[Valashar]

The live play in OP's video quelled a lot of my misgivings about the game (the normal kind that come with any attempt to rekindle an old favorite). Cyberdisks are still a holy shit threat, now with even more tricks. Sectoids have a new way to fuck you over, and chrysalids... well, they're still the worst thing to happen to any terror mission.

[CanRay]

I know I pre-ordered it! 

[Xzylvador]

Oh great, the guys who ruined the new Civilization by completely dumbing it down now get a go at another one of my favorites?

Quote from the game: "Oh noze! I wished I hadn't already used my rocket..."
Seriously? Giving squads an inventory which you could use to, I don't know, use for extra ammo and equipment was too complicated their new target audience? Guess I shouldn't be surprised, as "You can game with an x-box controller on your pc!" was also used as a new and excellent feature for a friggin' strategy game...

The sniper apparently also 'used up' his headshot ability... How the hell does that happen? And the assault guy lost his ability to charge, 'cuz really, running and then hitting something is obviously something you can only do once every half an hour too.

Movement: No matter how far you move, it'll use up the action. So when he's trying to find LOS between his robot and the enemy, he's got to guess where to move... If he moves his robot 1 meter, he can't move it another meter, even though the same action can normally make it go up to 20 meters. No indicator to show where he would have LOS and because of the incredibly good engine of the game and you can't do it by hand because of the way the engine cuts out parts of the map to allow visibility to where you're moving... Really well worked out!

Looking great, thanks Firaxis and 2k!

[lurkeroutthere]

I was going to write something about how all these are off the mark, but honestly they are probably valid concerns. My caveat and hope is that the game will bring enough new stuff to the table that I won't object to the changes. Also almost anything is better then the old time units system.

The lack of inventory and depletable abilities system is annoying, but in the context of a game, as long as the enemies are built along similar baselines, I honestly don't care too much, it's a game design choice and I can accept that.

My biggest single complaint I suspect is going to be "You have to choose who to save!" aspect. I'm a multinational special operations outfit deploying small squads, are you really telling me it's impossible for me to get a second sky ranger and 6 man team going? That crap will get old very quickly.

[Xzylvador]

My biggest single complaint I suspect is going to be "You have to choose who to save!" aspect. I'm a multinational special operations outfit deploying small squads, are you really telling me it's impossible for me to get a second sky ranger and 6 man team going? That crap will get old very quickly.

Wow, I didn't even watch that far...
You're saying you've only got a single squad?

[lurkeroutthere]

I can't say for sure that's all you ever get, but the demo gives you a choice while the aliens test two fronts. Defend in the US or China, both offer different rewards for helping them (US offers free scientists, china offers some amount of the games money unit, since you don't ever really use either in the context of the demo i can't really compare) both will raise the panic in their area if you don't help them out. I can't say for certain you don't ever reach the point you can't resolve to all crisis but one of the things I really enjoyed about the original way back in the day is eventually, while shooting down alien ships never got trivial you could reach the point where you had near global coverage and could have multiple recovery/strike teams going. I don't know about anyone else but I usually had my main response force, and my "farming" team. I'll be a little disapointed if in trying to ramp up the tension they limit your expansion.

I'm already pre-ordered so i can't say. I should also throw in that I enjoyed civ 5 immensely and don't understand a lot of hate for it, care to explain?

[Xzylvador]

I'm already pre-ordered so i can't say. I should also throw in that I enjoyed civ 5 immensely and don't understand a lot of hate for it, care to explain?

Heh. Too much to write here without completely derailing everything. Head over to Civfanatics or something and read most of the complaints there. Just a lot of oversimplification (lots of buildings don't matter or are actually bad if you build 'em, tile placement really doesn't matter much), bad tactical AI (1upt badly worked-out?), bad strategic AI and even worse diplomatic AI, civilopedia a (bad and unfinished) joke, simplified happiness, (lack of) trade mechanisms...
I was (and still am if I ignore Civ5) a huge fan of the series since its beginning, Civ's easily the best computer game in history for me. I must've played hundreds if not thousands of hours on all the previous games but abandoned playing Civ5 and went back to Civ4 after a week of trying really hard not to hate it.
YMMV of course and I'm glad you like it... But to me, other than graphics, it's a step backward on all fields compared to the previous versions.

[PeterSmith]

Heh. Too much to write here without completely derailing everything.

Start a new thread then.

Head over to Civfanatics or something and read most of the complaints there.

Civfanatics, guh. A hive of grognards yelling how their version is the greatest, and better than the one you like. I was thrilled when mods browsing was available within CivV itself, and once again when it was moved to Steam Workshop. It meant I never had to go back to their forums.

[DarkLloyd]

Heh. Too much to write here without completely derailing everything.

Start a new thread then.

Seconded. I'm trying to see if the new x-com is worthy of my future limited funds.

[PeterSmith]

Seconded. I'm trying to see if the new x-com is worthy of my future limited funds.

You can run through two combat missions in the demo. It's available through Steam for the PC.

[CanRay]

Seconded. I'm trying to see if the new x-com is worthy of my future limited funds.

You can run through two combat missions in the demo. It's available through Steam for the PC.

They appear to be the Tutorial Missions to teach you how to play the game, so will seem railroaded a bit compared to starting the original X-Com, which just dumped you unceremoniously into "You're the last hope for the world.  Good luck."  (Me, I read the manual, so I was good.  But not everyone does.).

[PeterSmith]

That's true CanRay, however it's still one of the major aspects of the game - tactical combat along with a touch of the strategic aspects.

[lurkeroutthere]

IF you check out X-com on facebook they've linked a fairly decent amount of actual gameplay footage, it might also be youtube searchable. I'm pretty pumped and I'm just hoping that some of the design choices they make work well as a whole picture rather then bringing things down for a console audience.

Some of the stuff like smaller squad sizes doesn't bother me as long as the maps and opposition are similarly small. I mean lets be honest in the original a lot of times you only needed those bigger squads because so many of your guys were so completely worthless and the maps were so big (not that that's a bad thing) once you got the craft or the command center found it usually came back to a small hand picked number of guys to get in and close the deal.

I've already pre-ordered so if nothing else i'll try and have a pretty solid writeup for you all when the game comes out.

[lurkeroutthere]

Oh sweet ghost, this game is good. Hard as hell but good.

[PeterSmith]

I'm holding off on picking it up until Friday. And while the ol' blonde mohawk would rawk, neither it nor the custom color tool for the soldiers makes me want to pay the physical media premium.