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Thoughts & Lessons from X-COM: Enemy Unknown (by Firaxis)


Chris

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You probably want to remove Stinky's maps and the community map pack (Skitso's is fine, though) as they're not compatible with the current version of the game. You'll end up with missing images, black patches on maps, and so on.

Oh, er, verify steam cache to remove I guess? Since it was just merging the folders and files, and I didn't keep a backup of the initial "assets" folder?

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It's ok, I did in fact validate steam files at first, which took like 20 minutes and didn't work obviously.

I then just uninstalled and reinstalled, and it's a general lesson learnt, my internet is so fast it was done in 3 mins. I've made the mistake of verifying integrity before and never thought "hey, let's just install from scratch..."

Put back just Skitso's maps for now. Does Kabil's random map sub-map stuff work as well? Thinking about adding those, and if anyone can say whether they're decent and AI works fine with them.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yes. I really enjoyed it for EU. I've not played it with EW much, but I didn't enjoy it as much. I think it's mostly because I've played the maps in the game to death. But it's also sprawled quite significantly and, as much as I like complex games, it's possibly got a bit big for me. (It's possible that my fatigue with the maps has stopped me from wanting to get to grips with the new systems, mind).

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I played EU once, full playthough, but it felt too gamey to me, Tactically it is crisp, clean and fun, strategically it is a mess. the idea of the satellites was a poor one, in my opinion, compounded by the one sat covers a country regardless if it is the UK or Russia and cover ONLY one country.

Between that, the one field team, the unavoidable Russian roulette with the abduction missions (more fake difficulty), the very few UFOs to intercept (and let's not talk about the lackluster interception mechanics) and the very small interception areas (this comes as a consequence of the whole Satellite coverage of funding countries only) makes the game a very poor re-imagining of the original.

Now, don´t get me wrong, what it does great, the tactical combat, it does beautifully, but it is not a game for me, and it is not a proper tribute to the X-Com game.

Worse, with the emphasis the devs put on the multiplayer made modding a lost cause (anti cheating measures in multiplay meant you couldn't ' play mods, at all) And let's not talk about the unnecessary expansion, it sounds cool, but only touched the tactical, which the game did beautifully, and failed to address the true issues the game had.

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I have to agree that the Geoscape and base building aspects are really lackluster. Although I love the tactical ground combat and I think they succeeded recreating the XCom feeling but in a different design, I think it's a very enjoyable experience.

Although what I really dislike about the game is the difficulty spikes and amount of bullshit the game throws at you at times. Sometimes it's just frustratingly difficult and unfair towards the player. Also I dislike that the alien never really search for you and that you bump into them by accident. Also most council missions suck ass with the spawning thinmen appearing from nowhere.

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Out of curiosity, has any of you guys tried the Long War mod(either the base game version or the beta version for Enemy Within)? I've been meaning to get around to do that, but I've haven't really been in mood for strategy games lately <_<

i played with the original game. It was really really good. The modders doing it are really magicians, not merely modifying some xmls, they are modifying the code of the game and really creating a whole new experience.

I plan to play the long war for EW when i get sick of Xenonauts:). WIth the orginial game long war from what i remember :

-Made the game muuuch longer, everythign was slower.

-nerfed the initial difficulty spike and made the later game more difficult.

-The tottaly new classes and perks reorganization meant tottaly new ways of playing.

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X-Com had so many things wrong in terms of the core design, it's really hard to believe people making it actually understood what made the classic great, or they just didn't have the option to deliver that.

Long War actually seems really interesting in paper, they seem to try fix one of the biggest complaints I had with the game, it wasn't dynamic anymore at all. I will propably give the game second chance with this mod at some point, but vanilla X-Com was one of the biggest dissapointments I've had in years in gaming. It had so much potential, it could had been awesome, but it was rotten by core design.

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The main issue of X-Com:EU is that it was mainly designed as a simple video console game with simplified controls for simple people. :D

It has some good features, like the class traits (e.g. medics with their stabilization and revival) and nicely designed maps, but I prefer more flexibility on the battlefield (TU system, no alien spawn-ganging) and the geoscape (more bases, more aircrafts, random UFO encounters including own base attacks) what Xenonauts offers. Games should offer more than fancy graphics and repetitive cinematics: complexity.

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Out of curiosity, has any of you guys tried the Long War mod(either the base game version or the beta version for Enemy Within)? I've been meaning to get around to do that, but I've haven't really been in mood for strategy games lately <_<

I've been playing it for a few weeks now and for me it has made Xcom EW a completely new game I use the long war mod with camo textures on Ironman Mode. It added a ton of new features its definitely challenging no more just bumping into aliens they actually seek you out. They added new classes and new officier training the Aliens are twice as hard with new attacks don't even get me started on those chrysallids I cringe when I see them now. The aliens take over countries and level up themselves making them more challenging and your xcom soldiers can only do one mission at a time as they get fatigued so have to rest forcing you have a larger pool of good soldiers. But as of now I have to switch off between that and Xenonauts with XNT mod and a few others and having a great time now if there was a way to combine the two I would be living in a perfect world.

Edited by Derekash71
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I've been playing it for a few weeks now and for me it has made Xcom EW a completely new game I use the long war mod with camo textures on Ironman Mode. It added a ton of new features its definitely challenging no more just bumping into aliens they actually seek you out.

This would fix the - for me - greatest shortcoming of the game. I'm not sure if I really care for the difficulty bump, though. Thanks.

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I've kind of given up on the whole modding thing. Maybe it's just me, but they always make my game crash-ey. (Regardless of the mod pack or game in question.)

Even those seemingly safe hi-res texture packs or other graphics enhancements are usually underwhelming - they never look as good as the screenshots either.

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Ok so i`m miles behind on what the Dev was saying about xcom (it`s probably all forgotten now), but I just wanted to add that I agree with this:

Worse, it actually encourages bad play. The game mechanics encourage you to flank the enemy and kill them, but doing that in-game often results in you activating a second or third group of aliens and turning a manageable situation into a bloodbath. This leads to a more boring playstyle where it is more optimal to snipe the aliens from further away. Not good.

Big time. You`re afraid to flank so as not to `trigger` more Aliens, which shouldn`t happen.

And I was very disasppointed with the UFO-aircraft interceptions, which were really lazy in my view. The Interceptions in Xenonauts was EXACTLY what I was hoping Firaxis would`ve done in a 2012 game.

And not being able to pick up dropped items was ridiculous as well. :mad:

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The new Firaxis' XCom is a very different game than the original. It's a bit sad that the XCom name goes to a decent game but not very a "XCom" feeling one and the game that plays most like "XCom 2.0" is Xenonauts. I'd rather play a better tactical/strategy game of a different genre than more of Firaxis' XCom. It was fun but I don't feel I need to play it ever again. Firaxis' creation won't bring me back for 20 years like the original, or like Xenonauts will.

Gameplay is king.

That said, I played a few good multiplayer matches in it with Steam friends.

Edited by XMAN
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  • 3 weeks later...
The original mod was created by Dean Hall/Rocket

Right...

one of BI's senior programmers who had intrinsic knolwedge of the engine and the code.

Nope, Dean Hall was hired on AFTER the mod's success, which makes DayZ amature made. He had no professional game dev experience prior.

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This would fix the - for me - greatest shortcoming of the game. I'm not sure if I really care for the difficulty bump, though. Thanks.

In some ways the accidental activation problem is worse though, because (especially on higher difficulty) there are even more aliens on the maps. It's a great mod overall, but would be way better with the ability to add new maps to balance for the increased alien spawns. I just wish they had come up with a better way of implementing the fatigue system, because it is just so arbitrary to shut a soldier down for a week because they went on a combat op.

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