The PC version is actually cheaper on GMG at the moment. I think this price point is rather greedy. Especially when you consider a lot of potential customers would be double or even triple dipping by this stage. It's a shame. Part of me wants to support quality mobile games. It's just that Xcom wasn't a quality game to begin with...
So, just because the price has dropped in your country on the PC on a game that had a premium price less than 6 months ago, the developers should sell the game cheap on iOS, no matter the money and work they did on the port? That just doesn't make sense. Also, your last point seems to stand alone in a quiet corner somewhere. The vast majority of reviews I've read, no matter platform have been extremely positive, as has most comments here. For me, no game on iOS comes close to the depth and gameplay of this game. I absolutely love it, I play it everywhere, on the bus, in the john etc.
The framerate IS low, it judders between 15-20 and often lower during cinematic camera angles. Anyone saying otherwise is either lying or one of those rare people that simply cannot differentiate between framerates. You can see the difference for yourself by looking at the iPad 3 comparison videos - performance can be all over the place and it will be worse on the iPad3 compared to iPad 2/Mini due to the same hardware pushing a doubled "Retina" resolution. If you're not sensitive to low and juddering framerate, you'll be okay, but it's most definitely there and those of us that ARE sensitive to it will notice and be uncomfortable.
I finally raided those Europe base with success and captured their commander.. Immediately the panic of entire world lowered by 2.. I spent at least 2 hours raiding if.. It tough but fulfilling.. I did it with a captain and 2 sergeant and a rookie.. Lol
For all of you whose have an ipad 3 The game work just fine on ipad 3...i didn't feel any laggy ...the game is great...just buy it if you feel like the game.
The game runs fine, we've already established that your issues is due to jail breaking, so there's that. Also, it's not a good idea to judge frame rate from a YouTube video where the video itself can have frame rate issues.
Here's what people need to get through their noggins regarding hardware and this game: Every single device described as being able to handle it, *can*, they have not oversold the game, which would have been a horrible idea for an iOS title that costs $20 anyhow. However, it is definitely pushing boundaries, and anything hampering the performance of your supported device is going to degrade performance and/or stability. If someone is having extreme crashing issues, the problem is on them for arguably poor maintenance of their device. You're not going to be able to squeeze this game into the final 3.5GB free on a device and expect it to run smoothly, and jailbreaking further exacerbates the issues. because, excepting the iPhone 5, memory is going to be tight on all supported devices. This is a game you're going to need to free up several GB, both for the game, and to have adequate free space for the OS to cache data quickly, and if problems persist, will probably require a full backup and restore to further improve device performance. However, it bears repeating, with a little effort on your part to clean up your device, it will run fine on all supported devices and people need to stop asking "how does it run on device X?", since at this point there have been more than enough reports in this thread verifying that it runs fine on all supported devices. The "worst" devices are the iPad 2 & the iPad mini, they have identical CPU, GPU, and RAM, and are pushing 786K pixels. Still, plenty of people have it working on these devices without significant issue. Next is the iPod touch 5 & iPhone 4S, these are identical in terms of CPU, GPU, and RAM to the iPad mini and iPad 2 but have the benefit of only pushing 727K pixels. Plenty of people are enjoying the game on these devices. Myself, I've been playing on my 5G touch since Thursday and have had all of 3 crashes, only seen one very minor graphical error, and considering it's turn based, the frame rate is fine. Then you've got the iPad 3, saddled with the same CPU (just faster clocked) as the previous devices, but sporting a much better GPU and 1GB of RAM, this is offset in that it's expected to push over 3 million pixels. There are plenty of videos out there showing the game's performance on those devices. Then there's the iPad 4 that sports the best CPU and GPU of any iDevice, still it still only has 1GB of RAM and is pushing over 3 million pixels, but if it will run on an iPad 3, and it does, it's going to do very well on an iPad 4. Last, you've got probably the best device for running this game, the iPhone 5. It sports a CPU nearly as good as the one in the iPad 4, the second best GPU of any iDevice, a GB of RAM, and is only pushing 727K pixels. Compared to everything else, XCOM is going to sing arias on the iPhone 5.
15-20fps is not "fine" in my book and it has nothing to do with Jailbreaking, that's a baseless myth. I'm not going to fight this with anyone, it's a fact that the game runs noticeably and markedly slower than the console version's 30fps and not even in the same league as the 60fps on PC. It's perfect playable, no doubt about that, but for some of us that prefer fluidity; the performance is poor. Accept that or don't, but it's a fact. I have nothing further to say.
I can't verify if your claim is true, but I can't count the time people around here said a game had smooth framerate and when I bought I would end up seeing averages of 20fps. I've seen people claiming games that could barely hold 30 fps were running at 60fps. Hilarious. Some people just don't notice the difference. To me anything lower than 30 fps, while playable depending on the genre, is far from smooth. So I guess I'll hold until I get a better device.
Sadly that has been my experience also, it seems the abnormality that makes people unable to distinguish the difference in framerates between 20 and 60 is a lot less rare than I thought I guess it depends on the background, if you're a PC gamer at heart, you tend to be used to high framerates and are acutely aware when something drops below your comfort threshold. XCOM is a fine game, no mistake about it, but to me the performance is a little too much on the uncomfortable side. Especially given what some of the iOS devices are truly capable of. Personally I'd recommend holding out and waiting to see if the developers can release a patch that boosts performance. I see no reason why iPads 2 and Mini and iPhone 4s/5 can't sustain 30fps at this reduced visual levels, given their lower resolutions than iPad3/4.
True, yet so irrelevant, you may as well be posting what you ate for breakfast. Comparing what an 8 month old AAA PC/Console title is doing on hardware specs more akin to a 12 year old PC versus what it's able to do on current PC hardware hardly makes sense. No surprise that the game is not as pretty as it would be running on my PC with it's HD monitor, hexcore processor, and dedicated video card, but that's not a relevant comparison. Instead, compare this game to Hunters 2, Danger Alliance Battles, Call of Cthulhu, heck, even Final Fantasy Tactics (which sports a similar price tag). Compared to what our choices were in TBS games a week ago, ye gods, this thing looks and plays like electronic sex.
I said nothing about prettiness. Were we to run the console (7 year old hardware, need I remind you?) and PC versions at the same detail levels as the iOS version, the performance and framerate would be off the charts. I'm simply commenting on the performance levels *right now* on iOS hardware. To some, it's perfectly fine and acceptable, to others it wouldn't be. To me it's the same issue with KoTOR. Everyone is so happy KoTOR came to iPad and, in a way, so am I. It means iOS gaming is becoming more and more serious every week and that's a good thing for everyone - but that still doesn't excuse the vastly reduced visual quality and the same low framerate, though granted KoTORs framerate isn't as bad as XCOMs. Considering KoTOR is coming from Xbox roots and a 10 year old PC, the performance and visual degradation is quite shocking to me. XCOM is far more understandable, granted, but the framerate is still unpleasant to me. Again, this is all well and good and I don't disagree on any particular point. I'm not attacking the game, it's a magnificent title and one every strategy fan should own I just think that the iPad2+ and iPhone 5 are capable of squeezing more performance out, considering how far they toned down the quality levels. That's all, really!
Saying something is a fact doesn't make it so! When you've only experienced the game on a jailbroken device, it boggles the mind you say that everyone running the game smoothly is either lying or blind. Amazing!! It is logical in my book that jail breaking and running tweaks and visual enhancements, background services etc. will leave less resources for any given game.
So I've been playing for about... 15 hours. IPad 3, with 4gb free space, on 6.1.3. In that time I've had 4 crashes back to home screen. And 6 crashes that rebooted the device that resulted in a corrupted autosave. In every case without exception those 6 more severe crashes were the result of me pushing buttons 'early'. Either when swapping about the HQ screen, or trying to select troops. Tbh, for a game that is obviously pushing my iPad 3 to its limits I really dont think that's too bad. Not when you think of the amount of taps. And given the nature of the crashes, I expect them to be fixed. Frame rates... Couldn't tell you whether it's 20fps or 60fps. It looks great, sure it slows down a little when assault troops snap off shots from over watch but it isn't unplayable by any shot of the imagination. Based solely on the iPad version I've ordered the mac version, kinda annoyed with myself I never played this on Xbox even though its been out yonks.
