is xcom that good?

[Kaymish]

i not so sure but i have had plenty of fun with it even had a few operations that have turned into fucks ups and when the lady says if only there was something we overlooked i say no it was just a fuck up col vixen gave her life in vain and ive had operations where only one or 2 troops make it out alive or the whole squad gets wiped out by the survivors of a UFO crash

it is also the most buggy game i have ever played and these are not just annoying bugs like a BoS paladin stealing your plasma rifle these are bugs that freeze up the game or crash it outright and ive got plenty of power it auto sets the graphics to high

but any it is a really good game even if i confused it with the X-com game i actually wanted im not regretting getting it

 

[Hazy]

It's part base-building/research/management and another part turn-based combat.

Every unit can move two times, either a short distance movement, an attack, a special (such as overwatch, which fires upon an enemy that enters your radius -- almost like a Stationary "patrol" from StarCraft,) or they can expend both of their moves and traverse a much larger area.

It streamlined a lot of components of the original XCOM without necessarily dumbing it down (provided you're not on a low-tier difficulty, of course).

Theres a demo on steam. Im downloading it now so I can decide whether to buy it or not.

The demo is terrible. Try it out to get a grasp of the mechanics, but don't base your decision off of that.

 

[perkl]

too random.

Everything else I get, but how is it too random?

I think it's so praised mainly because beggars can't be choosers. There's no choice to XCOM unless you're into consoles which apparently have some options.

I'm sure XCOM is a great game but I can't unplay all the old games I grew up with. Take the tactical fights. It's been done in practically the same way back in 1985 classic Six-gun Shootout. You get behind cover and can stand, kneel or go prone. Depending on where you're getting shot at (characters had hit locations), cover might or might not be in the way. Depending on weapon and cover the shot might or might not penetrate and hit. People had up to three different weapons, ranging from tomahawks to derringers to breechloading rifles, all with different characteristics. Everyone also had different skills in using the things: a guy who was great with pistols could be worthless with rifles. Someone would always carry dynamite, which was used to blast away cover. You'd move or pick a target and weapon to shoot with, or do one of maybe three special actions. The computer would handle the rest.

Now almost 30 years later the best TBS is a game with cover system simpler than what it was back in the day. Taking actions is practically the same. Scenario variety is better in some regards, worse in others. Individual superpowers weren't a thing back in 1985, but have been done way before XCOM. Anyone remember Lords of Chaos or WH40k: Chaos Gate? The lack of innovation is dazzling. XCOM is a very polished, relatively simple game that does nothing new. I guess it's good that people are interested in the genre once again, so it's not all bad.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Awesome the whole alien motif never really struck me but the level of detail does have my interest piqued. I think Ill give it a go next paycheck/job I get. lol

Thanks all of you who did a good job of explaining what the big deal is.

 

[exessmirror]

im enjoying it although i do miss some of the depth of the original.

one thing it managed to keep from the original is the atatchment to your troops. if i loose a trooper i morne him but i dont reload the save. its a rare game where screwing up can be just as good as winning

to be honest that is one of the things they did better, they gave them more of a face.

 

[Product Placement]

One thing that I found great about the original is that when aliens invade your base. Based on how you designed it, the battlemap took the shape of your base. Experienced players took that into consideration and made a defensible layout.

Of course, the original game forced you to build multiple bases, in order to get a good radar/interceptor coverage around the globe. Making sure that every base had enough armaments/fuel for the interceptors, soldiers to defend against possible alien attack and weapons to arm said soldiers was daunting at times. Most people focused on maintaining a single primary base and cheap secondary bases that were essentially nothing more than a radar and hangar. With this in mind, I think it was a right move to let you have only maintain a single base, launch satellites to spread your cover and have it so that you can stage interceptors in different continents. It seems to mirror the tactic most players would have gravitated towards, anyways.

 

[Okulossos]

I personally see a major problem in their choice of engine.

It is the main reason for the inside alien ship problems as well as almost all the other bugs.

What I find most disheartening about it is that the choice of engine limits what they can do with this game in the future. I would like to see them making a map editor and release that in a following expansion or something similar. That way they could draw use of the community who could ad maps to the mission pools. However I do see that being difficult to pull off with the unreal 3 engine.

I don't think that the engine has much to do with that, since the engine itself is just there to render what you see and not really for the gameplay or design - and even if, you can configure the engine quite well (I actually played around a bit with the UDK and it is extremely easy to configure stuff without any prior knowledge). I am expecting at least that much from a AAA title. It is just poor programming and design and there is no real excuse for that. In the last mission the game even crashed on me after an extremely long loading screen in the mission before that.
The game is broken beyond believe and seeing that the quality assurance team make up over 2/3 of the complete staff that is just sad. They should be fired to make some space for programmers and designers, since they obviously don't know how to do their job.

This is extremely sad, because I love the rest of the game so much, that I am willing to overlook flaws that would otherwise keep me from playing the game. The thing is, I know the flaws are there because the game was rushed and because the programmers had to take a lot of shortcuts. When not looking at the ending of the story-mode (which is as generic as it gets) this could just have been the one game this year that just had it all for me. But as it stands it is a really good game overshadowed by poor implementation and execution. Even though it will still be a lot better that the other XCOM coming soon, I am going back to UFO: Enemy Unknown...

 

[SomebodyNowhere]

I really want to play this game, but I just don't have the money for another game at the moment especially when I still have games from the steam summer sale that I have not unpacked yet.

I'll probably pick this up at some point down the line off steam and play it and regret not doing so sooner, but that's an issue I'll let future me deal with.

 

[Okulossos]

While you are partially right the UDK still needs a lot of tweaking in order make it this. The UDK will affect the gameplay. You know the rag dolls that flies across the screen. I am going to go out on a limb here that making the rag dolls interact properly with a grid system is a bit of a challenge. Its the grid that is the main problem here. Lvl design becomes a much bigger issue as well with this grid.

Yes, the UDK contains gameplay mechanics and a lot of physics - but the UDK is for one not the unreal engine, it just helps for some sort of games. A game of AAA Status will need some kind of framework, but it can be expected to go far beyond the UDK, so I highly doubt that they actually used it.
The Grid might be a problem, but there are easy ways out of this. For one you have some kind of physics, but they are not very deep, so once something is dead there is no more ragdolling (that is what they did). Then you could make the Grid switchable. That is not hard to accomplish and it won't effect gameplay if only used for certain animations. I figured that they used it on some places. This would help with the physics.
But the physics are not the problem here. They work correctly. It is flaws like the ceiling in the larger UFOs which could simply have been removed completely. ... or the erroneous recognition of the proper level, which could have been fixed by doing it just like they did it in the original: simply force-bind the possible grid to the level which was chosen and the problem would have been solved.
Then there are some flaws like when using mindfray, that you character looses will instead of the enemy, or like the sometimes broken aiming mechanics which don't resolve properly due to too many variables, or problems with the direction someone is standing when firing a weapon which is actually going into the opposite direction. There are flaws that should have shown up in betatesting and that would have just needed some more polish and time to get rid of.

All of those are not big flaws going back to big problems with the engine or the grid. This is all going back to problematic design and an unpolished game. Most of those could probably be fixes by changing or adding a few lines of code here and there. That is nothing major.
If one of my software projects would be released like that I could pack my bags and leave, but I have a whole lot more time to fix my stuff. No, the main problem here is not a technical one. It is not like they couldn't have done it any better, or that some framework is too complex to function properly. The flaws in this game go back to a flawed time-management and a flawed resource-planning, both of which lead us directly to the publisher who is directly responsible for breaking this game and making me sad!

 

[Okulossos]

I may not have been precise enough. It is not the engine in it self, but the choice of engine for the project.

The engine does not care what it displays.

The ragdolls are a buggy problem. If you continuously reload the game the a downed soldier will jump slowly across the floor due the the ragdolls being in effect. With enough reloads you can slide the soldier across the map. To go physics are not the problem is quite simply not true. The destructible environment and the grid is making for tons of bug where you can take cover inside objects. The engine is a problem here.

I have not encountered any of those problems. Those are, in fact partially engine-based flaws which can be resolved by a good code, but that takes a lot of testing and time which the team did not have.

Now you are right it. ALOT of the problems comes down to downright ineptitude of the development team. I am just saying that the choice of the UDK engine is not the best for this particular game. It is not meant to be on a grid with destructible environment

the UDK is NOT the engine, it is the "unreal development kit" it contains the engine plus framework and configuration (and a great documentation) to modify into you own game. This game did - to my knowledge - not use that framework, it used the engine and build on top of that. So no, the engine has nothing to do with the flaws I mentioned. An engine, in it's basic function, is just there to display stuff. It's for rendering the frames. This does affect the gameplay a lot, since things like sleeptime in and of themselves dictate the speed of the game which in turn dictates possible movement etc... But the engine does not care much how the game is build up and how the frames are to be displayed.

 

[Xeorm]

I may not have been precise enough. It is not the engine in it self, but the choice of engine for the project.

The engine does not care what it displays.

The ragdolls are a buggy problem. If you continuously reload the game the a downed soldier will jump slowly across the floor due the the ragdolls being in effect. With enough reloads you can slide the soldier across the map. To go physics are not the problem is quite simply not true. The destructible environment and the grid is making for tons of bug where you can take cover inside objects. The engine is a problem here.

I have not encountered any of those problems. Those are, in fact partially engine-based flaws which can be resolved by a good code, but that takes a lot of testing and time which the team did not have.

Now you are right it. ALOT of the problems comes down to downright ineptitude of the development team. I am just saying that the choice of the UDK engine is not the best for this particular game. It is not meant to be on a grid with destructible environment

the UDK is NOT the engine, it is the "unreal development kit" it contains the engine plus framework and configuration (and a great documentation) to modify into you own game. This game did - to my knowledge - not use that framework, it used the engine and build on top of that. So no, the engine has nothing to do with the flaws I mentioned. An engine, in it's basic function, is just there to display stuff. It's for rendering the frames. This does affect the gameplay a lot, since things like sleeptime in and of themselves dictate the speed of the game which in turn dictates possible movement etc... But the engine does not care much how the game is build up and how the frames are to be displayed.

You'd be surprised what limitations the choice of engine can have on what one can do. For example, the choice of the unreal engine limits procedural generation of maps. These things aren't always as easy as they seem, though I do think also that they should have limited where the cursor went to cooperate with some areas.

 

[Okulossos]

You are making to big a disconnect here.

That you have not encountered any of those problems doesn't mean they dont exist.

I didn't say that, read my posting again.

Going "good code will fix it" is just besides the point. The engine will have a direct impact on the amount of work it takes to make it work and what you can do with it. I am sorry, but that you have fiddled with the engine doesn't give you insight into how much time that is. How are you able to say this is a time management problem when you dont know how much time is needed to make this work?

Because it is more than obvious. read my posting above again. Many bugs result from a lack of polish. Why do you think a 2GB patch was released just a couple of days after the game was in stores? because they didn't even have time to implement that anymore. the game was rushed and it shows... a lot.
As for the engine. i don't know how exactly much time it takes, but I have done my fair share of programming and designing and I know how code and programs end up looking if you rush them. And often (not always, but often) it is just a matter of looking at the code again and changing small things the get rid of a lot of bugs that just crept in due to taking shortcuts.

I know from my friend that the Hero Engine was the cause of about 90% of the technical problems SWTOR had at launch. Everything from slope to collision detection. We are talking over half a year in now and there are still issue they were unable to solve.

Yes, collision detection and the likes are in fact part of the engine, but look again at the bugs I am ranting and whining about. those have nothing to do with the engine. the ones You mentioned partially have to do with that and i never said anything else .

While I am sure that you are right in time management being an issue, all I am saying is that it isn't the only issue. The UDK was not the best choice for this.

The UDK had nothing to do with it, but if it did, it would not have been the right choice, because the framework used in the UDK is meant for other games. Thus they only took the engine and not the framework or the API. Those are completely different packages with completely different possibilities.

You'd be surprised what limitations the choice of engine can have on what one can do. For example, the choice of the unreal engine limits procedural generation of maps. These things aren't always as easy as they seem, though I do think also that they should have limited where the cursor went to cooperate with some areas.

No, I would not be surprised, but again read above: it kind of bugs I encountered have got nothing to do with any limitations of the engine.

How come I always feel like people in this forum read postings halfway and simply answer to that? I have explained it all in great detail above, so once again with feeling:

- UDK != Unreal engine; UDK == Unreal development Kit, its the complete framework not just the engine.
- No, the engine is not responsible for the gametype, it makes not difference between what it displays.
- Yes, the engine affects gameplay in some areas such as slowdowns, hit detection and physics (if the physics engine is implemented and not exchangeable)
- No, the engine is not the problem XCOM is facing. It may be part of some problems, but I can't confirm them as I have not experienced them. The problems I have encountered show very clearly that the main problem was time which lead to poor implementation and which has got nothing to do with the engine itself.

 

[Okulossos]

-snip-

Listen I think you are missing what people are saying here. There are a large amount of problems that are a direct result of how the engine is used. I mention a few. I could list tons others like.

-Invisible objects

-Destroyed objects that doesn't block line of sight, but does block movement.

-Grid tags on to models they are not supposed to tag onto allowing for you to grapple hook yourself to a position impossible to get out of.

-No-clipping enemies

-Models stacking

I could go on. While you will happily admit these are engine problems, you dont seem to agree that these are the bugs I am talking about. This is the disconnect.

Ah, but I did agree, I only said that I did not encounter any of those. That does not mean they don't exist, it just means that I have not seen them. those are issues with the engine, but most of them are not even related to the gameplay.

There is an engine issue here and while yes it could be fixed with more time, you do not know how much. Stop marginalizing it.

I don't know how much, but that does not matter at all, because as long as they are brave enough to release an unfinished project they have to be able to swallow whatever is thrown back at them. I don't care if it would have taken them another year or two (which it wouldn't - putting on the needed polish would have taken no more than perhaps 2 or 3 more month, that i can guarantee!) as long as they don't release a half finished beta riddled with bugs and problems.

Also since you seem to like to point out the UDK isn't the engine, you probably should keep from being the one pulling it into the conversation in the first place. If you insist on trying to make no relational here you should probably not have used it as example of how you have worked with the engine.

i made an example of how I checked out the UDK to see what the engine is capable of. That had nothing to do with XCOM. You are just misunsing the term the whole time and I am correcting you. I am not bringing it back up, you know... Just say Unreal engine And the UDK will be forgotten .

 

[migreeni]

Yes. Xcom is That good. I recommend you buy it and enjoy the feeling of true desperation by having the Earth invaded by aliens. They will show you no mercy.

So what's so great about it exactly?

Everything! ... apart from two game mechanics issues that I took issue with:
- The camera + ceilings == jesus christ
- Squad management: If you want to change your squad composition, you have to strip down your active member before replacing him/her with a soldier from your reserves (and then refit him/her with previously stripped gear)


But because some people like reasons beyond "everything!", I'll just bring out some of the points that I like about this game:

1. The difficulty!

I love a game that's a challenge to beat and you cannot just steamroll through it. I strongly feel that this game is at its best when played on the Iron Man -setting. It teaches you to adapt quickly to new situations and sometimes learn through trial and error. This is not a game that you should expect to beat on the first try. But when you do lose, you are happy for the chance to correct your earlier mistakes by starting over again.

I started with the Classic difficulty on Iron Man and I finished the game on my 4th attempt. My friends (those who have finished) took as many as 10-30 attempts, so do not feel bad if you don't immediately get it.

I have heard some say that your first playthrough should be without the Iron Man setting. I heartily disagree with those people! Iron Man is at its best when you are discovering new things and are given important choices. It makes you take responsibility for your actions, even if you had to make them ill-informed. Just like when you make real-life choices: You cannot predict the future and you will have to live (or die) with your choices. This is perhaps the greatest thing this game teaches you. Goddamn, I love you Firaxis!

2. The feeling.

The grim, desperate struggle to survive in a world that's suddenly gone all wrong and you don't know why. Our Earth is being invaded and you lead a small unit of soldiers, scientists and engineers who attempt to stem the tide of ever growing terror.

I loved the feeling this game manages to convey to the player. This feeling of excitement and desperation is heightened when playing with a high enough difficulty (I recommend Classic) and the Iron Man setting. Every choice you make will have consequences that you cannot erase, like in so many other games today.

If you like your games easy and less dramatic, use the Easy or Normal settings. I still recommend you always play with Iron Man, because you will get so much more out of this game, even when learning.

I have tried the Impossible setting 15+ times, but I do not recommend it unless you know the game mechanics REALLY well. The impossible setting lives up to its name and REQUIRES you to have luck to succeed. I do not like games where luck is the deciding factor and this is why I did not like the Impossible setting. I do not consider the Classic difficulty to be luck-based at all. If played well, you should almost never be in a situation where you flip a coin to see if someone survives. Having said that, I lost plenty of units because I did plenty of mistakes. But that's okay. In X-COM, you should be ready to lose units as it is part of the game mechanics. The game forgives you some mistakes, as long as you don't do too many of them.

3. The layers of strategy and tactics (2 games in one)!

In X-COM, what you do in missions will affect your strategic game and vice versa. You actually have to make tactical decisions based on your global strategic situation. When you make the tactical choice to destroy a UFO power core, alien weapon or alien body, you will need to adjust your strategical game accordingly. This is done beautifully and it feels very natural and logical when you play the game.

4. The detail

From the different retching animations by virulent civilians to the way human bodies twitch and tremble when being "fed" alien eggs, this game is designed to create a cinematic experience of the alien invasion, that gives credit to movies like Aliens and War of the Worlds and other great titles. The atmosphere was so well done in the original UFO game that I'm amazed Firaxis managed to create something so similar in this modern day gaming environment. The god is in the details and the designers really understood this.

I also really enjoyed the way this game stayed true to the original game in countless details, yet still managed to be its own game and not a copy. Brilliantly done guys!

----

Overall score: 9/10 (The game mechanics issues I mentioned earlier lowered the score from 10)

Great game, loved it, recommend it.