X-Com: Enemy Unknown, Updates to the Classic. Options

[X-Kalibur]

Yeah, the early part of the game was the tactically challenging part-later in the game it became one of those I win cause your armor, weapons and troops rocked. Where as the stragery part of the game became more important later in the game (Research priorities, base placement and design). I recall having two to three major bases where I could launch troops from, and the rest beeing listing posts/interceptor bases. Sometimes they would attack the interceptor base and that would be fun. I put my worst troops on guard duty. Loved the motion sensor grenades!!

Apoc fixed a lot of that problem. Combat remains fairly challenging throughout the game and the air combat portions can be particularly maddening for a while. I did miss having a tank to send into combat in front of my troops, however.

[crash2029]

I always like the first one best. The second one was good but the part where

[ Spoiler ]

your guys automatically died at the endgame mission

irritated me. I never really gave apocalypse a fair shake. I should probably go back and really give it a chance. I couldn't get the hang of the flight sim parts of interceptor at all. I never played enforcer, I was afraid to after I read a few reviews of it.

When I play apocalypse, should I use real-time or turn-based tactical combat?

[CanadianWolverin...]

It looks hopeful but there is this from the Game Informer article that sets off a red flag for me:

Is this going to be dumbed down for the "wider console audience"?
Firaxis is undeniably streamlining aspects of the game and removing no small amount of micromanagement, but from what I've seen I wouldn't call it "dumbing down" the game so much as getting rid of tedium and uninteresting mechanics. Soldiers still die permanently, fog of war and line of sight are hugely important in combat, and you absolutely can lose the game if you screw up too badly.

Those turns of phrase "streamlining" and "uninteresting mechanics" sends shivers down my spine (exaggerating for effect). Sure, there is a amazing amount of things that could be improved upon, but less game mechanics? If anything from the first game I wanted more, not less to mess around with - it was things like the UI that definitely needs improvement and what could be hurt by updating the art assets, especially if it got more cartoony? And some of the latest screen shots do appear to be in that direction and its a welcome one.

I am holding on to the vain hope that was just the humble opinion of the writer of that article at GI rather than Firaxis developers.

[Warlordtheft]

Apoc fixed a lot of that problem. Combat remains fairly challenging throughout the game and the air combat portions can be particularly maddening for a while. I did miss having a tank to send into combat in front of my troops, however.

Never got APOC to work on my PC--bad disk or something--and returned the game. Never got it again.

[X-Kalibur]

Crash - Try them both out. They both have their merits and are interesting, truth be told. I like to think of realtime mode as being more "popper proof" since all your guys will reaction shoot at them.

Warlord - You ought to give it a shot. It's cheap enough on steam. When I first played it, I decried it for being too different from X-COM and TFTD. I played it again a couple years back and really enjoyed it quite a bit. More than TFTD, I'd even say.

[Bigity]

No X-Com thread anywhere is complete without the story of Patrick Stewart, so here it is:

http://xcomtales.atspace.com/PatrickStewart/PSindex.htm

[AJCarrington]

Love that - brings back LOTS of memories... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

AJC

[Wounded Ronin]

No X-Com thread anywhere is complete without the story of Patrick Stewart, so here it is:

http://xcomtales.atspace.com/PatrickStewart/PSindex.htm

The best stories are those that write themselves in these kinds of games.

[Wounded Ronin]

Looked at the game again on the Steam Store, considering trying it after all these years. But it's still selling for thirty bucks? I guess I'll wait some more years for the price to go down.

Oh, and in hindsight, did it turn out to be any good?

[Tanegar]

It's excellent. At $30, it's a steal.