XCOM: One Does Not Simply "Shoot" a Cryssalid...

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Played the demo, and loved it. It's X-COM, only without the clunky interface!

[Zen Master]

Originally Posted by SlyGuyMcFly

Played the demo, and loved it. It's X-COM, only without the clunky interface!

Hm ... played the demo - have doubts.

The combat is fine. It has the right feel, the graphics are nice - however, I have serious doubts about the difficulty. I shot a flyer-thingy down with my pistol. No operative took any damage in the one, actual mission you get to play. But anyways.

Doubts. How is the depth? Like, how deep is the research tree? Do I have to listen to endless recorded monologues from the german doctor who barely speaks german - or can I fiddle around endlessly with research like in the old games?

How about the storytelling? In the original series, the story was told mainly through research (well, and certain missions) - as you learned more, you got closer to the alien background, their motivations and so on.

How about character building? Only thing the demo shows is: Here - you get this guy, he gets to be a missile launcher dude.

I'm not implying the game is bad - I will have to buy it, I guess. I'm just saying they took a slow and thinky strategy game, and built a faster-paced indirect-shooter out of it. It may be awesome. Too soon to tell.

[GloatingSwine]

Originally Posted by Acromos

I'm not implying the game is bad - I will have to buy it, I guess. I'm just saying they took a slow and thinky strategy game, and built a faster-paced indirect-shooter out of it. It may be awesome. Too soon to tell.

The original game was only slow because there was tons of tedious micromanagement to arse around doing. The actual strategy involved was pretty limited because the same few cheesy things always worked.

Everyone keeps harping on the tactical combat in the new X-Com being different without remembering that 90% of late game strategy in the first one was about how to avoid having to do the tactical combat because it was dull and unrewarding to have to deal with every pissant UFO (most people would shoot UFOs down over water so they didn't have to do the recoveries and didnt lose score).

The real strength of the first game was in the geoscape sections, balancing your limited resources to try and cover as much of the world as possible and prioritising research and development to get you the win before too many countries slipped from your grasp.

[Triaxx]

Played the Demo, now want the full game.

Impressions. That first mission wasn't bad. It set the tone that if you don't take great care, you're going to die.

I didn't see any base building, which would have been nice. I mean, it says new building available, Lab, and it's not that hard to add. But still it was nice to see that there's a reason to actually build your base on a different continent than Europe.

The second mission didn't really capture the 'terror' of an abduction mission, though I like seeing that the only limiter to how many troops is needing to train the team leader.

I was able to kill one sectoid to deal with a second with relative ease. The floating critters were dumb enough to both take cover within range of the same grenade. Only the thin men were an issue, because I moved my Sniper up looking for a way around because I was looking for Mutons down by the water. Turned out okay, because I was able to pop smoke with the support soldier and keep the Thin Man from blasting her. Then I broke in with a rocket, which was pointless because I used the door instead... just wanted to fire a rocket. The Assault guy tucked up against some cover, and blasted one Thinman who had shot while he was running and gunning. The other one blasted him with some poison, so I brought the Heavy up to flatten him. Depressingly, the sniper didn't get a single kill. Which is going to be annoying if she can't kill anything to rank up.

[NEO|Phyte]

Originally Posted by Acromos

Hm ... played the demo - have doubts.

The combat is fine. It has the right feel, the graphics are nice - however, I have serious doubts about the difficulty. I shot a flyer-thingy down with my pistol. No operative took any damage in the one, actual mission you get to play. But anyways.

The demo is on babby difficulty. There is apparently an .ini you can tinker with to change the difficulty. It makes a difference.

[Tengu_temp]

Originally Posted by GloatingSwine

(most people would shoot UFOs down over water so they didn't have to do the recoveries and didnt lose score).

I agree with your general point, but I'd like to point out you don't lose score for not investigating a shot down UFO.

[Triaxx]

Not any more.

[Tengu_temp]

You never did.

[Zen Master]

Originally Posted by GloatingSwine

The original game was only slow because there was tons of tedious micromanagement to arse around doing. The actual strategy involved was pretty limited because the same few cheesy things always worked.

Everyone keeps harping on the tactical combat in the new X-Com being different without remembering that 90% of late game strategy in the first one was about how to avoid having to do the tactical combat because it was dull and unrewarding to have to deal with every pissant UFO (most people would shoot UFOs down over water so they didn't have to do the recoveries and didnt lose score).

The real strength of the first game was in the geoscape sections, balancing your limited resources to try and cover as much of the world as possible and prioritising research and development to get you the win before too many countries slipped from your grasp.

The original was slow because there was tons and tons and TONS of paths to go, research to do, equipment to develop and test ... and so on, and so on, and so on. This made up far, far the most of the actual play time.

Hence, essentially, this was the game. That part - is NOT - in the new game. For this reason, the two games are hardly even comparable.

Not ... this is presumably pointless, but whatever, I'm going to try regardless: I'm not saying the new game is bad.

I'm just saying that there having liked UFO is a fairly bad reason to buy X-COM. Because except for a superficial resemblance in combat, the two are almost entirely unlike each other.

I have no clue how most people played the original. I'm fairly certain you don't either - you're guessing, based on your own experience. If I did the same, I'd claim that it never occurred to anyone to try and avoid ground missions.

I do agree that the most standard missions got tedious. Kinda like grinding in WoW. Hardly important.

Late game of UFO - for me - was getting every scrap of research done before I finished the game. Which actually is important, because the way it feels is that research in X-COM will be about as deep as a talent tree in WoW.

[BRC]

I havn't seen enough of the research in new XCOM to say it's less robust than that of old XCom. The research system in old XCOM was about as simple as you can get (Assign Scientists to research, wait on the Geoscape).
There were a variety of things to research, and you had to decide what projects to put your scientists on, but there isn't really that much to take out. The only thing I can think of to make the system simpler is to just automatically put all scientists on one project, rather than being able to split your scientists between multiple projects, something I have yet to see any evidence of them doing.
Now, obviously, they could greatly reduce the number of things they could research.

Except that dosn't make sense with what we have been shown. If anything the new Xcom should have MORE things to research.
Let's look at some things.
Basic Weapons
The first Xcom had six Weapon researches, three for Lasers, three for Plasma.
This new Xcom includes Sniper Rifles, Shotguns, and LMG's in addition to the standard assault rifles and pistols. With more basic weapon types, it makes sense that there will be MORE new weapons to research.
Armor
First XCom had three armor types, Body Armor, Power Armor, and Flying armor.

New Xcom has touted a variety of nifty armor abilities (Like the Spider Suit, which lets you grapple over to vantage points), all of those are likely going to be re searchable.


Now, what you seem to be getting at is that research will not be a matter of allocating resources, it will instead be a series of basic choices. The Demo does provide some evidence of this, since you are asked to choose between researching better Weapons or better Armor.

However, there is something else that contradicts that. One of the mission rewards you can receive is Additional Scientists.

If Research is just a simple allocation of points at predetermined times in the game (WoW Talent Trees), what is the purpose of additional scientists? Why would they give you additional scientists as a reward if those scientists didn't speed up research.

And if you can speed up research, that means that research CANNOT be a simple matter of point allocation, since they don't know how many scientists the player will get, they don't know how many research projects the player will complete.
The only change I can think they might make at this point is that Research is completed, not after an amount of time has passed on the Geoscape, but after a certain number of missions are completed. Which to be honest, I don't mind. Sitting there staring at the Geoscape, waiting for something to happen, was not what made Xcom fun.

[Muz]

Originally Posted by Acromos

The original was slow because there was tons and tons and TONS of paths to go, research to do, equipment to develop and test ... and so on, and so on, and so on. This made up far, far the most of the actual play time.

Hence, essentially, this was the game. That part - is NOT - in the new game. For this reason, the two games are hardly even comparable.

Correction: That part - is NOT - in the demo. It's just a demo, a brief chance to see some of how parts of the game play. At the easiest difficulty. Railroaded along to show you certain parts they want to show you. With some functionality and options removed that, from what I've seen from gameplay videos and developer interviews, are in the actual game. It's like a movie trailer or a factory tour. It's not like watching the whole movie or working in the factory.

[GloatingSwine]

Originally Posted by Acromos

Late game of UFO - for me - was getting every scrap of research done before I finished the game. Which actually is important, because the way it feels is that research in X-COM will be about as deep as a talent tree in WoW.

You mean "far deeper than it was in the first game" then.

Because research was actually super simplistic in the first game, there was hardly any of it that was necessary to complete the game, and the research trees were short and shallow.

90% of the available research was only for fluff reasons, it had no impact on the gameplay, it wasn't game depth, it was setting.

I have no clue how most people played the original. I'm fairly certain you don't either - you're guessing, based on your own experience. If I did the same, I'd claim that it never occurred to anyone to try and avoid ground missions.

Except I'm actually not guessing, I'm basing this on discussing the game with a variety of people, on numerous lets plays of the game, and on the discussions and information at the UFO wiki.

Now, not everyone skips late game tactical missions, but anyone who thinks about it for a few minutes will agree that they're actually not strategically relevant or rewarding, and will start to wonder why they didn't skip them before.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Originally Posted by Acromos

Hm ... played the demo - have doubts.

<snip>How is the depth? Like, how deep is the research tree? Do I have to listen to endless recorded monologues from the german doctor who barely speaks german - or can I fiddle around endlessly with research like in the old games?

How about the storytelling? In the original series, the story was told mainly through research (well, and certain missions) - as you learned more, you got closer to the alien background, their motivations and so on.

How about character building? Only thing the demo shows is: Here - you get this guy, he gets to be a missile launcher dude.

If you played the demo expecting answers to those questions, I have to wonder what kind of demos you've seen in the past. What you want, essentially, is the spoilers for the whole game: their tech tree, their leveling tree and their whole plot. None of those have ever been seen in demos for any game I've tried.

If you want to get an approximate answer to those questions, check the videos they put on youtube. They have revealed little of the plot or tech tree (although, as someone else said, there is far more varieties of guns and armour, most of which you get at the start, and you'll still get a lot of fluff from alien autopsies if that's your thing), but they have revealed a lot of the character development.

I'm hoping I'll get to play the demo, because the answer no video can give me and the demo can is: how are the controls? Nothing else, nothing more (but crucial for my enjoyment of the game, and thus important enough I'm grateful there is a demo). Sincerely, expecting anything else from a demo is kinda silly. For all the belly-aching about this demo in these and other forums, I have yet to hear a realistic explanation of what the old-timers were expecting. Because it sounds like they wanted something like 20 missions, so they could to see all those things they loved from the old game before they'd buy the new one.

Grey Wolf

[Muz]

Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

I'm hoping I'll get to play the demo, because the answer no video can give me and the demo can is: how are the controls? Nothing else, nothing more (but crucial for my enjoyment of the game, and thus important enough I'm grateful there is a demo). Sincerely, expecting anything else from a demo is kinda silly. For all the belly-aching about this demo in these and other forums, I have yet to hear a realistic explanation of what the old-timers were expecting. Because it sounds like they wanted something like 20 missions, so they could to see all those things they loved from the old game before they'd buy the new one.

Grey Wolf

Just to warn you, the controls in the demo seem to be slightly limited--at least, they didn't seem to be working quite the way I (admittedly thought) remembered them working in the PC UI gameplay videos. But maybe I just didn't know what I was doing.

I've got the game pre-ordered, though, so I'm definitely getting it. I'll try to post something when it actually comes out to say how the controls are (if anyone's interested), or at least if they're any different from the demo, but my sense is that they are. I rather think it's a poorly made demo, actually. If I hadn't watched a lot of the PAX footage, I'd be worried.

[king.com]

Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

If you played the demo expecting answers to those questions, I have to wonder what kind of demos you've seen in the past. What you want, essentially, is the spoilers for the whole game: their tech tree, their leveling tree and their whole plot. None of those have ever been seen in demos for any game I've tried.

Providing spoilers for the whole game is kinda the point of the demo. To show what the game does and has to offer to convince you to buy it. As to what demos have done this in the past I feel I need to be smug and point out the last demo the same team released did exactly this. Civilization 5.

[Zen Master]

Trying to have a discussion - or even an exchange of opinion - on the internet is basically a complete and utter waste of time.

I may buy X-COM. I will certainly buy Xenonauts.

[Triaxx]

Second impressions: First, to answer the question, about controls, they work perfectly well. I'm playimg on a laptop with touch pad, and it works very well, because movement uses the right button, and actions use the left. So there's no accidental movement. And anything done with the left cliick, can be backed out of.

Second, I did two things, I upped to difficulty to about normal in the ini. (Normal is where I always play TBS games.) The aliens were smarter. I moved my characters to give the aliens shots, and was suitably impressed by what they did. I had the Heavy on a roof under cover, andthe sniper on the roof with no cover (couldn't reach). Sectoid one shot at the sniper instead of linking up. He missed, but chopped the corner off the roof. The other one took a shot, hit him for 3, then retreated a little bit. The sniper now had a clearer shot at the one who had missed, and dealt him one shot to eliminate him.

The heavy then removed the second with the sort of extreme prejudice only a rocket can provide. With that done, the Assault moved up to engage the next set of aliens. This time, they popped into cover, but there wasn't an action available to deal with them. (Jerks didn't pop til after I'd used Run and Gun already.) Everyone else moves up, but can't get into range to deal with anyone. Floaty alien 1 (can't remember the name) pops up one of the crates, shoots at Assault, and some how manages to not only miss, but also fail to deal with his cover. Floaty 2, leans out, blasts him for five and ducks out of sight. Heavy deals with the one on the crate. Sniper can't get anyone, so I move the Support over to heal. Healing is quite simplified from the original, but he appears to have only three uses of it, so it's still very situational.

Assault is wounded, but I've seen where Floaty 2 is, and with one heck of a toss, his grenade takes flight and all we hear is death scream.

Moving up, I know two things. First, that sending the sniper around the left of the building isn't mybest option, and two that there's no way to deal with these guys easily. Support and assaul go left, heavy and sniper go through the main door. Both of them go out the window, one stands up to try and shoot at me, misses, and gets a sniper round in the face for his trouble. One thing to note, is that when killed these guys burst into a cloud that has two effects, one it poisons anyone who walks through, (seems to have no effect, though as we all know it just might not be a part of the demo), and two it acts the same way as a smoke grenade. Which is FUN. Heavy steps around the corner, opens up and misses completely. Assault ducks around the end of the corner, fires, and misses completely... Round ends, sniper fires, misses completely. Heavy runs up close to the window, getting poisioned in the process and proceeds to finish the issue.

Once back at base, we see the reprecussions of the injuries. Sniper and Assault are both listed as Gravely wounded, with Sniper being out 10 days, and Assault being out 14.

Conclusion: Don't get shot. Yes, that's a little obvious, but it's already been noted as pretty easy to avoid, though who knows what FUN will occur at higher difficulties. We haven't seen it all. I like the way healing has been done, no fiddling around with individual injuries is nice, even if I do like locational damage, it just sort of slows the game down. Second it's much easier to actually heal a target. Instead of having to close to one square, click the medikit, click then try and click the target, you get within any of the eight surrounding squares, when the support moves, injured units have a large, red circle with crosses floating around them, so there's no trying to recall who it was. Once you're there, you click on the medkit, then confirm that's what you want, and the healing is done automatically, with a cute little quip and it's done.

I'm not concerned about the hospital stays, because this is X-com, so them being allowed to live at all is quite the boon. It's realistic not being right back on your feet after being shot. Even so, it looks like there is quite definitely going to be a good reason to get better armor as quickly as possible.

Now, all this being said, the game is tons of fun, the way I like it, but I hotly anticipate the first pistols only iron man speed run.

[Muz]

Originally Posted by king.com

Providing spoilers for the whole game is kinda the point of the demo. To show what the game does and has to offer to convince you to buy it. As to what demos have done this in the past I feel I need to be smug and point out the last demo the same team released did exactly this. Civilization 5.

I think I'm misunderstanding you. How can a demo provide spoilers for the WHOLE game without being a free copy of the whole game? You want to see the endgame, all the tech and how it works, and everything that happens along the way? It's been too long since I played the Civ 5 demo; did it really let you play all the way to the end game and include every civ?

[Krade]

Everything I've seen appeals to me. From the article on Game Informer and random articles online to gameplay videos and trailers. Everything I've seen tells me this game will be awesome. I'm also greatly looking forward to the head-to-head mode.

Sure it won't be "Just like the original with better graphics," but I don't see why anyone would want that. I loved the original. I still play it occassionally. If I wanted a game just like the original, I'd play the original.

A friend of mine (who never played the original) tried out the demo and loved it (though he did say the mouse control on PC was a little wonky). My computer's a POS so I couldn't even install the demo properly (only one of the reasons I'm glad it's coming out on consoles), but I also paid for the game as soon as it was available to preorder. Since I saw the first article about in... February's Game Informer, I knew it was going to be awesome.

[Triaxx]

Question: Am I wall of texting? Or do I just repeat what others have said and there's nothing to respond to? Just curious.

Okay, so two things, I'm noticing first that the Demo is using DX9. This seems a bit strange, since the highest supported DX on XP was 9, but the game says a minimum of Vista.

The other thing is that I'm running the Demo on a laptop, (my only windows 7). It's technically below spec, but gameplay runs perfectly fine. My only complaint is actually the length and stuttery nature of the load times for missions. I realize, I only have 2GB of memory when it says four, but I'm noticing that it's not using readyboost. I wonder if that's a demo thing, or if the full game won't either?

[Gulaghar]

Originally Posted by Triaxx

The other thing is that I'm running the Demo on a laptop, (my only windows 7). It's technically below spec, but gameplay runs perfectly fine. My only complaint is actually the length and stuttery nature of the load times for missions. I realize, I only have 2GB of memory when it says four, but I'm noticing that it's not using readyboost. I wonder if that's a demo thing, or if the full game won't either?

You know, I had the same problem with the stuttery loading and gameplay being fine. And it can't be my computer because I have a high end gaming rig. Were more people having this problem? If so, I would expect it wouldn't be present in the final game. Or I would hope not at least.

[BRC]

Originally Posted by Gulaghar

You know, I had the same problem with the stuttery loading and gameplay being fine. And it can't be my computer because I have a high end gaming rig. Were more people having this problem? If so, I would expect it wouldn't be present in the final game. Or I would hope not at least.

Yeah, I noticed that too.

The Penny Arcade Report has a good article about the game that seems to alleviate any lingering fears about a lack of depth in terms of research. The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that in this Xcom you are not supposed to be able to complete every available research.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Originally Posted by Triaxx

Question: Am I wall of texting? Or do I just repeat what others have said and there's nothing to respond to?

I've been reading your posts with attention, since I can't play the demo myself, but have nothing to add to them.

GW

[Triaxx]

Glad it's not me. I notice it defaulted everything to minimum. Adjusting it didn't seem to make a difference. Unless perhaps it's reporting statistics to Steam to see who is playing. But Offline didn't make a difference.

@Grey_wolf_c: Thanks. Nice to know I'm not talking to myself. :D

[YakYak]

Originally Posted by BRC

Yeah, I noticed that too.

The Penny Arcade Report has a good article about the game that seems to alleviate any lingering fears about a lack of depth in terms of research. The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that in this Xcom you are not supposed to be able to complete every available research.

The developers said that it is possible to do all the research, but the sheer amount of time it would take makes it infeasible for gameplay, as you'd probably loose the council waiting for it all to come in.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Originally Posted by YakYak

The developers said that it is possible to do all the research, but the sheer amount of time it would take makes it infeasible for gameplay, as you'd probably loose the council waiting for it all to come in.

You could pick missions that reward you with scientists every time it is possible (rather than on more solid choices like "places where panic is becoming critical" and what-not) and spend most of your money building labs next to each other. If you manage no to loose the game with such a sub-optimal strategy, and hobble through missions with your under-strength under-equipped team, you might end with such a powerful research team that you can study everything in parallel.

Something to try in the easy difficulty, maybe.

Grey Wolf

[Zevox]

...so, it's Tuesday again, and again, no demo for the X-Box 360. Looks like console players don't get one before the release then, as the next time that new demos will hit the 360 is the day of the game's release itself.

So, I guess I get to take something of a leap of faith and buy this without trying it first. Kinda disappointing, but at least the gameplay videos I've seen do look good, and it has been too long since I've had a new game in this kind of genre, what with Nintendo skipping bringing the remake of Fire Emblem 3 stateside and taking their usual time localizing the newest one, and me not having a PS3 to play Disgaea 3 and 4 on.

A question: does the pre-order bonus for this apply to consoles as well, or just the PC version? I've found a few places saying the latter, but also some that imply it's available for all versions. If there is a pre-order bonus, I may as well go place one now; if not, I'll just pick it up without bothering with a pre-order.

Zevox

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Originally Posted by Zevox

A question: does the pre-order bonus for this apply to consoles as well, or just the PC version? I've found a few places saying the latter, but also some that imply it's available for all versions. If there is a pre-order bonus, I may as well go place one now; if not, I'll just pick it up without bothering with a pre-order.

Zevox

I cannot answer authoritatively, but the pre-order bonus sounds like a download code meant to discourage the second hand market. If that is the case, I would imagine it will be present in all forms of the game.

That said, I'm not going to pre-order. The bonus isn't that amazing, and I don't expect the game to do so well that the initial release will run out on the first day.

Grey Wolf

[Krade]

Originally Posted by Zevox

...so, it's Tuesday again, and again, no demo for the X-Box 360. Looks like console players don't get one before the release then, as the next time that new demos will hit the 360 is the day of the game's release itself.

I got my brother to download the demo on his computer (it was choppy as hell, but still played), and I have to say I like what I see. Of course, as I've said before, I've always been confident that the game would be amazing.

I got a little grenade happy in that second mission, though. I figured since it's just the demo I shouldn't worry about destroying potential research materials.

[JMobius]

Originally Posted by Zevox

...so, it's Tuesday again, and again, no demo for the X-Box 360. Looks like console players don't get one before the release then, as the next time that new demos will hit the 360 is the day of the game's release itself.

So, I guess I get to take something of a leap of faith and buy this without trying it first. Kinda disappointing, but at least the gameplay videos I've seen do look good, and it has been too long since I've had a new game in this kind of genre, what with Nintendo skipping bringing the remake of Fire Emblem 3 stateside and taking their usual time localizing the newest one, and me not having a PS3 to play Disgaea 3 and 4 on.

A question: does the pre-order bonus for this apply to consoles as well, or just the PC version? I've found a few places saying the latter, but also some that imply it's available for all versions. If there is a pre-order bonus, I may as well go place one now; if not, I'll just pick it up without bothering with a pre-order.

Zevox

I'm going to get it on the 360 as well, but my personal recommendation is that trailers and gameplay videos will be more helpful than the demo for deciding whether or not it appeals to you. The demo is extremely limited and lacking. If you really want a crack at the demo, you could also just try the PC one if your machine is up to the task.