XCOM Enemy Unknown

[psyco6]

Anyone play the new version?
Just picked it up have not tried it yet.
Got a 9.5 in Game informer on a Military forum it was recommended by other members.

[pershainovitsh]

I've been thinking of getting it for PC. If I won't get it for Christmas, I'll probably buy it myself soon after the holidays.

I think it's cool how your soldiers can get wounded or even die in the heat of a battle. There's a mode where you can't save mid-battle, which makes the game even more intense. So you'll need to think carefully what to do.

Since you can name your soldiers, why not name them after SWF members? It would provide an additional reason to keep them alive...

[psyco6]

I am really enjoying this game managing resources,R&D where to deploy too.
Sat coverage is my priority right now.
This is a turned based game but it moves fast.I'm also focusing on getting soldiers promoted so I can unlock officer training and have more effective squads in the field.

[pershainovitsh]

I got it for Christmas and just started playing. I'm playing on Normal difficulty with Ironman mode turned on. This means there is always only one save to load. This should eliminate quick-loading and saving your entire squad by trial and error. Death should be feared and so it is when death is permanent and the game constantly saves over my only save.

I did name my soldiers after SWF members. Scriv is the first one I named, and he was a heavy-class veteran, an expert in heavy weapons such as machine guns and rocket launchers. He's been on every mission so far and has the most kills. I'm a support with the ability to heal other soldiers with my medpack. I tried to make Spartan a sniper, but he got killed by aliens before he was promoted. On level 1 every solider carries basic equipment but after receiving a promotion they specialize on a class based on what they've been doing. Just for carrying a medkit I turned into a support. I replaced Spartan with Phoenix, who also died, but not from direct alien fire. An alien shot at him, missing completely, but damaging the car he was hiding behind. Thanks to Hollywood physics, the car started burning and exploded before Phoenix could escape. Lambourne is an assult soldier.


My thoughts so far:
It is a very good game, however, there are some things I don't like. I haven't found out how to see what the line of sight of my soldiers is. It's also not possible to align the camera angle to see it. The manual is very basic, but seves its job. I'll have to give minus points for lying: it's saying "To get the FULL list of controls, features, and much more, visit: www.2kgames.com/manual/XCOMEU" but the pdf file contains exactly the same amount of information as the physical manual. Also, if you tick the "enable tutorial" box on the start a new game menu, you will be taken away most of your freedom, which I've noticed. I think I'll restart the game once the tutorial is finished. Maybe I could save my squad members and make better decisions in the headquarters on my second run.

Now it might seem it's all bad but it isn't. The gameplay is good, graphics are adequate and it features a lot of cool stuff. Remember how your soldiers can die? Well, there's a memorial wall for them. Nothing big, though. You can research enemy technology in any order you wish, you can try to capture aliens alive, you can manufacture alien weapons (once researched) and equip your soldiers with them! XCOM: Enemy Unknown should provide dozens of hours of single player fun, and if anyone else buys it on PC, maybe some multiplayer fun too!



Edit: The last tutorial mission was a nightmare. First I got wounded, but patched myself only to notice that it was a single-use medkit. Then Scriv, my best soldier, and of the highest rank, got severly injured. He wouldn't survive another shot. He retreated back and luckily didn't get hit when the aliens shot at him the first time. The second time they did, and the hero was down. Lambourne panicked, wanted a medevac and shot me (!!). Andy, with the help of Lambourne once he got over his panic attack, defeated the aliens. Andy was turned into a sniper for some reason.

Time to start the game again now that I got the hang of it. Without the restrictive tutorial.

[pershainovitsh]

Situation update:

I'm starting to like this game more and more. Planning what to build in the base is fun. The battles are intense as I have to plan every move carefully. Many of my soldiers have gotten wounded and had to recover for several days. On this playthrough (I started again after the tutorial) Scriv is once again my best soldier and a heavy. Somehow Spartan and Phoenix are very unlucky in this universe, as they have died early on just like before. Lambourne is prone to freaking out, but instead of killing the crazy Finn he kills aliens with perfect accuracy when panicking.

[backtothefight64]

I'm intrigued now Al, do let me know how I get on !

[pershainovitsh]

...Well, there's good news and bad news for you. You were doing pretty well (I'm pretty sure you were a shotgun-wielding assault) until a particularily difficult mission with a downed UFO. I knew it was going to be tough, so I didn't send in all my best men. BTTF and Lambourne were the only elite SWF troops who took the mission. The others were just generic reserve troops with less skill than my other troops. I also sent in a SHIV (Super Heavy Infantry Vehicle) which is basically Wall-E with a minigun.

BTTF got wounded, but Lambourne patched him up quickly. Lambourne said a line I've never heard before or since, and it's scary how accurate it was: "You'll be back in the fight in no time" That's something I'd expect to hear in Battlefield when the real Lambourne and BTTF are fighting, not here. Scary.

Before that my heavy soldier got killed, but took out several heavy and thin aliens before he did. My Wall-E got destroyed too. The rest of the mission got even worse. One of my fallen soldiers was turned into a zombie and some very nasty aliens appeared. I was ready to give up a few turns ago, but now I was sure I'd have to do it. It appears that your soliders have to be in front of the troop carrying aircraft to be extracted, otherwise they will be left behind. As I was deep inside the UFO I had no choice but to keep going to the bitter end. Lambourne was the last one to die and one of my best medics. The zombie might have been BTTF, but I can't remember. I was too focused to get at least one team member out alive. It was my first failed mission. Casualities: 100%

Some SWF members seem to be luckier. Scriv (heavy class, MG, RPG), despite his numerous injuries, has been on most missions and has the most kills. He has spent at least a month in the infirmary, but he just keeps going. I'm a medic and have gotten wounded fewer times, and there doesn't seem to be anything stopping me.

SWF members' statuses:
Scriv: heavy, alive and well, a legend among alien hunters
Pershainovitsh: almost as good as Scriv
Lambourne: one of the best medics along with me, deceased
BTTF: deceased, fought to the very end
Spartan: deceased before he could specialize
Phoenix: deceased, as above
McGuirk: a sniper, alive
Wobblyone: isn't in the team yet, all unnamed ones are females...

Lessons learned so far:
- Don't be cheap. Buy the best armour available for all your soldiers you are sending for the mission.
- Use Overwatch, the ability to react fire on the enemy's turn. This can save you and your comrades.
- Use cover. Always.
- The environment is destructible, but sadly you can't use free aim with the RPG to destroy it unless you have hostile targets. A design flaw.

There are some screenshots to be seen on my Steam profile page.

[pershainovitsh]

Bad news... What was supposed to be a routine mission turned into a bloodbath. An UFO had landed in a Russian forest so I sent a strike team to eliminate the threat. Among them were Scriv, Pershainovitsh, Viper (a rookie sniper) a SHIV and two of my best shotgun users.

At first it did look easy. There was just a few "thin men" in sight, and quickly I took care of them. But before I knew, I had some of the strongest enemies I've faced coming from two directions. Viper got killed from an alien grenade, Scriv lost some health and they lost their cover. Then the other aliens started shooting at Scriv and he got critically wounded. I'd need to revive him in three turns or he would die. Luckily, the trusted medic Pershainovitsh was close, rushed to Scriv and revived him. The SHIV destroyed the grenade-throwing bastard. But before we could move, both Scriv and pershainovitsh got killed. All I had left was the SHIV, two shotgun-wielding women and a pile of Spartans in a pool of their own blood. As fast as I could I rushed my units to the extraction zone. The aliens tried to follow, but luckily I didn't face any more casualities.

SWF members' statuses:
Scriv: heavy, a legend among alien hunters, deceased
Pershainovitsh: almost as good as Scriv, deceased
Lambourne: one of the best medics along with me, deceased
BTTF: deceased, fought to the very end
Spartan: deceased before he could specialize
Phoenix: deceased, as above
McGuirk: a sniper, deceased
Wobblyone: a rookie, alive
Viper: a sniper, deceased

Lessons learned:
- DON'T BE CHEAP! I thought that I shouldn't research titan armour, because it would take 20 days (mostly research takes 3-10 days) and probably be very expensive. Instead I've focused on the faster research items, at the cost of my best men. They did have the best body armour available, though.
- Never underestimate the threat. I guess I got sloppy from facing the easy enemies first. Or maybe I was just unlucky.

I'm not sure what to do. I'm losing funding from countries because I haven't either responded to the threat or have failed to eliminate it. I've lost my best men. All I have is my best women. ;D One thing's for sure, I should've realized the importance of satellite coverage. If a country doesn't have satellites hovering above it, I won't be able to see any UFO's over that area. The countries will also have less panic and will give me something valuable, such as scientists or money in return.

I may lose this game if this keeps going on. Maybe I should sell all alien corpses and UFO pieces and build a squad from nothing but SHIV's? I need a plan so crazy that it might just work.

[pershainovitsh]

Another day, another set of funerals for the deceased heroes. At first a mission in a Japanese subway was going really well despite the enemies being some of the toughest I've seen so far. With teamwork I managed to kill most of them, but that was only after a sprinting alien the size of a rhino killed Taz with one hit. You know, you'd think it's easy to hit targets that are so big. Not for my squad. For one entire turn nobody could hit them. In the end all but one were dead or wounded on the ground. My last desperate attempt was to quickly stabilize the remaining wounded soldier and run to the extraction. It failed miserably. Had I just ran, I would have saved the medic and the other wounded soldier. That wounded soldier was Johan, though he wasn't a captain.

For the next mission I assembled a new Spartan squad entirely from rookies. That's all I had left. The squad had a reborn Phoenix, Rache, Iwazzio, Tiberian, Wobbly and a SHIV in it. Phoenix and Iwazzio were given the best armor I could make. I didn't have resources for more. Only Phoenix died, and that was caused by the enemies constantly getting critical hits on him.

The future doesn't look bright for Earth. The remaining Spartans are Earth's first and last line of defence. I haven't even responded to every threat anymore.

SWF members' statuses:
Scriv: heavy, a legend among alien hunters, deceased
Pershainovitsh: almost as good as Scriv, deceased
Lambourne: one of the best medics along with me, deceased
BTTF: deceased, fought to the very end
Spartan: deceased before he could specialize
Phoenix: as above, deceased twice
McGuirk: a sniper, deceased
Viper: a sniper, deceased
Wobblyone: a rookie, alive
Iwzzio: a sniper, alive
Rache: alive
Tiberian: alive

Lessons learned:
- A squad full of trained (?) soldiers can miss an alien the size of a rhino from 20 metres.
- Sometimes it may be better to leave a man behind and save as many as you can as fast as you can.

[pershainovitsh]

I lost all my rookies, funding from all governaments and the game.

SWF members' statuses:
All dead.

Lessons learned:
Build those satellites. Make the best armour available. Research weapon tech, which I for some reason didn't do. I was still doing pretty well with standard Earth weaponry.

[pershainovitsh]

On my latest playthrough I've been doing pretty well I think. Scriv was given the class of Heavy once again, Pershainovitsh became Support and McGuirk a sniper. Scriv died pretty soon. The panic levels in the countries seem to be higher than last time. I've researched laser weapons but could have only affor one.


Today's mission

Today there was this mission where an UFO had landed and I sent my men in. The loading screen once said that I should take rookies on the missions to get them promoted so I did that. Others on the mission were Pershainovitsh (medic), Ferguson (another medic, one of the highest ranking soldiers, gave her my only laser rifle), McGuirk (a sniper. Sometimes hits nearly everything, sometimes I curse him to the lowest pits of Hell when he can't hit the side of a barn), Tiberian (a heavy) and some random assault guy.

First thing you have to do in these missions is to find the UFO. Fog of War hides it from view at start. The foresty area didn't provide much cover, but I was using the trees and rocks as much as I could. Soon I spotted the UFO and three Mutons. Imagine Hulk in an armor with a plasma gun and you've got a Muton. They are quite durable and deadly (when attacked with Earth weaponry and low-level armor), especially if there's more than one. So I moved another soldier for a clearer view. Of course things could only get worse: he revealed three more Mutons! So now I had six Mutons outside of an UFO hiding before falled trees. I took a Steam screenshot of the situation. I was sure I would lose all my men in a flash. Six humans vs six Mutons. The odds were against me.

I thought for a while for a good tactic. Then I remembered that I have smoke grenades. According to the info "soliders inside the smoke are harder to hit" so instead of throwing the smoke grenade to the enemy or in between us, I threw it at our feet to keep three soldiers covered. A miracle happened on the enemy's turn: they either missed or didn't shoot at all. I guess it's easy to shoot while in the smoke because my lasergun-wielding medic hit her target, killing it in one shot. Somehow in the following two turns I managed to kill four of the remaining Mutons. Some of my soldiers did get wounded but I got them all healed after the immediate threat was neutralized. One got killed. It was the one I had gotten from helping a governament to deal with an emergency situation. I had given him a device that allows us to non-lethally neutralize aliens, but you have to be very close and the alien should have very little health left for it to work. You could interrogate the aliens if you get them alive.

I was such a formidable enemy that two Mutons had retreated. Pretty soon I killed them too. Then it was time to finally get inside the spacecraft. When I was moving closer, an alien made from energy appeared. I ordered two men to shoot at it, but since the requirement to be a part of Earth's first and last line of defence is the inability to hit anything, they missed. My sniper had to finish it with one shot.

When I finally got to the entrance of the UFO, three Mutons appeared and went behind cover. I tried to have my medic, who was the one who approached the UFO, hit at least one of them, but of course she missed, damaging the hull behind the enemies. Two of the Mutons were hiding behind the power source of the ship. I remember my head scientist saying that the power source is probably extremely unstable so I should avoid damaging it at all costs. Thanks for the advice. I moved my medic back a bit before I let the rookie throw a hand grenade right at the power source. It did blow up, damaging the hull a bit, exposing the medic to the enemy. Just my luck, the Mutons were the only ones to get any kind of an advantage from this.

I got all my men (and woman) as far away from the ship as possible. Some got wounded, some I got healed. My lasergun-medic died. I got the situation under control after that. So unbelievably, I survived the encounter of what at first appeared to be six Mutons, but in the end was nine of them accompanied by the weak energy-alien. Now I'm angry at the rookie who only hit the target about 20% of the time. Here's some irony: he became a sniper. If I could throw him in a cold cell or feed him to the aliens, I would. He cost me my best medic with his extremely poor aim. I could dismiss him, but I don't have too many soldiers to spare.

[pershainovitsh]

XCom can be quite stressing. Once again, what I thought would be another routine UFO landing mission (where you eliminate the crew and get to keep all the UFO parts for your own use) was full of surprises. Firstly, it was a massive spaceship, bigger than anything I'd ever seen. Secondly, I saw an alien version of an elevator. Then I saw a new enemy, much bigger, stronger and sturdier than anything I've ever faced. It almost got my best medic, Pershainovitsh! Luckily I could revive him with another soldier carrying a medkit. Then for the fourth shock: the aliens had ladders that I could use for my advantage. I got my whole squad up on the roof while the enemies were presumably on the first floor. Soon I discovered the massive alien again and did everything I could to kill it. To make matters worse, there was a Muton and a Berserker Muton in there too. The Berserker is a melee-only brawler so I ignored it for the time being. I almost got the priority targets killed, but only almost. On the next turn the dreaded gigantic alien wreaked havoc on the ship, hitting Pershainovitsh. Then the Muton went behind cover and shot him dead.

After that I got all my men to kill the remaining aliens. In one turn all three were down. The remaining two who were hiding somewhere didn't pose much of a threat. All my soldiers were wearing the best armour and wielding plasma weapons.

It hurts to get your alter ego to get killed. Think carefully if you really want to play on Iron Man mode. If I have to restart again, I won't pick IM, but won't save mid-mission either. If I get completely screwed, I'll reload a previous save.

[pershainovitsh]

My tip: don't play with Ironman Mode unless you sometimes get extremely lucky and you are a masochist.

I have gotten almost to the end in the campaign, almost got some of my best men killed before even reaching the crashed UFO and then finally meeting the strongest alien in the game (I hope). Only by sheer luck, trial and error (without loading previous saves because that's impossible), some decent intelligent in planning and good equipment I managed to beat it. Two of my soldiers were down on the ground, wounded, dying in a matter of two turns when I completed the mission.

Now I know the strategy to beat that strong enemy when he appears next time, but it's going to be difficult.

I'll give some general hints about facing stronger enemies.
- Fire at it with all your firepower until it doesn't move.
- If that doesn't work, try something else than bullets.

[psyco6]

I'm going to start the campaign over myself and focus on gear and sat coverage.

[pershainovitsh]

On what difficulty and are you going to play on Iron Man mode? Normal iron man was the (bitter) sweet spot for me, but I haven't tried the others yet. I've read that on Classic almost nothing you've learned in Normal doesn't apply anymore. Impossible is what it says. Don't forget that they added the Second Wave options that are unlocked

I beat the campaign on Normal Iron Man a week ago. The final level was actually rather easy.