My biggest complaint about the new Xcom was 4 and even 6 soldiers were so few that I would play super careful compared to original where losing 1 out dozen folks wasn’t that huge a loss.
Timers took me out of my comfort zone, and made the game more fun (as well as faster). Not mention on many of the mission the clean up phase have no timer nor did terror missions.
The more you narrow the path to a victory condition the less interesting a game is to me.
You want an example of how to properly implement a time constraint, if that’s what they felt like they had to go with, play Invisible. The time limit is all on the player and how much risk vs reward they are willing to tolerate.
Xcom2 to me feels forced down an optimal path because if I lose too many troops I will not manage it in the back end of the campaign.
I think the “forced to play a certain way” thing is a bit of hyperbole. I certainly understand not wanting to play with timers. In most games, I hate them. I really didn’t think it was that bad in XCOM 2. It forces efficiency, but there are still many many ways to approach an objective.
Someone upthread mentioned he (I’m assuming) felt like the missions were puzzles with the timers. The only time I felt like that was at the end of missions. I would also venture that most combat engagements, in both of the Firaxis games, are more puzzle-like, “forcing” the player to optimize every move. This is a good thing. It’s tense.
haha, in my experience views i disagree with are hyperbole, ones i agree with are perfectly rational and sensible
and as i said, if you wanted to implement these, i provided an example of how they were done intelligently, no hyperbole, tangible example in the game Invisible
If you’re talking about my comment, I mentioned puzzles only as something I don’t like in games, in general. I didn’t mean that I thought this was an issue in XCOM 2. Sorry for the confusion.
No, it was Guap. Sorry for being lazy and not checking above. :)
Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t arguing with you. I was just reacting to the feeling I’m getting that people are really bothered by the timers, that they constrain gameplay radically. I pretty much agree with what you said in your post; I just had a different experience. I was just averring that, in my subjective opinion, as a person who hates timers generally, I didn’t think it was that bad.
I can see how my statement looked now.
I’d also like to add that I would have preferred the game not be balanced around the timers and agree that it might have been more interesting to put pressure on players to optimize their efficiency with some other design element. Again, though, I loved XCOM 2 and had a blast with it; which makes its flaws seem minor to me in the larger scheme.
I was having a blast with it too at first, because it was all new and shiny and I was learning the game mechanics and being introduced to everything.
Then once that wore off I noticed: Hey! This is a puzzle game disguised as XCOM!
I wouldn’t go that far but it definitely feels like a board game rather than a simulation, like the old xcom games were. For me that’s reason enough to give the new X-coms a pass.
The first one and the expansion were fantastic. They did a superb job. You should check it out. I just have an issue with a game mechanic of this one.
I’ve played and finished the 2012 Xcom. Now it sits in my Buyer’s remorse folder in my Steam library, along with Brink.
Or you could just play Xenonauts, if you’re looking for something like the original X-COM games.
Xenonauts is fully destructible 2D with somewhat craptastic performance, but it looks reasonably good, going for a somewhat realistic military sim sort of visuals.
It has a more elaborate air combat minigame than both the original X-COMs and the Firaxis re-imaginings. The key to which is to utilise the keyboard shortcuts for barrel rolling to a specific side - which I mention here because a surprisingly lot of people didn’t realise this is possible and consequently had a hard time of it.
Xenonauts also lets you deploy up to 12 troopers on ground missions. And base management is straight out of the original X-COMs.
The GUI in Xenonauts is perhaps a little bit too faithful to the originals, but still significantly updated and the only really serious flaw with it is the lack of a button to open and close doors - something that will cause misclicking.
In terms of combat mechanics, Xenonauts largely uses the exact same as the originals. The most significant change is the inclusion of weapon ranges. It should also be noted that the armoury in vanilla Xenonauts is more limited than the originals. In vanilla Xenonauts there are only 6 distinct weapon types. Researching and manufacturing new weapons simply gives you improved versions of one of these 6 types. Researched weapons are not functionally different from your initial selection of weapons. A laster carbine is simply a better assault rifle, and not a different type of weapon as such.
Xenonauts has a wealth of mods, including two very elaborate total overhauls, neither of which is in any way recommended for a first time playthrough, because they’re both hard as nails and come with more moving parts than you can be expected to deal with as a scrub.
That said, there are mods I would recommend for a first time playthrough. First and foremost I strongly recommend the Xenonauts Community Edition (XCE or just CE), which you can get by enabling beta updates in Steam. Not long after the game was released, the developer made the source code available to a select few individuals in the community, who have done an outstanding job fixing little bugs, tweaking the odd game mechanic, significantly improving the AI, and incorporating the best community-mader map packs. XCE is fully savegame compatible with vanilla, the most up-to-date way to play the game, fully compatible with just about every mod out there, and in the words of Chris the lead developer: “the best way to experience the game right now.”
In addition to XCE I would recommend using Fire In The Hole! It lets you breach UFO hulls, which in vanilla/XCE are indestructible (only indestructible objects in the game), it adds a few new UFO interior layouts (UFO interiors are not randomised in Xenonauts, though the tactical combat maps are randomised in the same way as XCOM2 by Firaxis - meaning there’s a general map layout with randomised elements injected in), and a couple of other little neat touches which, in my opinion, greatly enhances the play experience without significantly changing it.
There’s also a few graphical mods you might want to look into, but honestly… Xenonauts already does look reasonably good for a very low budget 2d indie, so the mods are nothing ground breaking.
Finally, though it is a long, long way off, Xenonauts 2 is now in the works and something akin to a design document is available as a handful of topics on the official boards. If you love X-COM, you should probably go read those. From the looks of things it’s going to be very different, yet very similar in all the right ways. I’m super super excited about it. Though, again, it’s a long way off.
EDIT: It might also be worth checking out Invisible, Inc. At least for me it scratched the same sort of itch that the Firaxis XCOM re-imaginings did, but honestly did it far better than either of those two games. Invisible, Inc is a turn based tactics/puzzle game with dystopian flavouring, where you infiltrate evil mega corporations, knock out their private security, hack their computers, and empty their safes. For a game with a drastically different premise than the Firaxis games, it actually plays a fair bit similar. But - in my opinion - does a better job than either of those. For example, in Invisible, Inc much of the pressure to get stuff done fast, is pressure you put on yourself by trying to go for bonus objectives. I can elaborate greatly if you guys are interested. It’s a very good game. But I think I’ve derailed enough for now.
Invisible Inc is an amazing (small, tight, focused) game.
I loved the timer. Made the game more pleasantly challenging.
Playing with the timer was frustrating at times but it vastly increased my emotional engagement and reactions.
No worries man, while I’m a tad frustrated with what to me feels like a narrowing path, and sometimes a seeming obsession by the devs on just making things artificially harder through more HP and time pressure instead of something more elegantly done, I enjoyed the heck out of xcom2.
Yeah, I enjoyed it too, and will probably pick it up again at some point, just expressing frustration at a design choice I didn’t agree with and that frustrated me. I don’t think I’m alone, but that doesn’t mean the game sucks or anything. Just makes the first one more appealing to me.
I know meld caught some flack, but you know, in my book that was a smarter more similar time constraint design to the one in Invisible, Inc because you had it out there tantalizing you but not forcing you to chase it. The player made the choice on the risk/reward of going after it or not. Timers in xcom2 are a more blunt instrument.
Yep, agreed. I actually started a new game of XCOM (the reboot) and besides missing MECs and other stuff, I really missed the meld timers. They added something for sure.
Finally!