also to anyone who enjoyed invisible inc but hasn’t tried its endless mode: definitely do that. if i remember right my endless playthrough from last summer is still on day 7 (the game normally ends on day 3). eventually the game gives you an ultra-daemon or two at the start of every mission and you have to find an exit card from a randomly determined vault, and Omni guard-types start showing up as regular enemies. it is brutal and terrible and a really good time. it is a testament to the game that it can get so ridiculous and still feel completely winnable
Ugh, this is really frustrating. I was like 8 hours in and now suddenly the game won’t launch. The launcher shows up, but when I hit play it tells me “XCOM 2 has stopped working”.
Not sure what changed. Guess I’ll update my drivers. I did a Steam integrity check and it still doesn’t work. I really don’t want to redownload the whole thing on my slow connection.
EDIT: The drivers did nothing. Guess I’m not playing tonight 
EDIT 2: I figured it out. It was crashing when my Mayflash Gamecube controller USB adapter was plugged in. Make sure to unplug all controllers when playing XCOM, apparently! They took “no controller support” very seriously.
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[quote=“parker, post:61, topic:822, full:true”]
I’m sick to high heaven of hard asses saying dumb military lingo dialogue about “retrieving the package” etc, it’s got the same characters as in ever other videogame with the same voice actors etc, [/quote]
heck the thing about that is that military guys don’t actually speak like that and clinical at all, usually they make up bullshit slang words and acronyms specifically to avoid speaking like that
there are a few things in this game which are unarguably improved from the last one, mostly having to do with the premise and the geoscape (the whole shooting-down-UFOs thing was one of the 1994 game elements that was made trivial by the narrower focus of the remake, and the guerrilla force is a pretty natural fit), as well as the cooldown period for wounded soldiers (you actually need 3 of everyone but it’s not as interminably slow as long war). but – and this could just be dismay at the borderline unpolishedness of this one talking – I have to say it’s made me give a lot more credit to enemy within as an expansion to xcom 2012 in hindsight. the “stealth” game design fix for activating enemies late on your turn in this game really isn’t any better than the addition of the meld resource, and EW already had a really nice matsuno-esque balance of scripted missions (12 total) and recruitable NPCs (2) if you play with the DLC.
Credit to xcom 2 for having ridiculously satisfying execution cutaways though. Their sound design department deserves a lot of credit.
Also, the soldier customization is so nice that I was surprised at how crappy the last game’s was when I went back to it
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I also did not realize that the design lead on EW was the co-creator of twilight struggle
Yeah, for the alien-warping bug fix alone, I always recommend people play EW rather than EU when they’re first starting out. It’s telling that XCom 2 apparently adopted mechs and genetic improvements for the new game.
Update: Got my new video card, but I don’t have the power supply cords for it, so I’m waiting an interminably long time for those to arrive. I am in hell.
So I guess I’m too late to the party here…
I find this game emotionally draining too, especially on Ironwoman (hey, why not) because every move could shove dozens of hours of playtime into the trash can. I first started a non-iron campaign on the 3/4 difficulty setting but got sick of save scumming. Decided to go Ironwoman 2/4 difficulty. Now I realized I messed up the base building because I didn’t build proving grounds soon enough and I’m out of cash because I kept losing like a soldier per mission and some dark event jacked up the prices for new recruits when I needed them most. So yeah, not fun… I could try to save myself somehow, figure out a way out of it but the game is just so draining. You want to do so much stuff and it keeps interrupting you with missions and things to scan on the map.
What best describes the difference between real OG X-Com and new XCOM is this: in XCOM you navigate the world through the holographic Geoscape, in X-Com you rotate around and fight on planet earth. It’s not a fake ass representation, it’s the real deal.
But anyway, differences between the original and the remake don’t really matter anymore at this stage. This is what we’ve got now and it’s a good product. I’ll be playing this a long time and I’ll be drained by it and hate parts of it but the core of what’s there is just too alluring to just let go or pass up on.
Mothra, long time no see. 
Your thoughts on the game??
there is definitely a problem with design inspired by modern board games when the game you’re designing is 30 hours long
My new video card from PowerColor arrived dead, so I’m having to RMA it, which’ll take at least another two weeks. I’ve also had to upgrade everything else, and fried two hard drives in the process, but SOON MY HELL WILL BE OVER
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So, yeah, I’m enjoying this game so far:
Hilarious bugs and all.
The councilman’s final transmission was badass.
I’m nearing the end. One more suit of W.A.R. armor, a little more psi-training, and I’m going for it.
Been playing the shit out of this since I finally installed it yesterday. It’s really good. DOES take some getting used to re: the pirate speak and some of the awkward anime pics they used for research screens.
It’s all about looting the corpses of whatever you manage to kill, especially early on. You’ll regularly get some kind of better assault rifle or laser gun, with about one or two extra clips of ammo. It makes it so your team always has a huge range of projectile, laser, plasma, and melee weapons, due to the scarcity of ammo and the variety of firearms.
One of my pirate gals is only strong enough to carry a sledge hammer, so she just hides around corners and slugs em over the head when they pass. Another one pulled a laser rig off the blue officer from Wolfenstein (I think he was a commanding officer of one of the militant groups?), which she’s been scoring kills with left and right.
Slashing weapons like the cutlass seem to miss all the fucking time, so I wouldn’t recommend them. That said, there’s piercing damage from bullets, there’s cutting damage, there’s blunt damage, and so on, with certain enemy units and factions being better guarded against one type than others. Like, one group is decked out in anti-explosive armor, meaning you need to use piercing or slash damage.
So yeah, it’s fascinating. Beyond the scavanger element, I adore how many different factions there are, and how they each fight each other during certain missions. Gives me a bit of an X-Com Apocalypse vibe in that way.
this looks fantastic but I’m just not sure I have the mental fortitude for playing a new game in an old UI. when you give up familiarity, it’s hard to cope…
I’d say there’s enough new stuff everywhere, even in standard terror missions, that it’s a significantly different gameplay experience. The lore is actually really interesting too, delivered in the same “these are latest findings of the research team, put on your desk” manner as the original. Civilians are these bizarre mutant combinations of alien and human, enemies are a mishmash of pureblood pseudo-fascist humans, robots, and unexplained third parties that you want to kill just to give them to the research gals and get some answers.
For me, coming right off of having beaten XCom 2, the lack of cover drives me nuts, but I’m still enjoying the ol’ pop out, kneel, fire a few rounds, duck behind a wall, repeat combat. Again, I adore how they’ve made close-quarters melee an effective and necessary option.
There are some fun little additions too, like the fact that you can put a 1-tile parrot unit on your team to scout and hold a single item to drop for your team (like a molotov or a clip).
It feels like a sequel to Terror From The Deep, with a bunch of little fixes and additions.
Anyways, regarding XCom 2, I loved it to death. Finished it a few days ago and enjoyed the final mission much more than the last game.
Started focusing a lot more on psi training in the final half, and the payoffs are absurd. Well worth the investment:
Here’s a mission I did using only four psi-trained soldiers:
Mind control alone turns your worst enemies into your best buddies.
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welllllll, we all knew it was coming
this is the only game whose DLC I ever prepaid for, I’ll probably give it another go…