I quite enjoy the Firaxis XCOM games. Enemy Within was the best x-pac of the year as it really fleshed out the original game.
But after Beyond Earth and Starships!, I will wait a good long while to purchase anything new from Firaxis. They have put out two major clunkers in a row. So once all the reviews are in and it is a proven hit then it may warrant a purchase.
Very excited. Bring it on!
While I was hoping Advent was going to be a new franchise/game, getting XCOM2 is probably the next best thing (if not a better thing in general).
— Alan
This thread has buried the lede, which is - procedurally generated maps are coming! Lack of map variety was my only major beef with the first one.
Obviously the last couple of Firaxis games have been duds, but damn if they aren’t saying all the right things. Procedurally generated levels? Better mod support? Snake dudes? Hell yeah!
I don’t know exactly why I care so much, but the idea of playing terrorists/La Resistance in a XCom game seems completely off to me. Additionally, is it just me or are Orwellian Dystopias the new World War II?
This is awesome news.
Ugh, is that what’s going on? I thought something seemed weird in that screenshot with the crosshairs on some faceless facist goons.
Too trite for me. DXHR was the last game to make that work in terms of genuinely hating the generic supertrooper faction. I’m not sure this game can do it.
Good news, though that screenshot Turin posted looks… um, early. Let’s just say, “early”.
I love XCOM EU and EW, though I only played each once. I hope this new one will introduce some more replayability (random unit options, random enemies, random tech would be grand, etc. - a little more roguelike, if you will) but I’m down day one for sure. It’s nice to have something new to be excited for! Now that The Witcher 3 is out, I don’t know what my next “big” title to get jazzed for was going to be, I think this may be it!
Illogical, that says nothing about how long they have been working on it.
I think it’s a cool twist. There aren’t a lot of alternative scenarios:
The aliens invade again
XCom leads a rebellion against the aliens after a successful invasion
XCom invade the alien planet to put an end the menace once and for all (now that should be XCom 3!)
The story is just wrapper for the base management and TB tactical game play. Seems a bit much to get so jaded already about the story.
I suspect that Firaxis will be taking ideas from the Long War mod and integrating them directly into the core game. Well, I hope so anyway.
There are others that look a bit better, but mostly they are going for clean, slightly cartoony style.
Summary
The mobile base is called "The Avenger" and is a converted alien ship. There are five classes now — I'm guessing "Ranger" is the new one. They mention "Momentum" as a new class ability. "The state of the world affects each combat mission's environment." "Use concealment to ambush enemy patrols." "Loot enemies for precious gear and artifacts." You can save fallen soldiers by carrying them to the extraction. "There are virtually infinite combinations of map, missions and goals." Also confirms head-to-head multiplayer on generated maps.
(and the main new trumpeted features are procedural levels and modding).
Wait, what? Did Xcom have multiplayer?
From the site this one looks like its going to finally have mod support.
Wait, what? Did Xcom have multiplayer?
Features for XCOM2 seem promising. Will be interesting to see how procedural levels work out. Hopefully more destruction options this time.
Shhhh! Let’s not tell him about the zombies.
Really excited about this. Despite the flaws I still played a hell of a lot of nu-Xcom, enough that this may be one of the few games I scoop up at launch/preorder. Really pumped about the procedurally generated levels, kinda leery on lowering your gun and drawing a sword to fight aliums, kinda leery on guerrilla Xcom, really pumped about PC exclusive (Not sure it’ll really stay that way but I’m hoping it lets them do more with it than they could if they had to port to consoles). Also glad to hear Jake Solomon’s involved, though creative director may not be lead designer.
Kinda glad to have a game I’m looking forward to coming out near the end of the year. Don’t think I really had anything else.
this is what gets me excited most. It seems there’s going to be proper enemy spawning this time.
Yeah, it sure did.
It did, and it was a bit busted. Used a point-buy system to grab units (Basic humans being cheap but loading equipment on them raised the cost, aliums being a known quantity but generally cheaper (But less flexible individually)) and then you played out a single combat encounter. The most busted part was the fog of war in Xcom didn’t handle multiplayer terribly well. Even if you couldn’t see your opponent’s units or hear them moving, the fog of war didn’t obscure windows and doors. So if you knew a map well enough (Which it used maps from singleplayer so you probably would) you’d know where enemy units were depending on if windows were broken/doors were open on your fog of war. It also didn’t mask the in-game sounds they made while moving, so during your opponent’s turn there was no reason NOT to pan around the map and listen for footfalls and be a horrible cheater.
It wasn’t entirely garbage since the basic combat is still fun, but I played maybe 5-10 rounds of it with friends and then stopped. Even if it didn’t have quirks like that I doubt I would’ve played it much more anyway.