XCOM UNKNOWN

[ThryllSeekyr]

My apologies if someone has already posted about this game, but there are apparently none here. So.....

I ordered this game early last week being prompted by it's rave reviews on another internet forum.

Now, one of my complaints about this game is that it still costs a very steep $70.

I started this one up. [spoiler]Remembering how, the demo of this game played out with every member of your first Xcom squad gets killed on the games opening mission. Except for one. Forget his real name, but he was automatically upgraded from Rookie to Heavy Weapons and soon awarded the nickname Odin (Nick-Names or Call-Signs are given some time after they have risen above the rank of Rookie!) Though, he was soon killed as well as almost another replacement squad. After many missions into the game I now have a main squad of male Heavy Weapons with the call sign Lights Out, two three female Support with call signs Prophet, Pixie, & Smokes, a female Assault call sign Android who happens to have the best aim at 102. She has highest number of kills. I have a male  Assault class with the call sign Wild-Child and a male Sniper call signed Lock Down. So far both Lights Out and  Lock Down have been found to acquire Psionic talent through capture and research of a live Sectoid alien. Where I was able research a build a Psionics lab and test my soldiers. I have about 23 soldiers. Most of them haven't gone out on mission yet.

So, you scan for alien activity in room with a huge holo-globe of the world and a U.F.O. pops up on radar and if you have a Interceptor (You can build as many as twenty of these totally!) handy. You can send it out to shoot it down. if this is successful, you can send out a squad of five soldiers (You can eventually have six soldiers in squad when you buy the upgrade!) in a drop-ship to investigate where the U.F.O site for alien survivors. Mostly they will be sent out on missions where you have your squad stop the aliens from abducting humans. Strangely, and most of the time these are in sparcely populated areas where no civilians will be around. Even though it's a alien abduction. Though, there have been two missions so far where I had my squad have to rescue a large number of civilians while eliminating another alien threat. (This was the mission where my entire first squad was killed and failed miserably. My squad was immediately replaced by a squad of Rookies after that!  At that stage I had not yet discovered that I could save my games before hand.) There was also another mission where I had my squad enter a underground base that the aliens made on Earth somewhere in America. I had to research and build a special key for that one.

As, your squad does missions, they can collect and bring back alien captives and corpses for research. Aliens alloys, weapons, computers, for research as well. From these, you can research them for better weapons (Lasers and Plasma guns!)  armour (Nano weave Fibre vests, Carapace, Spider, Titan and Angel Armour!)  and other devices like Guns scopes, Arch Throwers ( For stunning  Aliens, so you can take them back as live specimens!) Alien Grenades ( That do lots of damage!)  or sell the excess materials and specimens on the Grey Market for more credits. Money is important for buying more Soldiers, upgrades and excavating and building on to your underground base. You do get a monthly allowance from all the nations your protections. Some missions will require you to choose between protecting three nations from Alien invasion/abduction. If you choose one, the panic level of the other two nations will rise and soon their panic level rises too high and they will redraw their support. Earning you less money. You can fix this by only picking missions in places where their panic levels are already high. Once your mission is successful, there panic level is lowered for now. Though it's hard to choose as some mission always offer interesting rewards like extra money, soldiers, scientists and engineers. I always go for the ones offering extra money as I always need some. You can also lower panic levels by building satellites and Satellite Uplink rooms and sending these Satellites out to countries  where their panic level is high.

Your base is viewed in the style of a human sized art-farm where you are always looking at a cutaway of it. You can see all the facilities and rooms and zoom in closer for more detail. It's just pity you can't walk around inside in first person. I have also noticed that it never shows your full compliment of soldiers hanging around the barracks. It only shows a small number of them and only ever the same ones.

Then there's your drop-shop that will always carry your squad of soldiers to and from missions and the Interceptors that you can build. You always have a drop-ship in this game and it apparently never gets damaged or shot down by aliens. There is now option to ever build more of these and you only ever have the one of them. Though, you can build up to twenty interceptors and upgrade them with missiles, pheonix cannons, lasers, and Plasma weapons. You can also upgrade them to be more like the U.F.O.s. These interceptors are then sent in groups of four out to major countries to protect them. They are more usefull if they have a satellite also in the same location. I currently have all twenty of them out all already, but mostly without their satellites.

The mission themselves always show  drop-ship taking off and exiting the underground base through huge retractable metal doors and then cut to scene of your squad sitting inside the drop-ship as they are given their full mission briefing. Most of the time you will be given various cut scenes of the drop-ship landing various locales sometime showing your squad impressively exiting from the drop down ramp of the ship. Then you are shown a three quarter top down view of your squad waiting for orders. You can always rotate and scroll the screen to look around them and from there action is then turn based. Taking turns can be slow going or fast depending on how you can have them move. You can have them as far as the green rectangular ring around them will allow and have perform a action at the end of that movement or you can have them dash or sprint their full movement which is shown as a larger yellow rectangle. Unless the enemy can be seen, not much can done except moving slowly within the green ring and using Over-Watch which allows your squad to shoot automatically only once at the enemy if they can be seen moving within range. (You can upgrade this skill on some soldiers to shoot at them if they are merely shooting at them or just within range but not moving.) It's best to move this way slowly until the enemy can be seen as they can get off a shot and probably kill them before the enemy have time to shoot back. Otherwise having squad moving at their full movement or dashing can put your characters with range of the enemy without allowing them to take action like shooting, throwing  a explosive grenade or smoke grenade, healing themselves or another, using overwatch, using a psionic ability if they have one or using the ability of a particular class of soldier and/or ability they earned from being promoted to another rank. They can also hunker-down to completely put themselves in cover. Providing they have found partial cover standing next to or behind another object (A fixture, some furniture, a book-shelve, a computer bank, a barricade, fallen log or large rock, behind some ledge of higher ground!) A light blue shield half filled in will show when your squad has successfully found cover and red shield half filled in when they haven't.

When you move your squad around, you often see them moving close up in third person view or a close up of them firing off their lasers which always leave a trail of smoke in it's wake as it heats up the air around it, throwing a smoke grenade, but this is only sometimes. Every time they successfully kill a enemy, this is always shown close up in full detail.

My only complaints here are that for all your squads usefulness, they can only shoot things. They cannot melee and have no skills as such. Although there is  a skill given to the Assault class called Close Combat that allows them to do more damage to enemies right next to them. However this is still only shown as shooting them. I only wonder what were the game developers thinking when they neglected to cover this part of combat properly. Did they run out money.

If there was full implemented Melee combat, then they could give you squad bonus for dashing into space right next to enemy. Sort of like a charge melee attack. There's also no penalty like giving your squad or enemy a free attack when ever they move from a spot next to your squad or enemy. Though, thats mainly a rule from Warhammer 40k Blood Bowl

My entire compliment of soldiers all have American accents despite coming from all parts of the world. Di they run out funding for voice actors as well.

Graphics could be a little better, some of the close-ups look a little dodgy.
Despite all that, I still find this game curiously addictive. I just kept playing all weekend no stop until my squad all had either laser or plasma rifiles, laser or plasma pistols, heavy laser weapons, scatter guns, alien grenades and now most of them have reached the rank of Major. Second highest rank. I have six satellites around the globe and about to send out another two or three.[/spoiler]

So I was thinking, why not game like this based on the Hall of Justice from Mega-City One.
Start off with a squad of Cadets, and have them promote to Street Judges, with Lawgivers, Stumm Grenades. Send them out to sites of disturbance in a Manta Prowl Tank. Kill or incarcerate Perps in Iso-cubes. Fight aliens, robots, or mutants. Having a Psionic Devision.

This game would translate to Judge Dredd very well in some places.

Perhaps even a Slaine version based on Myrddin's fortress at Dinas Emryes where you could sent out squads of Atlanteans on war dragons. Have squadrons of them. Kill or capture live Cythron's, Skull Swords, Mid-Guard Bezerkers, Formorians and to interrogate them for information and research. Upgrade to the forbidden Leyser weapons. Defend the fortress of Dinas Emyres!

The possibilities!!

In the meantime, scanning fro more alien activity.......

[Bobblehead]

Love this game!
Im a big fan of the original series from years back so i was waiting for this game with a mixture of anticipation,hope and fear. The last decent XCOM game for me was Apocolypse,and that was ages ago.Was happy with it tho,and its one of the few games i bought on day one release. Theres a few graphical bugs/glitches (on the ps3 anyway) such as people shooting forwards at things behind them (during the action death shots) but thats a minor quibble.
   There were alot of people maoning about the difficulty about the game,i admit the game is hard during the first half but as you upgrade your gear and your troops become more experianced i found the game became alot easier. Except Ironman Mode. Which was a pain! No autosaves,no saving during missions.If your troops die,the games saves so you cant restart the mission. Brutal!

In regards to the voices of your troops,you can actually customise them,different skins,names,armour etc,im sure one of the options is a voice one.

  In short,its a great strategy game,its bloody hard but rewarding and its pretty cheap now.It was also free on psn plus last month,not sure if it still is tho so worth a check. Theres an expansion coming out soon which introduces mechanised units and upgrades for troops,new maps and new aliens,so im looking forward to that!

On my 5th playthru atm,just need to finish the game this time for my plat (because im a dirty trophey whore   )   and would gladly playthru it again regardless of trophies or not. Top game.

[Ghastly McNasty]

I purchased this last month for the iPad for the cost of £13.00. Apart from a few annoying glitches it's awesome.

Totally agree it would translate brilliantly to Mega City 1. I'd buy the shit out of that.

[Bobblehead]

Forgot to add that the Mega City 1 idea for it is most excellent!

[ThryllSeekyr]

Sorry, I forgot to insert ENEMY into the title of this thread.

Love this game!
Im a big fan of the original series from years back so i was waiting for this game with a mixture of anticipation,hope and fear. The last decent XCOM game for me was Apocolypse,and that was ages ago.Was happy with it tho,and its one of the few games i bought on day one release. Theres a few graphical bugs/glitches (on the ps3 anyway) such as people shooting forwards at things behind them (during the action death shots) but thats a minor quibble.

I have the Red Ant Edition of U.F.O. Enemy Unknown from a purchase early ten years ago and I think I got it working once on Dos and I wasn't quite sure what to do in the game and so never ended up playing it. I just retrieved the game from storage last weekend and tried to install it. But it won't run without Dos and under my current version of Windows. Some people said the original was better too.

As for glitches I forgot to mention that there is no friendly fire penalties. You can have one Squaddie fire a stream of bullets, or laser, plasma through another Squaddie to hit their intended target on the other side and the Squaddie who standing in the way won't take any damage. Unless, they within range of allied grenade or rocket blast. They will take damage from those. I just figured the former takes away some of the realism.

In my version there's also a graphical glitch.....when you kill the Cyber-Disc and Drone in mid air. They don't fall to the ground in shower of beautiful sparks like the Floater does. They just explode and stay frozen in mid-air. I'm sure this is not right.

My version is for the X-Box 360, BTW!

   There were alot of people maoning about the difficulty about the game,i admit the game is hard during the first half but as you upgrade your gear and your troops become more experianced i found the game became alot easier. Except Ironman Mode. Which was a pain! No autosaves,no saving during missions.If your troops die,the games saves so you cant restart the mission. Brutal!

I'm not complaining about difficulty of the game as I chose to play it on Normal difficulty. You can change difficulty at anytime during the game. That's one of it's particular perks. Although I had only realised I could use the Save function after several mission into the game where I had already lost two entire squads of Soldiers. After that I kept replaying the same mission over and over again until I was successfully completing the mission with my whole squad fully intact. That was the mission where they had to board a flying U.F.O. and switch off it's power sources section by section. That Chryssalid and Cyber-disc  were difficult to kill before I was able to upgraded to lasers. Not to mention I had just started using a mostly brand new squad only one level up from Rookie.

No, I haven't tried Ironman Mode!

Maybe on second play through.

BTW, do you know if it's possible for you to complete the first tutorial mission without having any squad members getting killed. As it was, I wasn't really sure of the game controls at that stage and didn't know if it was me getting them killed or if the games scripted to have that particular mission play out that way. With just one survivor.

In regards to the voices of your troops,you can actually customise them,different skins,names,armour etc,im sure one of the options is a voice one.

Yes, I know about the customisation. I just wish there was more variation to it. Perhaps with a patch download. With regard to the voices. All ten of them, male and female are very similier sounding to each other and all in the same American accent. I kinda wish you could choose the flag of their nationality as the colour of their uniform. So each nationality would be different. I wasn't really bothered with name customisation as I was quite happy with their names and call-signs. I also notice that with the controls in my version of the game. X-Box 360 the slider would some jump back up one level changing it while I was sliding through each choice making it difficult. It would sometime also jump sideways changing yet again whilest I was scroll down through each choice.

  In short,its a great strategy game,its bloody hard but rewarding and its pretty cheap now.It was also free on psn plus last month,not sure if it still is tho so worth a check. Theres an expansion coming out soon which introduces mechanised units and upgrades for troops,new maps and new aliens,so im looking forward to that!

On my 5th playthru atm,just need to finish the game this time for my plat (because im a dirty trophey whore   )   and would gladly playthru it again regardless of trophies or not. Top game.

Despite all it's glitches, it's still a addictive game. I actually played this game with all the expansions and add-ons I could get for it. I think there's one that allows for more customisation of Squads. Though I shudder to think how much customisation that would have been without it. There's also the one with the Triad mission and your contact ends up joining your team when your successful. Although, I got him killed as well.

Pretty cheap.....not for the X-Box 360 where I payed $70 Australian.

Are you talking about Last stand? I've been trying to find out more about that one or are you talking The Bureau: Xcom Declassified.

This one does look very interesting. More like Second Person perspective shooter. I do hope they have some different and more variety in the aliens. Apart from the Sectoids and Chryssalids I thought the others were just dumb.

I purchased this last month for the iPad for the cost of £13.00. Apart from a few annoying glitches it's awesome.

Totally agree it would translate brilliantly to Mega City 1. I'd buy the shit out of that.

Well, you see what I paid above.

Glad you like my idea for Judge Dredd based on this, but a pity there's no love for Slaine!

How about Nemesis the Warlock, Strontium Dog, Durham Red, Tyranny Rex, Rogue Trooper  The latter mainly so you could have your dead troopers chips collected and then regened back at base.

[Bobblehead]

Sorry the comment about difficulty wasnt aimed at you ThyrllSeekyr,it was a just an observation in general,wasnt implying you were moaning lol

The next expansion for it is called 'Enemy Within'. Im not sure about the full details of it yet or what the price is.The first expansion was the one with the Triad,cost me £7 and didnt think it was worth it.It just gives 3 missions (played instead of the monthly council mission) and some armour tints iirc. The best thing about it is that if you do them asap you get loads of research tech really early in the game.The 3rd mission,the battleship with the power cores you mentioned,is hard with machine guns etc but pays off with all the stuff you get

2nd expansion was '2nd Wave' i think,that was free and gave the option to make the game harder or easier with different things like 'random stat gains' when levelling and satellites costing more everytime you make one.

As for the voices,i just went with generic ones,wasnt aware the choices were pretty similar

Id play a Slaine one too but only if there were some cool monster bosses i could bash lol.

[Dr Feeley Good]

I downloaded it for free on ps plus and haven't even looked at it,  will have to give it a go !

[ThryllSeekyr]

Sorry the comment about difficulty wasnt aimed at you ThyrllSeekyr,it was a just an observation in general,wasnt implying you were moaning lol

No worries, wasn't really offended by what you said. I was just saying that difficulty can be changed. Well, it can be changed. Maybe, that was one of the add-Ons I downloaded with it as well. I'm not sure....

The next expansion for it is called 'Enemy Within'. Im not sure about the full details of it yet or what the price is.The first expansion was the one with the Triad,cost me £7 and didnt think it was worth it.It just gives 3 missions (played instead of the monthly council mission) and some armour tints iirc. The best thing about it is that if you do them asap you get loads of research tech really early in the game.The 3rd mission,the battleship with the power cores you mentioned,is hard with machine guns etc but pays off with all the stuff you get

Enemy Within maybe the that other one I mentioned is a full blown sequel to this game. With regards to the Triads Downloads. Maybe that why I have found it more easier going than most. I'm getting all the tech earlier. That mission on the flying U.F.O. was difficult with the Chryssalid and Cyber-Disc featured in it. I don't really recall having anything better than the guns my squad was first issued with in that mission. Right now, I have just started the mission where our squad has been sent to their first U.F.O.
landing. Since it's a landing and not a crash after being shot down. There should be a full compliment of Aliens aboard. This should be fun 

2nd expansion was '2nd Wave' i think,that was free and gave the option to make the game harder or easier with different things like 'random stat gains' when levelling and satellites costing more everytime you make one.

Maybe that's it! Maybe that what I had been using in my game. I didn't really know any my soldiers all had different stats from each other until I noticed that some were getting higher percentages when aiming at enemy targets while standing right next to each other. "Android" has the best shooting percentages with a high score of 102 in Aim and "Lights-Out" has one of the lowest with score of 50-60. As for Satellites, they seem reasonable cheap to make in my game, but dear to put up.....what with the Uplinks you need to excavate and build as well.

As for the voices,i just went with generic ones,wasnt aware the choices were pretty similar

Yeah, they all seem very samey to me. They should release a Add-On with voices of all or atleast most of the different nationalities after hireing a lot of foreign as well as local voice actors.  "Android" is Asian, "Wild-Child" is Russian I think and my newest recruits are South African, Australian, British and Scottish, but they all sound American to me. I do know that the Soldier I briefly received from the Triad mission has a Oriental sounding voice. So what about the others......

Id play a Slaine one too but only if there were some cool monster bosses i could bash lol.

Good to hear and if Rebellion are reading this. Clone this game in for 2000AD. Get it done 

[ThryllSeekyr]

Right now, there are three games.

The Retro-Spin-Off....

THE BUREAU - XCOM DECLASSIFIED



It's out now.

The Expansion (XCOM -ENEMY UNKOWN)....

XCOM - ENEMY WITHIN



This will be out some time in November.

A Sequel, (XCOM - ENEMY UNKOWN) perhaps....

XCOM - ENEMY UNKNOWN - LAST STAND



This last one isn't available yet.

Too bad my money is tied up at the moment.

[Theblazeuk]

That 'Last Stand' is just the trailer for XCOM:EU

Think it's just Enemy Within on the horizon for now. Can't wait! Small squad of supersoldiers backed up by cyborg freaks against an unstoppable enemy.

Strikeforce: Morituri the game. At least in my head.

[ThryllSeekyr]

That 'Last Stand' is just the trailer for XCOM:EU

Think it's just Enemy Within on the horizon for now. Can't wait! Small squad of supersoldiers backed up by cyborg freaks against an unstoppable enemy.

Strikeforce: Morituri the game. At least in my head.

That's interesting to know as it's presented as two separate games.

They also have Genetically-Enhanced Squaddies.

Anyway, I can't wait until I have enough spare money to pay for the Spin-off and Expansion.

At the moment I am still in the middle of playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

I have the Hyper-Relay up and we have built our own U.F.O. powered Fighter Craft amongst the regular line  up of Jet - Fighters in the Hangar.

I am currently using Rookie Squads, raising their levels while the more experienced squads are resting and it's a bit tough going.

I'm thinking of putting a few more of the experienced Squaddies amongst the Rookies to increase my chances of succeeding....

[Bobblehead]

I have the Hyper-Relay up and we have built our own U.F.O. powered Fighter Craft amongst the regular line  up of Jet - Fighters in the Hangar.

I am currently using Rookie Squads, raising their levels while the more experienced squads are resting and it's a bit tough going.

I'm thinking of putting a few more of the experienced Squaddies amongst the Rookies to increase my chances of succeeding....

Going to missions with a squad full of rookies after youve activated the Hyper Relay is probably a bad idea,unless theyre kitted out in some good armour and weapons itll more likely be hard work or, if your playing on Impossible difficulty,a complete bloodbath. I think after the Relay is up the Ethereals start coming,and the Heavy Mutons too. Best thing to do is buy the extra team slots from the Training School and send 3 fairly well trained bods (Assault/Sniper/Medic) and just rotate rookies into every other mission.
And research Pistol Upgrades 1/2/3. I found that my Snipers were my best units when they were toting upgraded plamsa pistols
Glad your enjoying the game though,roll on Enemy Within! Cant wait for Mechs and Enhanced Soldiers.

[Theblazeuk]

Buy a plasma SHIV and back up 2 rookies with one of these and some veteran snipers + a medic.

Oh but get the thing that gives the rookies 1 level up from recruitment or you waste so much valuable killing time. You are almost in the end game when your rookies will be stun fodder against the ethereals.

("Last stand" is the name of the trailer for Xcom:EU. Enemy within is a DLC for Xcom:EU. From what I gather dont worry too much about the Bureau doesn't sound like a similar experience in the slightest and the narrative link is extremely tenuous)