XCOM 2

[DisturbedSwan]

Preloaded this yesterday evening on Steam and it unlocked last night but only got round to playing it this evening for 3 hours.

Before I get into some impressions I just want to note how poorly optimised it is, there's hundreds of reports on GAF, Reddit etc. of people with Titan X's and 980 Ti's struggling to run the game. Now, considering this is only slightly better looking than XCOM:EU, and is no Star Citizen in looks, it's a huge surprise that these Monster rigs can't achieve 1080/60 on it with Ultra settings.

I couldn't achieve 1080/60 either on my rig (970, i7) at Ultra, and had to drop it down to the High preset. This still wasn't enough and I had to put the AA on FXAA, DOF to Simple, Medium Shadow Quality, Tile AO, static Decals to get it to the 1080/60 sweetspot, and even then in Cut scenes it drops to 30FPS.

Technical details out the way, the game is bloody impressive so far I must say, I've already had a far better time with it that XCOM:EU and many other Strategy games I've tried to get into in the past.

It felt to me like you were thrown in at the deep end with EU and you were just expected to work out the systems for yourself and the way the game works after the brief tutorial, but this is far FAR better at getting new players introduced to the game.

Won't spoil it, but the opening mission is central and key to setting up the story, it has a really cool Guerilla, backs-against-the-wall, Resistance/terrorist cell angle to it and gets you right into the thick of the action and the story right away.

Just from that first mission you feel under pressure to succeed and in a desperate situation and the game builds off this and expands on this theme from what I've experienced thus far.

Once you've got acclimatised to the mission mechanics the game methodically introduces you to all the bits and pieces you can do at your base by highlighting certain things you should be doing and locking off other things that are best left til latter, it means you're not bamboozled by all the choice on offer as a Newbie and aren't afraid you've made the wrong decision already somewhere down the line.

Its much more cinematic than I thought it would be as well, I've encountered a lot of cinematic cut scenes already and I'm only 3 hours in.

The missions have been great so far, barely out of the tutorial stuff really but the first 'proper' mission I did I managed to successfully set up an ambush on the Aliens using the new Concealment mechanic and Overwatch, it felt fucking awesome.

The next Mission I did pretty well as well, but lost 1 soldier, then came the arse-kicking mission...

Had to escort a VIP to the EVAC point and extract them nbuut right at the start of the mission a Sectoid appeared, mind controlled my most advanced Soldier and I just couldn't really deal with it at all, they proceeded to wipe out the entirety of the rest of my team, reloaded and tried again to no avail so I reloaded back to before the mission begun and it loaded up a different mission.

I was much more wary and careful of this new mission as I'd been owned the previous one. Made good progress on this one though, got the VIP from his cell, escorted him through the level to the evac point, just staying alive by the skin of many teeth. Then I realised I'd left one guy behind, and the evac point was surrounded by Aliens.

Took a huge risk and just moved him along into the open, then on the second move I moved him to the evac point, it moved to the cinematic camera, one of the Aliens shot him using Overwatch which took his health down to 3, then another one too and I thought he was going to die, but the Alien missed and I managed to Evac everybody, when the mission ended it was so fucking satisfying, just absolute elation, and this is just on Easy! Thank fuck I didn't try it on a higher difficulty!

So yeah, extremely positive first 3 hour impressions, hopefully get round to playing some more tomorrow.

[DisturbedSwan]

Played another 2 hours last night, 5 hours total.

Been pottering along nicely, done a few more missions, spent more time than I should've done customising a load of characters and naming them after Games Journo I follow on Twitter and mates in real life it gets surprisingly addictive, must've progressed enough to unlock the countdown clock thing (similar to what they had in XCOM:EU I believe), the 'Avatar Project', no idea what this does, but as soon as it started it put 3 bars of progress onto it, no idea how long I've got before it goes up some more, so we'll just have to see how it goes.

I know I mentioned it in my last post, but this game just has such a desperation to it, you honestly don't want to lose any of your soldiers, and always feel that at any moment in any missions things could go massively tits up and your entire squad gets wiped up, it's just so damn tense and stressful.

One of the most satisfying things is setting up ambushes using concealment and Overwatch, when you manage to pull this off, surround the enemy (without them knowing you're there), put everyone on Overwatch, shoot one (to reveal yourself) and then see the enemy react and all your guys turn one after the other and shoot at them, it's so damn exhilarating and satisfying, you just feel so damn clever its unreal.

It's rare that I play games like this, and I absolutely love that you are free to attempt whatever strategies and manoeuvres you wish to Outflank and defeat the enemy whilst achieving your objective. It just feels like it respects the intelligence of the player and trusts that you'll some how manage to get out of a sticky situation should one arise.

Been a very long time since I played a game that requires much forethought and inspires as much tension and stress as this one, fantastic so far, only problem is I worry about playing it more as I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack whilst doing so .

Encountered quite a nasty bug too, when it was the Aliens 'turn' in the game, one of the Advent soldiers glitched out, everything went in slow motion, then he slid back backwards along the ground and then a 'missed' notification appeared above one of my soldiers' heads luckily enough it wasn't anything too serious, the performance of this game does worry me though.

More on Monday!

Also, the Firaxis weren't kidding when they said they've made this game Mod-friendly! You can pretty much tweak everything in the games .ini files:

http://www.pcgamer.com/how-to-tweak-xcom-2-ini-files-for-fun-and-danger/

XCOM 2 is a lot more mod-friendly than its predecessor, which is great news for people with the time and knowledge required to create their own modifications and content. It’s also highly tweakable, with a huge amount of the game’s values and mechanics open to alteration through its exposed config files. All you need is a simple text editor like Notepad (or preferably, Notepad++), some basic familiarity with the game, and the time and patience to find what you’re looking for. In this article I’ll show you how to implement some basic tweaks to get you started—then, once you’re familiar with how it works, you’ll be able to find and alter the game to your heart’s content.

Don’t forget to backup any files before you modify them! When your tinkering breaks your game, you’ll want to be able to set things back to normal without reinstalling.

Time to get your hands dirty. XCOM 2 .ini files

All the files you’ll need are in the config folder within the game directory (default C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\XCOM 2\XComGame\Config). Out of the files you’ll find within, here’s a quick rundown of the ones you’ll work with most:

DefaultGameData.ini Covers a very wide variety of mechanics, from how big a squad you can take to how fast the aliens grow in power.

DefaultGameCore.ini Another general variety file. Adjust things like how much aim a unit loses when disoriented or how much damage you take while burning.

DefaultGameData_WeaponData.ini Adjust values for all the weapons in the game, both friendly and enemy. Add more ammo to your shotgun, lower the damage on the Viper’s Plasma Rifle, increase the radius of Frag Grenade explosions, and so on.

DefaultGameData_CharacterStats.ini Adjust every stat for every unit in the game. Give ADVENT Troopers more aim, reduce the mobility of Chrysallids, add extra health to Berserkers, whatever you like.

DefaultClassData.ini Covers the four classes and their growth as they gain ranks. You can adjust how much aim and health you gain per promotion, allow soldiers to carry weapons from other classes, adjust who gets what perks, and more.

DefaultGameData_SoldierSkills.ini Adjust variables relating to the game’s perks. You could increase Blademaster’s melee damage bonus, reduce how much a Shieldbearer guards his allies for, or make Lightning Strike grant you its bonus mobility forever, just to name a few ideas.

DefaultNameList.ini A very important file that lets you decide which random names the game creates its recruits with. You can also adjust the chance of new soldiers having hats, props and beards in here.

DefaultMissions.ini Adjust which aliens show up on missions and how many of them should appear. You could add extra enemies to every mission, remove Stun Lancers from the game or make every operation a Chrysallid hunt.

DefaultGameBoard.ini Governs much of the Geoscape/strategy layer of the game. Make the Skyranger fly ten times faster and ensure you never miss a mission.

DefaultAI.ini One of the more complex files to understand, it governs how the AI decides what to do each turn. There’s still a few simple changes you can make in here even if you’re not technically minded, such as setting the ideal engagement range each enemy type will try to fight from or increase how much the AI values High Cover over other alternatives.

Now that you’ve got a general idea of what file covers what, I’m going to show you a handful of example tweaks to demonstrate how simple it is to shape XCOM 2 to your liking, even if you’re not a modder yourself. Another thing to know: modding won’t prevent you from earning achievements, if you care about those.

Basic tweaks

Increase the size of your squad

Here’s something everyone should play with at some point—increasing your squad size can range from the reasonable (adding a couple more soldiers) to the insane (adding a couple dozen more soldiers).

Open DefaultGameData.ini with your text editor and search for MaxSoldiersOnMission. By default, it’s set to 4 (and then you increase it by 2 with upgrades in the campaign). You can emulate the Long War mod’s sizes by changing this value to 6, or go nuts and set it to whatever you like—while XCOM 2’s default UI only supports 8 soldiers at once on the pre-mission equipment screen, the game will still send extra soldiers from your roster onto the operation until it hits the limit you’ve set. Stomping ADVENT with a platoon of 60 XCOM soldiers is something you should try at least once in your life.

Lowering the health of ADVENT Officers

Having trouble taking down ADVENT’s finest? Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Head toDefaultGameData_CharacterStats.ini and search for AdvCaptainM1. The first entry you find is the unit’s default stats—to reduce their health, you’d look for CharacterBaseStats[eStat_HP] and lower the entry’s value. Repeat this process with any of the other stat lines to tweak each unit to your liking.

Be aware that XCOM’s different difficulty settings override the default values we just changed, though. To adjust this, keep searching for AdvCaptainM1 and you’ll discover more entries in four difficulty sections throughout the file—Rookie, Veteran, Commander and Legend, also known as difficulties 0, 1, 2 and 3 respectively. So if you’re playing on Veteran, you’d find the AdvCaptainM1 entry under the Veteran Difficulty section and adjust the overrides there. Alternatively, simply look for the Difficulty stated above each set of entries—ADVENT Officer stats can be found under AdvCaptainM1_Diff_1. Players using Commander difficulty would look for AdvCaptainM1_Diff_2, and so on.

Adjusting the damage of a Magnetic Rifle

Open DefaultGameData_WeaponData.ini and find AssaultRifle_Magnetic_BaseDamage string. By default, you’ll see Magnetic rifles have Damage=6 with Spread=1—that means the center of the damage range is 6 but it can roll plus or minus that number by 1, for a damage range of 5 to 7. If we change the string to read Damage=5 and Spread=4, the Mag Rifle will now have a damage range of 1 to 9! Have fun relying on that next time you need an ADVENT Officer to die. Perhaps you’d like the Mag Rifle to be your personal Sectopod slayer—that’s easy. Change the string’s Pierce value to 1000 to have your rifle ignore up to 1000 armor, or adjust the Shred value to 4 to remove that much armor with every hit.

Increasing a grenade’s explosive radius

You can increase a grenade’s damage in the same way, but to tweak its explosion size we need a different section of DefaultGameData_WeaponData.ini. Search for FragGrenade_Radius and you’ll find another set of different entries relating to the item. Changing the value changes how big your explosion will be in tiles—setting it to 30 would make your nade wipe out an entire city block by itself, while reducing it to 1 would make it only effect a single tile at once. Remember that the Grenadier’s Grenade Launcher increases the range and radius of grenades as well, so factor that into your personal balancing act.

Make your new recruits wear more stuff and have more beards

If you want your new recruits to stand out a bit more, you can adjust how likely they are to come with props or facial hair when the game creates them. OpenDefaultNameList.ini and find the section starting with NewSoldier_HatChance.

Adjust these values as you see fit—setting HatChance = 0.40 gives every recruit a 40% chance to come wearing a hat. NewSoldier_BeardChance = 0.66 would make 66% of your male rookies come with some manner of facial hair.

There’s another section below that deals with Civilian hat and prop chances as well—set NewCivlian_HatChance = 0.10 for a 10% chance that non-combatants like Engineers and Scientists will be born with some manner of hat on their noggin. Be warned that after playing with this setting, my Central Officer Bradford started walking around the Avenger wearing a kevlar helmet. Be warned that it was awesome.

Slow down units when they’re carrying bodies

Find it odd that your soldiers can move at full speed even while they’re hauling another adult human over their shoulder? While still in DefaultGameCore.ini, find CARRY_UNIT_MOBILITY_ADJUST and change the value to -6. This will apply a -6 mobility penalty to any unit currently carrying a wounded ally, unconscious VIP, and so on.

Advanced tweaks

Adding extra uses of Conceal and improving Shadowstrike

Open DefaultGameData_SoldierSkills.ini and find XComGame.X2Ability_RangerAbilitySet. If you’re familiar with XCOM 2 you can guess what most of these values represent; for example, we can increase the STEALTH_CHARGES value to allow the Conceal perk to be used more than once per mission.

What are we going to do with all that extra stealth? Set SHADOWSTRIKE_CRIT to equal 100. Now your Ranger is guaranteed to crit whenever he attacks from stealth, which local Sectoids will find highly unwelcome.

Give Shotguns to your Specialists, and increase their HP growth

Open DefaultClassData.ini and find Specialist X2SoldierClassTemplate. In this section, find AllowedWeapons=(SlotType=eInvSlot_PrimaryWeapon, WeaponType=”rifle”) and, underneath, insert the following: AllowedWeapons=(SlotType=eInvSlot_PrimaryWeapon, WeaponType=”shotgun”).

Easy as that, your Specialists can now equip Shotguns. But they need a bit more beef if they’re going to fight up close and personal—so look a few lines down and see the stat strings for the various Specialist promotions such like squaddie, corporal, sergeant, and so on. Within these entries, adjust the (StatType=eStat_HP, StatAmount=0) to be however much health you want them to gain for that particular rank. So if you went to the lieutenant section and set its StatType=eStat_HP,StatAmount=0 to instead be StatAmount=10, your Specialists will gain 10 health once they’re promoted to Lieutenant. That’ll probably be enough to keep them alive.

Giving the enemies aim bonuses at close range

By default, XCOM 2’s enemies don’t get more accurate at close range like you do—a big departure from Enemy Unknown which sees a lot of hilarious incompetence from charging ADVENT Troopers. It’s not too hard to return the aim bonuses to the enemy, though, it just takes a few minutes and some patience.

Find the FLAT_CONVENTIONAL_RANGE[0] line within DefaultGameData_WeaponData.ini to get started. These are the bonuses the AI gets when they’re a certain range in tiles from their target. By default they don’t get any bonuses but if you were to change FLAT_CONVENTIONAL_RANGE[1] to equal 20, the AI would gain +20 aim when a tile away from their target. FLAT_CONVENTIONAL_RANGE[2] governs the aim bonus they’d gain when 2 tiles away from their target, and so on.

If you’re not sure what you’d like their bonuses to be, the easiest way is to simply copy the range bonuses your own soldiers gain. Scroll up until you find MEDIUM_CONVENTIONAL_RANGE—this section is the aim bonus your soldiers gain with proximity while wielding a ballistic rifle. Reference these values to see what you should give the AI in order to level the playing field.

Back in the AI bonus section, I’d guess that FLAT_MAGNETIC_RANGE and FLAT_BEAM_RANGE relate to more advanced types of enemies. To be safe, put the same values in these sections as you did for FLAT_CONVENTIONAL_RANGE. The result should be a lot more accurate enemies at close range and a lot less hilarious misses at point blank from your local ADVENT peacekeepers.

Change how powerful your weapon attachments are

Would you use the Repeater if it was just a little bit more reliable? OpenDefaultGameCore.ini and find XComGame.X2Item_DefaultUpgrades within. This entire section governs the stats associated with each attachment you can tape onto your guns in XCOM 2. Find FREE_KILL_BSC—that’s Free Kill Basic, aka the basic Repeater—and adjust its value to whatever you like. Setting it to 33 would confer a 33% chance to instantly kill any target you hit.

Perhaps you think it’s odd the Autoloader only has a limited number of uses? Set FREE_RELOADS_BSC to equal 0—this removes the basic Autoloader’s limitations entirely and allows you free reloads as many times as you want with that weapon. Try not to litter as you dump dozens of half-full magazines throughout the countryside.

Add extra enemies to your missions

This’ll be a little more complicated, but still not too hard. Open DefaultMissions.ini and find ;ADVENT ENCOUNTER DEFS FOR All Missions. This file may not immediately make sense to you, but don’t worry—just focus on each text block that starts with ConfigurableEncounters. Each of these is a configuration for a different group or ‘pod’ of enemies that will then be placed onto any mission that requests it. To add more bad guys, simply increase the block’s MaxSpawnCount value to equal the number of enemies you desire, and repeat for each ConfigurableEncounters block until you’re happy.

For example, increasing the MaxSpawnCount of the ConfigurableEncounters=(EncounterID=”ADVx2_Standard”, \\ section will increase the number of enemies spawned everytime the ADVx2_Standard encounter is placed onto a mission. Once you’ve got your head around how this file works, you can adjust the numbers and types of enemies present on every mission in the game at your choosing.

Alter the AI’s engagement ranges, movement patterns, and how much it cares about cover

DefaultAI.ini is perhaps the most complicated file to mess with, but don’t worry, we’re only changing a few simple things to start with. Once you’ve opened the file, we’ll first find the FallbackChance line. Increasing this value to 0.75f should make enemies more likely to fall back to allies when they’re the only survivor of their patrol. Next, find CURR_TILE_LINGER_PENALTY and set it to 1.0. By default the AI is encouraged to move every turn to prevent camping—by changing this value we allow the AI free reign to hold their positions, meaning they won’t run around for the sake of running (and getting shot by your Overwatches). A few lines lower you’ll find CALC_FULL_COVER_FACTOR—make it equal 2.5f. This increases how much the AI values Full / High cover when making its moves.

Finally, open up DefaultGameData_WeaponData.ini again and find AdvTrooperM1_idealRange. This entire section governs how close or far each enemy wants to be from your soldiers. For example, increasing the first value to AdvTrooperM1_idealRange=12 encourages all ADVENT Troopers to stay around 12 tiles away from your squad. Setting AdvMEC_M1_idealRange=1 encourages ADVENT MECs to charge your position, ending up 1 tile away from you in close combat.

With this simple set of AI tweaks, you can radically alter how the game plays. Setting ADVENT’s soldiers to fight you from a longer distance increases their survivability by keeping them away from your shotguns and grenades, while their MECs and tankier units can be configured to charge in and truly mess up your positioning. By more strongly prioritizing full cover and being allowed to hold position more often, the enemy will play more defensively and effectively, which is particularly challenging on timed missions as they stall you for turns. Increasing their likelihood to fall back when overwhelmed keeps enemies from suicide charging you in last ditch attacks, instead linking up with allies and living to fight another turn. It’s a lot tougher, but you might really appreciate the extra self-preservation instinct the AI will display—particularly when their new defensive tactics make those timed missions all the more intense to beat.

Closing

There’s absolutely tons of things you can change in XCOM 2’s config files, and we’ve only scratched the surface here. Once you’ve spent some time experimenting with some tweaks, you’ll gain familiarity and be able to tweak and adjust the game quickly and confidently. I can only hope next time you can’t find a ‘Make Incendiary Grenades cover the entire map in cleansing fire’ mod on the Steam Workshop, I’ll have equipped you with all you need to make your dream a reality.

Not used anything yet myself, but I may take some of the enemies health down and my soldiers up if I have problems further on in the game (assuming things get harder and harder) really cool Firaxis have made it so easy to tweak stuff.

[DisturbedSwan]

Another 3 hours played earlier, still loving it, but things are seriously getting desperate in my game now and I think I may be getting to the point where my squad capitulates to the enemy if things keep going as bad as they have done today.

Been introduced to a few new enemy types which have kicked my arse in a few missions, losing 3 or 4 soldiers in the process, bought a new engineer into my base which has left me low on Supplies, then I had to recruit another 2 rookies because I was short of them which left me extremely low on Supplies and to top it off I failed to do another Black Project mission (or chose a different one to do instead, I'm not sure) in time which means enemies now have increased awareness when in concealment which sucks

So yeah, backs really against the wall, tomorrow could be make-or-break for my campaign.

[DisturbedSwan]

Another Xcom 2 update:

3 hours played yesterday, now 11 hours total (which is probably 10 more than I managed with XCOM:EU ).

If I thought shit hit the fan on Monday, boy I was in for a surprise yesterday...the game actually managed to get EVEN tougher did a couple of big missions today which is what I'll focus on.

The first is a story mission where you have to get to this Advent Blacksite facility and get a vial or something, carefully attempted to stealth my way to the objective, nab the vial and get out to the extraction zone ASAP, but of course, this being XCOM it didn't work out that way. I did quite a good job surprisingly, was almost in the base (where the vial is) and then I get spotted, had a 3 of my team in Overwatch and they took out the Aliens that spotted me which was a 'fuck yeah!' moment, but all the other Aliens were now alerted.

Didn't really know whether to leg it to the objective, then leg it to the Evac point or to just attempt to fight the ridiculous amount of Aliens I'd alerted to my presence. I chose the latter and, needless to say, it went incredibly badly, killed a few Aliens but the Sectoids reanimated some of them, so that turned out to be futile, after that I just decided to leg it with my remaining troops to the Vial and then the Evac point, otherwise I was going to fail this mission.

It didn't go well and 2 of my guys got killed, with 2 remaining. One of my guys made it to the Vial (despite being burnt), then legged it to the Evac point (barely surviving the enemy's Overwatch on the way) successfully and extracting, I tried to get my last remaining guy to the Evac point, almost made it and the fuckers killed him at the last possible moment, so this meant I'd lost 3 Troops on 1 mission which is never good.

So, I go back to my ship, battered and bruised and then I fast-forward time, getting Supplies etc. and then I realise one of the 'Dark Events' that is active this month (in game) had activated and I was drawn into this mission where I had to use all possible troops (even wounded ones) and defend the Base-ship against hordes of Aliens and eventually destroy this relay point that was stopping us from taking off. I admit I reloaded about 3 or 4 times to see if there was anyway to avoid this mission happening, but I couldn't get away from it, so decided to give it a go.

It went surprisingly well for the most part, I hadn't lost any troops in the mission for quite a while despite the enemies being plentiful and some having rather large health bars, then the reinforcements hit and shit hit the fan again. Even so, I only lost 3 troops before finally making it back to the entrance ramp of the ship and successfully jetting off, this gave me a 'good' rating, which I was surprised by, but has left me incredibly low on troop numbers and means that I'm on the precipice of disaster...

[DisturbedSwan]

Another update:

Now 16 hours in.

Surprisingly, I've been doing quite well the last couple of days. I listened to a podcast a few days back where one of the guys teased the other for basically re-loading a save every-time he died in XCOM 2 and this guy said to the other that that was the only way he finished it, and that just resonated with me really, so I thought to myself 'well if re-loading saves when soldiers die is good enough for this Strategy/XCOM veteran then it was good enough for me' so I've employed that strategy ever since and have not lost another soldier, got a few wounded but nothing more.

Promoted an awful lot of my soldiers now which helps, got a full squad of Leitenants and above (one major and one colonel included) which helps a lot, researched some fantastic armour too which has a built-in rocket launcher, so I'm absolutely battering enemies and just easing through missions at the moment, which I'm loving, makes a nice change from getting my arse handed to during the first 10 hours or so.

The only thing that could go tits up now in my game is the fact that the Aliens have progressed the Avatar Project quite a bit (it's not about 3 squares away from completion) but I've never been that worried about that to be honest, there's mods out there that extend it so if it seems at all likely I'm going to fail and the Avatar Project will be built I'll install one of them and take my time.

Speaking of Mods, installed a few last night to try out, the 'Evac All', 'SMG Pack', 'Leader Pack' and Corgi gun are the ones I've got installed, Evac All is incredibly handy, Corgi Gun is just for fun and the other two just give you more options in-game really. Another one that's been recommended to me is the free-camera movement Mod, which allows you to move the camera freely and not be restricted to just moving it with Q and E all the time, sounds handy but not installed it yet.

No idea how much longer I've got to go now, but I'm 16 hours in and things have been ramping up slightly, so fingers crossed I'm 2/3rds of the way through at least.

[DisturbedSwan]

Another update (sponsored by Blakeycritic.com):

22 hours in now.

After my last update I thought the game was getting easier and I was having a better time with things, then I went into a mission which was rather difficult, got a load of my A team wounded and out of action for days and then decided to do a story mission with a team mainly made up of Rookies (never a good idea). Needless to say, it didn't go well, some of the enemies in this mission I'd never seen before (one of which had an absolutely OBSCENE amount of health and armour), on top of this I encountered a load-game bug which meant that I couldn't load any of my saves in the mission without the game crashing to the desktop. I got quite lucky in taking out the OBSCENELY hard Sectopod, made good progress through the mission, had 3 soldiers remaining after I grabbed the objective but then 2 bit the bullet whilst running to the extraction point whilst my last remaining Rookie got away by the skin of her teeth holding the Objective.

I lost 5 out of 6 soldiers in this mission :shock: I mean 4 out of 5 of them were Rookies so who cares, but one of them was Lieutenant Gordon Ramsey who unfortunately had to be sacrificed in order to complete the mission :cry:

Since then though, things have been all smooth-sailing again really, my A team fully healed and feel ridiculously OP, all have EXO Suits with Rocket Launchers in them, a crazy amount of health and armour, a mix of Gauss Weapons and Mag weaponry (most with scopes and other add-ons and some with PCS upgrades too) and are all Colonels, Majors or Lieutenants. Only had a few soldiers wounded and none have been killed since that last horror-mission

So yeah, things are looking up, the Avatar Progress bar is right down near the bottom now, I've got a team full of badasses with great armour, a shit-load of Supplies coming in every month and have (I think) only got a few story missions left until the end of the game so happy days

No doubt I'll get my spirits dampened again within the next few hours in some horrific fashion Oh, XCOM, don't ever change.

[DisturbedSwan]

Finished it yesterday, 26 hours played.

That last mission is a massive cunt I'll tell you, a ridiculous difficulty spike.

Had all my A team on the job, all with EXO Suits, loads of health, armour etc. and still just managed it by the skin of my teeth, fuck knows how that mission is possible on higher difficulties, it's such a huge difficulty spike, took me almost 2 and a half hours just to get through that one missions, it's so long and feels like a constant bombardment of enemies from the start to finish, then the final 'room' feels like Firaxis repeatedly kicking you in the balls.

Really enjoyed it though from start to finish, first strategy game I've ever completed, loved and enjoyed. I do think it's more accessible than XCOM:EU as it seems to me (bearing in mind I only played 2 hours of XCOM:EU) that there was not as much on the line with this, I believe in XCOM:EU you had missions where you could lose entire countries if you couldn't complete this one mission at this specific time when it pops up, and you had all the Satellite stuff and all the specific ways you had to organise your space in your base to fit everything into one another.

You still have the Avatar Project in this, but it never really feels as ominous, bewildering and soul-crushing as all the shit XCOM:EU threw at me (from what I can remember), the most I got that bar upto was 2 from the end and then I did a few story missions and alien facility missions and the bar went right down, before I finished the game it was only at 1 square. I could've spent a whole load of time waiting for it to fill up again, just gathering supplies and outfitting all my troops with WAR suits, Pulse Rifles etc. if I wanted to with all that time! Apparently even if it ticks down to 0 you only have to complete an alien facility mission or something every 20 days to keep your game going.

It just seems more reasonable to me than XCOM:EU in getting you used to the game, and once you're in there it fucks you up, but is fair with it, it never fucked me up enough to say 'fuck this game' and walk away from it, it made me think in bed late at night about what strategies to employ the next day to get myself out of a sticky situation and back on the road to easy living, that retention is the sign of a damn good game to me.

Highly recommended.

9/10

[shinymcshine]

Bump - as I'm going to start this properly tomorrow (PS4).

 

Really enjoyed XCom: Enemy Within on the 360 - although those aliens which just use to teleport in next to you were an unnecessary inbuggeration, but looking forward to it.

 

Also - wow, hadn't quite realised how long ago it had been released !

 

 

 

 

[shinymcshine]

I'm hoping that me missing three 82% shots on the run (on the first proper mission) and my ranger subsequently dying, was either just an unfortunate quirk, or a way to demonstrate that your squad isn't infallible.

[shinymcshine]

Balls - 3 hrs and I'm done with it.

 

You know when something just doesn't click, well that's it here, all feels too much like I might as well be playing XCom:EW all over again, including all those base building and research bit that I wasn't keen on then either.

 

Think I'm probably just in a gaming funk.

[mfnick]

Shame it didn’t click for you mate, this is one of my favourite games of the last few years. 

[shinymcshine]

I gave it another go today, but sadly still not feeling it - I like the turn based tactical combat, but hate all the base stuff and cut scenes in between - and  with the way I'm feeling with games currently, I just can't be bothered with those bits.

[shinymcshine]

9 hours ago, mfnick said:

Shame it didn’t click for you mate, this is one of my favourite games of the last few years. 

 

Don't know if you've got a NS but Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is amazingly more fun and strategically challenging than I ever thought it would be, and Into the Breach was pretty special too.

[mfnick]

I can understand that regarding the inbetween mission stuff, it was the weakest part and if I wasn’t in mood I found that a slog too but more than willing to get through it most of the time.

 

I need to try Mario and Rabbids again, it just seemed a bit slow and basic but I wasn’t enjoying it. Need to give it a bit more time.