Thirith on 25/2/2016 at 12:11
To increase activity on the forum and so that I don't clutter up the XCOM 2 thread, I thought I'd start a new thread on the not-so-new XCOM, which I started playing a couple of weeks ago. I'd previously started playing it two or three times (including on my iPad, which worked pretty well... until the game started to crash frequently). Like other games I bounced off of several times before learning to love them (Thief and Operation Flashpoint come to mind), it took me a couple of times to really get into XCOM - but now I'd say I'm kinda addicted, thinking of the mission I'm currently at while at work.
I haven't progressed much with the main storyline, mainly because I've yet to capture an alien. However, I've bumped into all sorts of enemies, including the Cyberdiscs, which I found intimidating until I realised that two experienced snipers could pretty much keep them busy and unable to attack or retaliate while the rest of my team worked on taking them down. I've also crossed paths with those quislings from EXALT; yesterday I played a mission which had me extracting a covert operative, and I first thought I was clever for escaping as quickly as possible, until I realised that the game would punish me for leaving any of those traitors alive. It's also when I found out that EXALT heavies are quite deadly with those rocket launchers...
Anyway, I have a couple of questions to those who are more familiar with the rest of the series:
* How does XCOM compare to the original games? Are they very close? I know there's a small but vocal group of people who consider XCOM dumbed down, but it's difficult for me to gauge this, as many of the posts I've read that argue this sound very NMA...
* What sort of things (other than the premise/story) were changed in XCOM 2? What was improved? Most of the reviews I read said that the second game is considerably better, but I'm wondering what people here think.
faetal on 25/2/2016 at 12:38
XCOM only really compares conceptually with the originals. The enemies are taken from the original (with the exception of Snakefucks, who became Thin Men), apart from EXALT. THey've basically dialled back all of the micromanagement. In the original you had to build several bases and the facilities in each, so you had to build access elevator, living quarters, research labs etc.. you had to staff them and budget them, you had to make or buy all of your ammo and make sure it was stored in the correct base and equip your soldiers appropriately, with full inventory and weight management (was there weight management? I can't exactly remember). In the tactical segment, you had action points and you had different types of firing mode - aimed shot, snapshot, auto and you had to leave enough AP for over-watch if you wanted it. I don't think the updated one is dumbed-down, but it is heavily streamlined and as such won't cater to those who got a kick out of the management and infrastructure side of the original.
If you want a taste of something much closer to the originals, but with less of the tedium of all of the micromanagement (which I'm not joking, led to me re-starting the game no fewer than 5 times simply because I hit a wall in terms of where my research / manufacturing / funding was bottlenecked while the aliens tore me a new one), then I'd highly recommend (
http://store.steampowered.com/app/223830/) Xenonauts. Opinions vary, but (
http://store.steampowered.com/app/37030/) UFO: Extraterrestrials is also pretty good IMO. There is also (
http://ufoai.org/wiki/About) UFO: Alien Invasion, but this seems to be still in development and I can't recommend it as I only attempted to play it briefly a few years ago.
nicked on 25/2/2016 at 12:59
There wasn't weight management strictly speaking, just if you gave a soldier super heavy armour and a rocket launcher, he'd usually have way fewer action points.
Also... referring to the new XCOM game as retro... now I am old.
Thirith on 25/2/2016 at 13:13
Quote Posted by nicked
Also... referring to the new XCOM game as retro... now I am old.
You're taking it too seriously, I'd say; it's retro in that it's the previous game, and these days it's all about the new, guerilla hotness of
XCOM 2. I was already ten years a gamer (give or take) when the original
Enemy Unknown came out. :)
faetal, thanks for the info. I think that the streamlined nature of the modern
XCOM is exactly right for me; I'm not much of a strategy/tactics guy, and I'd quickly lose patience playing a game that has systems within systems within systems.
I'm not entirely sure yet why, but playing
XCOM feels surprisingly like playing
SWAT 4 (which I love but have yet to finish), in spite of being a very different game. I think it's the combination of slow, methodical pacing, squad-level tactics and thing potentially going south within a few seconds. Come to think of it, I'd give a muton's left arm for an
XCOM-themed
SWAT-style game.
nicked on 25/2/2016 at 15:36
Aren't the first two SWATs like that? Isometric strategy type affairs?
Thirith on 25/2/2016 at 17:43
God, the FMV years were a weird time in gaming...
faetal on 25/2/2016 at 20:46
James Earl Jones concurs.
icemann on 27/2/2016 at 02:40
Terror From The Deep was my preference, even though it was broken in so many ways. Loved the whole "Monsters From The Deep" style to it.
Not seen many games that dealt with that theme.
Thirith on 27/2/2016 at 16:11
I've just genetically modified my first soldier, giving a sniper and a support guy mimetic skin and super-strong legs. Mwahaha.
Definitely digging this game hard now. No idea why it took me three attempts to get into it.
