[360/PS3/PC] Another New XCOM game coming from Firaxis (RTS/TBS hybrid)

I wonder if they'll keep the absurd level of difficulty. I recently (after buying the Steam package deal on the series) replayed this and was immediately struck by how unforgiving the early game is. Enemies that can see (and therefore shoot) you before you see them, are tougher than your troops and that have better weaponry makes for some brutal opening encounters.
 
Oh yeah, not to mention encounters with Chrysalids, or when the aliens started to mind control your strongest troopers...

But then, when you finally had completed the development on all the weapons and gadgets, and had strong enough soldiers to withstand their psi powers... Oh the payback felt really, really good :devilish::devilish::devilish:
 
mrcorbo said:
I wonder if they'll keep the absurd level of difficulty. I recently (after buying the Steam package deal on the series) replayed this and was immediately struck by how unforgiving the early game is. Enemies that can see (and therefore shoot) you before you see them, are tougher than your troops and that have better weaponry makes for some brutal opening encounters.
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Heh, stuff like that is what I always considered normal difficulty. It may be why I get bored with most modern games so easily. They are almost always incredibly easy and not much of a challenge.

Usually I would not hold out much hope for a game getting the right treatment to make it as good or at least nearly as good as the original which made the franchise great. But in this case since it is being done by Firaxis I have some hope. It makes me wonder if Sid Meier has a hand in it? If so this could turn out to be something truly epic. After all almost everything he touches is almost invariably a classic. Just look at the list of games he's done and there aren't a lot of average games much less stinkers. Hell just look at Firaxis' track record. A lot of classics, only a few average games and not a single stinker in the lot.

Regards,
SB
 
XCOM on easy wasn't hard. It's difficulty levels offered suitable challenge IMO. Plus with save and load anytime, you could always work around difficulties. ;)
 
Laa-Yosh said:
Oh yeah, not to mention encounters with Chrysalids, or when the aliens started to mind control your strongest troopers...

But then, when you finally had completed the development on all the weapons and gadgets, and had strong enough soldiers to withstand their psi powers... Oh the payback felt really, really good :devilish::devilish::devilish:
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YES!!!!!

I remember finally hitting on the early-game strategy of carrying lots of grenades. When your accuracy and weapon power are bad, just blow up the general area. Works especially well inside the smaller ships.

Man, if I wasn't obsessed with Skyrim right now, I'd probably fire this up again.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
XCOM on easy wasn't hard. It's difficulty levels offered suitable challenge IMO. Plus with save and load anytime, you could always work around difficulties. ;)
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By today's standard's, though, I think it would be considered difficult. Back than it was punishing, but not discouragingly so. I don't recall whether I played it on Easy at the time. I do remember playing it with a buddy and seeing the difficulty as a challenge and not as discouraging.
 
mrcorbo said:
I remember finally hitting on the early-game strategy of carrying lots of grenades. When your accuracy and weapon power are bad, just blow up the general area. Works especially well inside the smaller ships.
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YEah. My strategy was to arm everyone with heavy cannons firing explosive or incendiary rounds. Incendiaries were especially good at night as you could use them to light far off areas.

mrcorbo said:
By today's standard's, though, I think it would be considered difficult. Back than it was punishing, but not discouragingly so.
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I don't really remember. I recall it being funny when teammates would panic and such. :mrgreen: I probably just cheated loads with reload. ;)

I don't recall whether I played it on Easy at the time. I do remember playing it with a buddy and seeing the difficulty as a challenge and not as discouraging.
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What I'd love to see is an online mode where players play a squad member or three. You'd then have proper full-on team play with strategy and communication. Don't know how the realtime strategy would work out. Maybe that could be automated, or even just have a main player and the others spectating. The strategy aspect didn't take up too much time. Talking about what to invest in etc. would be part of the coop experience.
 
ohmygodohmygodohmygod :runaway:

It's less than month from the last time I played the original X-COM: Ufo Defence / UFO: Enemy Unknown through
 
Shifty Geezer said:
What I'd love to see is an online mode where players play a squad member or three. You'd then have proper full-on team play with strategy and communication. Don't know how the realtime strategy would work out. Maybe that could be automated, or even just have a main player and the others spectating. The strategy aspect didn't take up too much time. Talking about what to invest in etc. would be part of the coop experience.
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Online could easily be handled in the time you had during realtime at 1x gametime speed. Plenty of time to talk things over, have a cup of tea, bake a cake, and then come back. :p Usually after making your choices during x1 speed you cranked up the time multiplier until interesting things started to happen. :)

I still can't fully express in words how incredibly glad I am that Firaxis and noone else is working on this. Any other studio and I wouldn't hold my breath on it being even remotely faithful to the original. But Firaxis and Sid Meier are masters of modernizing and innovating while keeping the basic gameplay intact.

Civ keeps evolving yet still retains that "just one more turn" addictive gameplay. Although I really wish they'd bring back the customizable "castle"/"palace" that you could build back in the old games. :D

I can't wait til their vision of X-Com hits.

Regards,
SB
 
Some early shots (3) of the game...

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...creens-and-details-of-xcom-enemy-unknown.aspx

First one is most likely an in engine rendered cutscene as the art assets are noticeably better than the tactical combat shot later.

Second one is interesting in that the base view is now from the side rather than top down. That'll have interesting ramifications for base design as well as for base defense.

And lastly the 3rd shot shows the obvious tactical combat roots with high detail not a high priority. Also suggests that tactical combat may possibly end up featuring a quite large number of combatants and or large maps and hence the need for lower resource models and level design.

This game just cannot come out soon enough. What sucks is the game probably isn't out until 2013 at the earliest. ARGH.

Regards,
SB
 
First quote from some guy with digital copy of gameinformer which has new info about the game
I've got my digital copy. But I don't think there's any way to directly copy and quote the text.

There's apparently a 'Heavy Armed Mobile Cover Platform that serves as a powerful rock on which to anchor any tactical advantage' and you can directly customize the heavy troops armor and weapons individually.






Originally Posted by Gameinformer

THE VAST MAJORITY OF XCOM'S CONTENT COMES IN THE FORM OF PROCEDURUALLY GENERATED MISSIONS AND ENCOUNTERS, MEANING THAT EVERY PLAYTHROUGH UNFOLDS DIFFERENTLY
Though they mention there's some story based missions that are not randomly generated and involve in-game cinematics of some kind

What I've read is

•randomly generated missions, terrain. Developer says you'll never play the exact same mission twice outside of a few story missions which feature in-game cinematics
•fog of war is confirmed. area starts off with darkness everywhere, and the average soldier can't see ☺☺☺☺
•enemy spawns are randomized
•mobile platform called SHIV; customizable for new chasis
•Sectoids and Mutons confirmed
•The base's screenshot is accurate. It is now a side shot instead of top down. You can also upgrade your base, like the satellite, with alien technology
•There was an example in one scenario where Japan had the laser rifle already developed before the invasion because they felt threatened, so that seems random.
•You have 16 countries in the funding council you need to keep happy. Some provide more money, but others, like Africa, provide more raw resources
•The sniper units have a grappling hook ability to get on top of buildings
•Gunners have a suppressing fire
•you can equip your xcom guys with all kinds of different guns. customization looks like a big deal
•Apparently there's some sort of cinematic view when your guys get killed. They didn't cite VATS or anything, so I doubt it's too in depth
•Unexperienced agents can panic, freak out, etc if something bad happens
•Firaxis designer states that the PC version will have an enhanced interface. He cites Dragon Age: Origins on PC and console as a big inspiration

This is like the first half of the article

•Destructible environments
•In the scenario they showed, one member died. Because of this the other squadmates didn't get an experience bonus
•Without the bonus, the sniper leveled up still. He was able to choose from two abilities. Either Squad Sight(which means he can shoot anything a squadmate can see) and Snap Shot(which lets him shoot after moving. Something snipers aren't normally allowed to do)
•You can't recruit specific classes. You can only recruit rookies and then level them up to become specific classes
•The guys in suits in the screenshots are 'Thin Man' aliens. They're able to leap long distances
•Challenge is stressed a lot
•same quick save/load system though they are considering an iron man type mode where you can't load previous saves
•Firaxis states that they're not rebooting it, they're re imagining it. Using the same core gameplay with modern technology, weapons, audiovisuals, etc.

That's the stuff I saw that was worth noting
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Also, couple shots from GameInformer
GasStationShotHUD_02_1280watermark.jpg


DeepWoods_01_1280watermark.jpg


Engineering_1280watermark.jpg


Also, at least Sectoids & Mutons from the original game have been confirmed to be in the game

And finally, video with talk about art & style of the game http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/01/11/the-art-of-xcom-enemy-unknown.aspx
 
Very cool new info. From everything I've heard so far they are trying very hard to stay faithful to the original while updating and adding some innovation.

The only disturbing things I've heard is that they are "streamlining" some things. Again if this was anyone but Firaxis, I would immediately suspect some serious dumbing down of the game. But being Firaxis, I still have high hopes that difficulty/challenge remains a top priority.

And thank god they were inspired to do this by how relatively successful DA:O (yay) was and not DA 2 (puke). Likewise with the decision to keep the turn based tactical gameplay rather than the RTS or FPS (Electronic Arts you farqing bastards for ruining Syndicate by turning it into a FPS or 2k Marin for the FPS Xcom) that most developers would try to re-envision it as.

The tactical combat shots also look a lot better in those latest shots. I haven't been this excited for a game in well over 5-8 years.

Regards,
SB
 
Hmmm. Really don't like the idea of classes. In a way it adds depth, but it also adds complexity. In the original you'd just give the sniper rifles to the guys who had better accuracy etc., just going by stats, but you were free to mix things up however you wanted. Especially when it came to stealing the aliens' dropped weapons. Upgrading a 'snap shot' for snipers shows complexity in movement. What was wrong before with having 'reserve TUs for snap shot' enabled on all your troops and letting them get pot shots in the aliens' movement phase? I'm a little bit worried they'll actually slow down tactical combat by having more things to worry about. The original was pretty perfect - kit out your troops, march them off the plane, and issue commands the same way whether sniping, manically gunning, brain-draining, stunning, etc. It was a very flexible system that never left me feeling limited.
 
I actually found the end-game of the original a lot more difficult than the beginning. Ethereals were a real pain in the ass when the members of my team started to shoot each other.

I wonder how they'll work around having to use a gamepad to control the game without ruining it (C&C4 comes to my mind... dear lord how could they screw up the franchise so much?).
 
ToTTenTranz said:
I actually found the end-game of the original a lot more difficult than the beginning. Ethereals were a real pain in the ass when the members of my team started to shoot each other.
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Damn, either I play really fast or you play really slow, I didn't see a single ethereal on my last play through, well, excluding the Cydonia base of course
 
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