XCOM by Firaxis

measles

DOSbox didn't work for my version; Xcom:UFO Defense GOLD Edition.

I've just had it floating around in my email account for years now, lol

Align

some unsourced worries:
<!--QuoteBegin-"RPS comment"+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ("RPS comment")</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->- No more Time Units, replaced by “move+attack”.
- no inventory management
- you start with just four soldiers and you need new tech to transport more of them.
- no ammo/unlimited ammo gimmick.
- one single base
- [not confirmed] given the base sideview and the lack of top down layout, most likely not chance to have your base invaded by aliens.
- [rumor] no manual kneeling<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Some of them seem like you could tell from the screenshots, but others make me wonder if the guy knows more than us.
I liked the controllable real-time mechanic in the UFO AfterX series, but it makes for a very different atmosphere and gameplay experience. I'd rather this one game stick close to the original, even if it feels outdated. Ditto for small squadsizes.
If it's all true, well, DUMBED DOWN CONSOLE GARBAGE

Align

Well, by now all my worries have been alleviated by interviews (gameinformer has had a bunch, check their xcom tag if you want to be relieved)...

Except one. Why 4 dudes instead of 14?

lolfighter

Four dudes per mission or what? In that case, expect WAY less casualties. Hardcore fans will scream for blood.

Retales

<!--quoteo(post=1897530:date=Jan 27 2012, 01:41 AM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Jan 27 2012, 01:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897530"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Four dudes per mission or what? In that case, expect WAY less casualties. Hardcore fans will scream for blood.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ohhh boy. Wanna bet that when your guy gets shot, he gets "incapacitated" or goes unconscious. If you finish the mission successfully, your wounded guys will spend some time in hospital. UFO: Extraterrestrials did that, your guys were invincible, but they could get hospitalized for months. You also couldn't hire/sack soldiers. But I digress.

I'm really pessimistic about this, but really. If there really are only four soldiers per mission, I do feel they're not going to die just like that.

Align

They've confirmed repeatedly that there is permadeath, so I'm more worried about my own resistance to the urge to savescum when one of the 4 ultra-valuable guys die.

Svenpa

<!--quoteo(post=1897644:date=Jan 27 2012, 02:29 PM:name=Align)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Align @ Jan 27 2012, 02:29 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897644"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->They've confirmed repeatedly that there is permadeath, so I'm more worried about my own resistance to the urge to savescum when one of the 4 ultra-valuable guys die.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Unconfirmed sources say that number can be upgraded and it's possibly only for the tutorial levels you are limited to 4 people.

SentrySteve

I never played any XCom game before. What's the first one and does it work on Windows 7? If not, what's another good one?

Svenpa

<!--quoteo(post=1897662:date=Jan 27 2012, 03:49 PM:name=SentrySteve)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SentrySteve @ Jan 27 2012, 03:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897662"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I never played any XCom game before. What's the first one and does it work on Windows 7? If not, what's another good one?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<a href="http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_4_4__12&term=xcom" target="_blank">http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=...2&term=xcom</a>
All these work on win7 through steam.

I haven't personally played x-com but I've seen my share of streams of it. I believe UFO Defense is the way to go, at least to start with.

SentrySteve

Turns out X-Com UFO Defense is pretty hard.

Svenpa

<!--quoteo(post=1897793:date=Jan 28 2012, 02:29 AM:name=SentrySteve)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SentrySteve @ Jan 28 2012, 02:29 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897793"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Turns out X-Com UFO Defense is pretty hard.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Then you don't want to hear this: X-com has a bug that resets the difficulty to the easiest (Beginner I believe) if you reload a savegame. A quick google suggests the STEAM release actually still has it as well.

More info and utility to fix said problem: <a href="http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=242026670" target="_blank">http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=242026670</a>

lolfighter

It's the kind of game that you're supposed to lose repeatedly until you get the hang of it.

Temphage

To be fair, the original game had some really silly mechanics behind it that made it more frustrating than anything. Reflex shots probably being the most irritating.

Though I liked when you'd recruit soldiers, and half of them were a bunch of basic training asthmatic rejects so you'd have to immediately fire them and spend money getting more, praying they were wastes of flesh. I mean, seriously, there's got to be a recruitment system in place to bring a select few in to the X-Com program, you'd think the people recruiting would - I don't know - understand that a cross-eyed anemic ###### who can barely run and carry his own rifle without passing out <i>probably</i> isn't the kind of person you need...

lolfighter

Desperate times call for masses of cannon fodder.

Temphage

<!--quoteo(post=1898026:date=Jan 29 2012, 11:32 AM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Jan 29 2012, 11:32 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1898026"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Desperate times call for masses of cannon fodder.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You'd think it'd also call for money but no, the nations of the world are happy to go down in flames having spent barely enough to pay the mortgage on a house in Malibu.

lolfighter

Which, in light of recent times, is almost hilariously topical.

Align

Game Informer seems to be done with their exclusive month or whatsit, and most recently gave us this:
<a href="http://www.gameinformer.com/p/xcom-interactive-ant-farm.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.gameinformer.com/p/xcom-interactive-ant-farm.aspx</a>
which lets you see some details of the base facilities.
One in particular caught my eye, the lower rightmost one:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Thermal Power Station

As you build your base and dig further into the Earth's crust, you'll come across pockets of steam. This steam can be harvested and used to power your base.[...]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Those are some interesting implications, yeah?
Ditto the lower leftmost:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Workshop

As Laboratories do for Science Labs, Workshops boost the efficiency of your Engineering department. For every Workshop you build you will receive a random resource rebate on whatever you built. Recollecting resources like this will be very critical late in the game as resources become scarce. Your value of return builds as you construct workshops that are close together, so the layout of your HQ will actually have an effect on gameplay.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Svenpa

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As you build your base and dig further into the Earth's crust, you'll come across pockets of steam. This steam can be harvested and used to power your base.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

The xcom delved too greedily and too deep...

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/98384/Morgoth's_Balrog.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />

Align

<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kX9r0S77Vh0"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kX9r0S77Vh0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>
Nothing strictly new, except maybe a brief glimpse of the base construction interface. Still worried about max 4 dudes, upgrades or no.

Chris0132

I really like the camera angles they're showing, it looks like it really helps you see the layout of the environment, and makes the game look much cooler.

Only 4 people really doesn't bother me at all, I played ufo afterlight and it works absolutely fine with a small squad. I honestly prefer working with a small team and not ending up losing half a dozen people every mission, it's just pointless busy work honestly, you have to go and re-equip them and re-hire new ones and pick the ones with the good stats, you could really simplify that and just make it harder to die, but also harder to heal and get replacements, as well as making it harder to produce equipment, that's what afterlight does. You only get a handful of people, and if one dies you're kinda stuffed, it takes longer to build things in smaller numbers but ultimately you're still trying your damndest to keep them alive and use what stuff you can get.

lolfighter

<!--quoteo(post=1910844:date=Mar 7 2012, 05:33 AM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Mar 7 2012, 05:33 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1910844"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You only get a handful of people, and if one dies you're kinda stuffed<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think that's what people don't want - old fans of the genre prefer that their troops are replaceable so they don't have to savescum quite as much.

Align

Plus it changes the tone from "squad of superheroic soldier with cool guns and ships save the world" to "squads of soldiers fight a desperate battle against an alien threat, taking horrific losses in the process"

lolfighter

There's also that, yeah. Fans of the old XCom games always place a lot of emphasis on the desperate struggle, and while I haven't played the games I think a lot of that does not merely come from the difficulty, but also from the vulnerability of your troops and the more-often-than-not pyrrhic victories.

Chris0132

<!--quoteo(post=1910872:date=Mar 7 2012, 07:17 AM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Mar 7 2012, 07:17 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1910872"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think that's what people don't want - old fans of the genre prefer that their troops are replaceable so they don't have to savescum quite as much.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Well, not really, because like I said, you just change the scale.

Instead of losing 10 guys, your guys lose 10 hitpoints, losing two guys might be pretty catastrophic, but it would be as difficult as losing a catastrophic number of recruits in the previous game.

I don't really see the significance of losing large numbers of guys either, if you lose half a dozen guys a mission, it just makes the losses meaningless, and it's not as if a hundred or so deaths is really significant even if they were meaningful, there's billions of people on the planet, you could kill half of them and it'd still be a win when the alternative is all of them dying.

If each soldier represents a time investment on my part, I might actually care about keeping them alive.

lolfighter

Players tend to identify with their soldiers. They'll even act out classic patterns from real warfare. When the new rookie shows up, nobody wants to form an emotional attachment to him because he'll probably just get killed by a sectoid on his first mission. But if he has survived a mission or two, suddenly he's part of the crew. That makes it poignant when he dies on the third mission. You can't form a similar attachment to hitpoints.

When you reduce the scale, you also diminish XCom's role. In XCom, the scale was global, the stakes were high, and the struggle was desperate as signified by the constant casualties. Even if there are billions of humans on the planet, only a small number of them actually have the training and equipment to fight the alien invaders, and even fewer of those are available to you.

But we're arguing personal preference, and veterans of the game have mostly made theirs clear. They don't want this.

Svenpa

They should do something like Rainbow 6 did if they insist on few on the field. That is having a finite amount of "real soldiers with history/portrait" who are unlocked as you progress but eventually you'll want to save them or have killed off some/most of them and become forced to use lowly reserve units who are generally inferior but nearly unlimited in supply. This way you can mix reserves with real soldiers and have the former take most of the risks such as first encounter and recon. Thus getting a steady loss of troops in your struggles but not as often those you find valuable, if you are lucky.

Oh and they should totally have nationalities. I always put the single Swedish dude as leader in R6 to get a more local feel.

SentrySteve

Word, the Rainbow Six way would be awesome. I dunno how the new ones are but the first R6 and Rogue Spear had a list of people and if they died they were dead.

I replayed missions to keep some of them alive.

Align

That last is kind of what we don't want though. The UFO AfterX series had individuals and cannon fodder, but the individuals were too precious to waste, and losing one of them too heavy a blow. In XCOM a commander going down is a blow but you could manage it.

Svenpa

<!--quoteo(post=1911614:date=Mar 9 2012, 06:57 PM:name=Align)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Align @ Mar 9 2012, 06:57 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1911614"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That last is kind of what we don't want though. The UFO AfterX series had individuals and cannon fodder, but the individuals were too precious to waste, and losing one of them too heavy a blow. In XCOM a commander going down is a blow but you could manage it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Sounds like something that could be tweaked between reserves and real soldiers so the latter isn't too much better than the former. Perhaps reserves are randomly assigned, or earns, a few powers/feats/stuff a real soldier would have but cannot have several of them or get toned down versions instead.

Align

<a href="http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/09/14/xcom-enemy-unknown-preview" target="_blank">http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/09/14/xcom-...unknown-preview</a>
Seems everyone who's played it is overall positive. Comes out October 11th on Steam, so a month more of this hype train to build...