Video Games

[Zinegata]

Xcom 1 was in fact their last unquestionably great game

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

It's very easy to nitpick. What's not easy is to revive a long-dead genre. Like it or not, Firaxis' Xcom did it. I know more players who have played only Enemy Unknown than those who have played the originals. If it was so easy to make people love the old Xcom, then why didn't anyone play Xenonauts?

Now, the Firaxis Xcom isn't perfect. The ending was rushed and the end game was so-so. The thing is, the original Xcom also had a bad end game and final mission. Most people just don't realize this because of all the love for nostalgia.

The reality of the original Xcom end-game was that it quickly turned into a slow slog, because you ended up micromanaging so many bases and soldiers. In real life squad sizes are limited to 10 for a reason. In real life multiple bases have different commanders for a reason. Sure, it may seem epic the first time you fill the map with bases each with its own purpose, but you don't actually need them to finish the game.

Indeed the final mission in itself could, should the map spawn in a specific way, be done in just 2 turns and be solo'd by one guy with a blaster bomb. Which makes all of the prep seem really silly.

Firaxis' Xcom was in fact a pretty damn great game that was a proper "reboot" of the title for the modern era. It's basically the Jurassic World to the original Jurassic Park; or the first Michael Bay Transformers movie to the original Transformers animated movie.

Edit: Oh, and I do also love Invisible Inc and can't help but feel Xcom 2 stole much of the campaign structure from them. That said, Invisible Inc in many ways may never have been released without Enemy Unknown.

[PhoneLobster]

Firaxis' Xcom was in fact a pretty damn great game that was a proper "reboot" of the title for the modern era. It's basically the Jurassic World to the original Jurassic Park.

Wow. You are buttfuck crazy.

[Zinegata]

Firaxis' Xcom was in fact a pretty damn great game that was a proper "reboot" of the title for the modern era. It's basically the Jurassic World to the original Jurassic Park.

Wow. You are buttfuck crazy.

... And you're still stuck in the 90s.

[OgreBattle]

What happened to the original Xcom team, where are they nwo

[Zinegata]

What happened to the original Xcom team, where are they nwo

Gollop did a remake of Chaos Reborn last year. Haven't tried it yet though.

He honestly hasn't had a hit for a while now.

[name_here]

As a fan of old-school X-com, I must seriously object to the characterization of new XCOM. It made a large number of changes, mostly varying between definite improvement and different but valid.

You can't build multiple bases, but you can get interceptor and radar coverage in places that aren't your main base, which is honestly pretty much the only thing secondary bases were really good for. Sure, you could set up an additional base with a local strike team, but the logistics of keeping both bases well-equipped and filled with competent people were a tremendous pain in the ass and a skyranger can get anywhere in the world, so as far as I'm concerned the new one still has secondary bases but with less paperwork.

I actually like time units, which is not a common opinion among people who have played both, but I am not willing to call the two-action system worse. It's different and produces its own gameplay.

I like the classes very much; they're a very fun innovation and honestly I didn't find scrolling through the soldier list looking for people with the stats for heavy weapons, sniping, scouting, or catching bullets particularly entertaining. Enemy Unknown did have some issues with the skill trees where you never took some skills because their alternative was blatantly obviously better, but XCOM2 has fixed that up pretty well. Psions are basically gods; psions were always basically gods. It's the X-com experience. Now they have stronger powers but on the other hand they can't literally sit around where they spawned in and win the mission for you.

Bug experience varies by computer; mine is seven years old and runs both fine. A couple crash bugs that vanish on restarting, and some various ambient weirdness, but then again the original is also bugged to hell and back. Crap like how you unload all your partially used heavy plasma clips before winning the mission because they vanish if they're still loaded but you keep them if they aren't. Or you can mind-control a zombie and kill it and now you have a pet Chryssalid for the rest of the mission but can't use its melee attacks. Or if you set a blaster bomb waypoint directly above another waypoint the bomb will go north instead of vertically. Or if one of your guys is standing in fire and an incendiary goes off anywhere on the map he takes fire damage.

[Blicero]

Did Firaxis ever present fluff to justify the whole thing in Enemy Unknown where you have the choice of three abduction sites and can only go to one of them? I would be significantly less frustrated with the game if you could send B-teams to those sites and have them be resolved randomly or by the AI or something.

[PhoneLobster]

Did Firaxis ever present fluff to justify the whole thing in Enemy Unknown where you have the choice of three abduction sites and can only go to one of them? I would be significantly less frustrated with the game if you could send B-teams to those sites and have them be resolved randomly or by the AI or something.

If by produce fluff you mean "just ignore it then go to a sequel with the entire premise rewritten to support the predetermined smaller scale and bullshit arbitrary either or options" then sort of yes.

Of course even the sequel's premise isn't actually a fucking excuse for "1 base 1 team, and pick 1 of the 'dark event' missions only".

You can have a ton of guys in your base. The game fluff includes a ton of other resistance cells all over the world with more guys in them. Your primary activity is initiating communications with those (apparently invisible and mostly useless) local resistance cells. That is no god damn excuse why you shouldn't have more independent squads under your control those are instead reasons you SHOULD be acquiring more squads operating in more places simultaneously. I mean for fucks sake, my UFO base has two spare rooms in it. Just let me build a second fucking skyranger.

But even worse the entire back story for your commander was that he just spent the last 20 years plugged into alien tech running endless thousands of tactical simulations that implied to have basically amounted to providing tactical command to advent forces world wide simultaneously.

The fucking opening sequence/story line is stupid as fuck in a lot of ways (like even caring about rescuing what is apparently the only human military commander in the world), but it is especially fucking stupid when the commander's first order isn't "plug me back in to the global command network tech, but this time I'm fighting AGAINST the aliens".

Yes the opening story fluff of XCOM 2 is that you the commander have spent 20 years using global remote command tech to simultaneously command vast numbers of troops in tactical combats world wide, and then you start the game and are limited to controlling a single squad of 4 to 6 men in your immediate local vicinity only even while the first major story things you do are to research the global command tech you used to be plugged into.

And don't get me going about how fucking useless and wasted the cosmetic only concept of a mobile main base is on this stupid fucking game. I mean your entire fucking base is mobile so how the fuck do you get away with limiting me to ONE skyranger with only 4 to 6 of my troops in it again? I mean if I only get ONE mobile deployment craft why isn't it my you know, mobile base with ALL my guys in it?

[Zinegata]

Did Firaxis ever present fluff to justify the whole thing in Enemy Unknown where you have the choice of three abduction sites and can only go to one of them? I would be significantly less frustrated with the game if you could send B-teams to those sites and have them be resolved randomly or by the AI or something.

The B Team would have to be commanded by Bradford. The soldiers unanimously mutinied than to be put under his tactical commad after Berlin.

Also, Bradford continues his sterling command record in Xcom 2, where after 20 years he only suffers 50% losses and his attrition rate is so terrible his roster is nothing but rookies.

Seriously though... Having to do only 1 mission was a streamlining thing. It's probably the influence of Ananda Gupta, who has done very good work in streamlining games for the boardgame scene and one of his designs was #1 on BGG for a good long while.

[OgreBattle]

Sounds like Zap Brannigan's ancestor.

[Zinegata]

Sounds like Zap Brannigan's ancestor.

He's still a rookie in the tutorial mission despite being in command of Xcom for 20 years. And he doesn't seem to have aged that much. He IS Zap Brannigan.

[name_here]

Did Firaxis ever present fluff to justify the whole thing in Enemy Unknown where you have the choice of three abduction sites and can only go to one of them? I would be significantly less frustrated with the game if you could send B-teams to those sites and have them be resolved randomly or by the AI or something.

Apparently there's only one skyranger in the entire world or something. Granted, it's a supersonic VTOL troop transport in a game set now-ish, so it would actually make sense for that to be true. The aliens finish up and leave before a sufficient quantity of non-Xcom soldiers can reach the abduction site.

[Shady314]

He IS Zap Brannigan.

Zap is many things but at least he's funny. Bradford isn't funny. Bradford has no redeeming qualities. He probably gets people killed just getting the Commander coffee.

[Hadanelith]

Ye gods, I'm tired of listening to Bradford.
Also incredibly tired of only having one Skyranger which can only carry 4-6 troops at a time.
Also tired of only being able to send one of my grand fleet of 3 interceptors to fight the aliens. Seriously, why not send the whole squadron? Why is the max size of the squadron so tiny?
This shit bothers me rather intensely about XCOM EU/EW, and the first 2 of those problems persist in XCOM2.
Also frustrating: when ADVENT attacks the resistance camps, how come NOBODY has guns? Why am I the only one fighting? Why don't we roll in, help the resistance fighters win the battle, and clear out with a bunch of new recruits? The retaliation missions should also be instant recruitment for you, with a value based directly on how many men you keep alive in the mission.
There's plenty of streamlining to like in the new XCOM games, but some of it is truly rage-inducing.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, I have to second everyone else's complaint that this game basically feels like about 1/4th of a good game.

For me one of the most annoying things is that 95% of missions have a dumb timer. Just like... the dumbest timers, here's a list:

"The Uplink that was open for 2 days while we flew between half way across the planet and 2 feet closes in 8 motherfucking turns. Then they mysteriously turn off all their devices for some reason."

"The supply convoy that crashed has all it's supplies set to explode in 8 turns."

"You have to destroy the communication broadcast BEFORE IT FINISHES! In 8 turns."

Obviously, yes it's also really dumb that you can only field one team against the Black Events, which is so dumb, because there is so little actual content that trying to manage three complete squads doing missions simultaneously would both make up for the fact that I have 600 recruits sitting around doing nothing, and would allow me to play more missions, which, since there are so few actual missions, would be nice.

I mean damn... I'm currently sitting on like a Colonel of all the base classes, some kind of Captain, and 6 Motherfucking Full Power Psions, because all that time you spend flying around and building relay towers is time you also spend leveling up Psions, but you can only level up your troops on the so very very very very few actual missions.

[Parthenon]

I still think that you should be able to give resistance groups orders- rebalance things so you can't recruit troops as standard, you get fewer random missions, and retaliation missions are much less frequent, but instead you can order resistance groups to:

- put out propaganda- this lets you recruit a new soldier

- investigate and plan an attack on a resource site - this lets you create a mission and gives you some control over your resources

- search for UFOs- this gives you more chance to find a downed UFO

- make a diversionary attack - this reduces the number of aliens at an avatar facility

Each order increases the likelihood of a retaliation mission, and if you do too many missions too quickly then you may have two retaliation missions at once which means you lose at least one resistance group.

[PhoneLobster]

There's plenty of streamlining to like in the new XCOM games, but some of it is truly rage-inducing.

The difference is between streamlining that improves convenience and game play, and "streamlining" that exists solely to avoid anything that would be remotely hard to program or game design around.

The worst thing in the game, the way alien pods work, exists as a "streamlined" feature that lets them just flat out not program hidden movement alien AI. Or for that matter, complex alien AI at all.

Instead the off screen AI is just "sit there" or in the old XCOM "move slightly at random" and in the new one "move slightly back and forth at your random initial location". * Then once AI is triggered, well it hasn't got much work to do, run to nearest cover with a free "fuck you guys" action, then kamikaze to the death. Fucking easy to program that is. The difficulty of programming complex responsive tactical AI based on aliens having incomplete information and acting off screen in response to that? Nah, just cut all that shit right out and mimic the most primitive of MMO mob behaviour, there, problem solved, FOREVER!

And yeah, same thing with way too many features.

* Except for the chrysalid which sometimes moves in a way that apparently deliberately mimics one of the most hated unfixed gameplay bugs in XCOM 1 why? Because that's just how much respect Firaxis has for XCOM players.

[Longes]

He IS Zap Brannigan.

Zap is many things but at least he's funny. Bradford isn't funny. Bradford has no redeeming qualities. He probably gets people killed just getting the Commander coffee.

Well, Punished (Venom) Bradford at least looks kinda cool, and is apparently so good at keeping things secret that even the local resistance forces didn't know he has a flying alien ship until he flew away.

[Kaelik]

* Except for the chrysalid which sometimes moves in a way that apparently deliberately mimics one of the most hated unfixed gameplay bugs in XCOM 1 why? Because that's just how much respect Firaxis has for XCOM players.

Could you explain this in detail, I did not play XCOM 1.

[Pixels]

He probably means burrowing, which mimics the teleport bug. In XCOM 1, untriggered alien pods could teleport around the map. Back in EU they could even teleport right into the middle of your squad, which was especially troubling when it happened with melee enemies. Chryssalids are way more scary when they pop out of nowhere.

[PhoneLobster]

Yeah in XCOM 1 there was a well known bug where sometimes an undiscovered alien pod would just sort of teleport around. This was a big deal for a lot of reasons but the basic one was you'd have searched the whole map, you had followed the "heard alien noise from this direction" indicators the game gave you to hunt them down... then they were not there, they were suddenly on the other side of the map, and when you went back if you were unlucky it might happen again.

Now to be fair I have only encountered Chryssalids in XCOM 2 about twice now. Because many aliens don't really get multiple appearances for some reason.

First time they would burrow up just out of sight range, but then run right at me anyway. Then the research text went on about their "new terrifying" burrowing transport ability thing in vague terms and I was "eh". Then I run into them, well, one thanks to a dark event, on an intercept alien convoy mission. It seriously spent the WHOLE mission burrowing back and fourth between the four unexplored corners of the map. By the time I cleared everything else it had settled down to switching between two unexplored spots down the bottom end and I wandered down and cleared it out.

But yeah. It's basically the teleport bug made official.

[Hadanelith]

There's plenty of streamlining to like in the new XCOM games, but some of it is truly rage-inducing.

The difference is between streamlining that improves convenience and game play, and "streamlining" that exists solely to avoid anything that would be remotely hard to program or game design around.

Yeah, I mostly meant the convenience stuff. I fucking loathe the 'pods' structure for alien groups, ESPECIALLY that free move to cover. Aliens surprise you? Welp, somebody's gonna die. You surprise the aliens? They instantly get to redeploy to meet you. It's only in XCOM2, with the half-ass 'concealment' mechanic, that you can actually surprise the xenos and waste them, and you can do that all of ONCE per mission. And even then, you don't get any sort of 'ambush' or 'surprise' bonus, so even if you set up the ambush the way you're supposed to (set up all but one squad member in overwatch, use the last one to take a deliberate shot to start the party, watch the aliens scatter into all those overwatch shots), half the fucking time, all of your stormtroopers MISS. Even with all the time in the world to set up their shots. You basically never actually get to feel like you have well trained troops, because they fuck up piss-simple ambushes.
And in non-concealment scenarios, or after you've burned your one surprise, you basically CAN'T take advantage of the alien's movement system without throwing entire turns away (and you're almost always on the clock, don't forget). You could, conceivably, set all but one of your team on overwatch, and then scout one dude forward to trigger the pod, sorta replicating the ambush, but that burns the whole turn, can still result in a flurry of whiffs, and wastes a whole turn if the scout move doesn't pop a new pod. It's maddening.
Speaking of the timers - I definitely like the idea of a mod I saw on the Nexus: Timers don't start until you break concealment. Makes so much more sense. Still hate that damn near every level is timed, but that would certainly help in quite a few of the scenarios.

[Kaelik]

Burrowing

Yeah, I just assumed when they popped out of the ground they were just a pop that stays buried there to automatically surprise fuck you, didn't know they were teleporting all over the map.

God do I fucking hate that free move to cover. Like you see three fucking Archon clumped together, surely you can use your 6 fucking void rifts to fuck them right? No, after one they all get to freely sprint out to really far apart? Fuck you too XCOM.

Speaking of the timers - I definitely like the idea of a mod I saw on the Nexus: Timers don't start until you break concealment. Makes so much more sense. Still hate that damn near every level is timed, but that would certainly help in quite a few of the scenarios.

I've encountered one mission type that is natively like that. It's the rarest fucking mission type, because fuck you, you are going to have to dash sprint your way to the objective as fast as possible with no idea what is in front of you and barely get there on time, and you are going to like it!

Everyone on my team rocks Wraith suits and the best Speed modifier I can find for Person Sims, because grappling hook + really fast + run through walls, is great.

The facility missions are actually hilarious with super fast wraith suits, I've literally won like 4 of those across 2 playthroughs without actually killing anything or having anyone die. (neither one actually finished yet, one is my tutorial bitching already training Psions before the Avatar Clock even started Psion playthrough, the other I'm playing more standard, currently running 4 Sharpshooters, 2 Ranges, occasionally sub in specialist if the mission is a hack the objective mission)

My current strat is even better, you sneak a Ranger in with Wraith, they end their turn one the square. Then next round they blow it, run out to cover, and then one the next turn, with everything closing in, they Run and Gun, dash, shoot some poor advent with a Rapid Fire Shotgun from melee range, and then get an Implacable move, and end up on the other side of the goddam planet right inside the evac zone, and then all the sharpshooters that were covering him jump in, and it's a free win.

[Blicero]

Yeah, I mostly meant the convenience stuff. I fucking loathe the 'pods' structure for alien groups, ESPECIALLY that free move to cover. Aliens surprise you? Welp, somebody's gonna die.

The headcanon I developed to explain that was basically "Before the aliens are spotted, your soldier dudes are craning their necks and looking everywhere constantly. So when they first spot the aliens, they are not prepared to take advantage of the situation and press the attack. Once they see the aliens, they can focus on them." Once I settled on that, it stopped annoying me as much. It would be neat to have a high level ability that denies them their free move, though. Although I also assume that the ranks in XCOM are basically just there to make your stormtroopers have slightly more self confidence, because their aim is always so bad.

[Kaelik]

Also, man, the continent bonuses vary tremendously in usefulness and awesomeness, and you don't even get the same ones, you get entirely different ones.

In my first game I got "infinite reuse of all weapon upgrades and personal simulators, you can totally pull them off people and put them on other people whenever you want" and "all armor is produced instantly, both wraith armor and the experimental armors, like plated chest and stasis vest." Both of which are amazing.

My second game, every single thing is just "you get a small numeric bonus to supplies that you already have too much off, or intel which you have enough of, but not the resources that are actually limiting your production..."