I have left the Jedi ways behind. The Sith will triumph! Jk Jedi ftw (although the Sith get more "combat" focused abilities, and are thus cooler in general).
Hey, welcome back! And while we are at it: Does anyone of you play XCOM? I started yesterday, and gosh, what a great game. Got me hooked instantly.
Pardon me -- spreading myself a little thin as of late with regards to activities I'm taking on-board... Welcome back, JediKnight (and to whoever I may have missed)! Nullzone, what genre is XCOM?
Hello, Undead and JediKnight! Welcome back, although you probably didn't miss anything....It's been really quiet here for a while. I haven't tried it, Nullzone. It's a third-person cover shooter, right?
Xcom It's a mix: The battles are tactical turnbased cover shooter, with lots of suspension and depth. To give an impression on how huge the battle section alone is: I just spent like 2 hours on a story mission where you have to infiltrate an alien base. Moving from cover to cover, having my guys and girls cover each other, etc. The suspension kept me hyped up for the whole thing, listening for alien sounds (yes, you get those as indicators where enemies might be), cheering when they took one down, and biting my nails when something nasty popped up suddenly. Then you have the management side of it, which is also huge: You need to build your base, pay attention to your funds, make sure no country panics out because it gets attacked too often, set priorities for research and manufacturing, etc. Awesome game, more than worth the ~15 I paid for it.
Pretty sure you won't regret it. One other thing worth mentioning: In the beginning you are really short on funds, so you have to make hard choices what you want to buy, and it really influences your gameplay from what I saw so far. Example: I had panic rise up (baaaad!) in Africa, but couldn't afford satelittes to spot alien incursion. I was biting my nails that "please, pretty please" no crazy stuff like aliens landing happens there until I could get up my satellites. I spent my money on Interceptor aircrafts, to protect those few sats I already had up. But then, I could have taken a different path, and e.g. decide to deck out my squad with better gear. On higher difficulty levels, optimal progress path really becomes an issue. I play on easiest setting, to get a feel for things and because I want to have fun, not worry about details on an insane level. And even on easy, it is still quite hard to make it through a battle level with noone killed. Oh, and: Save often! On my iPad2 it crashes every 2 hours or so. As this is pretty regular, I assume a memory leak.
Have fun, and tell us how it is going. For help and info, check these out: http://www.ign.com/wikis/xcom-enemy-unknown/Starter_Guide http://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/XCOM:_Enemy_Unknown The Wikia XCOM wiki has some great guides for impossible difficulty. Most of what is written there also applies to easier difficulties, will make your game easier. I am into month 4 or 5 now, and still very short on funds. Not enough money to do everything at the same time, which is actually quite cool. I got a few more satellites up, and had to buy some more interceptors to protect them. Next on my list is building more powerplants in my base, and to build better equipment for my squad (that costs money and resources you get from aliens). Pay attention when you levelup your folks. Some skills are much better than the second one you can get on a level. Example: a Sniper Corporal has the choice between Snapshot (fire on the move, with a penalty) and Squadsight (shoot at stuff one of your buddies sees) . Squadsight is far superior, because the sniper rifles have an insane range and can still hit well enough across half the map (only slightly exaggerated). I already retired 3 people where I experimented with the skills, and decided they are not good enough for later missions.
Again, thanks for all the tips! I'm about a third of the way through the second month, and so far I think I am doing pretty good. My only real regrets are putting my second Satellite over the UK and not Canada, as my base is in the US and a Sat in Canada would be much easier to defend, and letting one of my first Assaults bleed out because I forgot to equip a medpack on my Support. (I also desperately want that upgraded body armor, as I tend to not realize how badly flanked I can get sometimes. Too bad Engineers are apperently hard to come by!)
Always welcome If you do not play on Easy difficulty, consider a restart. From what I read, something like that can kill you in the long run even on Medium. But then, write it off as learning experience Noone said we have to finish the game on first playthrough. In the beginning when you need them most, they are rare. Later on things get much better. You need to be a bit lucky with your mission rewards. Check out the guide here http://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/Impossible_Difficulty_Strategy_Guide . It gives great insight on what to look out for and when to build your first Workshop to get more engineers. With Workshops and Satellite Uplinks you need to plan ahead, so you can build them in a 2x2 square for maximum bonus. If you can afford it, going for better weapons is worth it, even more so than the better armor: the faster you kill the aliens, the less you get hit. Ideally, you shouldn't be shot at more than 2-3x a mission, at least in the beginning. If you get flanked a lot, you are doing something wrong. Most likely you are too impatient Moving slowly (unless you have a time limit, e.g. for rescuing civilians) is absolute key. If you trigger 5 new enemies with your last move of the turn, you are screwed. If you do the same with your whole squad set up for a killzone, say byebye to the Aliens. Did you get the squad size upgrades already? Those are absolutely worth it and should be high priority. 5 or 6 instead of the base 4 people in the squad makes a huge difference. Here is the combat guide from the Wiki: http://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/Impossible_Difficulty_Combat_Guide Most important lesson: Snipers, Snipers, and Snipers. I always have two in my squad, and my whole tactics revolve around getting the Snipers a clear line of fire: those guys are total beasts. Makes it a bit harder to level the other guys, because the Snipers get so many kills. But better to take it slow than be dead I got lucky with a request for plasma rifles from Japan: 1500$ reward, so my money problems look much better now: upgraded a bunch of stuff, and bought fancy new armor and weapons. Also raised the difficulty to "Medium"; I feel ready for more of a challenge
Some more XCOM stuff: For some great play videos, watch this guy: http://www.youtube.com/user/Beaglerush?feature=watch He is doing Ironman Impossible (toughest difficulty), and has a nice sense of humour. In season 2, episode 6, he comes up with a freaking song to accompany the alien autopsy cutscene. Lookie here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJIuwNU8CsQ , at ~ 09:08 . Two lessons I just learned the hard way: 1) Interceptors with the default Missilelauncher are not strong enough to shoot down a large UFO, even with boosting items. 2) When you send someone to PSI training, remove their equipment first. They aren't smart enough to drop it off at the armory before they go in
For computer or ipad? Which one is more worth it? Sorry I didn't read carefully, I'm played tennis today so I'm really tired.
I believe Xcom is a port so the PC version might have better graphics. Speaking of PC games, I've been playing too much league of legends. I liked heroes of order and chaos, but it was unbalanced and lol is better in every way.
Yep, XCOM is a PC port. You get more fancy stuff there than on iOS, e.g. additional content packs and usermods; and better graphics, of course But on the Gameplay vids I watched, it didn't look much better on PC to me. It plays perfectly fine on iOS, no complaints. Sometimes it slows down when too much stuff is going on at the same time, but nothing serious. And it crashes if I play for a few hours in one go on my iPad2: I suspect a memory leak.
