XCOM 2

Gavinmad_sl said:

Are people forgetting that XCom was actually kind of mediocre or what? It was buggy, full of easily exploitable AI, and had very shallow and relatively linear base building and research, as well as a linear campaign. The remake is a pale shadow of the depth and scope of the originals, as old and janky as they look now.

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I don't know man, finishing an I/I run on the xcom reboot was the most fun I've had with a tactics/strat game in decades. The original xcom is hard to compare to, but I enjoyed XCOM EW really thoroughly after a lot of the EU bugs got patched. It has flaws, but there isn't all that much competition in the genre so it's easy to see why people are stoked.

Furiously rubbing one out right now. As far as I'm concerned, EU (+EW) is the perfect strategy game.

If you played Ironman or Hard/Impossible non-ironman I'd say just go straight to LW. Long War makes a lot of assumptions about the player's experience with the xcom resource management metagame.

At lot of the fun of Long War comes from the tension of committing finite resources for a long game and not really knowing how that strategy will play out till later. Like folks said you can lose a Long War game long before you've realized it whereas a vanilla Iron Man game you can pretty much tell if you're fucked by late April/early May.

Mist_sl said:

So you're saying I should play EW base first? Even if I beat the the initial release and the original 2 games?

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You honestly might be ok to just dive right in to Long War. The things that EW adds to the base game (The Meld resource used for MEC troopers and Gene Mods and EXALT missions) are changed so dramatically in Long War that a familiarity with them from vanilla EW wouldn't really be helpful.

Just be aware that even on the LW equivalent of normal difficulty, you will lose your first campaign or two (or seven) until you settle into a good opening strategy.

*edit*

Found this on the XCom reddit from the Firaxis community manager.

Developed by Firaxis Games, XCOM 2 transports players 20 years into the future, wherehumanity lost the war against the alien threatthat has established a new world order. The secret paramilitary organization known as XCOM is largely forgotten, and must strike back to reclaim control of Earth and free mankind from the aliens' rule. XCOM 2 is currently scheduled for release in November 2015. The game will also be coming to Mac and Linux via Feral Interactive.

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So I mean it was implied by the teaser but still a bit ambiguous, this just confirms it. Props to them for taking it in a new direction instead of just redoing the plot from Terror from the Deep or Apocalypse. Not that a modern remake of TFTD wouldn't be awesome.

Also this

. XCOM 2 will introduce gameplay features such as procedurally-generated levels, which will make each experience unique to the player,as well as offer a much deeper level of modding support. Additionally, XCOM 2 will offer a variety of new content including five updated soldier classes, increased soldier customization, more alien and enemy types, evolved tactical combat and more.

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Johnny and Amineri must feel like they've gone to heaven. At least Firaxis learned some kind of lesson from Long War.

ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN

Do they let you play on team alien in any of the XCOM games? Play the human collaborator working to crush the backwards human rebels who refuse the loving alien embrace. Bought Enemy Within for cheap awhile back, guess I should play it.

You can control aliens in the 1v1 multiplayer, but not in any single player campaign.

Four of the five new soldier classes
New enemies: Evolved Sectoids, snake-lady Vipers, and Advent soldiers
Stealth-infused tactics, including using cover for concealment and looting fallen enemies and allies
A mobile base: a flying aircraft carrier called the Avenger
Procedurally generated maps and the technology that powers them
Mod support, including official mod tools and Steam Workshop integration
One-on-one multiplayer

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From IGN. Can memorize certain map elements that the generator uses, but no more memorizing entire maps.

XCOM is probably one of the few games that could get away with crowd sourced content ala Dota 2 - let people create their own maps, campaigns, enemies, armors or soldiers and submit them for approval

Actually doing some reading and pondering, I think that victory in the first game is still canon, you win the battle but the Aliens return in larger numbers and you lose the war.

My evidence for this is that one of the developers posted on reddit several months ago that the volunteer absolutely survives blowing up the Temple Ship, but you never assault the Temple Ship if you lose the game. If the dev made a point of mentioning that the volunteer is still alive, that suggests he has some sort of part to play in XCom 2. Maybe he shows up in some dramatic fashion to help you out, or maybe he is the one who ended up betraying humanity to the Aliens. Hell, maybe after taking out the boss ethereal and blowing up the temple ship, the volunteer becomes the new overlord of the Aliens and he is the main bad guy of XCom 2.

Circumstantially, in the 'you lose' endings of XCom, the shadowy council representative now being voiced by Optimus gets mind controlled, so they'd sorta have to forget about that if he's still involved in the XCom project 20 years later.

PC exclusive first launch, or at least only PC listed at the end of the trailer, has anyone commented about that officially? Game should be amazing for it.

Any guess on whether the all new mod support is going to implement their pay for mods model?

Mist_sl said:

Having like 20-40% accuracy really makes for some bad gameplay.

Should I turn up the difficulty but turn on the accuracy bonus mod?

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Learn to flank nub.

But yeah the opening few missions are pretty rough. I would turn cinematic mode on but not jack up the difficulty if you're having trouble. Hell, I still play on cinematic mode my first new game after a major update to the beta.

It's not that your accuracy sucks (although it does) it's that cover is worth a lot more defense than it was in the normal game. But the aliens should have the same trouble hitting your guys.

Gavinmad_sl said:

Learn to flank nub.

But yeah the opening few missions are pretty rough. I would turn cinematic mode on but not jack up the difficulty if you're having trouble. Hell, I still play on cinematic mode my first new game after a major update to the beta.

It's not that your accuracy sucks (although it does) it's that cover is worth a lot more defense than it was in the normal game. But the aliens should have the same trouble hitting your guys.

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What's funny is it sure won't feel like they have the same trouble hitting your team. Watching live streams of this (at least a while back so not a current version) it was funny how often one the first couple maps they'd make a wrong move and lose their entire team in one turn after each alien landed a crit

Wow, I was already hyped up about XCOM 2, but how the hell did I miss Long War? I think that may just hold me over until November.

Mist_sl said:

Is it normal for Canada to just bitch out in the first couple days from almost no panic?

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The country is randomly picked, but yes, it is normal. Base assaults are tied to countries now (instead of there just being one alien base in the middle of nowhere). Since it is theoretically possible to play through without ever losing a country, it would be impossible to beat the game because at least one base assault is required for the critical path.

The plus side being that it's now possible to retake lost countries.