3601

More council missions when the council missions we have are likely the worst in the game? No thanks.

If you had asked me a year ago whether I would have bought borderlands 2 DLC over xcom DLC, i would have told you not a chance in hell. I wasn’t a huge fan of borderlands and i am a huge x-com fan. Well, i just bought the borderlands 2 dlc and i don’t plan to buy the xcom one.

I have no desire to play xcom again and i am finding it somewhat hard to even finish my current playthrough which is probably an hour max from the finish. The game just drops off at the end when you’re just doing more of the same with nothing really interesting to look forward to. The game is pretty fun and a very good sequel for this day and age, but it loses steam about 3/4 of the way through and it appears to have almost no replayability (in my opinion).

3602

Thanks for that tip about using [tab] right after hitting overwatch rather than waiting for the delayed character switch. Makes a pretty big difference for paranoaic overwatch-mongers.

3603

I don’t see it as a “throwaway” title at all. There’s plenty of polish, what with the pretty graphics, the details in maps, the extensive voice acting, the glam-cam, the ant-farm, etc. I do agree that the early game is more fun than the late game, but even the late game still keeps me addicted. I’m at 78 hours, going strong.

3604

I’d hardly call it polished with not uncommon freeze bugs, bugs with the save system and bugs with LoS.

The maps are also very forgettable. The game is basically fun in spite of the maps, not because of it.

3605

I think the foundation of the game is good, it hit a lot of the points of what made the original game so compelling. But at the same time, to make the game more accessible, they stripped away a lot of the content and choices that made the original so replay-able. I finished my classic game the other day and I don’t have a desire to replay the game.

After retrying my ironman run so many times and downgraded to just classic, I reached the point where I optimize everything that the current design of the game doesn’t surprise me or challenge me anymore. And I don’t want to attempt an ironman run with the current bug issues.

3606

Obviously you’re the target audience of the game then. I can’t help but wonder what you guys find in this game that keeps you engaged in the long term, but there must be something.

I believe that, despite Jake Solomons claim to the contraty, this game isn’t in any way designed for fans of the original game or tries to press the same buttons.
It’s possible that you liked X-Com, but your tastes have changed over the years for whatever reason, and now you love the new XCOM just as well, but it’s clearly aimed at a different audience.
Mostly, it’s freedom vs. canned experience, I think.

I already raised the comparison to the GTA series, and I still think it’s pretty fitting.
If the original X-Com was GTA3, this is a GTA in which the crib is now a seperate screen, in which the city map is another screen on which you have a button labeled “Cruise” which just advanced time and then starts a mission. Sometimes, you get a notification “Race available”.
Imagine GTA5 being like that, wouldn’t there be an outcry?
Thankfully, the GTA designers subscribe to a different design philosophy and/or have more understanding of their franchise, so that’s no the direction they’re going with GTA5.

It’s great that all you GOTY people love the game, but to me, this new XCOM is hardly better than if it was an FPS - the experience the game offers is almost just as removed to the original.
Somewhat, it’s like loving Poker and when boardgames are all the rage, they’re making a new Poker like Magic the Gathering. Hey, it’s still a card game, ain’t that just grand?

rezaf

3607

Lay down your arms, rezaf. I don’t think you’ll get what you’re looking for.

3608

I wasn’t lobbying for that, either.
I was just trying to say that you guys expressing unconditional love (and of course you have every right to do so) are likely doing it because of completely different reasons.

The only thing I actually wish Firaxis to do at this point is release modding tools (or the modding community to just “enforce them”, which is also a possibility).
The rest of the game is enjoyable once or twice, but ultimately completely forgettable to me.

rezaf

3609

The DLC misses the point entirely. What a waste.

3610

I was thinking that two of the last few games I played were the Carrier Command remake from Bohemia and Future Soldier, the latest Tom Clancy. In both of those you control groups of people/things on various exploration & assault missions, as in Xcom. But in both of those, the environments are big, beautiful and fully modelled. Cover works by, well, providing cover not by abstracting it, as does flanking. Your squad mates also have AI which is sometime sub-optimal, and sometimes rather cool. Xcom’s boardgame sim does seem very old fashioned in comparison.

3611

As poor form as an appeal to authority is, critical opinion outside this thread is unanimous. And not like “giant 7-to-9-scale outlets,” either, places like Tom’s front-page, TMA, Giant Bomb… When TMA’s panelists are debating whether XCom:EU has Strategy GOTY competition aside from CK2, well…A side conversation debating whether or not it’s “any good” takes on a certain unreality.

EDIT: Which isn’t to say it’s wrong for a contrary strain of opinion to be held by members in this thread. It’s just maybe needlessly wrongfooting the conversation to adopt an “I dunno what you guys are smoking, it’s clearly a disappointment” stance when that is in fact the more contentious opinion to argue vis a vis the “strategy game critics’” general consensus.

3612

You are placing a weird amount of emphasis on how you, personally, think the game should have been developed.

3613

Why? Or rather, where?
I simply said it feels very different than original for me personally, which it does - shouldn’t I emphasise my own thoughts when summarizing how I feel about the game?

Am I right? I sure am.
But am I more right than you others who love the game? Of course not.

rezaf

3614

It really is a weird choice for the DLC. The game’s strength is the personal stories gamers make up when guided through the semi-random scenarios, not the story-heavy council missions.

3615

I mean that all of your criticisms seem to boil down to “it isn’t the original, it isn’t what I thought it was going to be.” That’s fine, but it isn’t really inherently a negative.

3616

Yeah, rezgaf’s concerns seem mostly based on his personal feelings / quirks. So yeah, nobody can claim he doesn’t actually feel that way. But why would anyone besides rezgaf care?

3617

I’ve been getting this a lot lately. I thought it was because there was some intrinsic number of saves allowed that it wasn’t informing me of, so I’ve been deleting old ones.

It seems like sometimes they are saved but they don’t appear until you see the save/load list say ‘refreshing saves’. What prompts it to do that is a mystery.
Any link to the 2k forums?

3618

You’re right, of course - then again, why should anyone care about ANYONES opinion on XCOM? This is a discussion board, and unless you feel I’m personally insulting someone repeatedly, I can respond to every single post in this thread pointing out the things that I feel differently about. Just put me on ignore or something if it really bothers you that much.

That said, I guess I’m in the phase of emotional disconnect. I posted so much because I love the original XCOM and think this new game does it little justice. It’s solid enough by it’s own right, but ultimately forgettable.
Nobody would remake or even remember this game some years down the road if it weren’t for it’s predecessor.
It may be good (or even great for many of you), but it’s not a classic by a LONG shot. At least not in it’s current form. And before you call bullsh*t, let’s wait a decade or something and discuss this again.
Anyway, I stopped playing in earnest and can’t bring myself to start a new game, so in a week or something at the very latest, I’ll most probably stop caring and thus stop posting and thus stop annyoing you lot.
If that’s not good enough for you, hop over to the Dear Jake Solomon thread - I made a promise not to post there again and intend to keep it. ;-)

rezaf

3619

Not sure why the gang up on rezaf. I’m in at least some agreement with him. I played through the game on normal / ironman and once I got beyond the first several missions I had a pretty easy time. I didn’t mind too much since I figured I would play again on classic. Once I finished, I didn’t really have a desire to play again. First, I don’t think it is a bad game. For the most part I enjoyed my play through even with the sometimes wonky camera inside some ships and a couple crashes.

For me the enjoyment came is discovering what was next. The battles were decent, but got fairly repetitive. Keep your guys close together, gang up on the enemy group and then proceed to the next one. Aside from the terror and bomb missions, they all felt rather the same. The same tactics generally worked and none of the levels really made me play much differently. I understand some of this may be different on classic, but after starting a new game I just didn’t have the will to continue.

I think better level design and a more sophisticated treatment of cover could help. The required objectives, like capturing one of the aliens, makes the game feels like it is a bit on rails for me. It isn’t rare for me to disagree with popular opinion on games. I haven’t been able to get into Crusader kings 2 and games like Diablo and Torchlight are extremely boring to me. I need XCOM to have a little more depth to pull me into it for the long term. I wish I saved my money and waited for a sale on this one. Woeth a play through for me, but not at hot off the press prices.

3620

I played the original game like crazy and loved it, and there are things about it I do prefer. But I don’t think of these two games as vastly different creations. Suppose this new edition had not been called XCOM at all. The internet would be crawling with people condemning it for being a “clone” of XCOM. You run a base; you make tough decisions about what to build next; you engage in tactical combat against aliens of increasing difficulty; the only differences are minor! Why, in one you have Time Units, and the other you have two actions per turn, coupled with new Squaddie actions, which in effect give the player very similar tactical decisions to those in the first game!

I also don’t think the new XCOM is dumbed-down. I do wish the early strategic game didn’t funnel one so inexorably toward engineers and satellites, but even so, I constantly found myself agonizing over what to build and research, because money is so tight. Money is tight for me the whole game. By contrast, by mid- to end-game in the original, I’d be swimming with cash, and there weren’t as many tough choices to make. The tactical layer involves decisions not so much of computation (figuring out how many TUs to use where) but of tactics (try to flank or shoot now? overwatch or hunker down? suppress or shoot to kill?).

And I’m completely mystified by the suggestion that the new XCOM is “canned” whereas the old one represents “freedom” – that the new one is “hardly better than it was an FPS,” meaning its on rails compared to the glorious sandbox of the original. If anything, I find myself agonizing more about decisions in the new XCOM, both on the strategic and tactical layer, as I’ve described above. Sure, there are some points at which the new game doesn’t give us enough of a choice: the early race for satellites, and some of the squaddie abilities. But that was true in the original game too, and in some ways worse in the original game.

The original X-Com was great, one of my all-time favorites. I still have it sitting here. But I am more interested in playing this new XCOM. It scratches the same itch, in a slightly different way, and it’s a blast. I don’t know if it’s my GOTY, but I really like it.

EDIT: Oops, didn’t read all the latest posts before writing this one. I of course acknowledge anyone’s right to dislike any game, and to express that view here. It’s a reminder of how differently people can perceive the same thing. Nothing wrong with that.