APelz

Talking about those things, I have to say that they aren't even scary like they were in original. In OG they were PitA to kill and if you let either of those too close your guys were soon dead/zombies. Also in OG shooting zombies caused them to drop their skin and born new chryssallid. I haven't even seen a chryssallid born once in new XCom, apparently it takes something like 10 turns and zombies just drop dead when I shoot them...

Hmmyes, aliens felt more "menacing" when they showed no feelings or motions in original, here in this new XCom I'm always insta-annoyed when I see those stupid chuckling floaters after they kill someone. Makes the game feel so frakking cartoonish. I could complete the OG by using laser guns only (for example) on veteran or some middle difficulty and because damage was greatly randomized I could kill larger heavy enemy units with few shots from laser rifle if I was lucky. Also there were plenty of smaller easy'ish missions to train my rookies. As you know, there were plenty of small UFOs to shoot down. In new Xcom it starts to frustrate more or less to see enemies with more and more rows of clinical health blocks and because I know that my lazors do only certain amount of damage... It's like "awwww, so many health blocks to grind". Game is clearly telling me that I HAVE TO start using those damn plasma weapons if I want to complete the game, unless I want to lose my hair like Bruce Willis. And what chance do I have to level up my rookies? They can't hit a thing with their ~35% acc and seem generally useless in those "very difficult" muton missions that game seem to throw at me couple of times in a month. So addicting, so infuriating... Apparently devs didn't want gamers to load their brains with nonsense math tasks regarding financial management. It really shows what part they liked in the original (tactical) and forgot the rest, globe view having no use, no storage management etc. etc. Maybe to them all this stuff was boring but to me it's half of the game missing. Now it's just buy stuff until run out of money -> wait for council report as I can't sell alien weapons (fragments) etc. stuff anymore like in original if I didn't use alien weapons as everything may be needed to research/manufacture things.

Well then, that question goes both ways I guess? How do I know that I do or don't have the latest version if version number in main menu screen may show false information? Maybe all updates should update the exe to show correct version, it's not that big file anyway? Besides I have made Desura to track Xenonauts so I assume I should get some kind of notification when updates are available and there have been none.

Desura seems to be one pile of )#%#(#&, can't download new version with it and even if I make it search for updates it says there's none. What purpose does this program serve, as it is now it just seems to be launcher for the game and I can do the same more easily by creating Xenonauts shortcut on my desktop

Heh, I think I haven't used that option more than once when I was just testing things through... For some reason overwatch is so much more tempting option to use to end the round even if it causes my soldiers to miss their reaction shots and take hits a lot.

Had to see if that "full version is much better" claim was true so I went and bought X-Com as it was -50%. And I must say I haven't played other games since, don't know why but I just hated the demo. It's very addicting but at the same time all the bugs and stupid things annoy me 200%... I guess it's love-hate relationship. Game has "some" replayability value as maps seem to play slightly differently each time but still, they are same maps from different angles that apparently come in same order each time as the script says, which is a bummer. Currently playing on "normal" difficulty and kinda hesitating to go "classic" and beyond if all it does is make aliens cheat with ûber accuracy and annoy me even more

Is there going to be any major optimizations regarding how the game utilizes hardware? Don't know if my laptop (1,6GHz dual core) is piece of junk, but this one thing got a bit annoying when playing latest version of Xenonauts... My laptop is absolutely tortured! Fan screams at full speed and laptop gets as warm as my frying pan. More curiously kickstart version 10.x didn't spank my laptop as hard as this latest version...

That's how difficulty settings usually work, AI starts to cheat and it's units are given some ridiculous attribute boosts to make them super accurate etc. etc. Just like in original X-com on higher difficulty it was mostly ridiculous unbalanced mind-control spamming as game started to shovel ethereals and psi-sectoids with elite stats on your face from the start. I always hated it how AI blatantly cheated and psi-attacked my soldiers without line of sight. Why... why can't I just have greater number of aliens alone, always these cheats...

I read from somewhere that it gets frustrating when later in the game there are no "training" missions for rookies and you start running out of vets as they occationally drop dead (unless you are one of those save-sh*tHitTheFan-load-type of players). Game often just offers those 3 abduction/whatever missions and there's no sense in selecting easy low panic level missions as ignoring high panic level missions will cause countries to withdraw their funding. And ofc high panic missions are "very difficult" with crazy OP aliens like mutons/chryssalids/cyberdiscs where rookies don't have a chance. Yeah what kind of brainfart is that, I can imagine missions going to hell because the only guy carrying medikit gets killed and rest bleed to death because they are too dumb to pick up the medikit from corpse(s). Pretty much the only way to "surprise" them is to have your guy(s) in overlook mode and react firing when alien gang happens to walk by. Also the cover system seemed screwed up, even if units are perfectly behind cover enemy shoots through the wall and hits them. And I mean through the wall, like glitching/cheating or something without even breaking the wall. Sucks.

I have only played demo of new X-Com so far, and frankly I didn't get any "woooot omgz gotta get this game!!1"-feelings at all. Game is simply too streamlined and simplified and I can't imagine that full version would be that much more interesting, especially after reading about all the things that have been taken away and streamlined. Graphics are nice, but watching same cutscenes over and over again get kinda boring and nice graphics lose their meaning after initial "whoa". Maybe I'll buy it from bargain bin when it costs at least 50% less and/or some fan creates mod for it to put all the classic stuff back in the game as they were in the original. May sound absurd but to me the micro-management was big part of the original X-Com that made it so interesting (altough the inventory system was pain in the butt especially with >14 soldiers). But after getting my hands on Xenonauts kickstarter version I immediately got the feeling that this is it, I'm going to put my money to this instead and bought Xenonauts Premium. Altough I see it has it's streamlining also as bought stuff immediately appear to base and infantry equipment is limitless (at least in kickstarter v10something version)... Felt kinda mehh to me, didn't keep me interested for long. Maybe I am such a graphics ho after all and stiff low polygon visuals was such a severe turn-off for me that I would prefer original 320x200 sprites over that