mercy

Curiously there is still gameplay in XCOM:EU. But only with the Warspace 1.50 hardcore Marathon mod with Second Wave options, which i modified further by editing Base starting money: so i could fill up most of the empty space early. We should be able to build more bases and defend the bases. The Military Re-Texture MOD is a must so the soldiers look realistic movie commandos. Cheating - redesign - this way shows new sides of the game. Could build a lot of "tanks" and modifications, could try out interceptor modifications that i couldn't - or ignored - in vanilla and it turns out they are fun! For more fun, i gave civilians big defense and HP bonuses so when a Chryssalid attacks them during terror there is an indication of melee now, which is super fun!! Watching the karateka "Chuck Norris"-like civilians "fight it out" with the aliens is like watching post-apocaliptic movies, where average people suddenly become heroes, because of the circumstances. Even this way civilians drop like flies on Impossible. Today i led a bunch of rookies in the first better armor that has +1 item slots to a very large UFO and set the game to impossible. I had to retreat almost to the Avenger in each case during the mixed Ironman-mode (alt-tabbed a few times to re-load the ironman save game) my rookies were always eaten up alive by waves and waves and waves of monsters. We were simply overwhelmed. No matter how much i tried to go tactical military. I think impossible mode is for veteran soldiers, who have awesome abilities, most notably multiple attack per rounds and lightning reflexes, etc.. Also more fun: enhanced my soldiers and gave them Tae-Kwon Do plus Thai-Box training focusing on how to beat the aliens (looking for their weak points) in melee = 8 DEF by default (vanilla is zero). These elite "rookies" were those who have been massacred. Even with special military sniper-training before being recruited to XCOM = 80 between 85 Aim. Still turning on Ironman in case of smaller ships and bringing along professional soldiers of the highest rank in Warspace Hardcore mode - where the ranks have changed to include OPERATIVES plus much better naming is awesome fun!!! I think a game is really great, when MODS and/or cheats (can) are being used to elevate rpg-like skills of the characters and the game is still super-fun! A non-cheater or non-modder never experiences the absolutely awesome chaos that ensues when a lot of units are fighting it out on the map. In EXIGO for example (RTS-fantasy), modding the money enabled to have a lot of the best Golem-like fighting titans in the game, i could create a lot of them and setting the game to impossible difficulty resulted in such a gigantic battle i never saw in RTS's before.

I just realized, there is a functional Map Editor in the game. If it will be enabled at release will add a very strong point to the fun-factor and hopefully generate a lot of sales. Which UFO game has a publicly available, easy to use and functional level editor? The fact that people can whip up a preliminary design in an hour and refine it later speaks for the dedication of the Xenonauts Team. Another golden star added to the Game Rating!!

Inserting fitting humor into "quite dark and serious," content is possible. Of course its costly and doesn't have a too big chance to succeed, but if a developer can make his game memorable, to be quoted years after release, that can create a cult-following. Like the OpenXCOM movement, still developed today by a number of people: The whole UFO Defense is rewritten again from scratch in C++ with a load of new features. Voice actors being in the rare good mood, developers having a good time enjoying the recordings: that miraculous synergy of factors where development goes surprisingly well and fast, like in movie shootings, where quality shots are being recorded, because the team had luck finding actors who have an awesome chemistry together, can create a memorable performance. Once, a lead designer and founder of (then) one the biggest development company in my country told us during our visit that they were creating and excellent pitch for a Star-Trek videogame. His colleagues loved to work on the project, everyone had great energy, content was created really fast and well with their newest engine, looked awesome then the publisher decided that they rather wanted a modern warfare-like FPS so that was created instead and turned out mediocre, because the studio had a lot more experience with sci-fi games.

I found XCOM:EU playable only with the Second Wave MOD options right on first try, plus Warspace MOD, plus weapon and armor retexture MODs. In light of Xenonauts - which is for me a hope for a real modern full military tactical XCOM - the Firaxis game's design flaws were only bearable using heavy modifications. The pain is only increased by XCOM:EU's really good environment graphics - with modded soldiers outlook - because this could have been such a good game, but it isn't. Still i'm paying the heavy modded XCOM:EU, because i have done too much UFO Defense playing in the past. If Xenonauts wants to be a really good game, you have to have very attractive looking female soldiers - no fake breasts - like Tandy from Fallout. Xenonaust must have memorable gameplay moments of triumph combined with excellent alien SFX - screams, slurpy sounds, like they were in DOOM 1 and good NPCs making super humorous voice performances once in a while: a scientist ("I hope it will be raining" Westwood C&C series), a black-market merchant ("Hi Tin-Man, whats up?" weapon seller in Origin's Crusader no Remorse), a soldier: "I have a baaad feeling about this" mimicking Han Solo with a creepy voice. And a lot of these + Having the ability to vanquish a number of ALIEN bases is essential. + Must be able to shoot down biggest UFO's eventually, also a surprise would be nice, like custom, story-built, major UFO ships, differring in room and UFO-Commander content. + Demolish, make explode, make collapse, napalm melt structures and aliens, like what that little UFO-Zapper pistol did to enemies in Fallout 1. + UFO ships of a rare, curious sort should send high frequency radio messages to the player Commander: screaming "We will eat you alive!!" + Put something CREEPY into UFO bases in Xenonauts, like humans plus human body parts in glass-walled VATs or still living people and animals being tied into creepy UFO-machines using them as "batteries" + Put unique UFO-BOSSES into rare story-driver Major UFO ships, like larger tentacley things A'la The Thing and like sci-fi horror movies + Put UFO-ULTIMATUM into the game, threats from the aliens arriving via weird Television signals: "Surrender New York by 4th of April or we will attack your base!!!" or like "Give us All Your Milka-Cows, yes the purple Ones Or Else we will steal your interceptor pilots and make sausage from their bodies!!"

Piracy can be effectively battled by publishing frequent game updates in form of patches. A patch doesn't necessarily mean that the game is bad and needs to be fixed. A patch can contain new gameplay enhancing features and balances, important tweaks as well. I think, that the DLC idea is killing sales. If your game is really good, DLC-s are the first to be cracked. See the Mass Effect series. Instead of publishing DLC-s i would consider slowly dripping new bits of content into each new patch, which ought really be renamed Content Updates. Each new content update adds some tiny bit of fresh graphics, either a new NPC ["And More To Come!"] or a new weapon or new type of ammunition or a new type of grenade or a new type of enemy. Something that doesn't require rewriting whole systems in the game, just steadily add new content. A patch is best, when it: contains a new, restructured game EXE: when a cracker opens the new EXE in a debugger, he shouldn't see anything familiar. Hexadecimal addresses should change, program structure needs rearranged. A changed authentication routine compiles to different places in the EXE, for example. Old patchers (game specific auto-cracker programs,etc) should not work by default (on the new game EXE). Also few constants in the protection routines must be rewritten, so when the new EXE is debugged, entry points and jumps go to different places and behave differently than in the previous version. contains new features, content(see above), important polishing, re-balance, tweaks, best a fix some important problem that has most been reported on user forums: fix of one of the top 5 bugs or somethin'. contains listed bugfixes, but make these not the main point of the patch: always emphasize the NEW components to the gameplay. This way sales should increase, until the new version of the game is cracked again. Watch the process when the new crack of your latest published patch comes out. Time and plan the new content. Then rearrange the source-code again, so it compiles as a differently structured EXE and publish a brand new patch. Again with features & content that makes people drool for your game and makes purses open. If the patches are frequent enough and you succeed to balance - Plan & Proportion - the new stuff that gets into each new Game Version -, basically you are tiring the crackers out and increasing sales. Crackers get tired: when lot of gamers harass them to crack the new version of your game - at this time the Game is really good! new patches are coming out steadily, but all are a nightmare to crack, because they require a lot of time & energy sacrifice again and again with every new patch.

I would like to congratulate the Xenonauts team for (bringing in?) the artist(s) who created the awesome policeman NPC. Also the NPC in the bright orange ski-jacket with that long barreled shotgun(?) looks top-notch! He resembles characters seen in movies that have scenes in the (far)northern snowy areas. Very good modelling and coloring on the textures. Hope the soldiers will look that awesome in the final, in advanced armor.