Langy

I don't think that cover can tell you anything at all about what the game will actually be like. It has a Sectoid and a guy in armor, sure - but it's just concept art. We don't know anything about how well the game will match that concept art. Just wait until Tuesday or so to start making assumptions/etc, when the actual magazine is released and people can read the full article with all the pictures.

You mean like Xenonauts's new combat system, or the lack of player-controlled psionics or aliens who instantly know where every one of your men is on the map the instant they spot a single one of your soldiers? Look, I know that some remakes have completely changed things, but don't kid yourself - some of the old X-COM: UFO Defense gameplay really should be changed to make it a better game overall. Just because it's being re-imagined doesn't mean it's going to be worse - and if it does then that means that Xenonauts is going to be worse, because Xenonauts is very close to being a re-imagining of X-COM already. -- Yeah, piggybacking off of XCOM's marketing muscle will be a good idea - make Xenonauts the game to beat for them, so it's mentioned in all of the XCOM reviews. Let's just hope it compared favorably.

There have been rumors about it being in development for years - since before the XCOM FPS was announced. Who knows? Maybe it really has been in development since then. It's certainly been worked on for a while now if it's supposed to be released in Fall 2012 - not to mention the fact that there are going to be screenshots/etc coming out next week.

I am curious how they'll handle the fact it's being released on consoles. Consoles suck for strategy games, because the mouse (and keyboard, but mainly the mouse) is damned-near essential for them. And yeah, I'll agree that seems to be how the comments are shaping up, both in the articles and on other forums.

They probably mean 'action' as in 'there's combat! And explosions! And other fun, cool stuff!'. Then again, it's probably just a standard marketing word with no actual meaning, like 'Action Tetris!' is just regular Tetris with 'Action' in front of its name.

I expect 'Action Strategy' means that it's going to be real-time (similar to the UFO:Aftermath series); if so, at least there'll be one big defining difference between XCOM and Xenonauts. (EDIT: Except the GameInformer website says that it's turn-based! Odd - probably a meaningless phrase, then) I can certainly understand why the Golhawk team wouldn't be too happy about this news, even if they'd personally love to play the game - it's going to play hell with your market, and you'll need to make sure there are significant differences between the 600 lbs gorilla's take on XCOM and yours. All that said, I'm personally quite happy with the news. I don't know how similar the game will be to the original, but I'm probably going to buy it, and it makes me much happier with the FPS XCOM (which I was going to buy anyways, since I also like FPS games). And don't worry, Chris - you haven't lost a costumer quite yet: I've already thrown my $30 your way a few weeks ago, though I haven't looked too closely on how to get one of those badges yet, or really had enough time to playtest the game.

I wasn't specifically thinking about 8.4 having gamebreaking bugs (except, possibly, the 'immortal aliens' bug), but it was just released; the ones directly previous to it definitely did, though, and it'd be a shame to start the game up for the first time just to find out it doesn't work at all. I'm willing to wait a week for the press release build to be released to throw in my money for the pre-order - I'm willing to do bug-hunting, but I want my first gameplay impression to be a good one. I think that's an important thing to strive for in the press release/media blitz build, too.

I'm planning on pre-ordering soon; at the moment, I'm waiting for the current flurry of release, find huge gamebreaking bug, re-release to die down a bit. I'd like my first build to be a (relatively) solid one, and I think that once you've got something like that settled down, then starting up the media blitz machine would be a good idea. Starting right now (or, more accurately, a few days ago) could have been a mistake - a solid, if feature-limited, build is really a necessity for getting good press, I'd think.

Further to that, the landmass of Skyrim is actually smaller than the landmass in Oblivion, though it's bigger than Morrowind. Skyrim simply *feels* bigger, due to all the mountains getting in the way and the shear abundance of stuff to do. The size breakdown goes: Daggerfall > Oblivion > Skyrim > Morrowind But yes, Skyrim is the best Elder Scrolls game yet. I had some serious complaints about Oblivion and Morrowind - Skyrim, so far, has much fewer, though still many. For example, I don't care much for their UI design choices. Looking forward to the modding opportunities, though.

That would be pretty cool, but the game would need to be able to support 'basement' levels. Not sure if does so now or not.

SoaSE is the proper acronym for 'Sins of A Solar Empire', I think. SotSE is some kind of strange amalgamation of Sword of the Stars and Sins of a Solar Empire.

Comparing SOTS II's release to Elemental's is really badmouthing Elemental. Elemental actually worked, for the most part, and had most of its features actually implemented. SOTS II does not, from what I hear. Apparently, it's displaying code occasionally in the place of missing strings (something like SOTS_HIVER_JUMP_DESCRIPTION instead of "The Hivers can create jump-gates that allow them to instantaneously move from one jump-gate to any other."), the Options menu doesn't work, it always starts up in Windowed mode even when it's supposed to be in full-screen, and a *lot* of things make the game simply crash. It's basically completely unplayable. Elemental was just boring, with a few crashes here and there. SOTS II, not so much.

That description is a bit similar to a Pulsed Energy Projectile gun. It's a laser weapon that creates a small amount of exploding plasma at the target, stunning and knocking the opponent off their feet. The game should already include animations for aliens/soldiers falling down (due to falling unconscious), so it shouldn't be a burden to re-use those animations for 'knockback'.

That makes me sad. I liked Gazz's idea of a 'badge' or 'training course' system where you could train specific soldiers in specific things, like a Sniper course or a Night Combat course. Oh well:(

Pretty sure that's supposed to be 180 days, or six months.

Excellent news. Looking forward to sending you my money, now that you've got that nasty PayPal thing out of the way.