I'm disappointed in you, there should be a current thread about this already.

Who else has downloaded this from Steam? If you've played the original, and you liked it, you owe it to yourself to give this a try. It feels GREAT.

10/11/2012 7:59:44 PM

too busy playing to post a thread.

10/11/2012 11:51:36 PM

Love this game. Just captured a live sectoid commander. The chryssalids are still creepy and horrifying even if I perfer the old design. Haven't dabbled in MP yet. When some of my soldiers die it SUCKS

Feels a little more scripted than the original, of course. Very hard game.

10/12/2012 12:11:56 AM

Shits looks good, but I'll try it when the price goes down.

10/12/2012 8:40:01 AM

^ this

i have all the originals still, and after playing the demo it looked like a graphically updated version of those. so i figure when it goes 75% off in 2 months i can snag it then

[Edited on October 12, 2012 at 9:42 AM. Reason : .]

10/12/2012 9:42:12 AM

Yeah, so many games came out and released all at once. Busy playing BL2 and TL2 so I'll have to wait till I get some extra cash and time to buy xcom, although I could get it for $35. I'll probably wait till it gets around 20-25 before I buy though even though it looks completely awesome.

10/12/2012 9:44:35 AM

if it had a co-op multiplayer i could probably get into it paying more for it

10/12/2012 9:45:34 AM

I think there was a thread for this, but it fell by the wayside.

Anyway, I am a self-professed X-COM junkie and am loving the new XCOM game. It's not as much micromanagement as the first one, but it's much more "humanized." I truly miss being able to load soldiers down like pack mules, but squad specialization is growing on me. You don't really get to appreciate snipers until they get Squad Sight, and then they can become lethal.

My problem now is that I'm so determined to prevent any nations from leaving the council that I've already restarted twice. My dumbass engineers don't work fast enough when building satellites.

10/12/2012 11:56:28 AM

Definitely trying this. I played XCom 1 when I was 7 or 8. I'm not sure where you guys were but my tactics were primitive, 'throwing men into the dark and seeing where the shots came from that killed them'. I didn't bother learning their names at some point, and the psi training was pointless. They were dead the second they left the hangar.

There's a cheap droid game called Xenowars that plays like a really watered down old xcom. Still worth it for $2 or whatever.

10/12/2012 1:58:16 PM

i remember being younger & xcom was pretty much the only game i played on playstation

10/12/2012 2:00:24 PM

I was a big fan of the original even though I was 6 when it came out. Learned about it probably around 2002 from Home of the Underdogs.

Should I even ask whether playing on 360 would be alright or are you all hardcore PC gamers?

10/13/2012 3:11:30 PM

^Doesn't sound like the differences are too major:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2012/10/08/should-you-play-xcom-enemy-unknown-on-pc-or-console/

FWIW, I'm playing the PC version with a 360 controller and loving it.

10/14/2012 8:02:39 PM

PC here. Wouldn't have it any other way.

I think I'm getting close to the endgame on my first playthrough. Got a Firestorm, Hyper Wave Decoder, and everybody's carrying plasma weapons. Just got a Psi Lab built. Haven't lost a single sponsor country, either. Pretty pleased with myself.

10/15/2012 8:09:29 AM

Okay, I know this is a good game because I've been losing sleep to it. This game is too much fun.

10/15/2012 3:39:07 PM

i had many nights last week where i've been *just one more battle, just one more battle* and then popped open the steam overlay to see its 2am

10/15/2012 5:21:25 PM

^ Called the Civ Syndrome...

10/15/2012 6:58:46 PM

^ Oh Firaxis, knowing how to sow crack into their games.

10/16/2012 4:36:20 PM

There is a huge difference in difficulty from "normal" to "classic". Kind of want something between the two just so my damn soldiers last longer than 1 round and not get sniped by the aliens 40 tiles away on the first battle of the campaign on classic, but not the easy rapefest of normal.

10/18/2012 9:56:40 PM

Yeah, the xcom body count in classic is significantly higher than normal. Once you get over the tech hump it starts getting back what you're used to. Just need that body armor.

10/18/2012 10:05:01 PM

Here's an interesting suggestion which I've been trying out lately.

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?155726-Want-to-fight-more-enemies-Try-this-out

Even on Normal mode, having to fight 3 Sectopods simultaneously in one mission is a huge challenge.

10/18/2012 10:54:26 PM

nice! will have to play that, just wished they add norm Rolls and just spam aliens. I'd dream to find a level with 28 baddies to kill without taking heavy losses.

10/19/2012 9:37:11 AM

Sectopods rape faces, regardless of difficulty level.

I had one terror mission with nothing but Chrysalids or however you spell it. Saved 1 civilian, killed what felt like 20+ bugs. Missions like that teach you that running like hell is a viable strategy.

10/19/2012 10:28:06 AM

Is this worth the $$ on Xbox360? Or should I Redbox / wait for price drop?

10/19/2012 11:28:00 AM

just have two snipers, cover each other while the rest of your team is cannon fodder. So far, my pair of snipers have survived through the game thus far, everyone else barely makes it past a 5th mission.

I do like how if a guy dies with good gear, you don't loose it at the end of the mission, unlike original xcom. Unless you lose them if you lose the mission? I haven't really lost a mission in my actual campaign yet (besides losing face on first mission on classic).


Anyone else have camera problems in tight, multi-level spaces like in a large alien ship? I've had no issues till this one mission where I have to fight my way through a large ship and my camera spaz's out between levels and is deemed almost not playable because I can't select where I want to go.

10/19/2012 11:32:19 AM

I am just now seeing that problem for the first time. My saved game from my battleship mission is now having the camera wander all the way off to the left edge of the map, and I don't know what to do to make it quit.

10/19/2012 12:18:17 PM

Yeah, camera is wonky in tight, multilevel spaces like alien ships.

10/19/2012 1:28:49 PM

hope they fix it. The combat system stays true to the orginal xcom and def has the feel, but it all the behind the scenes stuff seems so watered down, its like I'm not really contributing to building the base. It's like those cheesy puzzle minigames that require no effort to play like in Mass effect or Deus Ex; just keep on pressing buttons.

It would have been nice to have unique loot/armour/guns in the game to build, find or buy. Oh I've been soooo spoiled with BL2 and TL2 lately.

10/19/2012 3:15:26 PM

Figured out what was causing the scrolling problem - a USB joystick. I use a stick when I play BF3 and typically unplug and put it away afterwards, but I hadn't done that this last time. Unplugged the stick, and the problem was all gone. Read that other people on the official forums had the same problem.

I just got the Blaster, and now have a psi-trained soldier. Can't wait to start playing around with these.

10/19/2012 8:16:40 PM

Holy shit there IS a blaster launcher just figured out how to get this

I feel like there needs to be an intermediate step for the Heavy between Rocket Launcher <-> Blaster Launcher. The skill that gives you 2 rockets per mission instead of one helps, but I still have this desire to see a stronger rocket or launcher or something.

Before realizing there was a BL, I've been leaving Heavys completely out of my missions. Running a flying Sniper + 2 Support / 3 Assault.

10/20/2012 10:13:30 AM

My only surviving original squadie is a heavy and he's my main dude with all the bells and whistles on him. His health is like 2x that of anyone else in the squad. I run 2 heavies, 1 sniper, 1 or 2 support and 1 or 2 assault. Depends if I have people down.

I also try to have 1 or 2 noobs on my team so if anyone needs to be pawned/sacrificed by enemy fire for my sniper, then their $10 replacement cost is worth it. lol

10/20/2012 11:17:21 AM

I am severely disappointed with the Blaster. For one thing, I'm not completely clear on how to "guide" it, even though the in-game tech documentation says that it can shoot around corners. If its effective range is the same as the rocket launcher, well, that really sucks.

10/20/2012 4:47:28 PM

awesome, I now have 16 top level squad members with 4 of them being psi.

10/21/2012 7:13:34 AM

And now we're getting down to the serious business of this game: editing it.

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/XCOM:EU_DefaultGameCore.ini_settings

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/searchresults/?cat=7

There are already several changes which I'd like to make to the core gameplay. Sounds like currently it can be complicated to try to do so, though, and most of the experimentation is still in the trial-and-error stage.

10/21/2012 10:12:55 PM

wow... the ending kinda sucked. (***Spoiler Alert***)



I was expecting a really grand and epic end battle with a boss that we have never seen that would take 15 mins to kill, yet my sniper killed the "end dude" in two shots from 40 tiles away. If the mothership is the size of a country, I'd expect atleast a few levels of maps to fight my way through or something.

The game just seems not a lot there, even though my first play through was 40 hours, it felt as though 30 of that was waiting and doing useless missions with very little sense of urgency to get around to do a main mission. There definitely was a turning point about halfway through of where it was all panic and I would constantly loose guys, but then it was like a time frame of 1-2 battles of where I went from sucking really bad to just complete owning; a very fast transition.

10/22/2012 12:31:57 PM

I have to agree. The final battle couldn't have been much easier. Two Blaster shots, and it was all over. While I enjoyed the game, it needs a severe dose of increased complexity and depth. Difficulty is somewhat loaded/rigged on higher levels, but being able to change the difficulty level at any time takes care of that problem. I'm curious what Firaxis' next move is going to be. Are they going to turn out DLC?

I've already seen some things from the modding community which I'd love to be able to tinker with. Some of these ideas I don't know if they're possible or not.

- Ability to change nationality of soldiers.
- Ability to have 2 inventory slots on all armors.
- Ability to move and use rockets in the same turn.
- Increased range for rockets and grenade throws.
- Decreased time for satellite builds. (This one's a no-brainer. You're telling me that 5 engineers take 20 days, and 100 engineers still take 20 days?! WTF.)
- Increased length of campaign overall. I finished in December, and that was only because I wanted to have absolutely EVERYTHING done.
- Ability to have more UFO's (e.g. terror ships) show up in the Geoscape.
- Ability to have more configurations of UFO's.
- Just for the sake of breaking gameplay for fun, I'd love to start out with laser weapons already researched. I completely passed on these in favor of going straight to plasma.
- Ability to deploy more than 6 soldiers!!!
- Ability to deploy a SHIV which doesn't count against maximum number of soldiers.
- Ability to actually SNEAK UP on aliens without them getting a free move. This one started to drive me crazy towards the end of the game. Barring this, then Battle Scanners for everyone!
- Ability to stun from a distance. (Actually, someone has already figured out how to use the Arc Thrower in a handgun slot, which makes much more sense to me since I almost never used my handgun.)
- More bases!!!
- More countries on the council.

And the list goes on and on...

10/22/2012 2:34:20 PM

also, why can't we sell live aliens on the black market for a higher cost? It would seem marketable to sell them and really help with early campaign stuff by bagging a few of them guys after your initial interrogation. Arc Thrower seems worthless after you have done your research shit.

Or that matter.. sell weapons and items or a better inventory system? Just seems like an after thought even though the original xcom inventory was kinda piss poor. This is 2012... Shit, even a simple Final Fantasy inventory system would have worked.

The most annoying thing about the inventory system is the fact that if you equip something on a guy, change him out before a mission start, the damn item stays with that guy! WTF? If I swap him out for a better dude, shouldn't whatever he was carrying go back to the general item pool to be reissued? Also, biggest mistake I made was sending my top three guys for Psi training with all of my top gear and weapons that I had, then a mission popped up when they were away and I was forced to use basic armor and starting weapons... SO LAME.

10/22/2012 3:30:04 PM

Agreed the inventory thing sucks: wish I could have sold a lot of the light plasma rifles and laser rifles toward the end of the game.

Agree on the difficulty curve. It was gradual at first, really frantic in the middle when the resource constraints choke you hard, but once you have sufficient satellite coverage and decent weapons, the game becomes pretty easy even with those annoying sectopods.

I also agree with the criticisms of the end battle. All I needed to do was get a spotter close enough to see the head Ethereal, and my sniper simply double tapped him out of existence. At very least make me have to kill all five of them.

Agree with the criticism of the heavy weapon gap between the rocket launcher and the blaster. At very least they could have provided something like a grenade launcher for the alien grenades as a stop gap.

10/22/2012 5:30:52 PM

Oh, I forgot one of my biggest annoyances. Why do psi-powers now have to be line-of-sight? I'd settle for it working like Squad Sight.

10/22/2012 5:58:16 PM

because that just makes too much sense and a psi soldier with all abilities unlocked, using top gear and top weapons are already OP as fuck... If they made it like that, I'd just use one guy for a whole mission... lol

10/22/2012 9:31:28 PM

Beat it on normal. Not sure how you play this on Ironman - once you get to a certain point in the game there are zero easy missions. If enough of you promoted guys get knocked out, I'm really not sure how even geared rookies can beat the later aliens.

Except maybe the Tank. For some reason I forgot to build a Foundry until the end of the game, and I love the hover death tank.

10/23/2012 12:27:06 AM

I played my first play on normal and ironman, didn't run into huge issues except the few painful moments of losing a few then valuable guys and only losing two countries. But its really easy to play against aliens with geared rookies, specially if you have the xp boost and squadie perk from the school.

Seriously? Foundry is kinda important to build early in the game to gain some of those engineering perks for your gear.


Btw, Doing the whole impossible/normal mode gameplay is really fun; you also get tons of extra cash from selling all those dead alien bodies per mission. Although I practically lose like 3 out of the 4 guys... lol 5 missions so far and its been 1-2 survivor rate, but no worries, the guys only cost 15 bucks.

10/23/2012 12:56:59 AM

Oh snap...

Quote :

"The "Second Wave" options were originally planned by Firaxis, but scrapped for launch. Lingering code remained, and it was discovered on the Nexus modding forums, eventually resulting in a full-on mod that unlocks the hyper-difficult options for just about anyone. Curious as to what they are? Well here ya go: - Damage Roulette: Weapons have a much wider range of damage. - New Economy: The funding offered by individual council members is randomized. - Not Created Equally: Rookies will have random starting stats. - Hidden Potential: As a soldier is promoted, their stats will increase randomly. - Red Fog: Any wounds taken in combat will degrade a soldier's stats for that mission. - Absolutely Critical: A flanking shot will guarantee a critical hit. - The Greater Good: The secret of psionics can only be learned by interrogating a psionic alien. - Marathon: The game takes considerably longer to complete. - Results Driven: A country will offer less funding as it's panic level increases. - High Stakes: The rewards granted for stopping alien abductions are randomized. - Diminishing Returns: The cost of satellites increases with every one that is built. - The Blitz: The aliens will target a larger number of cities every time they launch an abduction attack. - More Than Human: The psionic gift is extremely rare."

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/xcom-enemy-unknown/1226467p1.html

10/23/2012 1:05:06 AM

So on Classic/Impossible is there no option to build the Officer School? Are you stuck with squads of 4 the whole game?

10/23/2012 9:56:21 AM

you should be allowed to build the school later on in the game, but not sure at what point. I tried playing on classic for the last 2 hours to see how far I can get through it, but all my guys died or are out wounded and I have no money. Plus its just fucking stupid that aliens can snipe with the plasma pistol from across the map and hit every time. I swear, one alien took out three of my guys one after another and none of my guys even get a hit.

Still don't understand how one can play on classic or impossible modes with the crappy ass rolls or useless starter gears against plasma weapons. At the very least, they should start you out with having 6 guys since they die like flies. 4 vs 20? awesome odds...

[Edited on October 23, 2012 at 2:24 PM. Reason : ]

10/23/2012 2:24:33 PM

From what I've been reading, the combat systems that don't seem too important in Normal are make-or-break in Classic/Impossible. Full Cover is really the only cover, nanofiber vests replace gernades, Supression for Heavys keeps aliens pinned, and flanking is pretty much required. Also, squad movement needs to be more compressed and packs of aliens need to be cleared completely w/o exposing new map areas or pulling new packs.

10/23/2012 3:01:46 PM

^true, but the fact is that in order to flank, 2 out of 3 times of when I try to do that, I kite in more mobs to the scene and get out flanked for trying to out flank the first group of aliens then loose half my squad... \

Even on full cover, I get sniped by pistols 20 tiles away. I've resorted to just using explosives to take out the baddies... The scientist gets really annoyed every mission I do that. lol

10/23/2012 4:09:39 PM

Oh yeah, everything gets a grenade or a rocket until they're all gone, and then I start shooting.

Try wall sliding. You usually start in a corner or on a wall of the map. Just pick a direction that offers you the best cover and move that way, keeping your ass to the wall.

[Edited on October 23, 2012 at 6:36 PM. Reason : walls]

10/23/2012 6:36:02 PM

you guys know of any way to lower the game's resolution?

i've looked at the .ini files but couldn't find anything, would just like something smaller than the smallest resolution it allows in the normal game options

10/23/2012 7:58:09 PM

I wouldn't know about that... I got three gpu's.

10/23/2012 8:28:17 PM

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/815794-custom-soldier-ability-trees/

Ooooh. People have started learning how to edit the class trees and swap abilities around between classes. This opens up some tremendously fun possibilities.

10/26/2012 1:59:29 PM