Video Games

[K]

I really wanted to play X-com 2, but when I saw the minimum and recommended graphics cards and dedicated RAM, I knew that I was not going to get it to work properly without a top-of-the-line machine still hot from the factory. 2K just makes games that suck up too much of your system resources for little actual pay-off.

[name_here]

There was apparently some issue with the pre-loading and verifying your game cache fixes some problems. Particularly the way it can hitch on combat events like reaction fire.

I'm not having much trouble with bugs, but the geoscape is really pissing me off. It takes 3-7 days to do most events, during which I will be interrupted by like five messages about new events, not counting my research and production.

[Stahlseele]

And it's turnbased anyway, so apart from being not pretty to look at, what's a bit of stuttering going to do?

[PhoneLobster]

I really wanted to play X-com 2, but when I saw the minimum and recommended graphics cards and dedicated RAM, I knew that I was not going to get it to work properly without a top-of-the-line machine still hot from the factory. 2K just makes games that suck up too much of your system resources for little actual pay-off.

And there is basically no reason for those requirements other than 2K/Firaxis not being assed with doing ANY optimisation. The game does not look that good, the advanced graphics settings are both optional and not at all revolutionary, the AI is if anything LESS complex than the prior game. High system requirements are basically a cop out for a shorter cheaper development cycle.

There was apparently some issue with the pre-loading and verifying your game cache fixes some problems. Particularly the way it can hitch on combat events like reaction fire.

That sounds close to my own hand crafted personal crash. But I warn you, verifying is not reliable and the only thing verifying did for me was make the messages in the steam windows that pop up trying to start the game again automatically after it crashes (for some reason) gain more variety and stupidity.

I'm not having much trouble with bugs, but the geoscape is really pissing me off. It takes 3-7 days to do most events, during which I will be interrupted by like five messages about new events, not counting my research and production.

Everything about the game design has been to take all the things people hated about the prior game then double down on them hard and make them core gameplay instead of utterly inexplicable additions. The geoscape is pretty annoying and I find the alien progress thing really annoying with all its "oh yeah you really need to go do those facility missions to stop progress, but oh look, they are on the other side of the globe and a good two three months away each, and they progress like every month HAVE FUN!".

For me the big annoyances are mostly in mission though.
1) Stealth sucks - it's not a game changer, it's not worth it, overwatch ambushes sound cool but are objectively worse than not doing that so all you get is really one free shot before the aliens do the same old annoying "free run into cover" thing as the old game.
2) Everything is on timers - I don't entirely mind but I begin to suspect that this is entirely just because they knew that longer missions risked more crashes.
3) Alien Variety Isn't - Most alien variety is actually just "moar HP, moar armour, moar run straight into your face and one hit kill unless you've out teched/levelled it".
4) Alien Morale is no longer a thing - You used to be able to sometimes break the morale of the last alien in a pod if you killed all his friends in front of him. That is never a thing anymore.
5) Psions are just too damn expensive - I got too many other things to spend my resources on.
6) For that matter the black market and much of the strategy options are basically just traps - Just spend all your intel on contacting regions, spend all your resources on enlarging your team and getting more contact stuff in your base (oh look the satellite grind is back), THEN spend resources on anything else.

[Blicero]

2) Everything is on timers - I don't entirely mind but I begin to suspect that this is entirely just because they knew that longer missions risked more crashes.

The more reasonable explanation is that inching forward and constantly Overwatching was a tedious but efficient way to play the first game.

[Parthenon]

High system requirements are basically a cop out for a shorter cheaper development cycle.

The shorter cheaper development time seems to be it. You can tell just from the cutscenes when you unlock a new area- they are all the same cutscene with the same animation of the same XCOM guy meeting the same demographic of people in basically the same location, no matter the area or continent. There are what, sixteen areas on the globe, it can't be that hard to make sixteen unique resistance group locations, and then have even a simple animation of bringing out a crate or two of supplies.

---

I much prefer the basic set up of this game- being limited to 4-6 person groups and scrounging for money makes more sense as a guerilla group than an internationally funded small army. And there are all sorts of ways it is better- having a sword is stupid but fun even if having two close range weapons is weird, grenadiers are just flat out better for using grenade launchers and being able to move, and specialists not having to be next to the patient/hack makes for a more unique and better niche than having defensive grenades. As well as the engineer system is a lot more interesting than needing to have X engineers to get the next upgrade.

But as PhoneLobster points out, stealth is terribly implemented- maybe if kills with the sword didn't immediately break concealment for the party, or ambushes were actually good, then it might be better.

But you could do all kinds of cool things, like have missions where some or all the team wear civilian outfits and don't break concealment unless they equip weapons or go somewhere you shouldn't, or coordinate tasks on a strategic level for each area ranging from spreading propaganda to organising a mission trying to get a specific resource.

Or even have a couple of missions where there are ally troops which you can't control but give basic orders such as 'advance to this point' or 'follow us', or go into politically dangerous territory where you use terrorism to achieve your goals.

Hopefully the game being supposedly easier to mod will improve the game. I'm hoping for the obvious one where you are Nick Fury aboard the helicarrier as SHIELD searches for hydra around the world, slowly getting countries to be willing to let you run missions in their area.

Maybe I should actually try out The Long War mod for the original and see how much they stole and how many good ideas they ignored.

[PhoneLobster]

Maybe I should actually try out The Long War mod for the original and see how much they stole and how many good ideas they ignored.

Here is what they stole from the long war mod.

"MOAR HIT POINTS, no MOAR HPS AGAIN, LOLZ!"

Only they didn't steal all of the moar hit points. Just a few.

Now long war had a lot of improved content like actually 2 good class abilities to choose from per level and a lot of other nice filler for the relatively empty shell that was the original game. Though long war never really solved the primary issue of the original game, the bit where the ending had apparently fell off. Long war's solution to that? Just MOAR MISSIONS FROM THE FRONT BIT, no, EVEN MOAR MISSIONS FROM THE FRONT BIT!!!

But long war also added some fucking stupid shit guess which category MOAR HP!!! fell under.

Of course the 3 launch mods they had were made by someone who was in some shape or form the long war guys. What did they add?

A variant Muton I've seen all of once and killed (even with his MOAR HP) before he did any of the "exciting leadership abilities" he apparently has.

A tacked on mini character progression for squad leaders. I've nearly finished the entire damn tech tree and I haven't gotten it yet because it's too much of a waste of resources.

A crappy SMG that is weaker than the rifle but gives you a tiny bit of extra movement. I've used it. I didn't notice.

[MisterDee]

From the little I've seen streamed of XCOM2, it's painfully obvious the game shipped with lots of missing content.

Which would be par for the course for Firaxis, actually - their games routinely aren't complete until at least the first major expansion.

It would also explain the unexplainable ressource-hogness of the game. My guess is that it wasn't remotely playable and/or complete when they decided to delay it this fall, and they just piled on kludgefixes over kludgefixes in an effort to make a February release.

[Hadanelith]

Long War added some really good tweaks:

1: better class progressions (more skills to pick from, more of them are good)
2: the ability to shut out the aliens in the air (if you're good/lucky enough, you can shoot down all the UFOs, instead of there being completely un-interceptable bogeys)
3: more weapons and items (variety is good; spreading the tech tree is good)
4: more research and projects (kind of a mixed blessing, but it beats having nothing to do in the mid/late game).
5: alien research (enemies get stronger over the length of the game (another mixed blessing. It means you face the whole list of enemies all the way to the end of the game, instead of having Sectoids just up and vanish midway through; but the progression is just giving them more hp and damage, which can quickly become incredibly annoying without being interesting)).
6: increased squad size (fucking critical).
7: more hanger space (which lets you interact with the expanded air war, instead of having only a couple planes that are undergoing repairs all the damn time)
8: SHIVs are marginally more useful, instead of being complete deadweight.
9: fatigue system (preventing you from building one A-team and having a bunch of rookies, this forces you to spread the XP around. This is a good thing).
10: panic isn't forever (countries that leave can be brought back, rather than just permanently locking you out of continent bonuses).

Then there's the bullshit.

1: there absolutely did NOT need to be 8 fucking classes for your soldiers, and 8 (!) classes just for MECs. Way too many. Spreads the abilities a little too thin, and means that building a squad is a simple exercise in grabbing one of each. Adding MECs and SHIVs means that you have to leave behind other important abilities. It feels less like tradeoffs and more like just too many damn classes.
2: enemy research (not interesting, just damage/hp)
3: enemy perks (enemies can get many of the same abilities you can. It's pretty random what they can get, and some of the combinations they can roll up are fucking impossible to deal with).
4: the air game can get really fucking nuts (way too many UFOs for you to deal with at any given time, and the air intercept minigame is still boring and shitty and unbalanced).

There's more to it than even that list (it's seriously a huge mod). Overall, I think its an improvement over vanilla, but I'd love a mildly slimmed down version (seriously, too many classes. Just grab the winner abilities from each pair, and smash them back together). Also, I'd definitely like more adjustable difficulty (I know, I'm casual scum, but I'd like a game that feels beatable, but with all the good bits they've added).

As for XCOM 2...

Positive:
-definitely like the setup more (guerrilla resistance makes the constraints you're under much more sensible).
-like most of the new enemies (except Stunlancers. Fuck those right in the taint).
-Classes feel much less loaded with dead or boring abilities, which is a plus. Pistol sniper is great fun, and the swordsman ranger is bonkers but amazingly effective.
-definitely like the modular weapon system, the looting bodies, all of that.
-holy crap, the 'build a weapon once and its just available' change is huge. One TPK doesn't force you to pave your save because you've lost all of your (critically necessary) advanced gear. Same with armor. Love it.
-the air game is gone. Boring, shitty repetitive 'gameplay' gone? Cool.

Negative:
-stealth is...meh. Only works once a level, setting up ambushes is fun, but only works sometimes because you're leading squads of stormtroopers.
-seriously, stormtroopers. The number of point blank shots (with 90-95% hit chance) I've seen miss is incredible. It really feels like the RNG is weighted against you, because even when you use good tactics and set up good shots, you miss way too damn much.
-damn near every mission is on a timer.
-the lose condition (the Avatar project) is incredibly difficult to stop. Because of the way you move across the map, it is often the case that the Avatar facilities are months away from you if you pour all of your effort into reaching them. IDK how they expect you to turn back the doom track.
-only 3 tiers of guns (oddly, none of them are lasers), and they are pretty easy to get quite early, leaving you no further to go in improving your weaponry.
-love the whole random loot thing, but why the fuckity fuck can you not mass produce stocks, expanded mags, etc? Why are they permanently joined to the weapon you attach them to? Why can you not put an expanded mag and an upgraded scope and an upgraded stock on a single rifle? What the hell, Firaxis?
-Why do the Sectoids start the game with MIND CONTROL? (seriously, if you're playing on the highest difficulty, the intro level contains a Sectoid with the Mind Control psi power. If they get it off, you might as well reset. It's nuts).
-fuck Stunlancers. With live grenades. Those things are beyond evil. Far too lethal. Especially since they're *supposed* to be non-lethal riot units. Sometimes they knock you out, but all too often, they just murder you straight out.
-Fuck the AI pathing even more. It is far too easy to break stealth because the AI had a brain fart.
-bugs. So many bugs. Most notably, a serious memory/CPU leak that can bring your system to its knees.

Very divided on XCOM 2. Kinda feels like a Bethesda product: unfinished, but with great mod support. Hope the modders can make it a solid game. It looks like they've already gotten started.

[PhoneLobster]

From the little I've seen streamed of XCOM2, it's painfully obvious the game shipped with lots of missing content.

The most obvious is the whole 5 classes, 6 squad member slots, oh look, planned at release season pass bullshit DLC with a 6th class in. Hm...

Yep their DLC is clearly content flat out hacked out of the game to be sold piecemeal later.

Then there will be an "expansion" proper... which if anything like XCOM 1 will be basically just a piece of DLC of actual reasonable size that adds some much needed content but fails to deal with any of the major shortcomings of the game.

Anyway. I'd estimate I'm about 70% of the way through the campaign on normal, or at least over the god damn tipping point.

Yeah, the strategy game is still basically "rush satellites or die, but then you win". I didn't rush hard enough (not understanding the full implications/function of the coat of paint thrown over the satellite rush and not wanting to at first). So I racked up to 1 point shy of the Avatar project completing. I should have let it complete, just to see what happened. But then I hit the tipping point. Less than two game months later and now I'm back down to less than half the Avatar progress and my Tech tree is looking pretty close to complete. And that's with only having done ONE of the super secret plot missions that I'm pretty sure there are a small bunch of (and which I can now unlock pretty much at my leisure and at trivial cost to my post tipping point resources).

[Kaelik]

What is satellite rushing? I haven't seen any satellite based options yet (admittedly just started).

[PhoneLobster]

What is satellite rushing? I haven't seen any satellite based options yet (admittedly just started).

In XCOM 1 the one, the only, important thing you absolutely had to spend as many resources on as you could as fast as you could was to build satellite uplink facilities to open more slots for satellites, that you also had to build, so you could launch them over regions to get income and reduce panic.

In XCOM 2 the one, the only, important thing you absolutely have to spend as many resources on as fast as you could is to build Resistance Communications facilities to open more slots to contact more regions which you also have to buy with time and currency (but it's info and sitting around in your entire base on top of them instead of "buildiing") so you can get income and go on missions in the region to reduce panic Avatar progress.

XCOM 2 contains no satellites per say. It just contains pretty much the exact fucking same mechanic widely condemned as stupid by the player base only with a repaint and some minor refinements (mostly in streamlining dumbing down flat out removing most of the sheer number of support rooms required).

[Kaelik]

I see.

Well I'm currently engaged in tutorial bitching, where I refuse to even research the communications tech at all until my entire base is built up and characters and leveled, and everything that upgrades weapons and armor is researched.

Presumably when I finally research it, I will either discover the entire game is on easy mode because I have maxed out characters and base stuff, and the avatar progress just started, or I will find out that I lost the game 400 days ago and just didn't know it.

[PhoneLobster]

I will either discover

As of yet I have no idea when enemy power levels/avatar projects start progressing or what triggers progression once it starts.

I'm pretty sure XCOM 1 was a kludge of semi scheduled random events that couldn't be assed what you were up to interspersed with reactive events that walled off certain events and alien progress levels behind specific player achievements.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the earliest objectives wall of even basic avatar project progress, but I know from experience that at some point relatively early even if you camp away in just two or three regions the project will zip along regardless.

But as for progress in the strength and variety of aliens... I've seen other people make this complaint and I noticed it myself, a lot of alien types seem to appear once, get introduced with their little mini cut scene and comment... and never get seen again. Maybe I progressed too fast, maybe it's just that little though has been put into where in the progression those aliens are supposed to fit. I don't know.

edit: Oh and I don't know if it was an intentional part of the progression, but for me I built my Skulljack just in time for the base defence mission. This resulted in an important objective requiring an enemy officer in just the right place and producing a powerful "surprise" enemy in the one mission that by chance drops an unlimited supply of alien officers once per turn (after a certain point) and which gives you a bunch of extra soldiers.

So that worked out nicely. Well. Except for the bit where I had to restart my computer like 8 times.

[OgreBattle]

This (I think he's European) artist does fun XCom fanart:
http://androidarts.com/xcom/rebelsquad.htm





I'd play an X-Com that looked like that.

[Parthenon]

Thanks for the quick guides to Long War. Sounds interesting, but probably more worth wikiing for now to look at the abilities.

I'd pushed out of my mind just how shitty the stunlancers are. It would probably be okay if instead of killing, they instead always automatically stabilised you at 0hp, putting you out of the mission but not dead.

In fact, most of the melee is bullshit. Chrysallids are really bullshit in this one- on terror missions you can see them kill a civilian the other side of the map, and then as you advance suddenly spawns nearby and as part of it's intro animation rushes up to you and attacks you. This means you need overwatch by at least two soldiers as you advance if you want to protect yourself. On a terror mission where you have to rush ahead.

Actually, the modding system pisses me off even more suddenly- at first I was saving the mods because if you can't reuse them, then they are stuck on a tier 1 gun when you advance to the next tier. But, they are automatically moved to a gun of the best tier. It would have been nice to know that in the early game, but it also pisses all over the idea that they can't be moved from gun to gun.



What are your opinions on the psionics? I've only used the one psion so far, and the extra action is useful while the stasis is nice, but the whole system seems really weird and I'm not even sure if they even get experience and can be promoted. Which seems like a lot of the system- I'm not quite sure whats happening or why, and it all seems a bit rushed and unfinished.

Although I did see something interesting- if you start up XCOM 2 it opens up a window saying 'start xcom 2'. If you lock that program to the taskbar, then close and open it from the taskbar, theres a whole other main menu which looks like you can play around with a lot more- for example instead of a new game option there are "tactics" and "strategy" options, which the strategy looks like the normal game and at first glance the tactics looks like a skirmish mode. The game in this mode is either broken and regularly throws up red screen errors, or the main game is just as broken and hides the errors.

EDIT: I'm not at home and so can't test it, but there were red screen errors when an enemy died, and when some environment was destroyed. My gut instinct is that live actors are replaced with dead actors, but the live actors aren't properly deleted, and similarly destroyed environment isn't properly deleted, causing memory leaks.

[PhoneLobster]

Thanks for the quick guides to Long War. Sounds interesting, but probably more worth wikiing for now to look at the abilities.

The one thing a wiki will not tell you. (well actually it might, but it needs to be emphasised).

Long war is "not for casuals, it's for REAL core gamers who want to experience pain and suffering for hundreds and hundreds of hours per campaign, not mere mortal amateurs looking to experience fun on a time scale that isn't a full time job for a year".

It is in fact explicitly designed by people with that attitude openly designed with that attitude, I'm pretty sure its in their god damn official mod description. To the point that it has a "casual mode" option. Which basically STILL exists as a total trap option just to punish "casuals" for daring to mess with long war. Anyone deriving any sort of real enjoyment from really playing the mess basically HAS to manually and personally alter the config files and stuff and rebalance alien HP progression and stuff to try and make it not insane.

And yeah, it's a shitty attitude that leads to shitty design including HP bars that end up far far deeper than long filling your entire screen with red rectangles when a single pod of mutons appears. And a campaign pacing that seriously will take you your entire (generous) gaming year to grind through the campaign doing the same fucking missions again and again (only with more and more HP on the monsters and no discernible extra progression for your damage output against that).

I played it default. I played it default "Casual Mode". I played it through multiple versions that rebalanced the whole mess apparently at god damn random. It went from utterly unplayable to merely eventually unplayably unpleasant with final release. I refused to resort to manually messing with the balance myself. And for that reason I abandoned it without ever fully completing a long war game.

Though after struggling to make my way with a playable experience in Long War I'd have to say I learned enough technique that vanilla XCOM 1 and XCOM 2 are kinda push overs in comparison. But I really feel like a lot of what I learned was really about exploiting the flaws in the game rather than having an enjoyable game experience.

[name_here]

The game's melee system got me the A God Falls achievement and I shall brook no disrespect to it. But fuck stun lancers. I am so grateful that one of the melee perks is fuck stunlancers (also vipers). Bladestorm gives you a free attack whenever anyone moves into melee range or attempts a melee attack. As for the Chryssalid thing, that sounds like there were two pods and one of them was burrowed on your line of advance. They do that; they're assholes.

Psionics kick ass. I'm kind of sad that I don't get to append psionics to my standard soldier types, but on the other hand if I could do that they'd probably feel it was necessary to take away my capacity to deal twelve damage ignoring armor and obstacles along a straight line or to permanently mind-control a dude. Oh, by the way, the Sectoids don't have a specific mind control ability; they've got the Insanity power, which you can get on your own psions and inflicts one of several mental effects. I'm playing on a lower difficulty level, so it's not giving me much trouble because whenever they mind control anyone I can sword them in the face to break it.

The system is a bit wacky. You send them into the psionics lab pods to gain new abilities, unlocked seemingly at random; the bolt of fuck you is at the top of the power rankings and it was seriously one of the options immediately on unlocking the potential on one of mine. They don't appear to level up normally; god knows my beloved super-psionic has killed enough people to be basically sure of that. But you can deploy them while training is ongoing; I think they lock out in-training rookies so they can't get promoted during a mission while in training.

[Kaelik]

I currently have a Psionics lab training my first hopeful psionic character. I also have warden armor and plasma weapons. Still no avatar countdown. Did just experience my first game crash during a mission though

Haven't yet made contact with a new region.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Dunky (youtuber) has a year end review thing, and at 5 minutes and 27 seconds he has the perfect joke:

Talking about the melee on your computer online play, and how great melee is "There's an enormous roster of characters"

Good one. Would the Brawl roster just be a picture of Metaknight?

[PhoneLobster]

I currently have a Psionics lab training my first hopeful psionic character. I also have warden armor and plasma weapons. Still no avatar countdown. Did just experience my first game crash during a mission though

Haven't yet made contact with a new region.

Did you manage to trigger any enemy types beyond sectoids and advent troops?

[Pixels]

I got the impression he won the battles but the Council panicked.

That was my impression as well, that this ending to X-COM EU/EW was now canon, which is what you get when too many nations withdraw from the project.

8: SHIVs are marginally more useful, instead of being complete deadweight.

Hmm? I never used them in EU, but in EW alloy and hover SHIVs are nigh-unstoppable, high-mobility, regenerating tanks. Sure if you're going for the strongest squad possible they get outclassed super-late game by genetically enhanced soldier and MECs. That takes a ton of meld though, and I can't be bothered to train new soldiers when a squad of snipers and SHIVs easily smashes the endgame.

Anywho, I'm content to wait for a patch or two for X-COM 2 to sort out all this terribleness. It sounds like a real mess right now.

[Kaelik]

I currently have a Psionics lab training my first hopeful psionic character. I also have warden armor and plasma weapons. Still no avatar countdown. Did just experience my first game crash during a mission though

Haven't yet made contact with a new region.

Did you manage to trigger any enemy types beyond sectoids and advent troops?

I was specifically crashing over and over on this one mission where the advent invade a haven because of a Faceless spawn. Eventually I realized I just had to ignore the Faceless Civilian and the Civilian right next to him and kill everything else on the map, and then he would kill that one civilian.

For some reason, rescuing the civilian next to him crashed that game.

Now I am off unlocking regions while training OP Psions and ignoring the Avatar countdown that finally started once I researched the tech that allowed me to look at other regions.

Psions are OP as fuck. In addition to every single ability they have being better than all the abilities that other people have, they have two separate trees like everyone else, but they can actually just have all the abilities in both trees, so just... fuck normies.

A fully upgraded Psion has a LightningBolt Lance that kills out to sniper range, an AoE explosion easily as good as a Launched Grenade that also sometimes mind controls people in the blast, The ability to nuke ignoring cover and armor and heal half the damage done, total immunity to mind effects, fire, explosions, and poison, the ability to mind control one enemy per fight, the ability to lazer enemies with their mind and impose a status effect (which can be mind control on top of the one free mind control), the ability to lock an enemy or ally in stasis, and by the times you use all these abilities, you are right back to the CD on your Explosion and Lance abilities being back up.

Also you can give allies move actions if you care. Also if you literally die, you actually stay at 1 health and lock yourself in stasis for a round.

EDIT: you can also blow up enemies grenades on them. I forgot about that because I never even use it.

Also, because of the way they level, if you don't do any missions for a while (or if you do missions with regulars while the PsiLab trains) you basically level faster than other classes too.

[Zinegata]

Which would be par for the course for Firaxis, actually - their games routinely aren't complete until at least the first major expansion.

What nobody wants to admit is that Firaxis has been on quite a slump lately in terms of new IP. Xcom 1 was in fact their last unquestionably great game, with Starships and Beyond Earth both being rather big flops. I feel they're doing this because they need the money to make up for those fails.

[PhoneLobster]

Xcom 1 was in fact their last unquestionably great game

Really now? Unquestionably? And not just OK, but great?

It had major gameplay and crash related bugs that were never fixed, it was startlingly short on content, it was basically entirely missing a second half of a game, the strategy layer was a bad joke, the scale and strategic options were minuscule in comparison to predecessors from decades ago.

It departed from it's predecessors in many big ways, and basically none of those were improvements. Everything it chose to do differently was not progress but instead stank of contempt for the originals and the player base along with a strong desire to simply cut every possible corner and respond to the hard bits of programming and game design by simply chopping off and throwing away major features like cold dead turds.

And while over all the result was questionably OK, it was the best entry in recent times in it's genre... considering the neglect it's genre received that is faint praise.

Meanwhile Firaxis (and prior IP holders) have regarded the series and it's fans with contempt for decades, they did not want to make more games in the series. They thought it was dead. They thought it wasn't worth investing in. But they saw an uptick in internet popularity in much the same way that cult movies sometimes become famous long after box office flops. And Firaxis decided to attempt a cheap cash in.

XCOM1 was made by a small team who essentially have no respect for the genre that knocked it out in a short time frame riddled with terrible design shortcuts and bugs.

They knocked it out so fast and with just about no fan fare that it pretty much took the internet by surprise. Then it took Firaxis by surprise by being a massive popular success.

XCOM2 reeks of being a desperate attempt by a team of second rate hacks to try and refine and improve on a success that they have absolutely no understanding of.

They don't know why anyone liked the old X-Com games they don't even know whats good about their own new XCOM games.

I mean for fucks sake these are the fucking idiots who responded to "So, XCOM version of Terror from the deep?" with "WTF? No way, the OCEAN ISN'T SPOOKY!", What. The. Fuck.

They just typewriter monkeys throwing some random populist memes at a wall ("stealth" games were all the in rage and their big competitor in their eyes was Invisible Inc) but only in the laziest and fastest ways and hoping like hell it continues to stick.

Everything Firaxis has done since at some time around Civ 5 has been nothing but cheap poorly designed cash grabs by talentless hacks.