Lord Kalten

If it helps, it currently is on offer: http://www.gog.com/game/xenonauts

In all fairness, I think its just fans commenting off the top of their head as the next natural progression. Terror From the Deep added very little value to the original game. People don't really talk about TFTD. Any XCom fan that has played TFTD will know that it is largely a lazy sequel to generate money. If you look at the skill trees for example, they are a clone of the original game. Most fans won't even remember the names of the weapons and just remember - oh yes, its the laser equivalent or the plasma equivalent. The only 2 games that were really worth their salt were UFO: Enemy Unknown and XCom: Apocolypse. I do think that there is scope for the development team to create their own ideas for underwater missions - but there is little to get from TFTD. However, it is good to get inspiration from other games. For example, in Apocolypse, enemies had energy shields which required a change in strategy. If you shot at an enemy with an energy shield repeatedly until it failed and then killed the alien, there would be no energy shield research because it was broken. However, if you gas grenaded everything onscreen, you'd capture at least one alien with a working energy shield which you could then start the energy shield research tree. Absolutely fantastic element of the game which required a change in thinking. Kalten~!!!

I agree with what you say. I think the other person's scrore of 7 is a little low - most of the professional and user reviews hover closer to 8 for a start! However, what I would say is that somewhere in there there is scope for most people to find changes to the XCom formula that the vast majority would see as an improvement. You yourself added the removal of psychic capabilities for a start. I think that there is an opportunity here on multiple fronts: 1) I think these forums can be changed to support another sub-forum for requested enhancements and changes. Small changes to the game that either were annoying in the original, has no place in today's UI or simply an improvement. Ideally voting buttons should be available on the top post so that people can vote with their feet so you can gauge the popularity of the idea by the masses. 2) There is a huge fan base and modding community out there - but rather than people downloading mods that might seem out of place or unbalance the game, to have some resource in place to add these bits to the main game. One of the problems of the clones like Afterlight is that the missions became too samey. The other problems with modding communities have often been that their additions don't fit in properly or don't work quite right or your average Joe simply doesn't want to download them incase it tarnishes the game. I play a game called Freelancer and there are huge mods out there, but a lot of people like myself don't use them because we're never sure of what issues it causes and may corrupt / unbalance the main game. But it is a resource to draw upon for development studios. 3) There are running commentary reviews like IGN: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/08/07/xenonauts-review They like many of the reviews out there do summarise the game as being 100% faithful keeping the good, the bad and the ugly into today's version of the game. They make some quite good points on what they'd have expected today - changes which would be seen as an improvement by over 99% of the XCom fans and people new coming into the game. My only concern is how a lot of this gets funded. I am happy to pay for expansion packs - although I'd recommend lots of small enhancement packs that are well targeted in what they do. Steam in particular is well suited to supporting these (look at games like Talisman). I also think that the Xenonauts project has been lengthy and tiring for the development team and there is a bit of fatigue on this game and looking forwards to making a different game. I'd suggest running with that but within 5 years, a lot of mods, feedback and the hunger to improve this game will have returned as it has time and time again with the old XCom and a few small enhancement packs to please the fans could possibly be targeted. The advantage with this approach is that the major bugs would have been fixed by then so that fixes to multiple code streams are less likely to be an issue and more focus on improvement can be made. Just my thoughts. Thanks again for a great product.

I'd like to add my thanks also. It's good to know that I have this game now for trying when I get that next urge to play UFO Enemy Unknown again!

Thanks for the super fast reply. If that's there definitely a lot of the subtle detail has been ported across.

Hi all, For those that have played through Xenonauts, I have a question - is it all there in terms of all the stuff from XCom? Those that have played through XCom tirelessly will know things like when a UFO lands it will have a green cross whereas if you shoot it down it will have a red cross and there is a big difference in Elerium-115 you can gain from the task. Are the subtle things in the game from XCom carried over to Xenonauts? Thanks, Kalten~!!!

Hi there. Just like to say that I'm a huge fan of XCom: Enemy Unknown. Loved it since my uni days when I got it and posted guides on Usenet: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!search/ufo$20xcom$20alien$20diplomacy$20cm3bcsc1/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action/VbxvU-1rPQE/f44nnk0Rb-cJ Have to say that Xenonauts looks an amazing game. Bought it recently on GoG. Looking forward to chatting Kalten