According to Steam, it’s going to be released late. Release date is Oct 8 (today) but it’s not actually available until midnight, which would be Oct 9.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. I wish I could stay up tonight and play, or better yet blow off tomorrow and play all day, but unfortunately neither option is in the cards.
Same here. Tomorrow is the first day on the job after a big promotion.
I can’t say I didn’t think about it, though…
I have to be at a trade show all day starting way early tomorrow morning. 
I wish I was still just a tech 1 some days (several of who are already planning to be ‘sick’ tomorrow, the slimy dogs)…
I finished the original XCOM UFO and TFTD. And Jagged Alliance 2, twice. Can’t wait !
So I woke up at 5 am to play for a bit.
I’m loving the tactical gameplay, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around the strategy layer of the ant farm/base. I’m still in the tutorial stages so they keep introducing more and more concepts, which si good, it looks like the base building part of the game is very deep, but I feel that it’s going to probably take me a full playthrough to understand everything.
Can’t wait to get back into it… And I have yet to beat Borderlands 2… and of course the Greenman Gaming discount on Dishonored meant I had to get that too… Jeebus.
My only complaint - as I feared, based on the demo, the mouse and keyboard interface is very awkward. Something has truly gone terribly wrong with your UI design if your POINT AND CLICK TURN BASED STRATEGY game feels better being played with a gamepad. Feeling just as well due to some amazing UI design for a gamepad? Fine. Feeling better with a gamepad? You did something very, very wrong.
And this is Firaxis, for pity’s sake. Sid Meier is just down the friggin hallway.
More thoughts:
I’m playing through on ironman mode on normal. Ironman, because, well, that’s the way to play Xcom. The only thing I’m worried about are any limitations to saving and quitting the game. I want to have a single save slot so that my decision, successes, and failures are things I have to live with, but I don’t want to be forced to lose progress simply because I have to cook dinner and I’m forced to stop in the middle of a mission. Hopefully they’ll let me save and quit in the middle of combat, I’ll check that out tonight.
As for “normal” difficulty, I figured normal was going to be plenty challenging for a first playthrough. I’ll give classic a shot after this one. Oh, that reminds me, dashing, in most instances other than your first turn is bad, mmmmm, k? R.I.P River Tam.
Yes, it’s the firefly crew, as well as the cast of Dexter (Vincent “auto erotic mummification” Masuka is a bad-ass assault grunt!), and my favorite D&D characters, that have so far inspired my squad member creations.
I’m thinking of adding real people I know as well as dopers to my roster too 
Another complaint: Why not let me customize every aspect of my squaddies? Makes no sense. Instead of a pool to draw from, just let me click on an open slot and choose an existing squad member I’ve already created, or allow me to build a new one from scratch. It bothers me that I can’t change gender or country of origin on the fly.
So you’d definitely go with the console version? I’m on the fence.
Honestly, with that kind of game I’d go PC all the way, for one reason alone: user made mods. You can’t depend on the developpers to listen to complaints, fix bugs or rebalance broken shit ; but you can usually depend on the playerbase to do it seven different ways.
Also to add giant turgid dicks and/or pornstar tits to everything, but that’s a little less important 
[QUOTE=Kinthalis]
My only complaint - as I feared, based on the demo, the mouse and keyboard interface is very awkward. Something has truly gone terribly wrong with your UI design if your POINT AND CLICK TURN BASED STRATEGY game feels better being played with a gamepad. Feeling just as well due to some amazing UI design for a gamepad? Fine. Feeling better with a gamepad? You did something very, very wrong.
[/QUOTE]
Well, it can’t be as horribly terrible as Skyrim’s. Still cranky about that.
Not in a million years. Graphics, load times, frame rates, all better on PC. Just play with a gamepad. And mods! The days of “Guess I’ll have to settle for the console version because -gamepad” are looong gone. Most modern PC games support gamepads (where they make sense - obviously no gamepads for starcraft or Total war).
Just plug in any gamepad, and you’re set. The xbox 360 is the one most supported right out of the box though. You can use a wired one (just plug right in), a wireless one (with a $20 USB adapter you can get on Amazon), or a windows branded xbox controller (about $40).
The game is also cheaper on PC - $45 vs $60 on consoles. Pre-orders were as low as $35 too, but you missed those 
And the devs have said they aren’t happy with the M&K UI and will be working on some fixes soon. So that’s good. Basically, it’s clunky, it’s not broken, it just forces you to use hotkeys a lot more than it should and it acts a bit funky with elevated terrain.
With skyrim the mechanics of combat and movement were just fine with M&K. But dealing with the inventory and ability menus was a terrible mess of consolified inefficiency and clunkyness.
The mainstream console reviewers praised it as the coming of Jesus, which goes to show just how limiting a gamepad can be in certain situations that they were actually happy about that monstrosity (to be fair, a lot of people were praising the aesthetics more than the usability).
With Xcom the weirdness affects the actual game mechanics - well, the experience of going through the game actions not the actual mechanics themselves. Which is why it’s bad, even though it’s not crippling or even as overtly bad as SKyrim’s issues - you have to deal with the clunkyness every time you are engaged with the core mechanics of the game.
On my third mission, the scientist lady asked me to take one of the aliens alive. I see absolutely no way to do that. Did the game just screw up and tell me to do something that my gear doesn’t actually allow yet? How do you take prisoners?
You need to research the Arc Thrower. It’s like a stun gun. Once researched you need to use your engineers to fabricate one or more of them, then finally equip some of your guys with the weapon.
It’s dangerous to capture an alien, as the range of the Arc Thrower is super short. I’d recommend liberal use of your support guy’s smoke grenade.
apparently you’ll need to invest in an alien captivity module on your base to hold the alien and interrogate it.
Also, there may be some hidden difficulties to capturing aliens. It was easy enough to get a sectoid, and even an outsider, but dozens of arc shots at floaters and mutons hasn’t accomplished squat.
Also, the surprising limitation I’ve run into has been engineers…I’d like to get more engineers, but to do that I need more satellites up, but have to build more satlink rooms, which require more engineers than I have…
Satellites give you money, right?
I read one review which said that your first playthrough will likely fail on the strategic level as you learn the game.
money, scientists, engineers per month, AND a bonus if you have the continent covered.
The arc thrower doesn’t really work on creatures that have more than three hit points. That’s current hit points, though, not total: if you shoot a muton enough with regular munitions, you should be able to finish him off with the stunner. Also, later you can research at least one level of improved stunner - I saw it in my research queue, but didn’t get a chance to research it before my squad got wiped out attempting to raid an alien base, and I decided to restart my game. (Fuckers threw six chryssalids at me at the same time.)
83% chance - miss
85% chance - miss
91% chance - miss
54% chance - miss
ALIEN ACTIVITY
Alien shoots - CRITICAL DAMAGE - “he’s gone!”
How is the strategic level game?
How deep is the base building aspect? What is it like? The only thing I liked about the game Evil Genius was the base building element and I’m hoping to find something similar.
So far the base building isn’t too complex:
It takes time, money & a # of engineers to build any particular room… There’s 4 levels down, the elevator is in the middle, you need to dig out a cave before building a room, unless one’s already there, and some rooms get bonuses if they’re adjacent (dunno if up/down counts yet) and some rooms get replacements.