Yeah, me too…I also liked the strategic and even tactical flexibility, within the parameters of the original game, that it gave you. Looking forward to see how they handle that in the new game (still haven’t had time to download and try out the demo…probably won’t before the game ships either, unfortunately).
I’m suspecting that a lot of it is going to come from the enhanced base building, tech researching, and soldier training options, which were rudimentary, adequate, and virtually nonexistant in the first game, respectively.
Not that you can tell from the demo, particularly, but there are definitely hints to that effect scattered throughout both the demo and the various videos the developers have released, so I’m not too concerned yet.
Played through the demo last night. Didn’t want it to end 
Demo is very short, but a good tutorial for the game. It is very ambitious, the way they have done it. Based on the demo I think it will be a very good game. There were a few issues, but nothing too serious, and they actually made me think of the original X-Com.
For those of you discouraged by the demo’s hand-clenching, according to PC Gamer and their pre-release code it really does let up on you to do what you want not long after the demo ends. It’s basically an extended tutorial mode.
This seems pretty obvious, based on the fact that you essentially complete freedom after the 2nd move in the 2nd mission, and the 1st mission is obviously the “here’s how you move around and do stuff” tutorial.
If I was “discouraged” by the demo, it’s just because I wanted more of it to be “free play” because that’s the fun bits, not that I was remotely concerned that the game was somehow going to have the same proportion of handholding as the demo. x.x
Wow. Haven’t been keeping up with the windoze news lately and the XP support drop is a bummer. I like XP because it does what I want it to do and runs with a minimum of fuss (with some tweaking).
That said when I do upgrade this game is an insta buy for me. I think I still have the floppies and original box around somewhere. Often imitated, never duplicated, I can’t wait for a modern version of this classic!
A few years ago I bought all the XCOM games on Steam. I tried playing one of them–I think it was UFO defense–and had trouble getting into it. Based on what y’all are saying, I might give it another go. Does it have a learning curve steep enough that I need to find a tutorial for getting started?
Also, just played the demo, and if I were in the habit of paying full-price, I’d pay it for this.
I’ve never played the XCOM games, but from what I understand, the good ones were generally pretty hard and full of fiddly micromanagement.
Enemy Unknown appears to try to streamline and remove the micromanagement while staying true to the XCOM spirit.
I highly recommend you try it again. I played it only a year ago, and even though I’m used to modern games by now, I absolutely loved it. The game doesn’t have a steep learning curve as such, it’s just from the time when games had manuals, and user interfaces and game mechanics were different enough that you actually had to read through the manual once before jumping into the game. So, download the manual from somewhere, give it a once over, and go kill some sectoids!
I still play the original XCOM games - not keen on Interceptor or Apocalypse but UFO and TFTD are still fun to play - as for the demo - played it and looks good - very early UFO/TFTD game play. will be adding it to steam.
Ain’t that the truth? I miss the days of manuals. Nowadays a game is one of two things:
a) So derivative that you don’t NEED a manual - you already know how it plays.
b) Has several hours of tutorial missions and hand-holding, requiring a mandated extended tutorial before you actually get to start playing.
If you bought the game on Steam, well, uh, they’re actually the first hit for a google search for “X-com UFO defense manual”.
Though humorously, for the fellow who’s bemoaning all the super long ingame tutorials you get these days, well, a large chunk of that manual is basically a tutorial. “Click on this. Do that. Now you know!” so I can’t say much has been lost there. 
Honestly though, with the new game coming out in a week, I’m not really sure this is a particularly clever time to wrestle with all the “have not aged well” design decisions in the original (My favorite Really Stupid Thing is how if you right click on just about anything in the squad loadout screen, it IMMEDIATELY launches the mission without so much as a “By your leave” as if right mouse click were some sort of secret handshake for “I’d like to go into combat with a completely random loadout on my squad please.”). This is to say nothing of the “weren’t even a good design at the time” design choices, like not having the faintest idea how far any of your squad members can move, because different terrain types cost different arbitrary numbers of time units, with absolutely no way to find out how many, other than to walk through it.
It’s still a good game, but I don’t think it “holds up” so much as “no one has really many anything like it since, so it’s pretty much the only thing in its genre” which is about to change, so…
Maybe for you, Mr. “I buy games when they’re released” Man, it’s coming out in a week. I anticipate this game’s release sometime around July 4, 2013. 
I did have some issues with the GUI as presented in the demo.
I thought we had arrived at a point in time when right click = dismiss the current window. This is fairly standard GUI design, no? Click to select, then confirm. Right click to dismiss. I don’t need my navigation complicated by nonsense added to satisfy gamepad control.
Same goes for Borderlands 2. So many silly steps to check and and compare items all because they can’t be arsed to design something that won’t work on gamepads.
How likely I am to buy a game new is directly related to how excited I am for it. I think I’ve bought… uh… well, I guess I bought FTL when it was new, which resulted in it actually being $1 cheaper than it’s budget breaking $10 “list” price, but otherwise, I’m having a hard time remembering the last game I bought new.
@Kinthalis:
I… am not parsing your “right click = dismiss” standard. Can you help me out and mention some UI in which this is the case and how it works? Because I can’t actually think of any cases where that’s how it works. That’s probably just me being spacy, but… help?
Right-clicking clearing a notification windows sounds like expected behaviour to me. An amusing example is Civilization 5.
Admittedly I’m coming at this not necessarily from a gaming UI point of view, but in software development in General. However I know there are games that do use this simple UI mechanic that works really, really well.
Endless Space and Civ V come to mind right away.
It’s fast, effective, intuative. ESC should bring me t the main options menu and that’s it. I shouldn’t be hunting aorund for that key every time I’m messing with some other subsystem.
I guess I really -haven’t- encountered this then.
Sounds more like a “thing you’d like to have” rather than them not following a “standard”. Maybe a best-practice, rather than a standard.
Either way, clearly, it won’t bother me any.
I’m a little confused. What’s with the snark? Am I missing something, or did you?
There were plenty of things to be wrestled with in the old game no doubt. In spite of those, Xcom UFO defence was the best gaming experience I had in the last 4-5 years, and I’m glad I tried it, no matter how good the new game is, or how well it captures the atmosphere of the original.