They're different games, but they're still the same genre.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I'm just of the opinion that the original X-COM was obsolete to begin with, definitely not the paragon of forever-fun and its age was very evident in many ways outside of the 320x200 resolution.
To take these obsolete gameplay elements and transplant them into a new graphical shell was the plan on resurrecting X-COM for new systems, and with the release of NuXCOM, I found myself happy to see updated gameplay as well and felt no need to return to Xenonauts. I do recognize that there are a subsection of gamers who enjoy Xenonauts because of its adherence to the originals strengths AND foibles, I'm just not one of them.
One of my happiest moments was when they said they'd never do Terror from the Deep.
My main concern is that they're not going to release a character creator early, and thus I'll lose Friday to making all of my friends into X-COM soldiers.
Do you really hate your friends that much that you'd like to see them die to aliens?
Quite the opposite, actually. Losing my friends is a gut punch, and thus I work harder to keep them alive. It makes for good motivation.
My manager gets to be the unarmored rookie who takes point.
PSN|AspectVoid
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I do recognize that there are a subsection of gamers who enjoy Xenonauts because of its adherence to the originals strengths AND foibles, I'm just not one of them.
Which just proves my point? "Not for me" and "obsolete" are nowhere near the same situation. I don't look at super-grindy RPGs which are centered around endless stat building and item crafting and say they're made obsolete by games that focus on a story or on more action instead, simply because I don't like to play those RPGs.
And keep in mind I've got over 70 hours in Xenonauts, and over 150 hours in EU/EW. Neither of them made me not want to play the other. I'm glad Firaxis is off in completely different direction as well, because obviously I've gotten a lot out of what they made.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I can't imagine a universe in which I'd want to play Xenonauts given the other options available, but if you enjoy it more power to you.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I do recognize that there are a subsection of gamers who enjoy Xenonauts because of its adherence to the originals strengths AND foibles, I'm just not one of them.
Which just proves my point? "Not for me" and "obsolete" are nowhere near the same situation. I don't look at super-grindy RPGs which are centered around endless stat building and item crafting and say they're made obsolete by games that focus on a story or on more action instead, simply because I don't like to play those RPGs.
And keep in mind I've got over 70 hours in Xenonauts, and over 150 hours in EU/EW. Neither of them made me not want to play the other. I'm glad Firaxis is off in completely different direction as well, because obviously I've gotten a lot out of what they made.
Fair enough.
I just feel that some of the more granular choices in X-COM feel way too micromanagy. Loadouts were extremely punishing and arbitrary, considering the nature of combat. Even disembarking. Microprose was known for publishing only the most painstakingly detailed games, so I guess it shouldnt have been a surprise.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I can't imagine a universe in which I'd want to play Xenonauts given the other options available, but if you enjoy it more power to you.
And I can't imagine a universe where I'd want to play an online RPG which is built around grinding out money to buy better ships to get more money to repeat the cycle forever, but loads of people love EVE. Just because I don't, doesn't mean Star Citizen makes it obsolete.
I just feel that some of the more granular choices in X-COM feel way too micromanagy.
To be sure, there was tons of room for improvement there. Xenonauts did, in fact, make many of those improvements, such as letting you set your deployment pattern before missions, establishing class-based loadouts (with the ability to make custom classes, to boot), automatically restocking stuff used by soldiers, and eliminating a HUGE amount of the item micromanagement (such as no longer having to actually manufacture ammunition). Heck, you can even get rewards from airstrikes on downed UFOs you don't want to send a team to; the tradeoff on the time you save is reduced reward. It is, overall, a pretty huge step up from the original without almost completely abandoning a lot of what it was built on. It even looks a lot better, because all the assets were made with HD resolutions in mind rather than upscaling ancient shitty graphics to HD screens.
But if somebody put a gun to my head and forced me to pick which one was more fun, I wouldn't have much trouble picking EU/EW. For as much as I think it definitely over-simplifies a number of things, I still spent more time having fun playing it than with Xenonauts.
Honestly, I don't think I'm going to make my friends to put in my character pool. It was fun to have them be in a campaign, but I'm not sure I want them to show up again and again, only to die again and again.
...Okay, well, there's one friend I'll make, but that's because he would appreciate dying again and again, as long as he got to kill aliens while doing it.
That's why you make a 1000-character pool. Put John Cena in there. Put Ned Stark in there. Put Bernie Sanders in there.
Your friends will barely ever show up, and when they do it will be 1) extra special and 2) one hell of a story. "So there you were, staring down this Sectopod, when out of nowhere, JOHN CENA! With supporting suppression fire from Freddie Mercury."
Honestly, seeing how people with bad-ass names suddenly became bad-ass in the Firaxis and Beagle's streams makes me feel like it'll be all the more satisfying to organically adopt soldiers to my character pool as they prove themselves to be true goddamn heroes.
So do we create a community pool that everyone uploads to of characters? Or do you send them to individual friends? Who manages what's in the pool? I'm confused about that but it sounds really awesome.
Honestly, seeing how people with bad-ass names suddenly became bad-ass in the Firaxis and Beagle's streams makes me feel like it'll be all the more satisfying to organically adopt soldiers to my character pool as they prove themselves to be true goddamn heroes.
Okay, wait, can I make Zaeed Massani?
Zaeed becomes a title, a remembrance, a warning label of how you were the only goddamn one to make it back alive.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
It is, overall, a pretty huge step up from the original without almost completely abandoning a lot of what it was built on.
Is it? For one thing, I think Xenonauts looks substantially worse than the original in terms of the character, meaning and "cleanliness" of its sprites. For a game from 1994, the original X-COM oozed personality from every single alien. Sure they often looked kinda weird in the tactical portion, but they were distinct and had a tremendous amount of character - such as the chryssalid. Meanwhile Xenonauts aliens just look awful and have zero character to them, like the first aliens in particular who look like dudes in blue suits. There isn't really an equivalent in terms of character and visual design like the snakeman from X-COM in Xenonauts. Xenonauts runs in a higher resolution, but OpenX-COM also lets you run the original in a higher resolution and I think its sprite work is just superior.
Further, Xenonauts adds a lot of new flaws the original game didn't have, which heavily reduced my enjoyment and meant I just never wanted to play it anymore. Aerial Terror Missions, occurring on the other side of the globe, where you can't do jack shit about them, are bullshit. 100% utter bullshit. It took me a while to realize that despite the idea of "You can build a base anywhere", you really want to build two bases right off the bat almost. The sooner you get interception up over two continents the better and it's the only way to avoid a sudden frustrating loss to "Well there went a bunch of countries to an aerial terror mission". Did I mention they made this even more flawed by requiring you - pretty much - to build you bases in a narrow band of three locations on the world map? Didn't do that? Well enjoy not having the radar coverage to protect the nations you need and ending up with a loss (as building/maintaining multiple bases is extremely expensive).
Likewise the aerial game of Xenonauts is inarguably better, but quickly becomes a case of "click button to autoresolve" and is the main focus of the game. I have not lost a game of Xenonauts since realizing that aircraft is the singular most important aspect of the entire game. As long as you win the game in the air - fairly easily accomplished by rushing air techs ASAP - you will always be winning a game of Xenonauts. This is because tactical missions are deemphasized in a lot of ways, going as far as the idea that doing multiple downed UFO missions a month isn't actually that worth while. You're supposed to shoot down a unique UFO each month or so, raid it for the techs and then airstrike the rest. That's intended, because again, what matters is shooting down all of the aliens UFOs - not actually winning the ground war.
As for the tactical layer, I find that Xenonauts managed to replicate the tedium of the original games combat extremely well. A final alien hiding in a random corner of the map for 20+ turns was just what I wanted from an update to X-COM. Likewise, they managed to perfectly replicate the meat grinder of breaching the bridge of an alien battleship or carrier by having the aliens gloriously spawn camp the entrances without ever moving out. Unfortunately, my frustration hit its breaking point here and where Xenonauts badly let itself down compared to X-COM was, you couldn't just breach from outside. All the fancy flying armor and such, with the best explosives and you CANNOT breach the outside of the UFO. Meaning unlike the original, which yes did indeed have aliens camping small rooms in the bridge etc, you aren't given the tools required to solve the issue. It's a risky open the door, chuck in flashbangs or whatever else, then move in hoping it worked strategy. I would have thought anyone who played the original game and wanted to replicate it, would have remembered something as important as "Always allow the player to blow their way in through another route".
Xenonauts also adds a confusing, near broken and poorly functioning cover system into proceedings as well. I've often had a lot of trouble with this aspect of the game, where soldiers in cover often don't feel like it works "appropriately". It also adds the whole "Can be shot from nowhere" that the original does, but somehow manages to make it feel even more bullshit. Especially when its the aliens with the super heavy cannon thing (Singularity cannon?), which seems capable of one shotting anything you have, even right into the late game and they are uncannily accurate with it. Once again, TUs are a granular system put into a game where you want to move the minimum distance you can and still shoot anyway - so functionally not adding a lot. Most of the "depth" here is facile and an illusion: If you're doing poorly enough that scrounging ammo and picking up corpses is relevant, you're probably on the route to losing anyway. These things won't turn around and save a losing campaign in the first place.
Essentially my problem with Xenonauts is that while it improves the original X-COM, it doesn't really do so in ways that make me want to play it over the original. It keeps the core flaws, fixes some other flaws, but most importantly adds some entirely new ones that drastically impact the games playability for me. XCOM: EU also adds a lot of flaws, fixes others and similar - but it radically changes up the gameplay and playability (especially of tactical missions) in some very important ways. Basically, XCOM: EU was entirely playable and felt like it was a genuine alternative or update to the original. Xenonauts sticks too close to the source material in some ways, while innovating in ways that don't actually make it a better or more playable game. Hence, if I want something faster and a modern combat engine, I pick XCOM: EU. If I want the original games more slow pace and overall geoscape style, I pick X-COM: Enemy Unknown (I am from foreign lands, so X-COM has always been "Enemy Unknown").
There isn't a place for Xenonauts for me between these two games.
Edit: Also if you think Beaglebush is bad, Xenonauts has the most hilarous AI quirk where you can open a door, unload everything into them, close it then end turn. Very often because the AI is so scripted to "guard" the interiors of UFOs like their bridge, they won't move from their camping spots whatsoever. So this means you either run in and die in a hail of full TU alien plasma fire or you open door, shoot, close door, end turn, open door, shoot, close door, end turn and so on. The moment you realize this quirk any of the "dangerous" UFOs are instantaneously trivialized in terms of challenge. It's also boring, no fun and yet the alternative is to be blasted apart trying to enter by aliens who will never try to leave or engage you.
It's not fun. It's not good design. It's bad that it's exploitable, but it's not fair or reasonable to deal with on higher difficulties if you don't exploit it.
Actually I remember another massive and gapingly bad flaw in Xenonauts after reading my old posts at the official forums, which already gives me RNG PTSD, the fact aliens can MC your soldiers and if they had no TUs all their TUs are automatically replenished. So they can MC a guy who already used most of his TUs, get full TUs again and just go to town on everyone around him instantly. It's as utterly bullshit as it sounds.
It also adds the whole "Can be shot from nowhere" that the original does, but somehow manages to make it feel even more bullshit. Especially when its the aliens with the super heavy cannon thing (Singularity cannon?), which seems capable of one shotting anything you have, even right into the late game and they are uncannily accurate with it.
I forget what it's called, but it's basically the alien sniper rifle. Does huge damage, and has such high armor penetration that anything except the heaviest armor (which you aren't going to put everyone in because it has SO MANY drawbacks) may as well be paper. And then they give it to the flying aliens.
There's a reason that the aliens in EU/EW don't have Archangel Squadsight Snipers.
Garthor on
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
It also adds the whole "Can be shot from nowhere" that the original does, but somehow manages to make it feel even more bullshit. Especially when its the aliens with the super heavy cannon thing (Singularity cannon?), which seems capable of one shotting anything you have, even right into the late game and they are uncannily accurate with it.
I forget what it's called, but it's basically the alien sniper rifle. Does huge damage, and has such high armor penetration that anything except the heaviest armor (which you aren't going to put everyone in because it has SO MANY drawbacks) may as well be paper. And then they give it to the flying aliens.
Oh no, that's a DIFFERENT thing and a different kind of annoying unfair bullshit.
The one I am referring to - I've read my old posts now - is the aliens heavy plasma cannon. It's found on battleships, carriers, base assaults and terror missions. It can literally one shot you in the best armor in the game, with the aliens wonderfully allowed to wander out from a blind corner, turn around and just one shot anyone they like. Then usually wander back around the same corner. They are practically snipers with the thing and very rarely (if ever) miss with it.
The flying sniper guys at least won't usually one shot your guys in the best possible armor in the game.
I didn't even realize that this was so close until I saw an email from GMG offering me the deluxe edition of the game for less than the standard retail. Which of course I jumped on immediately.
I am a-quiver for this.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
It is, overall, a pretty huge step up from the original without almost completely abandoning a lot of what it was built on.
Is it? For one thing, I think Xenonauts looks substantially worse than the original in terms of the character, meaning and "cleanliness" of its sprites. For a game from 1994, the original X-COM oozed personality from every single alien. Sure they often looked kinda weird in the tactical portion, but they were distinct and had a tremendous amount of character - such as the chryssalid. Meanwhile Xenonauts aliens just look awful and have zero character to them, like the first aliens in particular who look like dudes in blue suits. There isn't really an equivalent in terms of character and visual design like the snakeman from X-COM in Xenonauts. Xenonauts runs in a higher resolution, but OpenX-COM also lets you run the original in a higher resolution and I think its sprite work is just superior.
Further, Xenonauts adds a lot of new flaws the original game didn't have, which heavily reduced my enjoyment and meant I just never wanted to play it anymore. Aerial Terror Missions, occurring on the other side of the globe, where you can't do jack shit about them, are bullshit. 100% utter bullshit. It took me a while to realize that despite the idea of "You can build a base anywhere", you really want to build two bases right off the bat almost. The sooner you get interception up over two continents the better and it's the only way to avoid a sudden frustrating loss to "Well there went a bunch of countries to an aerial terror mission". Did I mention they made this even more flawed by requiring you - pretty much - to build you bases in a narrow band of three locations on the world map? Didn't do that? Well enjoy not having the radar coverage to protect the nations you need and ending up with a loss (as building/maintaining multiple bases is extremely expensive).
Likewise the aerial game of Xenonauts is inarguably better, but quickly becomes a case of "click button to autoresolve" and is the main focus of the game. I have not lost a game of Xenonauts since realizing that aircraft is the singular most important aspect of the entire game. As long as you win the game in the air - fairly easily accomplished by rushing air techs ASAP - you will always be winning a game of Xenonauts. This is because tactical missions are deemphasized in a lot of ways, going as far as the idea that doing multiple downed UFO missions a month isn't actually that worth while. You're supposed to shoot down a unique UFO each month or so, raid it for the techs and then airstrike the rest. That's intended, because again, what matters is shooting down all of the aliens UFOs - not actually winning the ground war.
As for the tactical layer, I find that Xenonauts managed to replicate the tedium of the original games combat extremely well. A final alien hiding in a random corner of the map for 20+ turns was just what I wanted from an update to X-COM. Likewise, they managed to perfectly replicate the meat grinder of breaching the bridge of an alien battleship or carrier by having the aliens gloriously spawn camp the entrances without ever moving out. Unfortunately, my frustration hit its breaking point here and where Xenonauts badly let itself down compared to X-COM was, you couldn't just breach from outside. All the fancy flying armor and such, with the best explosives and you CANNOT breach the outside of the UFO. Meaning unlike the original, which yes did indeed have aliens camping small rooms in the bridge etc, you aren't given the tools required to solve the issue. It's a risky open the door, chuck in flashbangs or whatever else, then move in hoping it worked strategy. I would have thought anyone who played the original game and wanted to replicate it, would have remembered something as important as "Always allow the player to blow their way in through another route".
Xenonauts also adds a confusing, near broken and poorly functioning cover system into proceedings as well. I've often had a lot of trouble with this aspect of the game, where soldiers in cover often don't feel like it works "appropriately". It also adds the whole "Can be shot from nowhere" that the original does, but somehow manages to make it feel even more bullshit. Especially when its the aliens with the super heavy cannon thing (Singularity cannon?), which seems capable of one shotting anything you have, even right into the late game and they are uncannily accurate with it. Once again, TUs are a granular system put into a game where you want to move the minimum distance you can and still shoot anyway - so functionally not adding a lot. Most of the "depth" here is facile and an illusion: If you're doing poorly enough that scrounging ammo and picking up corpses is relevant, you're probably on the route to losing anyway. These things won't turn around and save a losing campaign in the first place.
Essentially my problem with Xenonauts is that while it improves the original X-COM, it doesn't really do so in ways that make me want to play it over the original. It keeps the core flaws, fixes some other flaws, but most importantly adds some entirely new ones that drastically impact the games playability for me. XCOM: EU also adds a lot of flaws, fixes others and similar - but it radically changes up the gameplay and playability (especially of tactical missions) in some very important ways. Basically, XCOM: EU was entirely playable and felt like it was a genuine alternative or update to the original. Xenonauts sticks too close to the source material in some ways, while innovating in ways that don't actually make it a better or more playable game. Hence, if I want something faster and a modern combat engine, I pick XCOM: EU. If I want the original games more slow pace and overall geoscape style, I pick X-COM: Enemy Unknown (I am from foreign lands, so X-COM has always been "Enemy Unknown").
There isn't a place for Xenonauts for me between these two games.
Edit: Also if you think Beaglebush is bad, Xenonauts has the most hilarous AI quirk where you can open a door, unload everything into them, close it then end turn. Very often because the AI is so scripted to "guard" the interiors of UFOs like their bridge, they won't move from their camping spots whatsoever. So this means you either run in and die in a hail of full TU alien plasma fire or you open door, shoot, close door, end turn, open door, shoot, close door, end turn and so on. The moment you realize this quirk any of the "dangerous" UFOs are instantaneously trivialized in terms of challenge. It's also boring, no fun and yet the alternative is to be blasted apart trying to enter by aliens who will never try to leave or engage you.
It's not fun. It's not good design. It's bad that it's exploitable, but it's not fair or reasonable to deal with on higher difficulties if you don't exploit it.
Actually I remember another massive and gapingly bad flaw in Xenonauts after reading my old posts at the official forums, which already gives me RNG PTSD, the fact aliens can MC your soldiers and if they had no TUs all their TUs are automatically replenished. So they can MC a guy who already used most of his TUs, get full TUs again and just go to town on everyone around him instantly. It's as utterly bullshit as it sounds.
Funny; I didn't think of much in the 'Nauts tactical map as unfair; just samey. Like in oldCOM, every soldier has squad sight, so you just use ablative rookies to scout ahead and then light-up the bad guys with your more respectable talent (in that sense I don't really agree that TUs are as mappable onto a simple move/shoot paradigm as you suggest... but whatever, I think Action Points are a clunky system solution regardless).
The space ship bridges are a matter of flash -> smoke -> breach. It becomes rote & tedious, but I don't agree that it's a matter of either exploiting the system or being gunned down. You have the tools to mitigate the camping alien reaction fire (and also ablative rookies!)
I assume that most people in the thread are familiar with UFO: Extraterrestrials? The terrible game played by XCOM addicts during the dark ages, before EU/EW or Open XCOM, when it was frustrating beyond reason to try and get UFO Defense running on modern systems? I played a lot of UFO: ET, and Xenonauts ended-up feeling far too familiar to that experience (even though it's far more polished & pretty), mostly due to the art direction & sound design.
I was at the comic book store last night, picking up this week's selection, and I noticed that "The Art of XCOM 2" was sitting on the shelf. I know I should have stayed away and let the game surprise me, but who am I kidding, there's no universe in which I don't grab that book and look at almost every page of it.
I won't say anything here so as not to give anything away for those who want to go in unspoiled, but I will say this:
1) I saw drawings of ADVENT troopers without their helmets on.
2) It's really cool to see the evolution of alien design in sketches.
3) There was a section with weapon art, including weapons higher up the tech tree than the magnetic weapons we've seen in the various YouTube videos. They look hella sweet.
OK, I will say one spoilery thing:
There weren't any aliens in this art book that haven't already been showcased in videos or on the official site. Does that mean that this is it, all aliens have been revealed to us? Or does that mean that they intentionally kept some aliens out of the art book to keep them secret? I'm kind of hoping it's the latter.
This should answer all your questions, but basically you can create, save and export soldiers, scientists, engineers and vips for use in future games and other people's games.
Wait, character pools? What's that? Been kinda media blackout-y.
At any point you can take a soldier and save them to a character pool, which means they have a chance to show up in future games you play.
You can access the character pool from the main menu and can even have multiple character pools, so you could, say, have a Hollywood celebrity character pool to use for one campaign, and a real-life friend pool for another one. Or you could use them together! You can modify characters from the character pool menu, as well as select if they will appear as soldiers, VIPs, or Dark VIPs (bad guy NPCs).
Oh, and you'll be able to save and share your character pools with friends.
I saw someone mention that the aliens in this game can win, meaning the player losing isn't the only way. This is neat but will it be possible to mod it just enough to have longer games if I feel like it? Definitely want to play it as is a bunch of times, but having a game that just chugs along is fun too.
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Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
afaik you have to refund and re-buy the deluxe version on steam. This is obviously a no-go with gifted copies.
I saw someone mention that the aliens in this game can win, meaning the player losing isn't the only way. This is neat but will it be possible to mod it just enough to have longer games if I feel like it? Definitely want to play it as is a bunch of times, but having a game that just chugs along is fun too.
I daresay there is a way for you to adjust how quickly the Avatar project advances if you want the game to last longer.
However there are dark events that can occur in the campaign that can speed up its progress if you don't stop them.
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
Well, and (maybe spoilers? maybe just me misunderstanding something from a stream)
It looks like Avatar Progress exists as pips associated with alien facilities around the board, and when you take down an alien facility, they lose all the pips associated with that facility.
I saw someone mention that the aliens in this game can win, meaning the player losing isn't the only way. This is neat but will it be possible to mod it just enough to have longer games if I feel like it? Definitely want to play it as is a bunch of times, but having a game that just chugs along is fun too.
FWIW Legendary is already longer than the second hardest difficulty. But I'm sure its as simple as an INI change
I saw someone mention that the aliens in this game can win, meaning the player losing isn't the only way. This is neat but will it be possible to mod it just enough to have longer games if I feel like it? Definitely want to play it as is a bunch of times, but having a game that just chugs along is fun too.
FWIW Legendary is already longer than the second hardest difficulty. But I'm sure its as simple as an INI change
From a leaked super secret article on the deep web, the relevant .ini lines:
Well, and (maybe spoilers? maybe just me misunderstanding something from a stream)
It looks like Avatar Progress exists as pips associated with alien facilities around the board, and when you take down an alien facility, they lose all the pips associated with that facility.
I could have misunderstood that, though.
Continued spoilers
I think the extra pips that crop up when the facility is built signifies that things are progressing more rapidly with the Avatar project, and likewise if you sabotage a facility or foil a dark event, they lose pips to show that you've thrown a wrench into the works and set them back for a time.
I saw someone mention that the aliens in this game can win, meaning the player losing isn't the only way. This is neat but will it be possible to mod it just enough to have longer games if I feel like it? Definitely want to play it as is a bunch of times, but having a game that just chugs along is fun too.
FWIW Legendary is already longer than the second hardest difficulty. But I'm sure its as simple as an INI change
From a leaked super secret article on the deep web, the relevant .ini lines:
Posts
To take these obsolete gameplay elements and transplant them into a new graphical shell was the plan on resurrecting X-COM for new systems, and with the release of NuXCOM, I found myself happy to see updated gameplay as well and felt no need to return to Xenonauts. I do recognize that there are a subsection of gamers who enjoy Xenonauts because of its adherence to the originals strengths AND foibles, I'm just not one of them.
One of my happiest moments was when they said they'd never do Terror from the Deep.
Quite the opposite, actually. Losing my friends is a gut punch, and thus I work harder to keep them alive. It makes for good motivation.
My manager gets to be the unarmored rookie who takes point.
Which just proves my point? "Not for me" and "obsolete" are nowhere near the same situation. I don't look at super-grindy RPGs which are centered around endless stat building and item crafting and say they're made obsolete by games that focus on a story or on more action instead, simply because I don't like to play those RPGs.
And keep in mind I've got over 70 hours in Xenonauts, and over 150 hours in EU/EW. Neither of them made me not want to play the other. I'm glad Firaxis is off in completely different direction as well, because obviously I've gotten a lot out of what they made.
Fair enough.
I just feel that some of the more granular choices in X-COM feel way too micromanagy. Loadouts were extremely punishing and arbitrary, considering the nature of combat. Even disembarking. Microprose was known for publishing only the most painstakingly detailed games, so I guess it shouldnt have been a surprise.
To be sure, there was tons of room for improvement there. Xenonauts did, in fact, make many of those improvements, such as letting you set your deployment pattern before missions, establishing class-based loadouts (with the ability to make custom classes, to boot), automatically restocking stuff used by soldiers, and eliminating a HUGE amount of the item micromanagement (such as no longer having to actually manufacture ammunition). Heck, you can even get rewards from airstrikes on downed UFOs you don't want to send a team to; the tradeoff on the time you save is reduced reward. It is, overall, a pretty huge step up from the original without almost completely abandoning a lot of what it was built on. It even looks a lot better, because all the assets were made with HD resolutions in mind rather than upscaling ancient shitty graphics to HD screens.
But if somebody put a gun to my head and forced me to pick which one was more fun, I wouldn't have much trouble picking EU/EW. For as much as I think it definitely over-simplifies a number of things, I still spent more time having fun playing it than with Xenonauts.
this is 95% the plot of my fanfiction...
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Okay, wait, can I make Zaeed Massani?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Zaeed becomes a title, a remembrance, a warning label of how you were the only goddamn one to make it back alive.
Is it? For one thing, I think Xenonauts looks substantially worse than the original in terms of the character, meaning and "cleanliness" of its sprites. For a game from 1994, the original X-COM oozed personality from every single alien. Sure they often looked kinda weird in the tactical portion, but they were distinct and had a tremendous amount of character - such as the chryssalid. Meanwhile Xenonauts aliens just look awful and have zero character to them, like the first aliens in particular who look like dudes in blue suits. There isn't really an equivalent in terms of character and visual design like the snakeman from X-COM in Xenonauts. Xenonauts runs in a higher resolution, but OpenX-COM also lets you run the original in a higher resolution and I think its sprite work is just superior.
Further, Xenonauts adds a lot of new flaws the original game didn't have, which heavily reduced my enjoyment and meant I just never wanted to play it anymore. Aerial Terror Missions, occurring on the other side of the globe, where you can't do jack shit about them, are bullshit. 100% utter bullshit. It took me a while to realize that despite the idea of "You can build a base anywhere", you really want to build two bases right off the bat almost. The sooner you get interception up over two continents the better and it's the only way to avoid a sudden frustrating loss to "Well there went a bunch of countries to an aerial terror mission". Did I mention they made this even more flawed by requiring you - pretty much - to build you bases in a narrow band of three locations on the world map? Didn't do that? Well enjoy not having the radar coverage to protect the nations you need and ending up with a loss (as building/maintaining multiple bases is extremely expensive).
Likewise the aerial game of Xenonauts is inarguably better, but quickly becomes a case of "click button to autoresolve" and is the main focus of the game. I have not lost a game of Xenonauts since realizing that aircraft is the singular most important aspect of the entire game. As long as you win the game in the air - fairly easily accomplished by rushing air techs ASAP - you will always be winning a game of Xenonauts. This is because tactical missions are deemphasized in a lot of ways, going as far as the idea that doing multiple downed UFO missions a month isn't actually that worth while. You're supposed to shoot down a unique UFO each month or so, raid it for the techs and then airstrike the rest. That's intended, because again, what matters is shooting down all of the aliens UFOs - not actually winning the ground war.
As for the tactical layer, I find that Xenonauts managed to replicate the tedium of the original games combat extremely well. A final alien hiding in a random corner of the map for 20+ turns was just what I wanted from an update to X-COM. Likewise, they managed to perfectly replicate the meat grinder of breaching the bridge of an alien battleship or carrier by having the aliens gloriously spawn camp the entrances without ever moving out. Unfortunately, my frustration hit its breaking point here and where Xenonauts badly let itself down compared to X-COM was, you couldn't just breach from outside. All the fancy flying armor and such, with the best explosives and you CANNOT breach the outside of the UFO. Meaning unlike the original, which yes did indeed have aliens camping small rooms in the bridge etc, you aren't given the tools required to solve the issue. It's a risky open the door, chuck in flashbangs or whatever else, then move in hoping it worked strategy. I would have thought anyone who played the original game and wanted to replicate it, would have remembered something as important as "Always allow the player to blow their way in through another route".
Xenonauts also adds a confusing, near broken and poorly functioning cover system into proceedings as well. I've often had a lot of trouble with this aspect of the game, where soldiers in cover often don't feel like it works "appropriately". It also adds the whole "Can be shot from nowhere" that the original does, but somehow manages to make it feel even more bullshit. Especially when its the aliens with the super heavy cannon thing (Singularity cannon?), which seems capable of one shotting anything you have, even right into the late game and they are uncannily accurate with it. Once again, TUs are a granular system put into a game where you want to move the minimum distance you can and still shoot anyway - so functionally not adding a lot. Most of the "depth" here is facile and an illusion: If you're doing poorly enough that scrounging ammo and picking up corpses is relevant, you're probably on the route to losing anyway. These things won't turn around and save a losing campaign in the first place.
Essentially my problem with Xenonauts is that while it improves the original X-COM, it doesn't really do so in ways that make me want to play it over the original. It keeps the core flaws, fixes some other flaws, but most importantly adds some entirely new ones that drastically impact the games playability for me. XCOM: EU also adds a lot of flaws, fixes others and similar - but it radically changes up the gameplay and playability (especially of tactical missions) in some very important ways. Basically, XCOM: EU was entirely playable and felt like it was a genuine alternative or update to the original. Xenonauts sticks too close to the source material in some ways, while innovating in ways that don't actually make it a better or more playable game. Hence, if I want something faster and a modern combat engine, I pick XCOM: EU. If I want the original games more slow pace and overall geoscape style, I pick X-COM: Enemy Unknown (I am from foreign lands, so X-COM has always been "Enemy Unknown").
There isn't a place for Xenonauts for me between these two games.
Edit: Also if you think Beaglebush is bad, Xenonauts has the most hilarous AI quirk where you can open a door, unload everything into them, close it then end turn. Very often because the AI is so scripted to "guard" the interiors of UFOs like their bridge, they won't move from their camping spots whatsoever. So this means you either run in and die in a hail of full TU alien plasma fire or you open door, shoot, close door, end turn, open door, shoot, close door, end turn and so on. The moment you realize this quirk any of the "dangerous" UFOs are instantaneously trivialized in terms of challenge. It's also boring, no fun and yet the alternative is to be blasted apart trying to enter by aliens who will never try to leave or engage you.
It's not fun. It's not good design. It's bad that it's exploitable, but it's not fair or reasonable to deal with on higher difficulties if you don't exploit it.
Actually I remember another massive and gapingly bad flaw in Xenonauts after reading my old posts at the official forums, which already gives me RNG PTSD, the fact aliens can MC your soldiers and if they had no TUs all their TUs are automatically replenished. So they can MC a guy who already used most of his TUs, get full TUs again and just go to town on everyone around him instantly. It's as utterly bullshit as it sounds.
I forget what it's called, but it's basically the alien sniper rifle. Does huge damage, and has such high armor penetration that anything except the heaviest armor (which you aren't going to put everyone in because it has SO MANY drawbacks) may as well be paper. And then they give it to the flying aliens.
There's a reason that the aliens in EU/EW don't have Archangel Squadsight Snipers.
Oh no, that's a DIFFERENT thing and a different kind of annoying unfair bullshit.
The one I am referring to - I've read my old posts now - is the aliens heavy plasma cannon. It's found on battleships, carriers, base assaults and terror missions. It can literally one shot you in the best armor in the game, with the aliens wonderfully allowed to wander out from a blind corner, turn around and just one shot anyone they like. Then usually wander back around the same corner. They are practically snipers with the thing and very rarely (if ever) miss with it.
The flying sniper guys at least won't usually one shot your guys in the best possible armor in the game.
I am a-quiver for this.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Note this is from the same guy who brought us XCOM Ballet and Last Doorn Standing.
Funny; I didn't think of much in the 'Nauts tactical map as unfair; just samey. Like in oldCOM, every soldier has squad sight, so you just use ablative rookies to scout ahead and then light-up the bad guys with your more respectable talent (in that sense I don't really agree that TUs are as mappable onto a simple move/shoot paradigm as you suggest... but whatever, I think Action Points are a clunky system solution regardless).
The space ship bridges are a matter of flash -> smoke -> breach. It becomes rote & tedious, but I don't agree that it's a matter of either exploiting the system or being gunned down. You have the tools to mitigate the camping alien reaction fire (and also ablative rookies!)
I assume that most people in the thread are familiar with UFO: Extraterrestrials? The terrible game played by XCOM addicts during the dark ages, before EU/EW or Open XCOM, when it was frustrating beyond reason to try and get UFO Defense running on modern systems? I played a lot of UFO: ET, and Xenonauts ended-up feeling far too familiar to that experience (even though it's far more polished & pretty), mostly due to the art direction & sound design.
I won't say anything here so as not to give anything away for those who want to go in unspoiled, but I will say this:
1) I saw drawings of ADVENT troopers without their helmets on.
2) It's really cool to see the evolution of alien design in sketches.
3) There was a section with weapon art, including weapons higher up the tech tree than the magnetic weapons we've seen in the various YouTube videos. They look hella sweet.
OK, I will say one spoilery thing:
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
This should answer all your questions, but basically you can create, save and export soldiers, scientists, engineers and vips for use in future games and other people's games.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
At any point you can take a soldier and save them to a character pool, which means they have a chance to show up in future games you play.
You can access the character pool from the main menu and can even have multiple character pools, so you could, say, have a Hollywood celebrity character pool to use for one campaign, and a real-life friend pool for another one. Or you could use them together! You can modify characters from the character pool menu, as well as select if they will appear as soldiers, VIPs, or Dark VIPs (bad guy NPCs).
Oh, and you'll be able to save and share your character pools with friends.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
!!!
Holy shit. That might be enough to get me to do another Enemy Within run before XCOM 2 drops.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
How? I don't see any option to.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/426321/
Although I see deluxe gets you the soundtrack and this doesn't, so idk.
I daresay there is a way for you to adjust how quickly the Avatar project advances if you want the game to last longer.
However there are dark events that can occur in the campaign that can speed up its progress if you don't stop them.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
I could have misunderstood that, though.
FWIW Legendary is already longer than the second hardest difficulty. But I'm sure its as simple as an INI change
That provides a huge amount of flexibility with respect to customizing game length.
Continued spoilers
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
That third line...