X-COM Preorders

[CptHowdy]

just played demo. i love it. might have to pay full price for this. close to my birthday so i can write it off as an early present!!

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Seems pretty good but I did find the interface to be a little clunky.  I hope there's an option to remap controls.

[tgb]

Seems pretty good but I did find the interface to be a little clunky.  I hope there's an option to remap controls.

That was my reaction, although I only played the first mission before I had to quit.  Camera controls just didn't feel right, for some reason.  I'm still not convinced this is a Day One purchase, unless someone has an amazing sale.

[JudgeDredd]

I really quite liked that.  :)

[tgb]

I just played the entire demo and completed the second mission with everyone alive (one wounded).   I couldn't figure out how to tell how much ammo a soldier had, nor could I find an overhead map of the entire mission, so I ended up running my guys around in circles a lot.  I'm still not crazy about camera control, and found movement orders confusing on a 3-D map (is that shield inside the building or out?).

At this point I'm in the "wait for a sale" camp.

[eyebiter]

How many missions in the new X-Com campaign? What is the replay value?  Other than go back and choose the China mission instead of USA?   Will there be a mission editor? 

[Arctic Blast]

And...it's fully downloaded! I'll post some impressions later.

[Capn Darwin]

Ammo is shown in the lower right of the screen with the weapon silhouette going empty (dark).

[tgb]

How many missions in the new X-Com campaign? What is the replay value?  Other than go back and choose the China mission instead of USA?   Will there be a mission editor?

Someone posted that both the USA and China missions have the same map.  Which makes them essentially the same mission, the only difference being the reward.

[Arctic Blast]

How many missions in the new X-Com campaign? What is the replay value?  Other than go back and choose the China mission instead of USA?   Will there be a mission editor?

Someone posted that both the USA and China missions have the same map.  Which makes them essentially the same mission, the only difference being the reward.

There are a selection of pre-built maps that will be randomly chosen from for mission based on where they're happening and all that, with most other aspects randomized on the maps. Most likely, they only used 1 or 2 maps for the demo.

[Arctic Blast]

Okay, the demo isn't long as I'm back already!

It really doesn't get much in to base building or anything like that besides the absolute basics. Most of the focus is on the tactical side of things.

It seems like you're going to often have to make tough choices about which mission to take, meaning some people are going to be left to the alien menace and raise their national terror rate.

I pretty much got my ass handed to me on the second op. The first is a purely scripted tutorial mission, but the second lets you do what you want after a bit of hand holding suggestion at the start. One of the Floaters blasted my poor sniper in the face before he'd been able to do much of anything. At this point, I figured maybe I'd start to actually check out abilities beyond moving and shooting at things.

Every character fits in to a specific class, and that might give them something (for example, I guess that the sniper gets Headshot). Run and Gun is a solid one that lets your soldier use both of his actions in a round to move (Dashing) and then also snap off a quick burst of fire. And it turned out my troopers had more than just basic guns. Oh look, smoke grenades and frags and first aid kits. Hey, those might be helpful. Also, the Hunker Down ability is pretty nice. Using that lets your guy benefit from full cover when he's behind only partial cover. There's also Overwatch, which is pretty much putting your guy in Op-Fire mode.

In the end, everyone else lived but were all wounded and out at least 4 days. The weird human looking Snakeman replacements spit poison clouds. It sucks. They also burst in to poison clouds if you empty a shotgun in to them. That also sucks. And doing so shattered the Plasma Rifles they were carrying, meaning I could not research said weapons and be able to use them in the future.

All in all, the options seem solid. The interface seems a bit odd, but I'm sure I'll get comfortable with it after running through a few missions. I actually like the 'ant hill' type base view, but there's no way to really know how useful it is until I get a chance to actually play around with it in the full game. Kind of neat to see your various teams of people wandering around the base, though.

[tgb]

I keep hearing how tough that second mission is.  I suck, and still made it home with only one wounded soldier and everyone else intact.  I took several shots where the to-hit odds were 52-54%, and they all ended up as one-shot kills.  Either I'm extremely lucky, or you guys are over-thinking things.

I really miss having a strategic map that shows FOW and LOS. I always found it handy in terms of knowing what area to search next.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Yeah, I don't see it as being tough either.  I breezed through with no damage to my squad on the first attempt.  I guess the only area where I failed is that I blew up the two human looking aliens with a grenade instead of capturing them.

[Jarhead0331]

I enjoyed the very brief demo, but it did leave me with some concerns.  One, I'm afraid it may be overly scripted and not as close to being a sandbox as the original.  Two, I'm concerned the tactical options are too watered down.  For instance, your soldiers automatically dash and take cover and there are no options as to rate of fire, etc.  The original title let the player control these details.

[Sunflare]

I think you fellas have become stuck in the muds in your old age.  ;)  I enjoyed it a lot!  It was a little on the easy side, but the full games has different hardness levels.  Lets all try and see this in a positive light........it looks like after a 18 year wait they may have finally produced a title worthy of the name X-Com.