The good stuff I see:
(o) Gameplay based on flanking and supression - too early to judge that, but if it's true, this changes the gameplay significantly, for the better, imo, unless they fuck it up with cover being much too resilent etc. etc.
(o) LoS and fog of war rules seems to be implemented. Hey, after the recent JA, it's not a given anymore.
(o) Perk based char development - ideally, I'd like to keep the learning by doing system in place as well, but at least it should take away the grind exploits.
(o) Most soldiers on screenies have max HP<20, which is promising when it comes to lethality. A lot depends on the efficiency of cover and actual weapon damage, though.
(o) Thin men actually look like a good adition to the unit mix IMO.
(o) Environments look destructible, question is, are they destructive enough?
Shit I'm indifferent about:
(o) Discarding ammo mags - they will be missed, yeah, fuck you firaxis, supply and logistics actually IS a biggie in the strategy game genre.
Although, I have to concede that should mostly matter for grenades and explosives.
(o) No more TUs. to be fair, not a lot was lost, gameplay wise. Firing costs in the original were % values, so the TU's mostly mattered for movement range and kneeling.
I suspect they'll recover most of the tactical depth through perks, though kneeling seems to be gone for good, as soldiers will hug cover automatically, from what I gather.
(o) Only one Xcom base - ok, what the fuck had just happened here?
(o) Mutons Where do I start, first of all, they seem like a cross-breeed between wargoths from Aftershock and protos. Also, I grow tired with the "warlike, tribal footsoldiers trope". Seriously, if they also happen to be highly spiritual to boot, I'm going to puke on somebody's face.
Still, nothing fundamentally bad here, they just rub me the wrong way.
The alarming shit:
Yeah, looking at the available screenies and info I only have one big gripe about this new Xcom: the number of units. I know the ADD kids today cannot into controlling more than 12 unitsat a time, but if it only has, like, 6 soldiers per mission, it'll be a dissapointment.
First of all, if there's only a handful of soldiers per mission, I think it's safe to assume that we cannot expect the casualty rate of the originals.
The part where I do wishful thinking:
No screenies from air combat, from what I saw. Hopefully it didn't got axed entirely.
Civ 4 was very moddable. Civ 5 may have been moddable if it wasn't shit and nobody was interested.
Here's hoping Firaxis learnt from the mistake that was Civ 5 and Xcom will be more like the former. Still, it most likely just runs on a heavily modified Civ engine, so the possibility is there.
Also, the obligatory: mods'll fix it, rite??!
But, I should know better, Civ 5 also looked good on the previews but turned out shite.
