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

[Surf Solar]

Ending mission was so easy I was a bit offended. So much preparation, and I clean the thing without a single quick save. Even regular missions are harder, because they have more random and free-roamy level design.
A pinnacle of game design - final fucking corridor.

Spoiler

And they killed my Sarah Kerrigan! I was so proud of unlucky little medic becoming the only psionic in team, and they just... bah!

Yeah, the hardest mission I had in the entire game was when I shot down a randomly generated ship of the Battleship class. This thing was HUGE and had so many hard encounters in it I almost ragequitted. Was very disappointed at the difficulty of the last one. Also, if the game is sending me two sectopods at once in my direction, DONT FUCKING PLACE THEM RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER, it gets too fucking easy with the heavies rocket launcher and the +damage on robos...

As for your spoiler,

Spoiler

The most "gifted" guy with psionics happened to be my "avatar" that I named after myself right from the first mission. You cam imagine how pissed I was at the ending.

 

[Gozma]

I noticed something about my guess at hit chance/displayed hit chance bugs - if an enemy is standing at a corner with high cover on one side and half on another, and you are shooting from a position where either piece of cover alone would protect the enemy, the displayed hit chance will only calculate the low cover hit%. As far as I can tell the game still counts the high cover for the actual hit% (the displayed 50% hit shot was missed so many times I kinda suspect it uses both the high AND the low cover).

 

[Grunker]

How does Reaction Fire and Supressive Fire work exactly?

For instance, I just leveled a Heavy who can gain the ability "Supression." It say it grants Reaction Fire against the subject as well as a -30 to hit for that subject. I'm guessing this means that the Heavy counts as having taken an Overwatch action with regards to that enemy, or what?

 

[Surf Solar]

Surpression fire is an active ability you directly choose, it does not hit the enemy directly but the heavy shoots at the alien for the entirety of its turn disabling tohitchance for that enemy. If that enemy that gets surpressed chooses to move, the heavy gets a free reaction shot

Overwatch works similar, you activate it at the end of your turn, if an enemy walks onto that soldiers LoS the soldier gets a reaction shot. There will later be perks that give assaults free reaction shots without having to go into overwatch, quite useful

 

[good little toastboy]

That's exactly how it works, Grunker. I've never seen them try to run away and trigger the reaction fire though. On the upside they often don't even attempt to shoot at you while suppressed. They might toss a grenade or poison you though.

Multiplayer is a horrible (buggy) mess right now, it didn't show me red icons even though I could see enemies so I actually had to check with every guy, also the timer ticks down during action cam animations and reaction shots, which makes anything with less than 120 seconds per turn a joke . Then during the last two turns every move was flagged as a dash. Also I couldn't move through destroyed parts of the wall on the bar map, though I'm not sure whether that's a bug or feature. Still won by mind controlling my opponent's elite muton.

 

[Gozma]

Note that any move will trigger overwatch, not just walking into LOS. Most aliens pretty much will not move if they are aware that anyone has overwatch on them. That way you can have a guy standing in high cover with a smoke grenade on him overwatching an entire 3-man pack of aliens to keep them still while another guy has them flanked and is shooting one of them dead every turn. A lot of fun tactics arise out of that, but unfortunately it's generally more tactically important not to reveal new fog of war than it is to pull neat flanking tricks.

Suppression is single target overwatch plus an aim debuff.

 

[Black]

Overwatch and suppression work extremely well with assault's Flush ability which forces enemies to move.

 

[Raghar]

I managed to repair UFO:ET gold.

It's simple: Install patch 2.0, yes that patch they are saying you shouldn't install. It disables mods, and it would become rock solid. You will not be able to hire new soldiers, but if you'd want to hire rookies to blow up, get this game, or Aftershock. In aftershock, you not only can blow up rookies, you can blow up rookie mutants and psionics, and you can hire expensive somewhat trained candidates, in case going with rookies would be suicide.

 

[Heresiarch]

I LOVE this game. Really it is a big surprise, I was like losing all the hope of it and having imagination of this game having stupid music and cartoonish design and blah...until I saw MHC's praise of this game.

The strategic part is really, really brutal to you. You simply cannot play it like in old XCOMs so that you can buy fucktons of soldiers and scientists and build whatever you want while selling all kinds of alien artifacts for JUICY profit. Heck you could even keep building Gauss Cannons for big $$$ and turn the game into Xcom Tycoon. Instead now I find myself constantly struggling with money and fucking alien alloys - which was used to be so plentiful that I find them to be wasting my wharehouse space. I have researched armor and laser weapons and have a foundry but I can't even fully equip my squadmates because I need money for satellites because several countries are soon breaking off

The tactics part while is streamlined, I won't call it to be actually dumbed down. Now it plays more like a tactical wargame like W40K or even D&D. There are a lot less randomness (except for the RNG) involved, and a lot of things feel more realistic to play with now. I do feel missing the scary feeling of being ambushed out of the FOW.

Squadmates levelling up with new skills is a big surprise to me too. It do make some good RPGness and it can give some very interesting comboes accross different squadmates (like metioned above, Surpression fire + Flush). Limited squad size also force you to think better in your tactics, from sending out the right squadmates to planning out how to advance in the battlefield. However I do miss a bit the usage of stats like stamina, strength, reactions etc.

Finally the game atmosphere is better than I expected. The main characters are a bit cheesy and the art direction can get a little more serious but that's all (I really like TFTD and Apoc's art direction). The music the first time I hear it I thought I was playing XCOM: Alien Revolution, then I found it's really the same composer of DX: HR. The music while choosing thr squadmates before missions is right between epicness and cheesiness which I like.

So yeah, I do feel the game refresing and surpringly fun to play. Firaxis could put in a Hardcore mode to put back all the stats and time units in it, but then again it would become less balanced. It do show Firaxis is trying to stay true to the hardcoreness of XCOM, by giving this game the capabilty to ruthlessly fuck you up in the most ugly ways possible.

 

[Eyeball]

"Hey, did you guys hear about this modern sequel to a classic game they're working on? I saw the screens and it's total fagballslolololololol so much decline I can't even...wait, it's out? OMG ITS SO COOL, GOTY FO SHO BROS I WOULD SUCK ITS COCK!"

Codex. Codex never changes.

 

[Gord]

Na, the guys that were raging and screaming bloody murder before are still doing so (or not saying anything anymore probably secretly playing it seven times).
The guys that like it are different ones. The hivemind is an illusion.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

"Hey, did you guys hear about this modern sequel to a classic game they're working on? I saw the screens and it's total fagballslolololololol so much decline I can't even...wait, it's out? OMG ITS SO COOL, GOTY FO SHO BROS I WOULD SUCK ITS COCK!"

Codex. Codex never changes.

Go easy on them. How can they ever be as cool as you?

 

[Black]

"Hey, did you guys hear about this modern sequel to a classic game they're working on? I saw the screens and it's total fagballslolololololol so much decline I can't even...wait, it's out? OMG ITS SO COOL, GOTY FO SHO BROS I WOULD SUCK ITS COCK!"

Codex. Codex never changes.

You eyeballing me?

 

[circ]

Could they make the X-Files influence a little less obvious? Horrible VO. Would still give it a fair change but...

Is there a mouse fix for this piece of shit?

EDIT: ok edited some ini and set trueframe something to false. A little better, but these controls! What is this, an Obsidian game?

EDIT: uuuugh. Where is my UI and why doesn't my guy want to move despite having moves? Is he retarded?

EDIT: ok, had to restart because the tutorial bugged out and hence the above. Always a good sign. They can't even get one german word translated correctly?? This also looks awful, and not cutscene bypassing? Fuck if I want to watch a Skyranger EVERY FUCKING TIME I land.

YOU'RE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE TUTORIALZ REALLY DUDE?!?! YOU CAN'T KNOW THE GAME UNTIL YOU PLAYGI IT 7 TIMES HOMO WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU??

EDIT: FOR FUCKS SAKE STOP HOLDING MY HAND LIKE IM A LITTLE BABY. THE OLD ONE JUST PUTS YOU STRAIGHT IN THE SHIT AND LETS YOU LIVE OR DIE AND DOESNT GIVE A SHIT.

 

[Emily]

lol you are complaining that tutorial holds your hand.. It isnt mandatory

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

"Hey, did you guys hear about this modern sequel to a classic game they're working on? I saw the screens and it's total fagballslolololololol so much decline I can't even...wait, it's out? OMG ITS SO COOL, GOTY FO SHO BROS I WOULD SUCK ITS COCK!"

Codex. Codex never changes.

if it pleases you, i thought the demo sucked and i think this game sucks much much more.

 

[Psquit]

YOU'RE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE TUTORIALZ REALLY DUDE?!?! YOU CAN'T KNOW THE GAME UNTIL YOU PLAYGI IT 7 TIMES HOMO WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU??

EDIT: FOR FUCKS SAKE STOP HOLDING MY HAND LIKE IM A LITTLE BABY. THE OLD ONE JUST PUTS YOU STRAIGHT IN THE SHIT AND LETS YOU LIVE OR DIE AND DOESNT GIVE A SHIT.

My men, dont expect gold from big studios, they will try to cash in shitty games an hope for the 10 millions moneyzs formula... small studios or indies are the ones than try to make decent spin offs

 

[kris]

I LOVE this game. Really it is a big surprise, I was like losing all the hope of it and having imagination of this game having stupid music and cartoonish design and blah...until I saw MHC's praise of this game.

The strategic part is really, really brutal to you. You simply cannot play it like in old XCOMs so that you can buy fucktons of soldiers and scientists and build whatever you want while selling all kinds of alien artifacts for JUICY profit. Heck you could even keep building Gauss Cannons for big $$$ and turn the game into Xcom Tycoon. Instead now I find myself constantly struggling with money and fucking alien alloys - which was used to be so plentiful that I find them to be wasting my wharehouse space. I have researched armor and laser weapons and have a foundry but I can't even fully equip my squadmates because I need money for satellites because several countries are soon breaking off

The tactics part while is streamlined, I won't call it to be actually dumbed down. Now it plays more like a tactical wargame like W40K or even D&D. There are a lot less randomness (except for the RNG) involved, and a lot of things feel more realistic to play with now. I do feel missing the scary feeling of being ambushed out of the FOW.

The strategic part is only "brutal" because it forces you into the always three part choice that brings up panic a lot. Those comes with such regular intervals that you will be more or less forced to progress the story (for some extra panic reduction). I wouldn't call this "strategy". That would instead be managing of resources and missing missions because your soldiers is away on another one. In this game you never misses a mission for real, it is only always this three-way choice.

Of course the tactic part is dumbed down. you have to be dumbed down to not see that. Like i said in the other thread, this is the Civ5 of Xcom.

By the way, has all the armies of the world been disbanded in this game? I know you fought aliens alone in old games, but it feels a little bit strange going into moscow and it is deserted and the Russian military is AWOL.

 

[Tel Prydain]

I think that the 2nd wave options and a ‘Classic’ Campaign could save this game, and I think I’d be happy to pay a little if it was DLC.

For those who missed it earlier in the thread, the 2nd wave options are in a cut/hidden menu that would let you turn on ‘hardcore’ options when starting a new game… stuff like your Elerium decaying, random stats on new rookies, flanking gives automatic critical-hits and a whole bunch of other options that really should have been in the main game.
PC master race can get the details: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/803941-activating-second-wave/

Meanwhile, I also want a ‘Classic’ Campaign that drops the story triggers and mimics the original so that I have the chance to shoot down abduction/terror missions and find alien bases. Given the new mechanics I can’t imagine that they can totally fix it, but they should be able to emulate it pretty closely.

At the moment it’s an interesting distraction, but a little tweaking could make the whole thing worthwhile.

I've tried making myself playing this game but I just can't. Fucking useless animations you can't skip, annoying voice acting, inability to zoom out, super low-contrast graphics in maps that take way too much effort to distinguish between shit, armor, weapon and alien models like they were made by a 12 year old, etc.

Fuck this game. Fuck 2K, fuck Firaxis.

Fuck you - even the xbowx has the options to zoom out, disable animations and turn voice acting into subtitles. Learn to computer.

 

[Garm]

By the way, has all the armies of the world been disbanded in this game? I know you fought aliens alone in old games, but it feels a little bit strange going into moscow and it is deserted and the Russian military is AWOL.

You just have to kind of suspend disbelief for that. The entire premise of XCOM is kind of foolish... a couple dozen soldiers and one base is not going to be able to defend the world--note that the original was just as bad in this regard...I highly doubt that an alien invasion would be held off be less than 1,000 soldiers scattered around the globe. I think the best way to look at it is that XCOM soldiers are just a very small part of a huge war, i.e. there's a huge war going on but we just see the small bits and pieces featuring the most highly trained soldiers...kind of like a SEAL team or something...while the regular army just focuses on holding the aliens, XCOM is responsible for the small missions for R+D and recon.

 

[20 Eyes]

lol you are complaining that tutorial holds your hand.. It isnt mandatory

Welcome to the Codex:

-Optional Tutorial:
"FUCKING HANDHOLDING BULLSSHIT JUST LET ME PLAY FUCKFUCKSDHEWHAHJ"

-Optional Animations:
"FUCKING DECLINE BABAMOLE BULLSHIT HURR LETS RUIN XCOM WITH AWESOME BUTTAN"

-Features Included in the game that they have yet to notice:
"WHY ISN'T THERE ____ FUCKING CONSOLETARD DOGFART"

Many Codexers are so busy looking for something to bitch about that they can't be bothered to check options menus or, in more severe cases, actually play the game at all before writing long posts detailing the problems they imagine the game having.

 

[Cassidy]

As if the tutorial was the only problem with this game, the fact it is dumbed down console trash and claims to be a X-COM game notwithstanding. And there is the greater picture: every strategy game commercially successful as a multiplatform declines the genre as a whole. Once there are no more PC-exclusive strategy games, I'll almost stop playing videogames because I don't enjoy slurping Brawndo like some of you.

And this is only the first dumping on the franchise. There is the FPS claiming to be a X-COM game too. Way to troll the fans of the original, 2k.

 

[Black]

Didn't they cancel the FPS one? Or just postponed it?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

every strategy game commercially successful as a multiplatform declines the genre as a whole.

Good argument, you've convinced me, game is shit. Setting my computer on fire in protest. Going to wear a trucker hat and talk about how I liked X-com before it was cool instead of saying "Yeah I'm playing a game called X-com you've probably never heard of it".

Fuck off. That's even more retarded than saying an optional scripted tutorial ruins the game for you, which is at least a genuine complaint even if it's a silly one. Writing off a TURN BASED GAME due to being on console takes the cake.

Didn't they cancel the FPS one? Or just postponed it?

Postponed it, but it sounds like it's back on. Sounds like they're going to make it a $20 downloadable shovelware game instead of a full priced retail game. And third person. And squad-based. It's gonna be pretty fucking terrible because it's also coming to consoles.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/01/xcom/

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Good argument, ...

What argument,he just said the facts.