New Version of Xcom

[mostly_harmless]

Thanks, that was a nice spoiler-free first impression. I can't wait for the unlock on Friday. I think I will spend my night til then working now to have some time off playing then! Not sure what to do with the kids and the wife, though. :D

mh

[Molach]

Not sure what to do with the kids and the wife, though. :D

mh

Do like me - put them in the 'Alien Containment' facility.

As in send them to the in-laws.

[Gustaran]

Just spent 7.5 hours playing when I should have been sleeping. Now I need to go to work and think about things other than X-COM.
...

Thanks for the first impressions, I will put it on my "buy when a little cheaper" list.

A review I read today mentioned that even though the game seems to be indeed very good the interface and handling was clearly designed with consoles in mind and therefore rather clumsy for PC players. What are your thoughts on that ?

[Sirian]

Do like me - put them in the 'Alien Containment' facility.

As in send them to the in-laws.

Hilarious.

But better yet, marry a gamer spouse! My wife is more addicted in the first day than I am. Truly. We had an appointment in town we had to deal with, and I had no clean undershirts because she forgot to go switch the laundry from the washer to the drier despite multiple reminders. Too busy playing One More Mission™.

I am playing Normal for first run, but playing it Ironman style. I let the tutorial do its thing -- it actually wasn't too bad, as there were some useful things in it about interface and whatnot, even for Xcom veteran like me.

I've lost one troop, a Rookie got plastered by a low percentage shot while under full cover AND took a critical. There are just going to be some moments when multiple bad luck factors overlay. A veteran would have had more health. And either a miss or a noncritical would have only wounded the soldier. Veteran troops make a big difference.


The most surprising thing for me so far has been the smaller maps. There are some maps that are quite cozy. Others are bigger and have more of the old Xcom feel to them, though, having to cover a lot of ground and not being sure when something nasty is going to pop up. And the game does now have a max squad size of six, instead of sixteen. So maybe I shouldn't have been caught off guard by that. However, even the small maps are large enough to be fun. They are just about right, really, for a "quick" mission for a squad of five.

The differences I've seen so far between the new and the original are far, FAR fewer than the similarities. And they are mostly logical changes. I have yet to see anything that actually gets in the way of having fun. And the fancy new graphics, majorly upgraded UI, and the "feel" of the game now, with its voice acting, animations, and quicker pace -- first impressions are all A-rate.

As for the "console" UI -- it's fine. Really, this is such a drastic upgrade to the original Xcom UI, they could have done half this well with it and I'd still be happy. The UI was literally the worst part of the original game!


OK, enough babbling. Now back to the playing!


- Sirian

[pling]

We had an appointment in town we had to deal with, and I had no clean undershirts because she forgot to go switch the laundry from the washer to the drier despite multiple reminders.

Thank you for posting this ... I was idly checking the forum while waiting for a map to load in BF3 and this reminded me I needed to move my husband's work trousers from the washing machine to the tumbledryer

[haphazard1]

Definitely having a lot of fun with this game. A lot. :D

Now on my second game at Classic -- made too many mistakes in the first one while figuring out what was important and what was not, and global panic got out of control even though I was doing well on the tactical missions. The strategy layer is the key in this new game -- you need to win on the missions, but that is now only necessary and not sufficient. The strategy layer is where you will lose the game without planning and a certain amount of luck. Losing missions will have nasty effects on the strategy layer (not to mention leaving you with much less experienced/capable soldiers for the progressively harder missions), and that can quickly spiral out of control. But you can ace every mission and still lose the game quite rapidly in the strategy layer.

On the UI, I agree with Sirian that it is a huge improvement over the original. There is certainly a strong console influence, but the game is quite playable. If you are on a PC I strongly recommend adjusting the hotkey bindings to your tastes and using them extensively -- after a brief adjustment period this has worked smoothly and quickly for me, much better than trying to use the mouse for everything. There are some frustrations with selecting destinations within multi-level structures -- the camera tends to shift up and down every time a new soldier is selected, and you have to keep zooming in and out and adjusting the level of the view to see the level you are actually interested in. It is very easy to end up sending your soldier somewhere you did not intend if the game thinks your cursor was on a level above or below where you thought you were signalling.

The difficulty at Classic is quite challenging, although a fair part of this is just the need to know exactly what you should be doing right from the start. You are very limited in resources and need to take certain steps ASAP in order to survive at Classic -- there is very little leeway to explore options or deviate from a tightly defined path. This rather surprised me during my first game, as I expected that would be true of Impossible difficulty but was expecting a little more slack on Classic. There is not much there, though, so a first game on Normal is probably a good idea to learn what is and is not critical in a more forgiving setting. Looking back at my first game on Classic, I had already lost by midway through the second month; I just did not realize it. Officially I did not lose until the end of the fifth month, but I was doomed from very early on by not understanding certain game mechanics. Lots of things have long lead times and you really need to plan ahead, which of course requires knowing that you need to be planning ahead.

The second game is going much better -- so far, anyway. I just came back from a fight with mutons with 5 of my 6 top soldiers wounded (thank goodness I had two support troopers with field medic for 6 medkit "doses"!). Good thing I have been building a decent bench of reserves with a couple promotions each...I hope the next mission isn't something nasty like a terror mission. Been a while since I had one of those...hmmm, can I scrape together enough money to purchase the Rapid Recovery bonus from the OTS? Maybe I should check. :D

I recommend giving the new X-COM a try if you enjoy this genre of gaming at all, or even if you aren't sure. There is a lot to like in this game.

[Gustaran]

I wanted to mention that the STEAM community has found a way to run the game on Windows XP (which is not officially supported). It requires a bit of work but maybe somebody still has an older Windows XP machine in use and just wants to get the game up and running. Further information here:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/sh...?t=2964408

[KingOfPain]

Just spent 7.5 hours playing when I should have been sleeping. Now I need to go to work and think about things other than X-COM.
...

Thanks for the first impressions, I will put it on my "buy when a little cheaper" list.

A review I read today mentioned that even though the game seems to be indeed very good the interface and handling was clearly designed with consoles in mind and therefore rather clumsy for PC players. What are your thoughts on that ?

I never played the older xcom, so yeah the interface looks and feels to me outdated and somewhat awkward even tho it could have been a major improvement from the old. Unfortunately, I've had only a few hours of play and then the forum went down, and my monitor is dying on me. I am in recovery mode and probably won't be gaming for the next week or so... though I am itching to play some more Xcom. I like the game so far. Haven't seen enough to judge how much leg it has, that's a question the vets can answer.

[antisocialmunky]

After playing and losing a few games on classic (retired because I screwed up or got really bad early RNG rolls), I've discovered that suppression abilities are border-line OP especially when you get the

ammo conservation

upgrade. Got a an inconveniently placed enemy? Use your supports and heavies to so the AI doesn't move and then focus aliens down one at a time. (unless chryssalid apocalypse)

It breaks the game wide open for the player if you can get to it.

[Jkaen]

I do find that spoiler makes a huge difference in the game, and along with increased squad sizes is one of the must does