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

[WhiskeyWolf]

Game should have been made with the CivV engine, PC exclusive. With different FOV, further zoomed out, larger maps, more units, different art direction, proper UI.

Might as well hope that a billion dollars falls from the sky while we are at it.

Why? They keep making major Civ games PC exclusive, why not do the same with XCOM?

Excuse me, can you squeeze chest-high-walls and GoW-macho-estetic into a Civ game? No?

 

[Jaedar]

You have to press tab to cycle between targets when you want to shoot. PC ui lol

 

[Angthoron]

Game should have been made with the CivV engine, PC exclusive. With different FOV, further zoomed out, larger maps, more units, different art direction, proper UI.

Might as well hope that a billion dollars falls from the sky while we are at it.

Why? They keep making major Civ games PC exclusive, why not do the same with XCOM?

Excuse me, can you squeeze chest-high-walls and GoW-macho-estetic into a Civ game? No?

Rocket barrage over a mountain tile!

Firaxis should hire me now.

 

[Morgoth]

What is this dumbfuckery? They wouldn't had to make a stupid GoW clone had they sticked to the PC exclusivity.

 

[evdk]

He's saying that they would make the Civ games into a GoW clones if they only could figure out how.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Fuck the Civ5 interface/engine I really hate it, and every game that makes use of it.

 

[Misconnected]

Fuck the Civ5 interface/engine I really hate it, and every game that makes use of it.

I'm with you as far as "Fuck the Civ5", but past that we really couldn't disagree more. In my opinion Civ5 has a great engine and a very good interface. The former looks fantastic and runs really well even on some pretty crappy old hardware. And the latter is highly intuitive, provides almost all the right feedback, and does it without getting in the way or looking like shit. My problems with Civ5 are the AI, and possibly the game itself. But the AI is so hilariously inept that I'll never be tempted/challenged to play the game enough to decide if I really do prefer the sprawlier and more old-school approach to abstract mechanics representing in-game action, or if my dislike for what to me feels more like in-your-face-abstract mechanics is one of those Get Off My Lawn things that I instinctively dislike not because it's actually worse, but because it requires me to unlearn conventions I've perhaps grown too comfortable with.

Luckily I have Warlock and Civ4. Warlock is mostly missing the civ stuff, but it almost has the engine and interface, some of the abstraction, more than all of the wargame, and the best AI I've seen in years. Civ4 has all the civ stuff and a not laughably bad AI.

 

[DwarvenFood]

I guess the gameplay in Civ5 left a bad aftertaste for me that somehow ruined the engine up to the point that I'm unwilling to try Warlock. I do agree that it runs pretty good on my old hardware and I had no trouble figuring out what did what. Civ4 is great indeed. As for this X-Com game, it's less of decline than I thought, hope there will be a demo.

 

[Misconnected]

Totally off topic, but as far as Warlock goes, you should try to get over it.

It is most definitely not a civ or 4X game. The closest it comes to that sort of thing, is letting you squeeze resources from your enemies, which is what passes for diplomacy in Warlock, but that really is the full extent of it. You can research spells, build stuff and even turn buildings on and off too, but all of that basically works like the macro of your typical RTS.

Warlock is a hex-based wargame through and through. The notable difference between it and classic hex-based wargames, is that you city-spam across random maps, instead of trying to beat scenarios. But it's about one thing and one thing only: killing the shit out of everything and everyone. And the real draw isn't an engine and interface that is almost as good as Civ5's (and runs on even suckier hardware), the real draw is that the combat AI sets the bar for TB combat AI, hex-based & otherwise. The expansion/macro AI is, unfortunately, only as good as the best you find in other games. But the combat AI... Man, it is fucking great. It's like coming from Supreme Commander to AI War. If you haven't played Warlock yet, trust me on this, it is not just better than anything you've ever seen in a TBS, it is ENORMOUSLY much better.

- It's nowhere near human, of course, and unlike above mentioned AI War it doesn't appear to have any clever little cheese tactics built in (and Warlock doesn't have the same potential for that sort of thing either). But you'll be shocked by how much better it is than other AIs when it comes to shuffling little stacks around and killing your mans. And at least initially, the Impossible AIs mostly make up for their macro/expansion deficiencies by having near unlimited resources and a nasty habit of spamming the biggest, baddest direct damage spells in the game (yeah, the caster AI isn't exactly mensa material either, but the cheatiness of it all makes it pretty killy anyway).

Really, if you like that sort of thing when it doesn't look kind of like Civ5 (and if it's any comfort, it's actually the other way around. InoCo-Plus had already released one game using Warlock's engine and visual style before Civ5 hit pre-production, and released a second while Civ5 was in development. Warlock is the third in their line of games using the engine and visual style), you're doing yourself a great disservice by passing on Warlock. If nothing else, consider this veritable deluge of ridiculously high praise is coming straight from the glittering gem of hatred that pulses revoltingly in this angry cunt's chicken-breast.

 

[Serious_Business]

So is this a

Day One Purchase?

 

[villain of the story]

I guess the gameplay in Civ5 left a bad aftertaste for me that somehow ruined the engine up to the point that I'm unwilling to try Warlock. I do agree that it runs pretty good on my old hardware and I had no trouble figuring out what did what. Civ4 is great indeed. As for this X-Com game, it's less of decline than I thought, hope there will be a demo.

Oh but it will. Most games have one, thanks to the The Brazilian Bay The Brazilian Slaughter.

 

[Gozma]

There is a part of one of those PAX stream videos where they do a panel about the development of the new game and you can tell they were trying to make it way more of a glitzy brodawg game than they actually accomplished at the end. They were originally going to use way more of those glamor cuts and make it look like the soldiers and enemies were constantly (as in not just when you are taking a turn) firing shit and dodging and dodge-rolling between cover and cutting backflips when they get shot like generic American blockbustah action. Probably had a lot to do with this getting funded.

I think the multiplayer is not gonna be any fun because there won't be much skill involved - the metagame is too powerful and shots are way too random; what you will probably see are a few builds meant to bulldoze newbies that randomly win or lose when they play one another based on who hits their overwatch shots. Maybe there will be tricks to control the randomness decisively for a shot or two, I dunno. The single player though honestly looks pretty fun to me unless something really tedious or dumb is hiding in there somewhere.

 

[Morgoth]

PC Gamer preview

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

“There are some things you have to keep in XCOM in order for it to be XCOM,” says Murray. “You have to have the ability to take alien technology and turn it against the aliens. You need to have a strategy game that progresses based on the result of your tactical campaign. And the tactical game really has to be the heart of XCOM. I think when you have those elements, you can change the ways you go about different parts of it, and you still get a game that is recognisably XCOM but has a new feel.”

Purists may baulk at a thirdperson shooter reboot, but even they should agree that some change is essential to even this most loyal of remakes. Otherwise it would risk betraying XCOM’s most important aspect of all: the unknown

Bunch of heretics, the lot of them.

 

[Morgoth]

Purists may baulk at a thirdperson shooter reboot, but even they should agree that some change is essential to even this most loyal of remakes. Otherwise it would risk betraying XCOM’s most important aspect of all: the unknown

Change: The Unknown.

A new low for game journalism.

 

[Sranchammer]

Purists may baulk at a thirdperson shooter reboot, but even they should agree that some change is essential to even this most loyal of remakes. Otherwise it would risk betraying XCOM’s most important aspect of all: the unknown

Change: The Unknown.

A new low for game journalism.

Rule #4 of Propaganda

The rule of unanimity: presenting one's viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: draining the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure, and by 'psychological contagion'.

 

[Garm]

Honestly, the game doesn't look that bad--if it wasn't supposed to be an X-Com remake it'd look pretty good. It clearly isn't a proper successor, but it might end up being a solid game.

I really wish game journalists would just shut the fuck up though. Who are they writing too anyways? Fans of the original series know that 99% of the journalists never played the originals, and popamole gamers never played them either. There really is no point about referencing the older titles in the IP--take Fallout for example, I'm guessing less than 5% of those who started wtih 3 or NV actually decided to go ahead an play the originals after.

 

[KoolNoodles]

I was OKAY with tactical games like Silent Storm having small squads and roles, because it fit into the rest of the game. If they can pull that off they might have a good game on their hands. Will it be proper X-Com? No, not really. Honestly though, I have X-Com for that. It's one of those games that never leaves my computer, and I have it on my external HD for safe keeping. It's that good, and the graphics only enhance it.

 

[Jarpie]

This will be shit.

Ps. Pessimist never gets disappointed.

 

[EG]

Ps. Pessimist never gets disappointed.

They do seem to get beat up often, though.

 

[Gozma]

Yes, they could certainly tune the hit bonuses and minuses to only use the high end so that, say, you would see a lot of 85% chances to hit that you can turn into 100% with flanking or whatever; just a 15% chance to miss is tactically crucial with such small squads. If they had done something like a 3d6 or 2d100/2 probability distribution they could use more of the upper half of the distribution and still have reasonable hit probabilities for small units. But you are right that if they insisted on making typical shots 40-60% probable with such small squads it wouldn't matter.

 

[Gozma]

I think I was assuming the normal RPG formula of additive bonuses and penalties to rolls (e.g. kneeling in X-Com) because my first probability post looks pretty obtuse if I just read it now without whatever I was thinking at the time

If they had done something like a 3d6 or 2d100/2 probability distribution they could use more of the upper half of the distribution and still have reasonable hit probabilities for small units.

In your example you have 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 as missing rolls with 3d6, which is 5/18 of the possible roll values.
On a d100 it's 17/100

The point is that a larger fraction of the possible values qualify for the low absolute failure rate. You are using more values in the upper half of the distribution. That's meaningful if there are also ways to play with bonuses and penalties in the values.

 

[Job Creator]

In your example you have 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 as missing rolls with 3d6, which is 5/18 of the possible roll values.

4/27, don't forget more dice throws makes the average more probable, wasn't that your point?

 

[Gozma]

Lay off me I can't maintain Zomg quality anymore, that and the Codex altstorm are why I quit before

and Job I meant 5/18 5/16 possible results of the roll. They have different probabilities of occurring but that is not what I was getting at

edit fuck me I wrote that there were 18 possible results for 3d6... as in 1 and 2, I have that lyric suite brain disease

 

[Gozma]

Neg go bug Phelot or SMA for facebook codex, there's a whole forum for it now.