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TIGSource ForumsPlayerGamesXCOM, X-COM and X+COM
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Udderdude
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« Reply #60 on: October 23, 2012, 11:52:37 AM »

Here's my twin's review of the game.

http://www.extremegamer.ca/multi/reviews/xcomEU.php
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« Reply #61 on: October 23, 2012, 11:59:55 AM »

Quote
The two accented scientists that make up the bulk of the voiced dialogue through the game can be irritating.
as a native german speaker, listening to dr. vahlen's fake accent is pretty painful. the tutorial cutscene where she speaks german made want to drive a #2 pencil through my eardrums.
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Blademasterbobo
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« Reply #62 on: October 23, 2012, 03:37:18 PM »

they should've just used lines from old arnold schwarzenegger movies
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Dragonmaw
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« Reply #63 on: October 23, 2012, 04:31:12 PM »

There's quite a number of factual inaccuracies or omissions in that review but w/e.
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Udderdude
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« Reply #64 on: October 23, 2012, 04:58:50 PM »

There's quite a number of factual inaccuracies or omissions in that review but w/e.

Care to elaborate on that?
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Dragonmaw
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« Reply #65 on: October 23, 2012, 05:39:51 PM »

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If your soldiers take any damage at all, they'll be undeployable for several in-game days after the mission ends, and if they die they are gone for good.

Only if they take damage more than their armor; not always, sometimes they are knocked out and you can revive them.

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The most reliable strategy is almost always to move to the edge of the map, hide behind cover and wait for the aliens to approach you.

Not true at all, especially since most of the time enemies will not actually discover you first. You have to strike out in order to complete missions.

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You're given several very powerful defensive tools like Overwatch and very few offensive tools.

Overwatch is the only defensive tool that hits enemies, it can only trigger once per activation, and it has an Aim penalty. Calling it "powerful" isn't so much factually wrong as it is an incorrect assessment of the game mechanics.

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Once you're spotted, the enemy group is forced to run and hide regardless of whether it's player or enemy phase.

Nope. If it occurs during the enemy phase, they actually get a free move. I've had Chrysalids use this to instantly move up to my guys and force a panic. Only the Sectoids and Thin Men seem to prefer retreat to advance with the free move mechanic.

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Overwatch shots are particularly slow, because the game game animates in slow motion while they occur. I get that the developers wanted slower players to understand what was happening, but it's irritating that there's no way to skip or speed anything up.

There is an option to disable it.

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Depth is limited to a small number of classes, weapon types, skills, and enemy varieties.

Not necessarily factually inaccurate but certainly misleading. Each class has something like 18 skills, only two of which they always get (Squaddie and Major rank skills, IIRC). This forces players to specialize within classes. Roughly speaking, there are "eight" classes in the game: Explosive Heavy, Gun Heavy, Heal Support, Defense Support, Recon Sniper, Range Sniper, Rush Assault, Critical Assault. Weapon types are strictly linear in power, I'll grant that. There's actually more enemy variety than in the original, unless you count the different ranks in UFO Defense as varieties.

Also in general it's a pretty poorly written review.
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joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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« Reply #66 on: November 01, 2012, 09:47:33 AM »

I liked this game a LOT, I blew through it on ironman classic (13 games!!) over the first week I got it. It's deep and pretty amazing, although it has a couple of REALLY nasty bugs. Most notably, the weird abstracted logic with undiscovered enemies can go totally haywire, and you can have an entire map worth of enemies drop within your soldier's LOS during their turn -- once on the graveyard map I had an ironman squad wiped when 6 heavy floaters and 6 mutons all spawned in the same square IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SQUAD. Not a good bug to have in an ironman game.

Other interesting stuff to remark on:

  • A lot of the early game difficulty comes from Thin Men -- The game is never up-front about telling you that light plasma grants an accuracy bonus, so an uninformed player wont realize a thin man or overseer has a significantly higher chance of hitting his soldier if they're trading shots from cover. Like, 40% for your rookie is probably 65% for the thin man looking back at him.
  • Overwatch is incredibly viable as an offensive tactic -- even with the aim penalty, I get the impression overwatch @ enemies out of cover is significantly more accurate than fire @ an enemy in cover -- keeping soldiers on overwatch before you end your turn, so they can fire if any enemies are revealed and take their free move, is a vital tactic... ESPECIALLY with snipers, which brings me to...
  • SQUAD SIGHT is super overpowered, to the point of being pretty much the only viable tactic in the late game. Two snipers with plasma, squad sight, and opportunist (no aim penalty on overwatch) placed in elevated positions will have you looking at 95-100% chances to hit any enemy revealed anywhere on the map by the rest of your team. I kinda wish there were more good late game squad makeups -- a couple of squad sight snipers is such a profound silver bullet (ESPECIALLY endgame, with double tap) that it doesnt make sense to take anything else.
  • Lightning reflexes (first reaction shot by aliens always misses) is a super cool power, that kind of thing is lovely to have in your strategic toolkit -- I wish there were move powers like that, which made me use soldiers in interesting tactical ways, like bating enemies' overwatch so that other soldiers could safely move.

Anyway though: Great game. Bring on some tftd dlc.
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Alec S.
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« Reply #67 on: November 01, 2012, 08:42:57 PM »

On my fifth game of Classic Ironman (the first four tended towards disaster).  This one has been going pretty well so far.  I think I've only lost around 3 guys so far through maybe 7 or more missions, panic levels aren't too out of control, and I've captured a live alien.  The game has a lot of positive feedback loops where minor losses can quickly spiral into major losses, but I've been playing carefully and holding my own so far.  I think I'm getting a hold on the strategies (at least of the early game), both in terms of tactics in the missions, and overall strategies for base development.
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Muz
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« Reply #68 on: November 01, 2012, 09:00:43 PM »

A lot of the early game difficulty comes from Thin Men -- The game is never up-front about telling you that light plasma grants an accuracy bonus, so an uninformed player wont realize a thin man or overseer has a significantly higher chance of hitting his soldier if they're trading shots from cover. Like, 40% for your rookie is probably 65% for the thin man looking back at him.

They're still nasty mid-late game. I remember doing a bomb mission after mutons/ethereals. Was confident because I didn't lose any guys earlier. Totally underestimated them, lost half my squad.

Of all the units, thin men are surprisingly deadly because they're damn accurate and can very easily outflank you, and they come in numbers. A thin man can jump over the train you're hiding in and shoot you from the back, and a couple others could be in positions to surround you. Heavy floaters are the only ones that come close in deadly mobility.
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joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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« Reply #69 on: November 01, 2012, 09:27:38 PM »

A lot of the early game difficulty comes from Thin Men -- The game is never up-front about telling you that light plasma grants an accuracy bonus, so an uninformed player wont realize a thin man or overseer has a significantly higher chance of hitting his soldier if they're trading shots from cover. Like, 40% for your rookie is probably 65% for the thin man looking back at him.

They're still nasty mid-late game. I remember doing a bomb mission after mutons/ethereals. Was confident because I didn't lose any guys earlier. Totally underestimated them, lost half my squad.

Of all the units, thin men are surprisingly deadly because they're damn accurate and can very easily outflank you, and they come in numbers. A thin man can jump over the train you're hiding in and shoot you from the back, and a couple others could be in positions to surround you. Heavy floaters are the only ones that come close in deadly mobility.

Thin men are always dangerous as a surprise (I think they climb environments, ala grappling hook, for free, just like stepping from one square to the next?) but, assuming you're playing the economy right and have interrogated a beserker (that's another thing! We Have Ways is ESSENTIAL and none of the other continent bonuses really are, which I don't like) you should probably have 3-6 suits of titan armor by that part of the game... There's maybe a VERY narrow window where thin men are actually a late game concern, but by the endgame not even their crits are really gonna dent the obnoxious amount of health you'll be rolling with. There were a few missions where my only wounds came from thin men, but I dont think Ive lost anyone to them past early game.

Anyway gosh great game, I normally wouldn't be excited enough to talk about little tactical details like this in a tbs!
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Muz
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« Reply #70 on: November 02, 2012, 08:11:16 AM »

They do little damage, but it adds up. I think my problem was mainly underestimating them, especially with titan armor… one or two hits from a thin man can't kill an experienced guy, but once they surround him, lay down the suppression fire, give him nowhere to run, he's dead. And the emergency rescue teams were the second to fall. Once outflanked, anyone is practically dead.

Though I find it a little annoying that the game cheats on your behalf on normal or lower difficulty.
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tequibo
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« Reply #71 on: November 03, 2012, 06:34:14 PM »

Completed it today on Ironman Classic, on a third try.
88 solders dead, 770 aliens killed, 62 battles won, 7 lost. So many deaths. I have been one country away from losing the game. But at the end all panic levels were at minimum.
Very good game, indeed.

I must confess, when I would encountered a game affecting bug few times I would alt-tab and close the game to reload. Like enemies teleporting in the middle of my squad, or direct hot of a rocket not doing any damage to sectopod. I would not recommend playing on Ironman before most of the problems are fixed.

At the end I was trying to find psionics. I lost first two foolishly. And it did took quite some time to find another two. One of them have died, and other one, German lady, I think, got nickname "Bonus" and went to a final mission. I can't remember default names, and I stopped naming them after few dozens of solders I named after book and tv show characters ended up biting the dust. So many deaths *sigh*.

As for damn thin man - once you got ghost armor, which is very powerful if used smartly, you can sneak up on those bastards and blow three of them to pieces with a single alien grenade, while they are "undiscovered". And don't be afraid to spend rockets and grenades generally. It's better to spend it and get guaranteed damage then to curse while watching as your troops keep missing.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2012, 07:36:10 PM by tequibo » Logged

SundownKid
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« Reply #72 on: November 03, 2012, 07:02:50 PM »

I just played it on Ironman mode and got routed halfway through the game and deleted my save in anger. Is there a button you can press to electrocute whoever came up with this?
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crowe
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« Reply #73 on: November 03, 2012, 07:14:27 PM »

I don't really like the game, but considering ironman mode is an OPTION that you have to DELIBERATELY SELECT that seems like a pretty petty complaint to have.
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Radix
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« Reply #74 on: November 04, 2012, 01:56:13 AM »

You always have the option of suicide for being someone who gets mad at video games.
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SundownKid
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« Reply #75 on: November 04, 2012, 03:12:10 AM »

Because no one ever gets mad at video games, right? Tell me more, master of cool Noir

I had basically assumed Ironman was like Fire Emblem, where you could repeat a mission if you were routed, but you couldn't save or load during a mission. That's the mode I would LIKE to play on, it made me far more frustrated than I ever got in Dark Souls when my carefully protected team was routed by a swarm of grenade-throwing enemies.

The core gameplay is great, but the cheapness the game throws at you makes Ironman needlessly frustrating. I had soldiers missing on 99% hit chance and enemies shooting snipers from across the map with aimbot-like accuracy. That's not to say anything of the spontaneously combusting automobiles and lack of cover in certain chokepoints.
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Dragonmaw
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« Reply #76 on: November 04, 2012, 05:33:03 AM »

The game outright tells you what Ironman mode does.

Pay attention?Huh?
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Alec S.
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« Reply #77 on: November 04, 2012, 04:38:50 PM »

XCOM is fairly unique in modern long-form games in that you shouldn't expect to win your first game.  Most games have a mentality of making the game where you can't lose the game as a whole, just the individual missions.  This is not one of those games.  You're going to lose a few games before you win.  Most of the things that seem like bullshit that comes out of nowhere can actually be planned against with careful tactics which you learn over the course of a few games.

This is the whole point of Ironman mode.  XCOM on Ironman mode is a game that you can lose, and which you can't trial-and-error your way through.  It's like playing Chess and complaining that you can't take back your move after the other player captures your piece.

Because no one ever gets mad at video games, right? Tell me more, master of cool Noir
I had soldiers missing on 99% hit chance and enemies shooting snipers from across the map with aimbot-like accuracy.
A high probability of a hit still means there's a chance of a miss.  If you play recklessly to get a high-percentage hit, there's still a chance you'll miss and pay for, say running out of cover right next to your target

That's not to say anything of the spontaneously combusting automobiles
They aren't.  When a car is hit, it will catch fire.  If your guy is in cover behind it, he'll say something like "this thing is going to blow".  This means the car will explode on the next turn.  You can also use this to your advantage (say two enemies are hiding behind a car, you can throw a grenade to deal 3 damage to each enemy and cause the car to explode the next turn, dealing extra damage and [if they're still alive] destroying their cover)

and lack of cover in certain chokepoints.
Then avoid those chokepoints.  Dash past them or hold back and draw the enemies closer.
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SundownKid
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« Reply #78 on: November 04, 2012, 04:46:32 PM »

I started the game again without Ironman, and I'm loving it. Though I wouldn't have gotten through on Ironman, since I got wiped about 3 times... two in UFO missions, and once in the Alien Base before I beat it. I'm not saving during the missions, though, only using the autosaves afterwards.

TBH I only died once from an exploding car, after learning how to play better (e.g. making sure you are within line-of-sight) I had less trouble with cover.

I started in Ironman because I heard everywhere that it was the "real" way to play, but for your first playthrough I don't think it's a good idea.
« Last Edit: November 04, 2012, 04:52:01 PM by SundownKid » Logged

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« Reply #79 on: November 04, 2012, 04:49:29 PM »

ironman is still more fun for me because i end up getting reloading ocd when im playing without it. im not disciplined enough to use saves sparingly.
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