XCOM Unknown is also unwanted in my game shelf

[W8taminute]

So I finally made it to the last mission on normal difficulty after spending many many hours with this game.  For the past two nights in a row I've wasted a good 3 hours combined of my gaming life that I can never retrieve and I am regretting it, all to try to beat the last mission.

Before I continue with my rant let me just be honest with you all.  My patience is not what it once was when I was a younger man.  If a game doesn't grab me and enthrall me so much I can't take it anymore I get very irked and lose all willingness to play.  Unfortunately, for me at least, XCOM Enemy Unknown falls into the category of I really really wanted to love this game but its BS game play left me with such a bad taste in my mouth I'm going to sell it back to GameStop.

Here's why:

I should have known that any game made by Sid Meier is going to contain many BS die rolls for the human player.  I'll never buy any of his products again.  Can they make a game where I can play straight out strategy without having to resort to gamey workarounds to beat his stupid solve the puzzle style strategy games?  He seems to love giving the player 1% chances to hit while the computer routinely wipes you out with 100% hits and 100% criticals.  He's done this since Civilization with the famous spearmen killing tanks.  I'm done with Sid.

There has been many discussions here about slowly advancing, overwatch, taking your time, etc.  Well I've tried all of that and as a result I still got slaughtered on normal difficulty.  I now have only one guy worth a damn, he's my Psi gifted heavy, and the rest of my crew is a bunch of squaddies.  How am I supposed to win the game with this when I'm getting creamed within the first half hour of the mission?  I'm so frustrated right now and I'm so tired of reloading my save file over and over again.  I'm done with this.  There are better games out there but I just wanted to express my disappointment and share it with someone who might be considering getting this game.  Like I said, I've given this game so many chances but I don't have the patience nor the time to sit for 13+ hours carefully planning and plotting my moves for each and every mission you have to play.  Everytime that klaxxon sounded alerting me to an alien abduction mission or what have you I dreaded it.  Why?  Because to play a mission properly and minimize your losses you must play slowly and carefully.  Hence investing almost 2 hours per mission when you have many mission to play in a game month is not feasible for me. 

Do yourself a favor, unless you have plenty of time to invest in this game in order to learn how to play it forget it.  Get something else.  Life is too short and too hectic to waste on a game that requires massive amounts of patience to play.  I've never played War in the Pacific Admirals edition and I hear that it probably is not possible to even finish that game in one's lifetime, but I so would rather play that game then to play XCOM again.  At least in WitP AE I would get some sense of joy moving ships and planes around and calculating supply logistics and such. 

Ok thanks for hearing me out.  I feel a little better and tomorrow I'll be about 20 bucks richer when I sell this POS game called XCOM Enemy Unknown.

[Grimnirsson]

Ok, you did not enjoy this game it seems...  :P

Well, that one is on my list for sure, I played the demo, which was fun and actually convincing me that this is not a trigger-finger-shooter game, but a turn-based tactical wargame. Metactritic score is now a strong 90/100 and all the reviews say it's damn good.

So, do I understand you correctly that the game is difficult because you have to be patient in your planning and that the enemies are tough they will kick your @§§ if don't take your time? And that you consider this too much investment of time for one game?

If so, I still would say that's a game for me. I have great memories of playing the old Rainbow Six series on the Dreamcast, when these games still had their planning phase and you would sit there, trying to figure out how to get in there and rescue the hostages. The elimination of this plotting/planning phase turned the R6 games into a mere shooter.

I mean Dark Souls also requires tactical thinking and patience, sometimes even nerves of steel and you do enjoy that game :)

So what's the difference here: two games, both hard, both needing time and patience, both trying to stop you in reaching your goal...

Would be great if you could shed some further light on this point since it's one of the games I'm really interested in.

Thanks :)

[W8taminute]

So, do I understand you correctly that the game is difficult because you have to be patient in your planning and that the enemies are tough they will kick your @§§ if don't take your time? And that you consider this too much investment of time for one game?

Yes that is pretty much how I felt.  Every mission is like this with varying degrees of difficulty.  The early missions are not so tough when you are facing the weaker aliens.  As stronger aliens appear however you must not rush through or you will die.  Somehow the way gameplay is in these mission is very draining to me.  Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin is the closest game I can think of where you must carefully plot the moves of your squads.  Overwatch and slow positioning is key to keeping your men alive and I found that experience to be enjoyable.  Not so much with XCOM.  For me at least no matter how careful I was the aliens always seemed to be able to kill one or two of my guys per mission.  When you lose an experienced veteran and then again on subsequent missions I felt so heartbroken.  The new recruits are worthless on the later missions until they get promoted a few times.  All of this careful planning only to lose key troops really took the life out of me and I got discouraged.  Should I have been even more careful?  Maybe but I feel the rewards do not justify the torture and time spent on the game.

I have great memories of playing the old Rainbow Six series on the Dreamcast, when these games still had their planning phase and you would sit there, trying to figure out how to get in there and rescue the hostages. The elimination of this plotting/planning phase turned the R6 games into a mere shooter.

I totally agree and remember those old Rainbow 6 games well.  I played them on PC and found that they were truly thinking mans games. 

I mean Dark Souls also requires tactical thinking and patience, sometimes even nerves of steel and you do enjoy that game

So what's the difference here: two games, both hard, both needing time and patience, both trying to stop you in reaching your goal...

Aha!  Now Dark Souls is entirely different.  Yes one spends a lot of time, a lot of time indeed with this game.  Dark Souls however is extremely rewarding for your patience.  The sense of accomplishment and the loot you obtain from defeating a difficult area of the Dark Souls world more than makes up for the time invested.  The Dark Souls world is so immersive that one wants to continue playing to see how your character survives and develops.  Some fights are very demanding physically and mentally and one might have to fight the same enemy over and over again.  You will die many many times and have to start that segment again and again but because the reward is so great it's worth it to me. 

In XCOM I never felt I gained anything by doing a good job.  I only felt that I finally made it through a tough mission and now I must face this hell all over again on the next mission.  The story progresses nicely and is easy to follow but for some reason I never felt rewarded, only stressed.  Maybe I simply don't get how to fight tactical battles in XCOM and that is why I was so frustrated.  I did not understand the logic of combat in this game and now that I'm so burnt out with XCOM I don't care to learn it.

Well I hope this helps you in your decision.  I would be happy to send the game to you but I'm not sure if your system will play a game from my region.

[Grimnirsson]

Ok, thanks, understand what you mean. Guess, I'll have to see myself one day ;)
Thanks a lot for the offer, but for this month i'm over my game budget already and the play.asia site says NTSC on PAL = not tested, so it might work...or not. :P