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Orphan

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10 Good
  1. I'd be more interested in their utility on the ground in the first few turns.
  2. I can see the UFOs being a problem, and definitely a valid justification. With rocks and weapons and such, part of why I don't mind the graphics in this game is because 2D isometric games are representative to me; that is to say that I don't really care if Log A is identical to Log B, because both are only representations that there are toppled logs in that location. I'm not looking closely enough to care, because the game isn't built to remind me that every log is special and unique. The UFOs are a different story, though. They were very obviously on the receiving end of a lot of effort, and are a very important part of nearly every ground mission. If those can't rotate, that's a deal breaker. Thanks for calling those out!
  3. You know, I understand where you're coming from... but what assets aren't drawn from other angles? I mean, you say that there'd need to be 4 sprites for soldiers to see them from 4 angles, but there are already eight sprites for soldiers for 8 different angles.
  4. I think this was a fair review score, and I think Dan spent a fair amount of time on both the flaws and commendations. Dan makes a perfectly valid observation with regards to how difficult this game is to pick up if you aren't already familiar with it; especially for the people who may believe this is a "spiritual successor" to Firaxis' XCOM, and not the original. He starts the review by saying, "this game nails all of what makes X-Com my favorite game of all time", but it has room for improvement. The graphics don't bother me, but I'm also running this on a laptop that has trouble with Google Chrome every now and again. I'm just happy my computer runs it... but in today's market, video games are judged by their visual appeal. World of Warcraft (vanilla) is a great example of a game that runs decently on older hardware, but still manages to pull off a unique artistic style that incorporates seamlessly the general "feel" of the game. It may not seem fair, but there is an expectation that PC games will look better than console games; and while Xenonauts doesn't have a console variant, being a 2D game will absolutely prevent a perfect 10. I also understand tutorials are difficult for the programmer, but I was still in elementary school when I first started playing X-Com. It took me a few days before I felt comfortable enough with Xenonaut's controls and interface to not feel like I needed to restart the game after an hour of gameplay. Even then, there were pretty standard controls that were present in X-Com, and are present in the various remakes, that simply do not exist here without mods (i.e. "Next Soldier" buttons). Twenty years ago, throwing a 200-page manual at someone and yelling "learn or die" worked, because that was what gamers expected. Today, (optional) in-game tutorials teach people the basic mechanics they need to get by, and then let them figure out how to play from that point on. I expected there to be a tutorial to show me how to do things because there are popups that seem to suggest that someone is going to teach me how to play; to this end, the brief pamphlet that was pushed out was so woefully inadequate to show me how to play the game that I immediately set it aside and just massacred my soldiers until I remembered how to play X-Com. I can only assume that playing Xenonauts without being familiar with X-Com would be like playing Dark Souls if the developers assumed that you were already a Demon Souls veteran and could puzzle out the subtle differences on your own. Once I understood the game, these problems were easy to accept and play around because this is still a genuinely good game that manages to hold my attention while usually doing a pretty good job of straddling the thin line between difficult and punishing. However, some important gameplay inconsistencies include altitude bonuses not being worth the risk of getting shot, not being able to shoot through tumbleweeds or cacti, the issue with UFO walls filling up entire blocks, and the aliens being able to shoot you through obstructions that block your shots. If Xenonauts were published by, say, EA or Activision, these critiques would be self-justifying and couldn't simply be dismissed. If it were me writing the review, I would note that there are no glaring issues that would push my rating down. However, there are a lot of little ones that would chip away a pretty significant chunk. My first impression of the game was pressing the "mods" button to import the AWACS, and spending a couple of days trying to figure out why it wasn't working. I understood how to install mods manually, but there was a button that was supposed to load mods, and supposed to make that whole process significantly easier... and it does nothing. In other words, within the first two days of owning Xenonauts, I already had the impression that I bought a game that wasn't finished. Then I saw that the developers had already decided that they wouldn't add new features in. If you take a step back, and look at that objectively: how would you feel if you opened XCOM and there were missing features on the main menu or splash-screen? I'm not saying that's the truth, but it's certainly the perception I had when I bought Xenonauts after months of anticipation while following the development cycle. While I understand that there is a community edition to fix this, there shouldn't have to be. These are the sort of problems that undermine a game by priming new players to believe that the game was just pushed out the door because the developers were tired of working on it and wanted some cash for their efforts; and telling me that I should just download a mod to fix it is literally telling me that a blatantly unfinished and unincorporated feature is an illegitimate complaint and it's the responsibility of the consumer to fill that gap by doing the coding for the developer. In the end, I really do enjoy Xenonauts. It's a lot of fun, and I feel it fixed a lot of the problems that frustrated me with X-Com; but there are very clear areas for improvement, or spots that could have been polished a bit more with relatively little effort. The same is true of Morrowind, Fallout 3, Skyrim, ArmA, Operation Flashpoint, and several other ambitious and fun, albeit buggy, games. If Goldhawk puts out other games, I'll check them out because Goldhawk now has name-recognition with me, and I'd expect the game to be fun. However, as fun as Xenonauts is, I'm not going to pretend that it's flawless or that it doesn't batter the inexperienced player with a learning curve and difficulty reminiscent of Dwarf Fortress and Demon Souls' illegitimate love child.
  5. This. Additionally, it's two-syllables for jet-engines, and one-syllable for prop. Tu-95 Bear, Tu-160 Blackjack. La-7 Fin, La-15 Fantail.
  6. This happens to me pretty often. I'm playing on a laptop using an integrated Intel graphics chip. I find that alt+tab or restarting the program fixes the glitch.
  7. I have the opposite issue. I generally dislike the shotguns, and so I go with all rifles with the shotgun in my backpack. Eventually I started using a mod that added carbines in, because there wasn't anything that bridged the assault rifle/shotgun gap.
  8. Maybe, but their bodies do not seem optimized for applying that sort of leverage. The claws start too low on the back, and have to cross over the entire body. Now, if they were designed for a stabbing/boxing motion (like a rainbow shrimp) or a crushing/grappling motion (like a praying mantis) I could see that. But they look like their torso would prevent them from getting the momentum or leverage needed to punch through anything thicker than skin; and maybe even force-feeding the eggs to the victim.
  9. FWIW, even on "Normal" difficulty, the armored Sebillians in corvettes can regen health at a ridiculous rate. On a single turn, I had one live through two direct impacts with Alenium Rockets, 4-5 impacts from the LMG, 1 hit with a sniper rifle, plus an incendiary grenade I picked up in a mod at some point. Then he stood up, ran through the flames, and killed my sniper with a plasma blast before ducking behind cover. I thought my game was bugged, and reloaded at least six times before he would die.
  10. While it's true that the graphics on Xenonauts are not as... we'll say "shiny" as in Firaxis' X-Com, I do appreciate the low demand that Xenonauts places on my system. I'm always lagging behind on the latest and greatest computer tech, and nothing spoils an impressive 3D environment like watching it skip like a CD player during a jog. The isometric graphics and gameplay seems to have given the team time to focus on gameplay mechanics, and even include systems and mechanics that would've been impractical or impossible in a 3D environment without placing a significant burden on the computer ("That was a sweet trick-shot you did through my head to kill that Floater, guy!" ~ X-Com Soldiers). In all, the only complaint I've had with the graphics in Xenonauts are the fact that I cannot rotate the tactical map. I understand not having arbitrary rotation, but I see no reason why 90-degree rotations should not be included. I understand that walls will turn transparent when I position a soldier behind them, and that there's a button to only display tiles from the level I'm looking at, but this doesn't fully address the tactical problem I'm looking at: I can't see everything I'm doing, because the battlefield obscures tiles from my vision that are clearly in view of the soldiers I'm commanding. This unfortunately leaves me having to click around where I think passable tiles may be in order to find the exact tile I want to place my unit; which, more often than not, is on the far side of an object that has no transparency (i.e. vehicles) but still behind cover in case they begin taking fire. Since there already seems to be sprites drawn for nearly every 90-degree angle, this is the only thing that I can genuinely say feels "rushed" in Xenonauts.
  11. Awesome, thanks. Apparently, I need to do a better job of reading the prompts that come up.
  12. I'm just curious how maps are chosen for UFO crashes/landings/etc. Is it something that's done before my troops land, and is fairly predictable, or is it randomly assigned based on the general region you're assaulting? Basically, I'm just wondering if there's a way to predict what type of map I should expect by looking at the Geoscape, so I know which of weapons may be underutilized in the tactical map.
  13. Now, does the ballistic carbine just use the stock M16 graphic? I only ask because I don't aesthetically enjoy the AK-47's wood next to the rest of the weapons' polymer. The AK just stands out too much to me.
  14. Orphan

    -

    FWIW, I've also been looking for an answer to this question for several days. There are a couple of mods I've wanted to try, but I'd much prefer to leave game files intact and use a mods folder to actually mucking about in the game files. I'm partial to the Civ IV model that reads the XML from the game files, then reads the XML from the loaded mods and just overwrites any conflicts with the mod's data. As much as I like Steam, I'm also not a fan of Steam's Workshop. I'd honestly rather just not use mods than use the workshop, and I'd rather not use mods than mess with the game's main files.
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