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Thoughts & Lessons from X-COM: Enemy Unknown (by Firaxis)


Chris

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The post was a little hard to understand, what referred to which game. Just to be clear on the terms, the classic game is X-COM or UFO or UD, the new game is XCOM or EU. I think UD and EU are the terms most players have come to use.

Just a remark: for many old school European players Enemy Unknown equals the real thing (and UD doesn't mean anything).

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Wading into this topic late as I've only just picked up a copy. Sunk 25+ hours into it now, had multiple restarts on a Normal Ironman game with all the second wave stuff on.

My general synopsis:

1) As an UFO/Xcom game it's not very good.

Part of the entire charm was the infrastructure side, X-COM slimmed it down too much. The base building is rubbish (it's pretty though) and most of the economy stuff is rubbish.

There's also far too many barriers to progress and you can't sell any of your spare kit, even at a loss.

The rest of the stuff like full free aim, randomly generated maps and other small bits that are missing are only minor gripes.

2) As a tactical shooter game with added managment in its own right it's quite good.

It's addictive, generally fun, rather slick and the added variation of bomb and escort missions are interesting. Although I'm only rating it as quite good thanks to some big flaws.

The biggest for me is on the battlescape, repetitive maps can be ignored, but they way the enemies are spawned but only activate on sight rather than free roaming the map is terrible as it very frequently leads you to accidently spawning multiple groups and snookering yourself. It also feels extremely artificial for every enemy barring the Outsiders, which have a logical reason for "spawning" when you reach the UFO interior.

Aside from that, it's not a bad game at all and I'd certainly recommend playing it. I'll also give points for the UI and the cover system, I really like the new cover system.

Now, on to other matters: The action system that replaced the TU system.

It's bad. Not completely bad as I expected, but bad due to a flaw in the logic in how it's been implemented.

Basically you only have the following actions:

1) Move and move (dash).

2) Move and shoot/action.

3) Shoot/action.

Barring the Heavy with a specific ability that lets it (which is illogical anyway for the "heavy tank/dps" unit) or the assault class, none of the two classes (+ rookies) can do either shoot-shoot or shoot-move.

This is very bad. It's far too harsh a limit on your actions which when combined with the spawning issue, forces you to turtle your way around the missions using overwatch to be in with a slim chance on doing well on anything above normal.

If the game allowed you to do shoot-shoot and shoot-move as a general theme, with the limits being on the weapons (like the sniper rifle, or the heavy's rocket launcher) or on certain actions, I think the action system would actually be pretty good and would work rather well, being just restrictive enough to force choices but open enough to leave a lot of varied play styles.

Edited by Buzzles
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I found it too easy. Even on my first game on Classic Ironman it only took me 2 days. Only lost 9 people too. The rest were faster and with lower casualties. I never even found out what Sectopods did till the 8th time I saw them.

Its fun, but probably too steamlined, and I really did miss levelling the map and/or using hordes of troops to section and cut apart the aliens. Even having 8 troops would have gone a long way towards helping diffuse that feeling.

It comes across as a game that was heavily playtested a utter crapton. Juuust the right amount of aliens, just the right research speed. Everything was so neatly done. Each alien type appears at a set time, at what should be the right time for you to be able to deal with them (I held off researching Outsiders long enough that I started seeing mutons and heavy floaters, or waited till I fought Elites till I did the base).

Its good, but its too, I dunno, neat. Everything tidied up, no chaos. I missed seeing Mutons as the first alien type, or fighting Lobstermen with gauss rifles.

Havn't had that with Xeno yet. Fighting Androns with ballistics was the most fun I've had for a while.

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I found the combat maps to be over-designed. As a result of there being far too few soldiers in the field, you couldn't have too much randomness in terms of how much cover was available. They had some interesting ideas in terms of mobile weapons platforms that could be used as cover, but there was never a real need for them (also they are a pretty big waste of a ship slot).

There were just so few maps, and you always started in the same places in every map, that it became hard to want to replay it.

The way ballistics were modeled was a disappointment. Shots fired in X-com each traced their own path, and the "cover system" just naturally flowed from the fact that a bullet might hit something else first. EU didn't even really model bullet paths, and shooting through walls really killed immersion.

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While waiting for a big official content update /DLC / patch for XCOM: EU I started a Superhuman XCOM: UFO DEFENSE + latest UFO Extender v1.30 and XCOMUtil v9.7. In most cases the aliens slaughtered my 10-14 soldiers sent to investigate crashed UFO-s.

Also they quickly arranged a visit to my only base converting it to a slaughterhouse. I tried to defend 3 times and not one of my soldiers survived. Earth was lost..

Lot of enhanced features were added to the latest UFO DEFENSE (I guess you can call it super-XCOM-MOD), XCOM:EU-like shortcuts are configurable making the gameplay-speed fast. Compared to XCOM:EU the tactical freedom (real-world bullet-tracing for example so you can shoot friendlies accidentally) and the fact soldiers are capable of carrying a lot of gear is clearly apparent.

30 soldiers dying on my base one after the other by the hands of ruthless sectoids and Cyberdisks reminded me of XCOM:EU ironman mode and how Lt. Gorman in ALIENS must have felt.

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>>XCOM: UFO DEFENSE + latest UFO Extender v1.30 and XCOMUtil v9.7

May be would play this too. I'm not sure what expansions i had but...

My tactics to survive a base attack if i dont reload save-games is to have some tanks. To have at least two tanks just to defend the base + a lot of extra soldiers.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Barring the Heavy with a specific ability that lets it (which is illogical anyway for the "heavy tank/dps" unit) or the assault class, none of the two classes (+ rookies) can do either shoot-shoot or shoot-move.

This is incorrect. There's a specific sniper build that can Shoot-move-shoot-move. Snap-shot+In the Zone allows this. Under the right conditions both shoots can be multiple.

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This is incorrect. There's a specific sniper build that can Shoot-move-shoot-move. Snap-shot+In the Zone allows this. Under the right conditions both shoots can be multiple.

You are talking a very high ranking soldier and/or a very specific condition. I think the original post was intended to be more of a general state of things.

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You are talking a very high ranking soldier and/or a very specific condition. I think the original post was intended to be more of a general state of things.

Once while assaulting the largest ufo in the game I entered the central room of the ship, and I was stormed by berserkers and other soldiers. Using a sniper with squad sight + in the zone, and with the help of the squad to hurt some aliens, I was able to shoot and kill 5 or 7 berserkers/mutons in a single turn!

But my soldiers were all very high ranking officers; moreover it happened only once. Normally the outcome of the fight would have been very different...

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Once while assaulting the largest ufo in the game I entered the central room of the ship, and I was stormed by berserkers and other soldiers. Using a sniper with squad sight + in the zone, and with the help of the squad to hurt some aliens, I was able to shoot and kill 5 or 7 berserkers/mutons in a single turn!

But my soldiers were all very high ranking officers; moreover it happened only once. Normally the outcome of the fight would have been very different...

Yeah, and you shouldn't have put your soldiers in that position! Bad commander! Bad!

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  • 1 year later...

Hmm.. The new XCOM

I was so happy while playing the tutorial mission.

The presentation there is amazing. The way it pulls you into this dark scenario is fantastic. But after a little while there comes a vey rude awakening. The other missions are (ofc) nothing like the heavily scripted tutorial (which is good for the most part but they also don't deliver the same quality of immersion)

The game (imho) is so dumbed down it hurts. Cover only does anything if you kneel directly behind it. In any other circumstance bullets will go through nearly anything without impeding on aim.

Then as Chris already said that alien free move is aggrivating and a cheap fix for a really bad AI.

And in tactical combat the solution to pretty much every single "problematic" (the game is way to easy .. with the exception of the "Thin Men" showing up, maybe the sectoid commander when he first appears if you get unlucky) situation is a Sniper with Squad sight.

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@Tactical Dragon: I disagree. Imho Firaxis failed to adress the major problems the game had, but tried to blind people by adding "cool stuff" that does nothing for the game or tries to patch over existing problems.

The power creep through medals, mech-units and bio-enhancement makes the already inverse difficulty curve even more of a problem. Lategame Enemy withhin is (no matter what 2nd wave option you choose) insanely easy).

While the first 2 or 3 exalt missions are funny they quickly become grind and propose no difficulty what so ever.

The base attack mission is nearly completely scripted throws non-existing rookies at you for whatever reason and does not at all consider your base layout.

AI still horrible, cover functionality still not fixed, Free Alien move still exists, ...

in short... Enemy within is like the main game a lot of bling but hardly any substance.

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@Tactical Dragon: I disagree. Imho Firaxis failed to adress the major problems the game had, but tried to blind people by adding "cool stuff" that does nothing for the game or tries to patch over existing problems.

The power creep through medals, mech-units and bio-enhancement makes the already inverse difficulty curve even more of a problem. Lategame Enemy withhin is (no matter what 2nd wave option you choose) insanely easy).

While the first 2 or 3 exalt missions are funny they quickly become grind and propose no difficulty what so ever.

The base attack mission is nearly completely scripted throws non-existing rookies at you for whatever reason and does not at all consider your base layout.

AI still horrible, cover functionality still not fixed, Free Alien move still exists, ...

in short... Enemy within is like the main game a lot of bling but hardly any substance.

I completely agree but even with all that stuff Xcom: Enemy Within is a profitable game that people enjoy.

Yes I know, You and I probably were players that enjoy more deep strategy games, but XCom: Eney Within looks like strategy game but is not, is an action game. That kind of game you play one time and its enough.

I enjoy story line of this game, even with that linearity is like a action film that you can't deny is really enjoyable.

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I'm with TD on this one. Enemy Within was awesome. BUT you have to voluntarily bypass all the gimmicky OP crap that's available. I never built a mech, never used gene mods, never used ghost armor. Try playing that way on the hardest setting and it's a hell of a challenge

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I'm with TD on this one. Enemy Within was awesome. BUT you have to voluntarily bypass all the gimmicky OP crap that's available. I never built a mech, never used gene mods, never used ghost armor. Try playing that way on the hardest setting and it's a hell of a challenge

Ghost Armor actually is a positive point of this game, is not the best armor for protection but confer cover bonus. The setting of this game is in the future, Mechs and Gen Mods give good taste, personally like Gen Mods.

For mechs they think to introduce a interesting system, when a soldier is dead there is a chance of getting in coma, you only can construct Mechs for this kind of badly injured soldiers. Additional to that this soldiers has a hidden "mental stability" stat, when the battles go on the soldier lose the sense of humanity and slowly becoming crazy.

Interesting I think, even with all that flaws of the game, they have objectives and engaging story (Quiet lot of Cliche IMHO).

Is a good game but I only play it once on classic/ironman, before I ended I stop playing it.

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I enjoyed Enemy Within a lot. It was clearly Firaxis taking the opportunity to move further away from the original X-Com ideas and let their imagination run wild, and they came up with a cool game that mixes up the original game mechanics and takes it in a slightly new direction.

It's a bit unfair to still be comparing it to the original X-Com at that point I think.

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The new mechanics by themselves were enjoyable, but they didn't really fit into a coherent whole... the overlap of class skills, gene mods, and new items got a little messy at times. It would have been nice to see them adjust the original game a bit more rather than just build on top of it.

I've come to really enjoy the tactical layer of XCOM for what it is, just a shame the strategic is built more like a board game than a simulator.

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