dracopticon

Good summary! I concur.

Do you really know me that well, that you can honestly judge from my plethora of posts that I "always bash different games"? I think not, I myself wouldn't assume to say a thing like that about you, simply because I don't know you, or your posts well enough. In another of my replies, I said that I praise Firaxis for the Alpha Centauri game, but bash them for XCOM:EU. That's within my right, just as it is your right to bash or praise games in or out of your taste. I am exactly as negative as I want, because it is a democratic right to be that, just as it is being positive about things. As I've played the X-COM games from the very start (I am 48 years of age now), I can honestly compare them, and do so with a "X-COM veteran's opinion".

This sounds GREAT! I can't wait to hear the new sound of this game. Thumbs up!

Sure is bro, sure is!

That's your view, not mine. I played through both the original XCOM games, both "UD" as you call it, and Terror from the Deep, and on the hardest level of playing w/o cheating. That's because I HATE cheating, which I think reloading saved games is when the sh*t hits the fan. When I could use more personnel from other bases to fill out the thinned ranks of my brave soldiers, the fight was very much helped by that fact. So it DOES indeed matter if you have more bases. And it's also more realistic, IMHO, that there exists several bases in our world, having just one base severely cripples the whole defensive idea of the organisation. No, it's just stupid.

Firaxis, as every other game producing company, can be hailed as great producers (in my taste for Alpha Centauri), and also trashed (in my taste for an oversimplified XCOM game). No different from other companies. And scolded? Yes, just as you can scold me for expressing those feelings. It's your and my right on this democratic forum.

Yes, I certainly want to know about that too.

That sounds very good! Thanks for letting me know how Xenonauts alpha functions.

The "The base never gets attacked" viewpoint was the lesser of the two, as you can see if you read thru my thread. So, no, this part isn't as important as having many bases, which more than anything changes the whole playability of the game. And just as you say, there's several more weak points than this in XCOM:EU, but this is MY view of what makes the game much less enjoyable.

I have now found the two biggest and most important faults with XCOM:EU (and yes, I reinstalled the game and started to play it again in spite of earlier bouts, to come to grips with its fault and greats). My foremost grudges with this game is: 1. The fact that you only manage ONE base on the whole planet, and 2. The enemy NEVER attacks the base. In the old XCOM games, the fact that you could build several bases meant that even on the hardest playing level, when loosing a lot of good and experienced combat personnel, you still had few more personnel that could fill the gaps from other bases. This means one VERY important thing: in the old games you didn't have to cheat by reloading the game over and over when the whole group went to the wind and was killed outright. And, the worry that bases could be attacked added to the feeling of a great threat (not to mention the overall atmosphere is lacking in XCOM:EU). Good base building and personnel managing skills are not as important here in XCOM:EU as in the old games. I say: let's see what Xenonauts have to offer in these two parts. I am eager to know.

Perks are for computer Role Playing Games, where they stereotype the characters to such a degree that it's silly. But that's also in line with todays gaming on consoles and even PCs: people can't cope with a lot of different choices when it comes to tactical games like UFO nowadays. And exactly like Par'Gellen says, it's just BOOO stupid to limit stuff down to either a protective vest (that isn't even put in the right compartment on the soldier) OR a grenade. How many times does this have to be mentioned to be discussed and generally agreed on? I understand the game designers want the XCOM:EU game to be like a battlefield chess game - like "when you use that tactic with that playing piece, this happens" - but then they should call it XCOM:Chess! It is restricting and limiting into a level that's only insulting to the classic XCOM player mind. The graphics are very nice, but crawling around in night time cities that look much the same whether you're in New Delhi or New York is also stupid. It's a world view for the uninformed masses. It's from a world "overrun by tourists with 89 flowers on their back" to quote 'the artist fomerly known as Prince'.

I don't care if the "guy knows his stuff". That's your evaluation. Not mine. XCOM:EU IS definitely dumbed down, when you play a game where facing means quite a lot to seeing the enemy or not, especially when using the "overwatch" tactic, but I can't control the facing in this crappy game! And I can't choose the exact way my men should run, as going from one point to another is totally controlled by the computer/game itself. That means my XCOM operatives sometimes run right INTO the overwatch of the aliens, instead of the smarter way I want them to run! And that's in addition to all the other stupid stuff of this game, like you can't pick up stuff from the ground, you can't tactically shoot at walls to uncover hiding aliens. You can't throw stuff between XCOM members, and you're not allowed to carry normal amounts of stuff into battle. No XCOM:EU IS dumbed down.

Thank you for the help, but no thank you. I appreciate the effort you put into your advice, but it isn't that I don't understand there's other ways of playing it. Instead it's this: my overall feeling for the game is so destroyed from the lack of general freedom of doing things MY way and using the soldiers as the team I WANT them to be, not some randomized fluke handing out of soldier types. I actually liked the way they made the soldiers into different archetypes and they all have a certain use on the battlefield. They could've gone with that idea AND also let players have the freedom to choose a lot of things both on and off the assignments. But no... It's like the game designers of today (or their sales managers/bosses whatever) cringe from the idea of letting players have it their own way in HOW THEY WANT TO PLAY THE GAME. And as have been said many times over on this thread, by others: the game is oversimplified. The soldiers don't have mechanics for different ways of dealing with the assignments. And they most basic stuff simply can't be done: pick up stuff, be a carrier of ammo for another soldier, throw stuff between the soldiers, shoot walls and/or other obstacles tactically, etc etc And just because it's good enough for newer generations of players DO NOT mean that I, as an XCOM player veteran, have to accept these crappy crappy changes. Also, don't even get me started again on how little REAL horrific atmosphere from the original games have survived into this one. It gives off a "plastic" feeling, like I've said before. XCOM: EU is light years from the first original games in giving you the rightful respect the aliens should have. Instead, it's built like tons of other games these days; just continue to up the killability of the aliens and do the same for the XCOM operatives until you meet the overall "boss" like som f-ing Mario game!!!

I have now totally uninstalled, deleted and destroyed anything even resembling the XCOM:EU game on my PC. And it feels so good! The biggest reason for this is, that even in the end of my latest try out with this game (including one of the mods Par'Gellen talked about, where the aliens do NOT crit all the time on Classic Ironman) the aliens managed to wipe out my two best teams, that's the best 8 of my crew. And that's in spite of my men having as much as 70 or 80 percent chance of hitting more often than not. The aliens have almost nooo problems of hitting my crew between the eyes 90% of the time... And OK, this all out killing of personnel can happen in most great XCOM games, but then atleast you have the opportunity to do so much more on the battlefield than you can in this measly game. One can only have so much patience... Good bye crappy game!! You will not be missed.

Same here! I have even once in my life told an embarrasing "funny story" about a boy with no arms, while there was a man present in the room with... you guessed it - no arms! So that's the kind of guy I am. Not astonishingly subtle most of the time. No sirree! But then again, if I don't make a fool of myself once in a while, what is there to really talk about??