XCOM: Enemy Unknown Gameplay and Discussion

[Binge]

Really? I just double checked an I do NOT see a thread for this amazing game! I have been doing a lot of live-casts of this game. Here is the beginning of the game without the tutorial. The tutorial is pretty cool because it teaches you a lot, and I didn't want to record that in case anyone buys the game.

http://www.twitch.tv/slumbering/b/335510424

 

[3870x2]

8.2

 

[Binge]

8.2

y-...yes? Where are judges 2 & 3? We need an overall mean score!

 

[3870x2]

y-...yes? Where are judges 2 & 3? We need an overall mean score!

IGN.
I am disappointed by the score, not the game. The game I am going to get for sure.

I guess if IGN isn't on your payroll its hard to get on the 9+ scale.

 

[hellrazor]

I'd say it looks like a high 7, but I would get it if I could anyways.

 

[MT Alex]

I plan on getting it when I'm more flush, but I'm worried since I loved the original so much. Even after all the reviews I have read, I'm not willing to admit they did the original justice. I'll have to watch your video and maybe review this statement.

 

[W1zzard]

8.9

i really enjoyed it and did a full playthrough

 

[Binge]

I plan on getting it when I'm more flush, but I'm worried since I loved the original so much. Even after all the reviews I have read, I'm not willing to admit they did the original justice. I'll have to watch your video and maybe review this statement.

Please take a look at that video and check out the other videos I have up. There's a lot of play-time recorded, and I have waaaaaay too much fun naming my soldiers.

 

[RCoon]

I'll throw an 8.1 at it, i hate turn based strategies, nothing except Heroes of M&M can change my mind, until this thing came along. Now i play it every day for at least 2-3 hours an evening. Losing a squad member is so painful i reload before mission start

 

[MT Alex]

You bet I will. One of the things that has been nagging at me is only having 6 soldiers in your squad, the vids will clear a lot of that up, I'm hoping.

 

[KainXS]

I'm loving it, the only problem I have so far


no base defense, wtf were they thinkin leavin it out.

 

[ShiBDiB]

Not enough variation between games, not enough weapon types, inability to stay with bullets is annoying, felt very linear.

If it was more sandbox and fleshed out itd be fricking great... but right now its a turn based strategy on rails

 

[Binge]

Not enough variation between games, not enough weapon types, inability to stay with bullets is annoying, felt very linear.

If it was more sandbox and fleshed out itd be fricking great... but right now its a turn based strategy on rails

CHOO CHOO!! I love this part

***PEW PEW*** Jesus 'Hardcore' Burrito has vanquished another poor alien!

 

[Yukikaze]

Not enough variation between games, not enough weapon types, inability to stay with bullets is annoying, felt very linear.

If it was more sandbox and fleshed out itd be fricking great... but right now its a turn based strategy on rails

This. The game is a 6 at best.

Maybe Xenonauts will pull it off, but I am not holding my breath.

 

[techtard]

Played it, finished it.
It was fun, but brief. It was kinda like the game RAGE - just when it's starting to get good... BAM! Game is finished.

I would have liked more customisation options and more items, research & upgrades.

They totally dumbed it down for the console, and its another game that suffers from a short single player experience in order to shoehorn in multiplayer.

 

[Depth]

Not enough variation between games, not enough weapon types, inability to stay with bullets is annoying, felt very linear.

If it was more sandbox and fleshed out itd be fricking great... but right now its a turn based strategy on rails

It's a very shallow game. First playthrough was brilliant, as I thought I was only scratching the surface. I felt as if I was missing something when I was at the final mission and thought I should have taken another "path" and hit New Game.

That was when I realized I had to do everything I had done up to then one more time, as there are no paths to choose from, only small threads of research.

Assault rifle -> Laser rifle -> Plasma rifle. Each step in technology gives you a huge advantage that slowly evens out as the aliens arbitrarily decide to throw in bigger and bigger guys at you.

I'm not cowering in fear when an alarm goes off because a very large UFO contact appears, I'm joyfully happy because soon there will be more Elyrium, power cores, flight controls and bodies to play around with.


It's all just making me sorely miss UFO:Aftermath....

...Which I think I still have on DVD somewhere....

I'll see you guys later.

 

[Binge]

Good to hear all of these posi and negi reviews stacking up. Seems like something that can go either way for people.

So far the linearity has not bothered me, but I am most disappointed with enemy movement and AI. For being so advanced they are pretty stupid. I never feel as if I am hunted. It's definitely routed around creating approach methods for different terrain. In that respect I find the game to be quite interesting, but to be fair to the folks with negi remarks I totally see what they are bringing to the table. The only difference is that the other aspects of the game are fun, and even with some repetitive elements reducing the shine of the title there is such an awesome attention to detail. The theatrics are amazing regardless of the logical progression of events through the game.

Research is the means to an end. With live-streaming the title I have banned a fair share of folks for making suggestions to my play-style. There's just some better ways to play, and without the challenge of learning those ways the gameplay is much more cheap.

 

[hellrazor]

If you're looking for something better (not really) you can check out UFO: Alien Invasion. Don't expect much in the media department, but gameplay is pretty good.

 

[MT Alex]

If you're looking for something better (not really) you can check out UFO: Alien Invasion. Don't expect much in the media department, but gameplay is pretty good.

Looking at their site, why not just play the original X-Com? The graphics don't look like much of an upgrade.

 

[Mussels]

oooh a new Xcom? count me in!

 

[ShiBDiB]

Good to hear all of these posi and negi reviews stacking up. Seems like something that can go either way for people.

So far the linearity has not bothered me, but I am most disappointed with enemy movement and AI. For being so advanced they are pretty stupid. I never feel as if I am hunted. It's definitely routed around creating approach methods for different terrain. In that respect I find the game to be quite interesting, but to be fair to the folks with negi remarks I totally see what they are bringing to the table. The only difference is that the other aspects of the game are fun, and even with some repetitive elements reducing the shine of the title there is such an awesome attention to detail. The theatrics are amazing regardless of the logical progression of events through the game.

Research is the means to an end. With live-streaming the title I have banned a fair share of folks for making suggestions to my play-style. There's just some better ways to play, and without the challenge of learning those ways the gameplay is much more cheap.

You sound like ur on one of if not the first playthrough..

You cant comment on linearity yet, but trust me when I say that your 2nd 3rd 4th 34th playthroughs will all be the same. Theirs one way to win in the end, doing anything different will lead to you losing.

The game does a great job of tricking the user into thinking it has depth. But it really doesnt, you either use plasma weapons or you wont win, you upgrade to heavy armor or you wont win, you research down the same tech paths or you wont win. I didnt even know it was a cross platform game, but that totally explains why it feels so dumbed down.

Makes me miss my favorite xcom game.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM:_Interceptor

Then again I liked it for the base building space expansion stuff.

 

[Binge]

You sound like ur on one of if not the first playthrough..

You cant comment on linearity yet, but trust me when I say that your 2nd 3rd 4th 34th playthroughs will all be the same. Theirs one way to win in the end, doing anything different will lead to you losing.

The game does a great job of tricking the user into thinking it has depth. But it really doesnt, you either use plasma weapons or you wont win, you upgrade to heavy armor or you wont win, you research down the same tech paths or you wont win. I didnt even know it was a cross platform game, but that totally explains why it feels so dumbed down.

Makes me miss my favorite xcom game.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM:_Interceptor

Then again I liked it for the base building space expansion stuff.

On my 3rd playthrough actually. One of my files I use explicitly for streaming, and the other two are my own tinker toys. I would be a really sh!t unhappy gamer if I thought depth = upgrade path. To be honest you don't NEED plasma weapons. I completed the first alien base before people thought I should be completing it. You can do quite a bit just with the tactics in the game.

I said something positive about the game, and it does not mean I disagree with what you're saying. Without treading so heavily you may want to consider the observations made by others. You expect a game of this type to have a certain element of game-play, but I found that it primarily tests the users ability to infiltrate an area with a squad of 6 who use different skill-sets. Replaying the game has little value except to streamline the build-up process. Trust me there are ways to lay-out a base better/spend resources/research devices than the times it was done before. Just because some of the people out there stuck it on some gawd easy difficulty and ROFL-clicked to success does not mean others turned it up to something more challenging and then replayed it until it became TOO easy by getting TOO good at getting those high-tier upgrades/building a dream team.

tl/dr; I said I was banning people from my stream who tried to spoil this for me because I could tell 90% of the fun was learning the game. If you have stopped learning bits from this game so that you could optimize it then obviously you beat the game. Put it down and play something else.

 

[MT Alex]

Makes me miss my favorite xcom game.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM:_Interceptor

Then again I liked it for the base building space expansion stuff.

Sheesh. You might want to keep that to yourself, if nothing else than to add credibility to your posts. That was definitely the dog of the original franchise. Sure, it didn't hit the depths that Enforcer did, but wow, nothing like the first three titles. It was a blow horn game that hollered: "Hey, you didn't like Apocalypse that much? It's only getting worse from here on out." To be fair, the Wing Commander jazz wasn't that bad, but it's quite a leap from the turn based squad tactics goodness of the previous games.

 

[ShiBDiB]

Sheesh. You might want to keep that to yourself, if nothing else than to add credibility to your posts. That was definitely the dog of the original franchise. Sure, it didn't hit the depths that Enforcer did, but wow, nothing like the first three titles. It was a blow horn game that hollered: "Hey, you didn't like Apocalypse that much? It's only getting worse from here on out." To be fair, the Wing Commander jazz wasn't that bad, but it's quite a leap from the turn based squad tactics goodness of the previous games.

Haha I know I'm a minority with that one, I just liked the whole space getting supplies from planets and expanding further thing. As a space strategy game it wasnt half bad. Woulda been better if they dropped xcom from its name.

And binge what difficulty are you on. Because you wont win on classic+ without plasma weapons. Unless you game the AI using one lowly squaddie to act as a sacrifice to trigger the ai to walk into your overwatch ambushes.. even then good luck using bullets.

 

[Binge]

Haha I know I'm a minority with that one, I just liked the whole space getting supplies from planets and expanding further thing. As a space strategy game it wasnt half bad. Woulda been better if they dropped xcom from its name.

And binge what difficulty are you on. Because you wont win on classic+ without plasma weapons. Unless you game the AI using one lowly squaddie to act as a sacrifice to trigger the ai to walk into your overwatch ambushes.. even then good luck using bullets.

Same. Usually I pull enemies with a medic-tank and stage ambushes. Getting enemies to walk into choke points allow the use of explosives to soften them up. Usually overwatching is a waste of ammunition. Holo-tag is a better use of the ammunition with suppression on melee enemies. Forcing them to move with fire and triggering suppression damage. etc etc etc