[Videogame] XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Thought there was a previous thread about this, but couldn't find it. Maybe I'm just imagining things, but someone link to the old thread if it exists.

So anyway, this is a remake of (arguably) the greatest videogame ever made: X-Com. Wondering if anyone else picked it up?

I've been going back and forth between feelings of dread and excitement about this game. At first, very excited that such a reputable group (Firaxis) was finally taking on X-Com. Then, not so excited when I heard it would be limited to 6-man squads and that they were ditching the Time Units system. Then excited again when I watched an hour-long video on the multiplayer.

So far it has received universal praise on Metacritic, with the *lowest* score received being an 82/100. I was encouraged.

So I started playing tonight. And my initial reaction is, sadly: vast disappointment.

Now, I'm pretty sure this will still end up being a decent game. But the extent to which some very, very basic things have been inexplicably dumbed down is very saddening, given how much potential this game had to be great.

The biggest problems, by a mile, lie in the combat aspect. Here's a list of issues I've run into just from the first few missions:

1. You cannot fire, then move with a unit.
Prevously, Time Units allowed you to perform literally any series of moves or actions, in any order, provided you had enough time units. Even crouching had a Time Unit cost.
This game simplified things. You basically have three options: a) special action (like firing a rocket launcher), b) move, then action, or c) move twice. Inexplicably, there is no option to fire from your current position, then retreat.
This is obviously very limiting tactically, and there is no reason I can fathom for its exclusion.

2. If you sight an alien, you cannot change where you are moving to.
In the original game, if you were in the middle of moving to a spot and you sighted an alien, your movement would cease and the game would warn you that you sighted an alien. You could then continue to where you were going, or alter your path.
In this game, there's no such thing. Your move is your move, and sighting an enemy cannot change it. This seems to be a limitation of the 2-move system, but it seems like they could've found a way around it (Valkyria Chronicles' system was actually a much better way of doing basically the same thing this game is trying to do).

3. The amount of protection cover appears to offer has nothing to do with what it actually offers.
In the original game, if you had a wall between you and an alien, you could count on that wall to take one shot before it was destroyed, unless the alien used an explosive weapon.
In this game, that wall may provide you no protection at all for no discernible reason. In this game, a low wall will say it provides you "half-cover," while a high wall provides "full-cover." But that's not always logical. So a bit earlier, I had a guy crouching behind a low stone wall which was on top of an elevated platform. There was an enemy on the opposite side of the wall and *below* the platform. Logically, he has no line of sight and couldn't possibly hit me (or even see me). But, by this game's logic, I was in "half-cover," so he magically hit me and killed me THROUGH the stone wall (without doing any damage to the wall).
How am I supposed to plan my movements when basic laws of physics don't apply?

4. Aliens can arbitrarily move on your turn, and even prematurely end your turn. Seriously.
Needless to say, in the original game, the aliens played by the same rules you did. If they had enough time units to fire on your turn, they could fire on you. But that was it.
In this game, as soon as you sight them, they get to move into cover. Secondly, an alien will sometimes just take a move, out of the blue, on your turn. So you may use two of your four units to move, then an alien arbitrarily cuts you off, then it's back to your "turn," and you can use any of your four units again.
How am I supposed to plan my tactics properly when I don't know when my turn will actually end?

5. You can't fire anywhere you want anymore.
In the original game, you could fire anywhere, often creating a hole though a wall that you could move through, or blowing up a building you thought aliens might be in.
In this game... nope. You can only fire if you see an alien.

6. There are a finite number of maps. Plus, they tend to be small.
No more randomly generated awesomeness to keep you on your toes like the original.
Instead, they are all pre-constructed. So if you play the whole game, you already know the entirety of the terrain on any given mission, which just feels like cheating.


So then, once we get past all the combat problems, there's another problem in the "other half" of the game:

7. The ship-to-ship combat minigame has been eliminated entirely, in favor of the computer randomly generating an outcome.
Yes, that's right. In the original game, you had some rudimentary "aggresive," "standard," "cautious," and "disengage" options to finesse that alien craft to the ground.
In this game... there's zero control. You send an interceptor after an alien craft, and then the game tells you whether it worked or not. The end.




...even with all that said, I'm going to keep playing for a bit. I feel like it may still be a decent experience if I stop comparing it to its predecessor and expecting it to be as awesome as the original. It's just hard not to when, you know... this was *supposed* to be a remake, and you'd think after 20 years they might be able to improve on the original, rather than destroying a lot of the basic aspects that made it great.

 

Lol. Yeah, obviously I'm not talking about the FPS of the same name, but I suppose the video does still apply to an extent. :grin:




But yeah, to quote myself from last night:

And yeah, that's pretty much what happened.

If I wipe the original from my mind and don't think about this as an X-Com remake but just an entirely new game, it's actually quite awesome. Were I to review it from my 4 hours or so with it so far, I'd say it's an 8.5. It *is* dumbed down, but that dumbing down also means you can get twice as many missions done in the same timeframe. So it really keeps things moving along.

So yeah. Not great... but still really, really, really good.

 

Um, no. Disengage or not disengage is NOT a minigame. And the other "options" are to use single use items to just straight make your ship better. That's not a game, it's just giving an encounter you have no actual control over a higher chance to succeed. In the first, you could actually choose to get aggresive to heighten your chances of a hit, and then carefully time moving out of their weapons' range when needed. This new one is only a game in the sense that a slot machine is a game.

I'm aware of that, however the very simple ability to fire, then move should not be a special ability that's restricted to one class. It's such a basic thing to do tactically...

Yes, you're right about this, thankfully. This was apparently something that only ended up happening once on a tutorial mission. Just didn't feel like I needed to come back here to correct one thing.

Except it seems kind of arbitrary that plasma weapons can blow holes in walls, yet you are magically not allowed to free aim with them. I'm just not big on arbitrary limitations. Same thing with not being able fire and then move with anyone.

And, maybe you can help me out with something here. If I have a sniper, and I move to a spot that only takes one move, and it's not into cover... is there really not a way to end the turn without taking another action? If there is, I'm not seeing it.

Dude, I was plenty good at the original and I'm doing more than fine with this one on classic. I know how to move intelligently. It just seems like, again, a pretty silly limitation. If I start going around a corner and see an enemy, I should have the option to change my path to engage the enemy better if I wish. Like anyone in real life might.

Um... weapons should not be able to shoot through walls without destroying the wall. I've had it benefit me and I've had it hurt me. In both cases, it's stupid. Plasma rifles are supposed to destroy walls and such if they hit them. They should not all of a sudden start going through walls. It's insane that a game that's 20 years old can do line of sight correctly and a brand-new one can't.

If you look at my second post in this thread, you'll see I've already said that I think this remake is "really, really good" upon playing it a bit more. That doesn't change the fact that a lot of things about it seem dumb to me, and that it doesn't quite live up to the original.