Happy to be able to check out the demo for the sequel after how much I enjoyed the original! I have been wondering exactly what the Xenonauts are supposed to be as a organization in this installment as there wasn't really a explanation of who they are or why they are receiving funding from the powers that be.
Air combat was one of my favorite parts of X1 and X2s take on it seems fine once I figured out you can't shoot or combat roll while afterburners are on. The multiple rockets per pod is a great touch though I wish new planes auto equipped basic weapons so they don't go into battle unarmed. Really loved the sound effects for the alien ship weapons. The change of the number keys to time instead of turning weapons on and off isn't much of a loss considering it messed with missiles locking on once unlocked before but I'm really missing the function keys allowing for easy selection of planes especially with how fast alien ships turn now. I do have to call out that the intro mentioned that the aliens are trying to be relatively stealthily before the invasion begins proper and the 2nd ufo immediately started strafing a shopping mall, do destroyers normally have serbilian soldiers guarding them month 1?
Ground combat seems to have a bit more angle weirdness then the previous game mostly involving enemies in the open on roofs and occasionally looking at a wall from an angle allowed me to look through it. Walls felt much more fragile to basic weapons and while I adore being able to vault low cover it does sometimes have the side effect that rather then walking around a obstacle they go through the door to outside and hop through a window to get back into the room eating reaction fire the whole way, while the new path indicator looks a lot cleaner it does lose some clarity. While I understand why you made the demolition packs so much less damaging and easier to throw considering how hazardous using them was and how much tu it took to throw often leaving them in the open to inevitably get gunned down it feels a bit sad to see how small the blast radius is and how 2 of them was still not enough to get through the door of an alien ship.
I have to say that the new aiming indicator feels like a step down mainly because it lacks a bit of clarity compared to a circle that gets more circles the higher your aim level. Combined with it now defaulting to the most expensive shot option I often found myself stopping and checking what weapon they are using especially since a snipers lowest level of aim looks the same as a assault rifles middle level. I do really appreciate having all the grenades visible at the same time after how long it took for me to figure out to right click them in X1 and the ability to quickly pull out a soldiers side arm without having to put your primary into your backpack is an excellent touch. Medkits are mostly fine with the sacrifice of putting your weapon away to heal being replaced with taking up your pistol slot, the only part of them I wish was different being the old ability to simply heal less if you don't have enough tu to heal for the maximum amount. No idea how hard it would be but an option for unit health to not be visible over their heads would be nice. It is sad to see light vehicles go away especially considering we can apparently bring multiple helicopters with us now, would of been nice to use a whole helicopter to bring a BMP or something.
I found myself enjoying the light machine guns reliability to at least score glancing hits on targets adjacent and behind to where your aiming and the ability to fire a 3 round burst is certainly nice allowing me to at least get some rounds down range. Lastly my biggest gripe with the demo has to be sound, I had to turn the music slider to half to keep it from drowning out all the other sounds and the basic ballistic weapons sounds sounded significantly worse then their predecessors lacking a certain punchiness to them.
Sorry if this whole thing comes off as a bit of a mess but it's about midnight right now and I'm trying to put my thoughts on everything down before I forget,
