The Official XCOM Thread

[Blarg]

Yes, smoke is very useful for concealment for those reasons.

I will reiterate my other point about it too, though. Your guys will sometimes collapse without enough health to survive if they are not picked up and taken out of smoke. Sometimes you can get to them in time, sometimes you just can't. There's no one way or the other here; it varies.

Wookie, you speak of letting soldiers die. They're very expensive, and I don't let them die lightly.

One more thing about tanks. They take up four spaces that could be used for leveling up soldiers. Which is not to say they're bad, but that everything has a cost. Considering how valuable increased stats are in this game, how critical even, I tend to think of the game as a giant machine for testing out soldiers and leveling them up. You need good ones badly, but they aren't necessarily all that common, especially as regards psi vulnerability, which is extremelyh common. I like being able to stat up and kick out as many soldiers as I can, and sacrificing a big chunk of my squad to a piece of metal that doesn't level, and dies as often as anything else, isn't a trade off I like.

Just a matter of taste, though.

[BCPVP]

This sounds like a pretty cool game. Once finals are over (because I do NOT need another distraction, especially an addicting one!), I'll be sure to try this game out.

I'm amazed at how complex this game seems to be from you guys talking about it. For such an old game...wow. I was a huge fan of Civilization and this game sounds similiar.

[Blarg]

It has a pretty satisfying depth to it, but what still strikes me all these years after it first came out is how vivid the battles were, and that even though they are turn-based. They're much more absorbing than the usual turn-based game, because the combat model is so perfectly designed. At every moment you're wondering if some small movement will make one or a handful of aliens suddenly show themselves and open fire on you at once. It's really spooky.

The game is honestly frightening at times. Lots of fans talk about jumping out of their chairs when seeing certain aliens and the panic that ensues, and it's one of the very few games I can say actually gave me a scare, and quite a few times too.. I still remember parts of battles after all this time, they were so intense.

One of my favorite things is to get the game going for a while and have a bunch of battles saved right before they begin. The game randomizes battles -- scenery, lay-out, aliens, etc. So if you have a game or two saved, you can step right into a great battle at any time. They're still good even after you've beaten them, because they'll be randomized and still new to you.

[evil_twin]

What an awesome thread. I was badly addicted to this game at the time and played it through multiple times. I didn't realise it was playable again on XP boxes. Thanks for the link, I'll give it a go soon and maybe get more involved in the strategy discussion then.

Did everyone love Terror from the Deep just as much? Somehow I never really enjoyed it, neither the premise nor the balance seemed right somehow.

[Blarg]

I don't think it had nearly as much atmosphere as the first one did. Fighting lobsters was more funny than scary. Plus they were damn hard! A little too hard. And the scenery underwater was more boring than the dark creepy farmhouses or shops filled with cowering customers. Plus some of the maps were just too damn big and took forever.

I didn't like it nearly as much as the first one, and I think most people thought it tried gamely but missed the mark. It walloped the other sequels though.

[Morrek]

XCOM is like my favourite game ever, nice thread. I've finished it maybe 3 or 4 times on my PSX, but it doesn't work anymore so I haven't played it in way too long.
And yeah, terror from the deep wasn't nearly as fun.

Downloading the game now... awesome

[evil_twin]

Agreed, the lobsters never did it for me. The first combat I played was huge and I rapidly became bored.

Does this newer version fix the wrap-around stats bug? That is, when you leveled up a character beyond 255 in an ability it wrapped around back to zero, rendering a previously super soldier useless.

I used to avoid completing the game just so I could keep on doing battles and leveling up. Once you get psi powers and can control the Erethreals(sp?) you can take sweet revenge on the all the alien scum. Cutting them down in swathes and watching them all panic was classic stuff. Of course this constant leveling up was somewhat ruined by the wrap around stats bug.

[Blarg]

I remember hearing about the bug way back when and I think a patch may have eventually fixed it. I don't know about whether the windows version linked in this thread does.

I used to constantly avoid ending the game so I could keep on fighting too. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Morrek]

Just started playing the game again now, quite some fun but I hate the music, gotta find a way to turn it off ^^
Never heard about the stats bug, maybe it's because I usually end the game fairly quickly as I usually just play the game for a few days during spring break or something and I don't like leaving things unfinished.
On another note, I remember in the manual they wrote something about a practise range of some sorts for your soldiers, but I never found out how the heck to do this, anyone know anything about this?

[evil_twin]

I do remember having a patched version at some point along the line and being rather annoyed that they had not fixed the wrap around stats bug, so I'm not so hopeful. Still, I can see myself finding out, few missions to go yet though!