X-com Enemy Unknown; some thoughts.

As some of you may or may not know I’m a huge X-Com: UFO Defense fan. It is the game that I most credit for me making the transition to what I consider to be a gamer. This ancient (by technology standards) game is something that I still play to this day. There is nothing that compares to the intensity and nerve-wracking suspense of each and every turn. The terror that you feel when you see a Chryssalid wandering near your troops or when you hear that distinct shrill shriek as the psionics sound rip its way through your speakers and directly into your brain. The apprehension as that horrific window popped up with the dreaded words “Terror Site.”The amazing feeling you got when you passed that point in the game where most aliens no longer threatened you (except those damn Ethereals) and you were just wiping the floor with them.
It was a tough game. A game where you’re just thrown to the wolves under-equipped, under prepared, and under manned. Hell, your base is set up as a death trap if it’s ever invaded. Veterans of the game know you have to completely rebuild your first base because of this. The online community has also helped keep this game fresh by giving us mods to help it keep running even on today’s systems. It takes some tweaking and trial and error, but it’s worth it.

Sectoid then and now.

Anyways, my point is that I love the game and have been playing it pretty consistently for over 15 years. You can understand my elation when I heard that Firaxis was heading up a remake of this beloved game. People who were fans of the original game were working on a successor at the studio of one of the legends of game design. My money was spent already before I had even finished reading the headline.

I had been worried that I was never going to see a turn-based X-Com again, especially since that weird prequel FPS was in the works and the last few X-Com games we got were weird ones like Interceptor and Enforcer if you don’t include all of the titles that got lost along the way. But here it was, right there in front of me.

I was finally able to download it via Steam and have been playing it as often as I can ever since. The new game is a great spiritual successor to the original. It maintains the tension while streamlining the controls and troop advancement systems. The art style is wonderful. It captures the essence of the original game while giving the game its own modern twist. I will gladly and happily recommend this game to EVERYBODY EVER. It is wonderfully crafted and masterfully executed.

Old School

Many problems with the original games have been smoothed over and streamlined. The swapping of time units with the two actions is very nice. The creation of the 4 classes of soldiers is wonderful, and so is the fact that you can customize appearances. I’m always for customizing appearances. (Okay I DO have the Elite Soldier Pack DLC specifically so I can give people the original ULTIMATE FLAT-TOP. Yes it has to be in all caps, that’s how Guile trademarked it.). The upgrades to the Psionic abilities is a breath of fresh air. The distinct abilities and the great cover system make every mission enjoyable and far more tactical than they used to be. I could sing the praises of this game all day!

ULTIMATE FLAT-TOP

There are very few complaints I have about it, nothing that makes me even want to regret playing it. But since whining seems to be the theme of my blog, I’m going to go ahead and complain about these few problems I have with it now.

[Please note: Because of the small amount of free time I have available to me these days I usually don’t get to play very often. That means I haven’t been able to finish my first playthrough yet. I am to the point where I’ve just built the Hyperwave Decoder which says to me as a fanboy that I’m probably getting to at least the ¾ point in the game’s timeline. I’m saying this because I want you to understand that I haven’t seen everything the game has to offer yet and that there might be some things here I haven’t encountered yet that I’m complaining about so bear with me. (I refuse to look at walkthroughs, FAQs, etc. until I’ve completed at least one playthough on this one because you should have to be completely blind going into this game dammit!)]

My first complaint is one of my biggest. It has to do with the number of troops you have. In the original game you have 3 types of transports available to you. You have your basic Skyranger, the UFO-like Lightning, and the “ultimate transport craft” the Avenger. Each one had its own strengths or reasons for existing. The biggest thing though was the number of troops you could transport with you into battle and the amount of equipment available to you.

In the new game you are limited in your number of troops by a hard number that is based upon your researched tech and the ranks of your soldiers. That wouldn’t be too bad except for the fact that you are only going to have four to six soldiers in a mission. Period, end of story. That’s it.
I understand why they did it tech and gameplay wise. It makes sense, but it still irks me, not only from a classic X-Com point, but from a narrative/military stand point as well. When going to an encounter in this game you are going to lose people, especially early on. Each squad member is a specialist of some kind and brings something specific that you want or need into the fight. Losing just one of them when you have that low of a number of troops means you could be losing 25% of your fighting effectiveness from a single lucky shot on one guy.

I find that unnecessarily frustrating, especially in a game that is as brutal as this one gets. It’s more frustrating when you think about how the first Skyranger you have in the first game was equipped with about a dozen soldiers. I’d personally like to see larger engagements with more troops under my command. I need rookies to sacrifice as scouts!

Another thing that’s been missing, and I know this one is missing because of some reviews I’ve read, is the classic Base Defense mission. This was when the aliens discovered your base and made an attempt to invade it. It was a desperate and brutal fight every time, especially when it was your main base. Those aliens wrecked everything they freaking could. It was a nice change of pace from the other missions and was an especially important mission because it could destroy you and end your game.

If this entered your base and you didn't shit yourself...

I’m just a little sad I won’t be able to shoot up my base in this one. Oh well.

I’ve also noticed that this game seems to have a lot less alien encounters than previous editions. Normally at this point in the original you’ve encountered over 100 UFOs and at least fought in 2 alien bases, if not more. I’ve seen, what, one Base and maybe a handful of UFOs. The abduction sites and all that count as encounters and all, but you still aren’t sending your ships out to shoot down those fleets of ships every couple of days, which has led me to neglect upgrading all of my interceptors. Which of course leads to my weaksauce ones getting shot down repeatedly.

Sometimes it seems like the LOS for this game wasn’t checked out very well. Sometimes my troops can shoot through walls, while other times they can’t see something 30 feet in front of them. It’s just a little inconsistent and slightly annoying. This won’t prevent you from completing missions, but if I were playing Ironman mode (which means the game autosaves for you while beating you over the head with the highest difficulty level, basically creating what we vets were doing on the honor system in the original game to keep it challenging after so many playthroughs. We X-Com vets are a sick bunch.) I would be rather upset by this more often than not because it can lead to the loss of some of your troops through poor positioning. As mentioned earlier, the loss of one guy is devastating in these encounters.

Not every race, terror beast, or piece of tech that you might know and love from the original game are represented here. Items like the Stun Bomb or Aliens like the Snakemen don’t make an appearance and it makes me a little bit sad. I was looking forward to seeing modern interpretations of Reapers and Snakemen and they’ve obviously been passed up for Berserkers and Thin Men, which are great, but I want my damn Snakemen and easily burned bipeds! Maybe they’ll be in a DLC or something, I could get behind that.

This! Why couldn't we have this!?!

And my final complaint is really going to sound really picky, but it’s one that bothers me a lot. When you completed research in the original game, no matter how worthless or benign it was (Alien Entertainment I’m looking at you!) you got to read the description while you looked at some type of artwork that went along with it. Autopsies had each of the aliens cut open so you could see their organs and such while Interrogations showed you what they looked like while alive.

Hell, you can see some of those Interrogation pictures on the targets that this game’s scientists are testing their weapons on. Really this isn’t much, but it would be nice to be greeted by a completed research project with some type of artwork unlock or character model coming up so you can truly admire the work the team put into these things.

Ah, gotta love the homage.

If you’re on the fence about getting this game do not let these little complaints stop you from buying it. The game is wonderful. It is far more than I ever hoped to see from this franchise I thought was long dead. With 2K and Firaxis working together on this behind the scenes and it being available on consoles as well as the PC (which is really is the only platform you should be playing it on but if you don’t have the hardware, I guess you can play it on a console…) this game should be able to keep you entertained for far longer than you think.

It is by far a successful reimagining of the Franchise and I’m looking forward to more.

Deus Ex Human Revolution

So I finished up Deus Ex Human Revolution over the weekend and figured that I'd write a little bit about it because I haven't touched the blog for a little while. The housing issues and waiting for my son to pop out have kind of made life a little stressful for us so I haven't really had time to write or work on anything fun (which, as usual, leads to massive amounts of political talk making its way onto Facebook and me trolling comment sections on my favorite news sites. All work and no play makes Epi a dull boy and what not).

I picked up the entire collection of Deus Ex on Steam during the Summer sale because I'm poor and don't get to buy new games at release anymore (the last new game I bought was Skyrim, and before that was Duke Nukem Forever. Screw you, don't judge me. I can talk about that tragedy later.) I technically already owned everything but DEHR but the deal was too good to pass up and Steam is easier to deal with than trying to fight the old compatibility war with those older games. I'm sick of wasting my time on those types of things, which was why I got out of PC gaming in the first place. That's a different story for another day though.

The point is I'm a big fan of the original game which makes me hate the second game and made me intrigued to play the third.

(Note: I got distracted from writing this entry from this point on due to my son being born, so suck it if you find this to be a little disjointed, well, more disjointed than usual.)

DEHR takes place in the past and is basically a prequel to the orginal game. The main character, Adam Jensen, is the head of security for one of the major manufacturers of augmentations. Though you provide your best efforts, you're unable to stop a group of augmented mercs from wrecking havoc at your company's HQ.

Along the way you are mortally wounded and following the incident you spend the next 6 months in various facilities being fitted with the very best tech the company can outfit you with. Following that recovery you're on a mission to find those responsible for the attack. At this point the game becomes a stealthy 3rd person cover/FPS action game with  RPG elements. As far as gameplay is concerned it is immensely enjoyable.
The action sequences are enjoyable and almost all of them can be.avoided. When you get into gun fights it can be really fun and enjoyable.

It does use the rechargeable health bar, but it isn't quite a COD super soldier serum. The FPS gameplay is accessible and effective and you also have a cover system that switches you to a 3rd person perspective that also let's you have extended fire fights. The amount of health you and your opponents have is pretty low (with the exception of boss fights which I'll get to) and lends a more realistic feel to the combat. Without upgrading Jensen's dermal armor plating a single shotgun blast in "normal" difficulty can wreck your day.
It makes for some intense fight scenes and encourages the use of stealth, ambushes, and cover to accomplish your goals.

The original game focused very heavily on the multiple ways you could complete objectives. It was perfect at the time it was released. The design team for DEHR tried their hardest it seems but they didn't quite make it to the high mark set by the original. That being said, they still made it more open-ended for completing objectives than most games these days do, even ones that supposedly give you choices. I found ways to get into every area in this game from most every conceivable direction and most of them there are multiple approaches.

The storyline is kind of predictable, but is enjoyable. The elements of what it means to be human and other themes of the first one are toned done in this and a vague exposition about at what cost is it for humanity to advance itself with technology. The answer to that question though is easily seen within the confines of the story, it is AWESOME to be augmented, why would you choose anything else?

The acting/scripting is enjoyable and doesn't distract from the gameplay. Jensen's voice seems kind of forced into a Bat-Bale style of brooding anti-hero stereotype, but it works for it. Like I said, the voice acting isn't distracting. Like all game voice acting though it can be somewhat cheesy and predictable.

The major flaw with the game though is in the boss fights. This has been mentioned in countless other articles about the game but is worth mention every time. It is a good example of why the industry should be moving away from these old tropes unless important for the gameplay/narrative. The boss fights can be very hard. The first one, where you have to fight a super soldier with a built in mini-gun in a small room takes an ass ton of tries and is frustrating as hell. It can stop your enjoyment of the game entirely right then and there. I didn't do what others had done and exploited the mechanics to my advantage, but I was sorely tempted to.

This was the only major beef I had with the game. Two of those fights were brutal slugfests that just broke up the feeling of the game. There was only one real way to defeat any of them and that was brute force. It ignored anything you had built your version of Jensen for and just stuck you in the middle of a fight you didn't want for no real reason. It was jarring to say the least.

Overall, I would say I highly enjoyed the game. It is a good hardcore experience. It is enjoyable, easily worth the investment of time and money. I want to see what this team does with the property in the future, they have shown some great potential in their design philosophy.