XCOM (Firaxis)

[friznit]

Can't find a fred, not sure if there was one. The Firaxis remake of XCOM has been subject to a lot of love/hate on the interwebs. It's now on Steam preorder and I must say the screens/vids look damn sexy. Ofc all the usual questions apply: will the maps be random enough, will the depth of the game be on parr with modern expectations or will it merely bely the fact we've been looking at XCOM through rose tinted specs for years? And why do I have to build basic ammo for my machine guns when I'm this uber special XCOM project ninja bastard? Also, it says it has MP...but no mention of coop.

[Dog Pants]

I have the special edition on pre-order. In case you're the only person in the world I haven't told, I played it at i46 (first member of public in the UK ). I can't answer any of the questions about randomisation, multiplayer, or depth, but the tactical maps I played were tense and.. tactical. Oh, and the German woman on the squad actually spoke German when encountering regular German troops. That impressed me.

[Dog Pants]

In case you were interested but sceptical, RPS are gushing about XCOM.. I'm gleeing in anticipation of my pre-order arriving.

[friznit]

This is the first game for some time that has got me quite excited. The last 2 turned out to be hopeless disappointments, so really got my fingers crossed that this doesn't.

[TheJockGit]

Very excited about this game, I have been a big XCOM fan since the days I played it on the Amiga 500. All that I have read so far looks very promising.

[Dog Pants]

Garrblearbleglaaahdemo.

I am excited beyond that which is respectable for a 34 year old man. However, I'm terrified that playing it will spoil the experience of the game proper. I'll download it anyway. Y'know, just in case.

[Dog Pants]

Reports are looking like the demo is the thing I played at i46.

[Dog Pants]

Okay, that's not the best of demos. For a start, you get about an hour's worth for 5GB. I don't know what they're using all that drive space for. The version I played had some sort of gimpy arcade style X-Box bastardisation as controls. Mouse is easier, but they still could have optimised the controls better - why select shoot, then select enemy, then press space? Simply right clicking on the enemy would have done the same thing with far fewer inputs and kept things flowing better. I told the 2K rep this at the time, so I'm sure others must have. Seems an odd decision. Finally, the demo is very linear and holds your hand a lot. It's really just the combat part of the tutorial, and the version I played earlier had a bit more on base building and research. The actual mission has a better variety of grobblies though. I can live with the controls really, it's not like the game puts you on a time limit, and from what I've read the missions are a lot more open and dangerous in the game than in this demo. A lot better, in other words. I hope this doesn't put too many people off.

[friznit]

Shame they have to gimp the controls so much (or can't be arsed to code a them for PC separately). The L-Click/R-Click interface is a staple of these sorts of things, and trying to emulate a controller with Mouse and Keyboard will always make me feel like a spastic catholic fumbling a five year old.

[Dog Pants]

The pre-purchase on Steam now comes with a copy of Civ V. Firaxis did a strange thing, stretch goals for the pre-order, so the more people pre-ordered the game the more stuff you get. Since it's #2 in the Steam charts (after Borderlands 2, good week for 2K) it's fairly obvious that hitting the top mark wasn't going to take that long. I wonder if my Game pre-order counts towards that.

[Joose]

Yay! Although I already own that. To the spare steams thread!

[friznit]

So, let the rage ensue. Or are we more tolerant now that we're all middle aged? Not actually played it cos of old skool release schedule, but our cousins across the water seem to be swinging between rage and fanboism.

[Joose]

I've sent my computer to the states, so managed to put in a few hours. Honestly, and rather unsurprisingly, both reactions are kind of stupid.

If you go in expecting the same as the old game you are going to be disappointed, because it is different and in some ways it's less good. However, it's still overall a damn good game. I'm enjoying it a lot.

[Dog Pants]

Every review I've seen has said what Joose said. It's not the old XCOM, but it hits the pertinent points. It isn't perfect, but it's still bloody good. Hopefully on friday I can see for myself.

[buzzmong]

Dunno, RPS's post on it has me apprehensive about buying it now.

From what they say the game is quite a good game and one I'd enjoy, but some of the issues they said they found (which, barring Interceptions, are all patchable easily) like issues with mouse controls and such, or no free-aim for shooting apart from grenades/rockets, are things that I think would grind me the wrong way, and probably annoy me if I bought it at full price.

Of course, waiting for a bit not only allows patches, but also the inevitable DLC to hit. I think it'll be a gotee purchase or during a Steam Sale if it's cheap enough.

[Joose]

issues with mouse controls and such, or no free-aim for shooting apart from grenades/rockets

The mouse controls are a little spazzy on occasion, but not often. Mostly for me it has been an issue of occasionally not being able to point at the location I want to until I give the camera a bit of a jiggle. As its turn based its not costing me anything game wise, so its been only a minor annoyance, especially as it has only hit me in maybe one in five missions.

The view is more of an issue for me. Im not sure why, as you can zoom in and out pretty far and rotate it to see around things, but it always seems to be ever so slightly restrictive. I think the issue *might* be that I want to have the ability to freely zoom in and out and rotate the camera to whatever angle I like. You dont actually need to, but I cant think of any reason why they would need to stop you doing it, so the fact that they have stopped me doing it grates a little. Again though, its only a minor issue.

The complaints about lack of free shooting confuse me. At absolutely no point so far have I wanted to shoot anything other than aliens with my shootyguns, so the fact that I cant hasn't ever come up. Unlike the camera thing, I don't miss it because I never want to do it.

[buzzmong]

The complaints about lack of free shooting confuse me. At absolutely no point so far have I wanted to shoot anything other than aliens with my shootyguns, so the fact that I cant hasn't ever come up. Unlike the camera thing, I don't miss it because I never want to do it.

I think it's probably down to destructable scenery. From what RPS have said on the occasions where your soldiers miss aliens and their shots hit walls and such, the walls can and will break.

Doesn't help that In the previous games if you were short of the 'splodes, you could just hammer a wall with bullets/plamsa etc and have it fall apart, which was very very handy if you knew an enemy was behind a wall/object and you have troopers in the right place. Also helped to make new access points/shooting positions.

By not having free aim despite knowing and being shown that freely destructable scenery is in and working is a point of "Well, I should be able to do this, but I can't, why?".

[Joose]

I guess it might just be that I haven't got to a point where my weapons are shooty enough to break walls, so it wouldn't be an option for me at the moment even if there were free aim. Being able to shoot out a brick wall with regular bullets would be a little silly, but the aliens plasma weapons do make a mess of the scenery, that is true.

[friznit]

I fear my biggest rage will come from the restrictive soldier load out thing. Hopefully it will be moddable.

[Joose]

My game status as of last night:

Canada has gone. China and the UK are shitting themselves and theres nothing I can do about it. My most experienced soldiers are all dead after a mission that went suddenly and horrifically pear shaped. I have $2 left in the accounts, and if I sell anything to make more money I won't have enough raw materials to build anything with the newly acquired funds. My only remaining experienced soldier is in the med bay for the next 15 days. I've only got 4 rookies left. Its 25 days till my next influx of council cash.

The world is doomed.

I'm enjoying every minute of it