Vivisector 9999

Alternately, there's no need to fear losing the war against the aliens when you can be sure that at least Tom Cruise will go extinct when the rest of mankind does.

I'm with you. Not everything about Apocalypse was well-advised, but it had its share of charms, too. And unlike TFTD, at least it moved the actual physics/gameplay forward. After all the collapsing buildings and collateral damage in Apocalypse, I found it hard to go back to the original game where you can shoot a lamppost and see its upper half just hang in the air...

In the past, the Star Wars franchise has produced worthwhile things when George Lucas wasn't at the helm, so maybe this will be good, too. I'm not all that interested, though. By this point in my existence, I've seen just about all the Star Wars movies / games / shows / tabletop RPGs / coloring books that I need to.

I won't argue the rest of your post (hey, it's not like I get a trophy or something if I convince you to like the game after all), but this part is only true on the lower difficulties. On Classic/Impossible, the AI isn't shackled and does a much better job at NOT standing around holding its dick until you find it.

Yeah, come to think of it, you're right. I have to ask if that was really the best plan for them, though. The first UFO ET got massacred in reviews (and justly so, IMO). Bman's mod helped a lot, but I still don't feel the temptation to ever come back to that game. Maybe if they'd gotten more player feedback in the first place, it would have been a better game... and now it looks like they're passing up that resource again. Compare that to the Xenonauts crew, who have gotten all kinds of free playtesting and feedback right here on this forum. Not to mention extra funding from all the preorders and word of mouth. We're already seeing mods, too, and the game isn't even done yet. I don't think anyone would deny that this open approach has helped (and will keep helping) Xenonauts be a better game than it would have been. I'm certainly betting on it over ET 2.

I'd wonder if it was ever ON the map to start with. Other than the fact that they recruited Bman (which was admittedly good news), how much information did they ever release about the game? Very little, compared to all the things you could dig up about Xenonauts and XCOM: EU. Now, I'm not accusing the game of being dead... but I wouldn't bet on it coming out before Xenonauts.

No, that would be Ann Coulter.

Yes, the Thing remake was 2011. And officially it wasn't a remake, but a prequel. Still doesn't excuse it, though.

Trust me, the large audience has nothing to do with it - it's hard for most people to be objective anywhere ever. Most of the time, if you really want "objectivity" in the video game world, you have to find demos or watch gameplay footage and decide for yourself. Myself, I wouldn't say the new XCOM was "awesome" or through the roof. But I thought it was better than "meh enjoyed it anyway". I actually would compare it to the earlier Sid Meier's Pirates remake - a great game in its own way, and something I'll have a blast playing through now and again, but... I don't know, there were just a few things keeping it from being endlessly, obsessively replayable.

And you've been just as much of a wall when everyone else explained their anti-piracy position to you, too. Did you really think this was a good idea? Coming onto the forum of an indie game developer to preach the merits of stealing games? To a crowd that are almost entirely that guy's paying supporters, no less. I mean, I can almost understand hating the greedy, stagnant AAA publishers, going to THEIR forum, and being all like "Yeah! Fuck these guys! Copy their shit! It's all free advertising for them anyway! Now brace yourself for the link spam!" But doing it here?

"Streamlined" may be the word you're looking for. (Since you obviously mean it in a positive way.) Also, I wouldn't hit you for looking forward to the FPS XCOM game. That's your right. People get into way too many pissing contests over what games they're into anyway.

This kind of thing can vary a lot between gamers, even hardcore strategy nuts. One player's "challenging" is another player's "infuriating". One's "tedious" is another's "Ha ha ha, I'm kicking its ass NOW!" For me, basically it comes down to making your decisions as a player matter. I don't want the game to be brutally unfair to the point where your decisions don't make any difference. But neither do I like feeling "safe" for too long, or - even worse than that - feeling like I'm playing on autopilot and nothing I do could cost me the game (another situation where your choices don't matter). I liked the original Torchlight, but I've never been able to finish it because even on the hardest settings, it feels too much like mowing your lawn after a certain point. This is part of what made the original X-COM so brilliant. As soon as you got used to one challenge, it'd throw something new at you. Xenonauts is showing signs of expanding on that over the original, too. Like the air combats - you get used to shooting down the scouts, but then the fighters show up and now you have start paying attention during the dogfights...

I could swear that someone posted that link in another thread, but no matter. It's a good read and I agree with most of it. I actually liked a lot of the new XCOM's streamlining, and the removal of TU's didn't hurt the tactical game as much as I feared it would. Playing on Ironman Classic/Impossible can get just as tense as the old X-COM ever was. Still, even though I really enjoyed the new XCOM overall, it felt like something was missing. It feels very scripted at times, and I missed the "simulation" feel of old X-COM. If the old X-COM wanted an alien leader for a research project, it didn't care whether you got that alien from a larger UFO or an alien base - and the aliens could have as many of those bases as they could get away with. The new XCOM isn't so flexible. It's like "Capture an Outsider alien. Now assault THE alien base. Now assault THE Overseer UFO. Now do this..." Always in the same order. That (and the small pool of maps) hurts replayability a bit. So I'm still looking forward to Xenonauts. It can have that simulation feel that the old X-COM had.

The shows had its charms, but it lost its way after a while (which is why you said "all the way up to the sixth season"). I know another movie is planned, but after the last one, I don't think there's much hope of the franchise resolving itself in a non-wallbanger way. I guess it could have been worse. Most TV shows don't even have ONE good season in them. Nor Gillian Anderson, for that matter.

You shouldn't thank me, since what I wrote was the exact opposite of your point. You said that all word of mouth is good (even if it's negative). That Max_Caine dude said that no, bad word of mouth can and does hurt sales - and I was backing him up. Seriously, it's physically impossible that it helps a publisher (we'll pick Kerberos, since this actually happened) when my friend is like "Sword of the Stars 2 is a train wreck. Holy fuck, it's like they released the broken alpha version of it!", and I reply (after hearing the rest of his rant and seeing others like it all over the net) "Wow, I am NEVER going to buy that game... not even if they patch it. They shouldn't be rewarded for that."