XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[easytarget]

Yeah, I that's going to come into play because there's a human group with a different agenda than xcom who turn up as an additional adversary.

[Monk]

Really gives the whole thing a bit of a Stargate SG-1 vibe.

if the final mission is against a Col. Maybourne I may have to just throw in the towel right then and there.

[easytarget]

As a result of these comments I've decided that the naming convention for my first play through will be StarGate!

I anticipate Maybourne taking point early on and catching one in the forehead. haha

[Papewaio]

Well you have to get to Col first otherwise its just the son...

[easytarget]

True enough. haha In which case I'd probably be stuck working to keep him alive.

May have to reconsider that name, but there are plenty of others in the Stargate universe!

[Monk]

True enough. haha In which case I'd probably be stuck working to keep him alive.

May have to reconsider that name, but there are plenty of others in the Stargate universe!

Remember: Col. Jack O'neill. Two L's. There's another O'Neil with only one L. He doesn't have a sense of humor.

[Jarmam]

Now I feel left out from not having watched said show :(

There are those of us who are stuck having to rename Malcolm Reynolds every time he gets promoted to Major.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Now I feel left out from not having watched said show :(

There are those of us who are stuck having to rename Malcolm Reynolds every time he gets promoted to Major.

As long as his nickname is "Tightpants" does it really matter?

[Papewaio]

I usually name my cannon fodder after backroomers. In my current game Kadagar keeps surviving despite my best efforts.

Is he always in the bar between missions or playing hello nurse?

[Papewaio]

Well he does like taking pot shots.

What nickname did you give him?

[Monk]

You can choose the nickname? I just lost that campaign, can't remember his nickname but it was real generic.

Once your troopers get assigned a nickname you can change it to whatever you want.

[Monk]

Apparently Base Defense is back in some form in Enemy Within:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

(Direct link to image from the 2k Facebook account: http://imgur.com/9Vmoqyx)

Confirmed. Hold onto your butts.



Devs have confirmed on an IGN stream: Lose the base defense mission and it's game over.

[easytarget]

As it should be, it is after all the only base you've got.

[easytarget]

Release day is almost upon us!

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

RPS Wot I Think - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...within-review/

Pretty positive, it's going to be tempting to outright buy it. I'll probably try to hold out until the first patch is released though.

[easytarget]

I picked it up on GMG on a 20 buck pre-order, suspect I'll get at least two more complete play throughs in it, easily worth 20 bucks.

One will be to mess w/ MECs, the second to mess with gene splicing.

I'm assuming the core game play is pretty much the same, so it's always down to money early on about where you want to commit it so I always end up sacrificing something I wanted to fully explore but couldn't.

[easytarget]

Yep, same here, somehow there was a mix up, which is starting to get to be a pretty typical story with GMG, and the download that happened last night before game release didn't end up actually being the update (makes zero sense) and in order to kick start the process you had to go in and run verify integrity, at which point steam found like 5000 files that weren't up to snuff and proceeded to start downloading what is turning into a rather large file update.

This may be my last time doing business with GMG, I like their prices, but they aren't proving terribly professional at handling release launches and it's just old. Over the last year this is the third time with them, the last time I had to hassle with a refund process because what they were selling had no steam key, despite the fact the game had to be installed and run from steam (who but morons do that?).

So, here I sit waiting through a download process that should have been done before launch....

[HopAlongBunny]

Downloaded! It's a big one.
It gives the option to play "Unknown" or "Within"; kinda nice as I still want to complete a campaign I was finishing up :)

[easytarget]

Yep, finally got the update loaded, starting a new.

[easytarget]

Yeah, but it is nice they put in some language choices, my snipers are all now speaking Russian and the heavies oddly enough are all speaking German. As for clothes, I changed the colors right off for ease of class identification. Otherwise you have to earn the rest by making Sgt, at which point you get your nick, your proper name and any specializations in appearance.

I changed the language right off though just because it's fun to hear different languages spoken on the missions. I foresee some new tough trade offs in the additions they made, I like it.

I hope there's one more DLC, they need to replace the intercept with something legitimate, not this placeholder BS they left in place. They need to make the strat level real, not just this one trick pony with firing Sats up in orbit. And lastly they need to update the ending and make it a challenging real ending.

[Monk]

I can't decide if the game is easier of it it is simply less in the dice rolls.

I feel like heavy cover is way more reliable.. but it's now more much more destructible. Alien weapons fire will blow out hard cover pretty easily, but the protection inferred seems a lot more reliable when calculating hit rates, if that makes sense.

Sectoid numbers in the first few missions has been reduced from 3 aliens to 2 aliens per pack on Classic. This is a huge hit to early game difficulty. I haven't taken a single point of damage in the month of march. Will need to play more to see how it shapes up but overall the early game feels way easier. I don't like that. Will probably bump up to impossible if this keeps on.

New maps are freakin' awesome. Love them way more than the old ones, haven't come across a new map that I haven't liked yet, where in the original i was hard pressed to find one I did like.

MELD is an interesting concept. Turns most missions into an optional bomb disposal without the automatic fail if you don't get to the canisters. Moving at a mixed posture, I can typically secure at least 1 MELD per mission with 4 squadies. Haven't tried the new units yet but I'm about to make my first MEC. Should be fun.

Leveling up feels much slower. I bagged a triple kill with my squadie sniper in a UFO assault and he is still a squadie. I am almost certain he'd have hit corp by now in Enemy Unknown. Could just be a perception thing.

Also noticed Rookies getting auto promoted to Squadie after two active missions, even if they have 0 kills. I am fairly certain mission count never counted before toward rank up. Anyone else confirm?


edited for more thoughts

[Jarmam]

Doesn't come out here until tomorrow at midnight - I much jelly :/

That did make me spend the last couple of days getting smashed to absolute bits on Impossible again. You know - for warm-up!

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Monk, I don't want to dig to find the source, but they adjusted the XP curve at least in the early game. It's not just you. :P

[HopAlongBunny]

Looks good; finished my old campaign.
The tutorial locks up at the same point everytime though.
Maybe I'll just skip straight to a game.

[Monk]

I take back what I said about it being too easy. I got pearl harbored on the 6th of april by a mixed thin men and floater opfor. Holy crap. The slower XP gains make the second month incredibly dangerous.

It's also a bad idea to rush the new toys in your first month. Play it smart and sat blitz like you normally would, go for MECs or Gene mods by the middle of month 2 at the earliest.

[Monk]

The EXALT dudes really add some much needed dimension to the strategic layer as well. Do you slowly weed them out, or do you risk trying to guess their base? On normal its a no brainer, on Classic it might be a difficult choice.

It depends on what your panic levels look like, honestly. Unless you're completely spiraling there's no reason to ever take the guess, but if you're about to lose a nation it might be worth the risk to get them out of the way once you've narrowed it down.

Also: Once EXALT shows up never, and I mean never, tread close to zero space dollars. If you don't have enough money for them to steal? Yeah. They will just raise panic instead.

[Greyblades]

Just been playing with my first mech trooper, Lt. Scottie "Clank" Gibson with the pneumatic fist suit and more medals than previous limbs, still having half his health taken out in one hit from by an errant zombie, hrm.


Also a bit dissapointed that while Scotland is a seperate nationality from Britain in this game, we still dont get seperate accents for their soldiers. I mean I have a guy named scottie for chris' sake and I cant role-play Mr Scott in a mech suit, what the heck man?

[HopAlongBunny]

Skipped the tutorial to by-pass where the game was freezing up on me. So far, so good :)
Need to see which candy is quicker now: weapons, armour or meld!

[TinCow]

Need to see which candy is quicker now: weapons, armour or meld!

If you're playing on Classic or above, I still highly recommend the old strategy of weapons and satellites. Save Meld for when you've got resources to spare. Oh, and Memitic Skin is almost certainly the greatest single ability in the entire game.

[LeftEyeNine]

Since I had lost quite a lot of support following my negligence of satelliting as much country as I could, in my first go with XCOM:EW yesterday, I preferred to not spend a single shilling on soldier upgrades and focused on excavations, satellite uplinks and satellite launches instead.

I got torn up. The Matrix-esque guys had only recently shown up in game and my manpower was already plummeting. A survivor extraction mission ended up total disaster, losing all soldiers on site.

I just couldn't figure out how to balance out the sci-eng-credits expenditure concerning the squads and infrastructure. No satelliting means cancerous panic everywhere, no upgrades mean losing a lot of guys and eventually coming to an end. Should I sacrifice one over another (obviously the latter needs a little bit of improving but still) or the gameplay accepts a management I couldn't figure out yet?