I hope they can catch the atmosphere of the original. I still remember the first time I deployed troops to a shot down UFO and was searching a dark house when an alien popped into sight and shot one of my troops. I just about jumped out of my chair
I’m not sure what Palooka’s basing his judgement on, but I did watch a developer’s video diary that seemed to imply that you’re limited to only one base, which worries me slightly. On the other hand, the same video indicated that what you can do in that base is significantly deeper than it was in the old game.
But the only point of multiple bases in the first game was better radar coverage (which is apparently taken care of via Satellites in the new game) and more “real estate” to build extra hangars and whatnot, which is a problem that should be easily avoided.
I guess there’s “redundancy in the case you lose your base to aliens” but that is something that actually HAS been lost in the new version. And I’m not entirely sure I miss it, because while it’s a cool idea, the implementation was not good at all.
Played the demo last night, and while I got annoyed with Colonel Sweater, as I dubbed the talking head who gives you your tutorial briefing stuff, once I finally got out of the “Okay, now move squad member #1 to cover behind those boxes!” section of teaching people who’ve never played Xcom before how the game works, I thought it was excellent.
Much less relevant to the gameplay experience, but not the annoyance factor. Clicking and dragging an item vs navigating several menus to get the same thing done = annoying.
True, but not all interfaces need to use a click/drag sort of setup, so it may or may not be relevant in that regard either.
Most of the non-gameplay related “handicaps” of a controller can be mitigated or completely eliminated by intelligent UI design. There’s no substitute for a mouse for some gameplay related tasks though, in much the same way that playing platformers with a keyboard tends to suck. x.x
Word of warning: I nabbed the demo and… it won’t run on Windows XP. Which is not to say it requires the graphical pizzaz of directX 11, oh no. It runs with good old dX 9. The 32 bit version. Because fuck you, that’s why.
On the one hand, if there’s one game that’d prompt me to finally move on to Win 7, it’s this. On the other hand… I really don’t want to move on to Win 7. Why did you go and do that for, Firaxis ? I thought we were friends !
Oh common man. Seriously? Windows XP? It’s over a decade old now. It’s time to let go.
It is less secure, less optimized for modern hardware, it’s a DECADE OLD. In computing terms that’s like you talking about how you’re upset that they won’t make a pen that’ll let you touch up your cave paintings.
UPGRADE.
You might as well bite the bullet because with Windows 8 coming out soon MS is not going to support XP anymore. It will be like Windows 2000…completely unsupported for updates and unsupported in the future by vendors. Personally, I’d skip 7 and jump to 8 when it ships, but that’s just me.
Windows 8’s tablet interface - metro, is a disaster foisted upon us by gigantic dildos.
Luckily there are already, easily installed hacks that dump you into the standard desktop environment and restores the start menu, so it’s essentially a better optimized windows 7. And it’s cheaper! $40 from what I hear.
I have a release candidate on an old laptop and it works great. I don’t mind the interface either…in fact, I kind of like it. If you don’t, you have options to modify it if you really want to as you said. Personally, it’s probably one of the best OS candidates I’ve seen Microsoft put out in a long, LONG time…or anyone else for that matter. It’s funny how MS is finally putting out something that seems pretty solid, and all the press is about Apple’s new iPhone 5.
Windows 8 does…not… look good. I am not sure I’d heed this advice. In fact, I’d NEVER suggest jumping on a “just released” MS OS.
I forget what dragged me to Windows 7, though I skipped straight to it from XP because ew, Vista.
Ooop. Okay. Just saw Kinthalis’ assertion about how to make Windows 8 usable. Not bad then. Particularly at that price point. I have to say that there’s a REALLY OBVIOUS reason to not upgrade to win7: If your XP box is working just fine and runs everything you want it to run, why would you want to spend $100 and a bunch of time figuring on which stupid version of the OS you want?
You don’t upgrade your OS until you need to. End of argument there as far as I’m concerned.
[QUOTE=Airk]
Windows 8 does…not… look good. I am not sure I’d heed this advice. In fact, I’d NEVER suggest jumping on a “just released” MS OS.
[/QUOTE]
Matter of opinion. I like it. shrug As to the old saw about jumping to a ‘just released’ MS OS, to me that’s old hat. I jumped right to Windows 7 (hell, I was running the RC on my home machine before it even shipped) with no issues. Vista was a disaster, but, well, it was a disaster…had nothing to do with it just being released. It was a disaster BEFORE it was released, and everyone knew it. So far I’ve found very little to complain about with Windows 8.
Which part of ‘it won’t be supported after the end of this year’ didn’t you get? Sure, you can stay with XP…hell, there are some old foggies and stubborn folks still using 95/98 and Windows 2000 (probably some folks who love pain still using ME), but MS is not going to be doing any further updates, driver folks will no longer be doing updates, and nothing new will be written for it. Again, suit yourself, but you are giving foolish advice IMHO.
I ran windows 2000 for YEARS after they “stopped supporting it”. Frankly, most of the time, that’s just them washing their hands of having to deal with it and has next to nothing to do with how well the OS does or does not continue to work.
It becomes a security risk at that point though - really windows XP is already a security risk compared to a modern OS. It’s also not takign full advanatge of your modern hardware.
Yes, if your PC is an 8 year old relic, then I don’t see the point, though, again, security is an issue. But a modern rig, with windows XP?
Yes, I know people who still use it. But…no more security updates. No new driver updates (which means that after a while, no new games are going to work on it…in fact, that’s already happening, since Kobal2’s point was that THIS game won’t play on XP NOW). Sure, it will still work with older, legacy software that’s on it today, and if that’s all you want then that’s fine. Personally, I’d like an OS that is supported (and better optimized for the newer hardware and software), especially with continuing security and driver updates, but YMMV.
Well, yes, eventually you hit a point where you need a driver update and you “Have” to upgrade.
There’s more to it than that. For one thing, you get a reputation boost with the host country for building new bases. But more importantly, you can drastically reduce your response time to new outbreaks and landings. It’s particularly useful in avoiding night missions. If you have a terror attack in Calcutta at three in the afternoon, and your only team is in the US, it’s going to be pitch black by the time you get there. On the other hand, if you have a “B” team in China, they can pop over there in a couple hours and take care of it before sunset. Also, it helps catch landed (as opposed to crash-landed) alien ships before they can take off. Taking those things intact give you a lot more loot than if you have to shoot it down, but they’re tough to catch because they don’t stay grounded for very long. Having a lot of bases around the globe helps insure you’ve got a craft near enough to get there before they leave - especially if you’re still flying Skyrangers.
That is a bummer. I’m still running my win xp hp laptop which just about has the legs for this game according to the minimum system specs requirement. And I’d just discovered the original Xcom last year, and was super excited about this game.
Although I was probably not going to be able to play it anyway - I have a university internet connection that doesn’t allow Steam to connect. Is the game going to be available without Steam?
Fair enough, but I don’t really feel this is that big a deal. Yes, it’s a level of additional detail, but it’s also a level of fidgety micromanagement.
Besides, night missions were fun.
I like fidgety micromanagement!