Hahaha yeah, I work weekends, so the Friday release didn't really help me much. I just installed it and fired it up once, then another time to create a character. I'm off Monday and Tuesday though, so I hope to dive in a bit more then.

I played a few more missions of my new Long War game in X-com 1. I've got laser weapons on the way and plan on grinding out psi research with a quickness. I want to develop my psi troopers as rapidly as possible, since it's a pretty powerful capability. I keep seeing all this positive news about x-com 2. Good thing it's not a multiplayer game that's best to get as soon as it's out.

Unlike the Division, which is coming up and I may have to buy.

Re: positive Xcom 2 reviews...it's good. It's REALLY good. Been playing almost non-stop for 2 days, and still having a ton of fun. They basically improved on the original Xcom on almost every aspect, even if it's a very different game in many ways. Your approach that is, not the actual gameplay. But they really nailed that feeling of being a guerrila movement operating in the shadows. My only gripe with the game so far is that a) the loading times are looong and b) it's killer on my PC. I have to turn down almost everything to get a half-decent framerate. Now, my PC isn't exactly state of the art anymore (understatement), but for what you are seeing on your screen the framerate is just too low. In short, it's poorly optimized. This is the number 1 complaint I've seen everywhere else as well, so I'm guessing Firaxis is working to fix that to some extent. Fingers crossed.

Some thoughts and info (no spoilers):

- Soldier customization is much deeper than it used to be. The 'pool' system is a lot of fun as well. I've got fellow gamers and friends show up as soldiers (either as veterans or as rookies), family members as VIPs and other personnel (engineers and scientists) and even people I dislike as capture/assassination targets (Advent collaborators). Fuck yes.

- There are a ton of little touches the game does to give everything a more epic/guerilla feel. For example, if you are doing a mission in a city you might see your soldiers( faces on the 'wanted' screens hanging around. Soldiers that are lightly or gravely injured will stumble or fall on their knees when they return to base. Soldiers that were gravely injured or have seen a ton of death around them may become 'shaken', leading them to suffer willpower penalties. They may shake off this status after participating in a few succesful missions again though - and sometimes even improve their willpower for overcoming their fears. Rad.

- Much more than in the original game, missions (extraction/recovery mostly) are 'timed', ie you are given a limited amount of turns to complete certain objectives. This may not sound so great, but it's really well done and adds to the sense of urgency you have from being a small group against a global government machine. I hated the timed missions in the original XCOM, but I haven't had much of a problem in this game yet. That leads me to the next point...

- The concealment mechanic. On the more clandestine missions, your team will go in without the aliens being aware of their presence. Basically, what concealment does is not trigger enemies that are in your sight, unless you get into their (shorter obv) vision range. This has 2 major advantages: 1) you can set up elaborate 'overwatch' ambushes. Most of the time, the very first patrol of aliens you encounter is dead before they knew what hit them, if you do it right 2) if you are very good at it (I'm not), you can sneak past large parts of the map to get to an objective before your cover is blown. This, of course, entails some risk as you may get surprised by a patrol coming from behind. But I think it would even allow you to go in with a very small (2) person team and just stealth it. Not that I've tried it, but maybe I should. I think it's theoretically possible.

- the world map. It's better than in the first game. No more satellites, but instead you have to set up contacts with the resistance movements all around the world. It's not entirely different as you can still lose certain regions if you don't respond to some missions etc, but it just works a bit better. Also the satellites were pretty abstract and boring, this is a lot more fun. I've only just started understanding the resources systems but they seem to work pretty well. In short: you have 'intel' which you can use to uncover alien operations, contact resistance groups or buy things at the black market with. And you have 'supplies' with which you can build facilities, build items, infrastructure etc. And then there are the more limited resources like elerium, alloys etc etc of course

- The black market - you can now use it for a variety of things. Recruit personnel, 'buy' items, exchange intel for supplies, etc. Or just sell excess stock for supplies like in the original of course.

- On one of the timed missions, one of my soldiers failed to extract in time. I thought he was gone - his status was 'captured' instead of 'KIA' though, so I held some hope. Then, a month later, a VIP rescue mission shows up...to liberate my (lieutenant rank) soldier. The one I left behind. Fuck yeah. (I got him out safely fyi)

- There still is a global Doomsday clock you have to race against, and I have to say that I wasn't very clear on how it all worked until quite a few hours in...but it's probably as much my own fault as the game's. I think I am going to lose this game tbh - I'm already like 70% there and I'm barely holding on. We'll see. I wouldn't mind though.

- Cautionary tale: you can assign certain classes to soldiers in the pool, but they are only applied if you recruit them as a veteran soldier. Otherwise they will come in as rookies anyway, and will gain a random class after their first outing. You can prevent this by sending rookies to the guerilla tactics school (or something) which will train them from a rookie into a class of your choice. This is free, but takes a few days. This is why my original ideas of the CK peeps' classes were bit mixed...Derf needed to be a ranger of course, but became a sniper. Shiny needed to be a sniper but became a ranger (and was brutally murdered in her first mission). Etc. It's not a huge deal, but I don't want you guys to have the same 'problems' I did.

- the modding tool looks amazing for a newly released AAA title. Not only were there the 3 'release date' mods from the Long War team (using all three btw), even 2-3 days in people started adding mods that made me go like...of course! One mod just to add berets to the available hats, another to add a load of countries and flags in there the game didn't feature at launch (needed it to make Peltz Estonian)...and it's easy as pie with the steam workshop. Download, tick the box in the launcher, voila. Really excited to see what people come up with when they go a bit deeper into the mechanics etc (naturally the first mods were just cosmetic, what did you expect after 2 days)

Forgot to add another thing I like about the game:

- Gremlins (drones). The specialists have these little guys that can remotely provide bonuses/do actions for them. Depending on how you develop your skill trees, they can give any allies +30 defense for the turn (useful if one of your guys is stuck in a dangerous position), they can heal and stabilize remotely (!!); they can perform a (small) attack that bypasses armor, and they can hack remotely. What can they hack? Pretty much anything mechanical. This ranges from 'light posts' in cities (they're part of a camera network so can give you intel etc) to doors and turrets to actual mechanical opponents. I don't need to tell you how much of a difference it makes to take control of an enemy mech for 2 turns. It's not easy to do though - you need to be a very skilled hacker to do it with a good chance of success. I usually just stun them for 2 turns, which already provides me with enough of a window to work with.

'Unfortunately', I am going abroad for a week to visit my family, so I won't be able to play until I get back. Oh well. I've lost a few guys here and there but mostly I think I'm "over the hump". I feel like I have got things under control a bit more...but that's probably an illusion. We'll see in a week.

Sounds good. Good luck with your vacation.

Thanks! Got back a week ago, had a blast. Didn't really do anything in particular..just hung out with my brothers and my family. Drank and bought a lot of beer (and took back around 15 kilos of it to Malta haha), ate good food, slept in, did some work around my parents' house. Came back pretty well rested, only to get a bunch of crap dumped all over me at work, but I'll mention that in another thread.

Also binge-played some more XCOM 2 and...it's oh so good. It basically has all the strengths of the original (and then some), with none of the weaknesses. I was so hooked on it I barely could stop playing it, and this is considering even that the loading times and performance were terrible on my little old PC. These problems are well-known for most players btw, and they're working to fix them. But the game itself...my favorite game in quite some time. I'm not sad I dropped 50 euros on it at launch.

Most of the CK crew soldiers I made survived until the end btw. Peltz become my secondary sniper + squad leader, and Derf was nr 3 in the sniping pecking order and gained some leadership abilities too. J become a psi operative but only started kicking ass towards the end of the game (before that I didn't invest much time and effort into psi skills). Shiny died on her first outing, a disastrous mission which saw 2 rookies die, one regular left behind and 2 gravely wounded soldiers narrowly escape. O'Cram and I appeared only late in the game as rookies so never played much of a role, and Satis become a ranger but was only nr 3 in the pecking order behind two killing machines (respectively had the highest and third-highest amount of kills over the entire game). Since I only usually take 1 ranger along at a time he rarely came off the bench.

I finished the game, after some really tough missions in the middle to end game...had to reload a few times to avoid a game-ending disaster. The game is tough, it really is. And this was on 'veteran' mode, which is only the 2nd lowest difficulty. Now I restarted an ironman game on 'commander' difficulty, which is basically the equivalent of 'classic' in the original XCOM. I'm gonna lose, probably. So far so good though. At least I understand all the mechanics a bit better now, both on the strategic and tactical level. And I'm gonna invest in psionic powers early in the game. Wish me luck!

Sounds awesome. Here's hoping Shiny doesn't get murdered right out of the gate this time.

Just a quick update: after 8 tries at commander + ironman difficulty, I have failed every time. Made it past the 2nd month twice, but got raped hard within a few missions the other times. This game is HARD. I've had some ridiculous bad luck streaks happen, but even so, fucking hell.

Think I may give veteran + ironman a go instead. I suck at this game.

Honestly though, really not sure how I am struggling so much so early in the game with all this playing experience under my belt. Shit is ridiculous. Last time I tried I got hit with a mission with 4 different pods of enemies, an 8 turn time limit to deactivate a terminal across the map. Da Fuq. And then a series of 3 85-92% flanking shots in a row failed, and I got wiped. Well, technically 2 guys died, the 3rd panicked and the 4th was gravely wounded. And there were 3 enemies left. Quit to desktop, was impossible.

Veteran it is.

The thing with most games at their highest difficulty level is that they force you into a specific way of progression. Any deviation from that path leads to failure. Like Men of War 2 for instance. You are pretty much screwed if you cant find that blind spot in the AI code. For instance on the US second mission my teams totalling of 20 men got wiped out by a single machine gunner because while he had no issues with shooting my men, my men did not fire back, just watched like a bunch of dumbasses.

So do some reading, there is a flaw in the ai you have yet to discover.

You're right Peltz, that's the reason why I never play games on 'nightmare' settings or something like that. Autistically searching for that blind spot is not my idea of fun.

In this case however, XCOM2's 'commander' difficulty is supposed to be the equivalent of 'classic' (ie tough but fair) in XCOM1. And it's tough, but not fair. So I stopped trying that. Now playing on 'veteran' ironman. Already lost a few people, mostly due to my own stupidity, but otherwise going pretty well. Still alive!

Well, finished the veteran ironman game, and was having such an easy time towards the endgame that I was like....should have played commander.

Or maybe I'm just becoming half decent at this game. Still, even though I could definitely stand for another run (crazy I know, already sank 70 hours in it since release) I'm gonna hold off and focus on other stuff. Should make playing with mods or the expansion a lot more fun in the future.

Grats, glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks. If you see it for cheap, I would absolutely recommend you to pick it up. Easily one of the best games I've played in years.

Glad you liked it. For me the most interesting game i've played is the steam game card collecting game. Everything else has left me feeling empty and drained. MoW Assault squad somewhat an exception but the other games, no fun.

EDIT: I'm becoming Jade warrior apprentice? .

Lol, you're sounding terrible man.

Anyway, I'll pick up Xcom 2, don't worry. I'll probably wait until a sale, though, or at least until all the DLC have dropped.