, along with setting up multiple turns worth of movement so you don't have to reorder a soldier every turn 5 times in a row to cross an area.

Strategic interface needed a way to rearrange units in a ship (added through mods) and I would add to this the ability to sort soldiers by stats if I were making Xcom 2. Maybe add way to auto-sell equipment, but then I would argue that selling things at Xcom's profit margins were an exploit anyway and generating infinite money from building things shouldn't have been possible.

I could write for hours about the many problems with game mechanics and balance in Xcom, but its interface is near perfect.

 

[someone else]

^ mods will fix XCOM just like it fixed X-COM.

 

[Marsal]

XCom interface is one of the best designed in gaming history.

It's really amazing how elegant and responsive it is, considering the resolution and the target OS. There are some omissions, but overall design is excellent.

Marobug, go ahead and name a few games with better interface design.

 

[Marobug]

Almost everything released after 2000 ? Don't get me wrong, I love xcom and it's easily in my top 10 but saying the interface is one of the best ever is just retarded.

http://xspblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/xcom_ufo_defense.jpg

Just by looking at that screenshot I can spot several glaring problems. Imagine you never played this before and were faced with this interface for the first time. No context help meant you had no fucking idea what the buttons were for or what those colored numbers and bars meant; low resolution meant the interface took up about 40% of the screen; no minimap meant it was pretty to get lost in bigger maps; and so on. All these conclusion were taken just by looking at that screenshot, I'm pretty sure I could find several more by playing.
Can you imagine any of these shortcomings in a modern game ? Saying it's one of the best interfaces ever in gaming is just retarded, and justifying that by saying it's "amazingly elegant and responsive" is not much better either.

 

[mr.doo]

Of course you don't play those old games now, the interface makes it impossible to stand the tedium of doing things. Once you see interface improvements in a game you want them to be standard. All that gameplay greatness are hidden behind so much manual work to get anything done it takes a special attachment to get over that effort hump.

In thought X-com apocalypse was even more fun that the others, but that seems to be just me and a few friends who think that. Going to cult of Sirius with fully loaded incendiary rockets just to torch their base was fun fun fun.

In the original I remember when the characters got to good, stats over 255 the stats started over at 0 which was kinda wierd. I think they will avoid that "feature" this time, by having no stats

XCom interface is one of the best designed in gaming history.

Holy shit
Sometimes I question myself if this retard is trolling or if he's just a proud ignorant.

 

[Average Manatee]

Just by looking at that screenshot I can spot several glaring problems. Imagine you never played this before and were faced with this interface for the first time. No context help meant you had no fucking idea what the buttons were for or what those colored numbers and bars meant;

Click them once and you know what they do. Heck, the icons should be obvious enough before you bother to click for all but a few of them. Do we really need a context menu for something you can discover in 1/5th the time by simply pressing the button? The colored numbers/bars coincided with unit stats, which anyone with a hint of intelligence would notice instantly. Those without hints of intelligence are free to read the manual and have it explained to them.

low resolution meant the interface took up about 40% of the screen

Resolution is a game engine limitation, not part of interface design. And if by 40% you mean 25%.

no minimap meant it was pretty to get lost in bigger maps

3rd from the left. Maps are small enough you shouldn't even need it unless you were retarded. The largest maps are, what, 4x4 screens?

If you want to devote more space on the main screen to a map, I refer you to your previous complaint about the UI taking up too much space.

Can you imagine any of these shortcomings in a modern game ? Saying it's one of the best interfaces ever in gaming is just retarded, and justifying that by saying it's "amazingly elegant and responsive" is not much better either.

Spend your time using it and it handles whatever you need it to do very efficiently. Does an extra 5 minutes learning curve mean jack shit vs 20 hours of more comfortable play?

 

[Darth Roxor]

If anyone finds UFO's interface clunky and opaque, he is most likely braindead and should return to Skyrim. I managed to play and finish Enemy Unknown when I was 7 or something, without reading any manuals, and never having to wonder for more than 5 seconds or 1 mouse click 'what does this button do'.