Thanks to the guys at the XCOM forum, I found out that GreeManGaming is having a 24h sale for XCOM: Enemy Unknown for 60% off. With coupon GMG20-P4DLK-FKYRS you can even take 20% further, for a total price of around $16/€16. You’ll get a Steam key after purchasing. A great bargain if you ask me. To yourself or to give to a friend this is must buy if you like sci-fi strategy with a good dose of tactical gameplay. Check our review to know more.
By the way, if you were on the fence for the Slingshot DLC, GMG has also a coupon (GMG30-BORDE-RXCOM) that will take 30% off from the second and last available XCOM DLC. Here’s our Slingshot impressions.
I don’t know about you, but I smell that big news are coming for XCOM soon. I mean, this sale, now, when there’s talk of a recently found DLC/Expansion on the Steam Apps Database. It may be nothing, but people there are speculating – myself included :) – that a major DLC or full blown expansion may be in the works to reveal soon. Don’t quote me on that yet though :)
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Still waiting for different combat calculations before I’ll add to the 7h playtime I played since release. ;)
Anyone experienced with Mods with Xcom which might change the hit/crit calculations?
There’s a second wave option (Damage Roulette) that allows for weapons to have a wider range of damage. But, if tweaking the numbers is what you mean, have a look at mods available here. This one in particular will probably help you out since it tweaks some weapons damage.
Ah, was more looking for changes in hit calculations instead of damage calculations.
So that moving in the angle to your target by one “random” degree doesn’t change your chances from 25% hit and 10% crit to 65% hit and 60% crit anymore.
Ha yes, sorry. You mean the to hit/crit chances. Don’t know.
The third patch actually introduced more pugs and less stability. It’s definitely a good game to get for this price but re-playability is not still not good.
I’m not aware of Firaxis working on any other IPs so the lengthy wait for patch/DLC/expansion is curious considering XCOM was a commercial success.
Yes, patch #3 was a letdown because it didn’t fix the major bug that it was supposed to fix: the infamous teleport bug (which manifests more frequently in the Impossible difficulty). I don’t say total letdown because 2K/Firaxis combined Second Wave in the same download item, and the (fully working) Second Wave options were a very nice addition which helps increase replayability.
I used 3 Second Wave options in my last playthrough and it was a lot of fun. By the way, I went with “Alternate Sources” (more power needed), “Not Created Equally” (random soldier stats) and “High Stakes” (random abduction bonuses). I didn’t try “Marathon” yet (which makes the game session longer) but I understand many people are having fun with that.
To my best knowledge Firaxis is only working on the Civ and XCOM franchises. There are rumors for new content for both though. A new expansion (One World) is being rumored for Civ5 while there’s definitely something in the works for XCOM also. Possibly just a new patch, but it could also be the promised new DLC – which the lead designer said to be quite different from Slingshot – or even a full blown expansion (this one less likely perhaps).
The thing about trying to get reliable sales numbers for any game is due to two things, 1. the publishers frankness about the figures, and 2. It is complicated.
1. Sometimes publishers will release sales numbers, however this is mostly coming from smaller ones. Large companies generally do not release exact sales figures across all platforms.
2. A game like Xcom:EU was released on several platform like Xbox, Playstation, and PC physical, and digital sales. NPD tracks all but the digital sales.
So you have Take Two claiming a commercial success as cited in this article, http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/10/31/xcom-enemy-unknown-a-success-more-dlc-coming.aspx.
However another article claims disappointing sales, http://www.flesheatingzipper.com/gaming/2012/11/npd-xcom-enemy-unknown-sales-disappoint/
However never take any thing at face value, of course the company will always spin things favorably. Why would they ever admit sales sucked before they close doors. (Sometimes they still refuse to admit it was their fault in that situation)
On the other hand the website citing poor sales, and claiming that Xcom was a failure, is biased towards consoles. Admittedly the author stated that PC digital sales were not factored in their claim.
So the biggest unknown is digital sales, so no one can reliably claim that Xcom:EU was a success or failure. For many years now it has been claimed that PC Gaming was on its last breath, however I think it has just migrated to digital sales because it is much more convenient.
Do doubt about the digital sales convenience. Even if there’s some room left for box products, the large majority of games will be digital. There’s no turning back now I guess. And why should be?
About the “how successful was XCOM”? I knew that Take Two had reported XCOM to be a commercial success, which should include all platforms in general I guess.
On the somewhat poorer than expected sales on consoles, which your link suggests, that’s not very surprising, since after all this was, still is and will be a PC game for a long time. I suspect that the digital sales were decent. Jake Solomon (lead designer) also commented about the game being a success, or big success, don’t remember the words. But, as you say, that could be biased opinions, who knows.
So, in the end, what we have is Take Two words, which were “[XCOM] is proving to be a critical and commercial success”. Intriguing the “critical” word there. Maybe they were caught by surprise on how good they were. And there was a lot of money involved in making this game, for 4-5 years with lots of twists and turns. In the end I suspect that they were squeezed to deliver, they did what they could, and the result was still very good. I suspect that a lot of good stuff is still to come.
Not any time soon will I give this game another chance to remove funds from my bank account – bought it at full price like a moron in October and have had nothing but frustrating times. The patches fixed little to nothing and the core feature, combat, is basically a joke. Needless to say, I won’t be buying any DLC’s for a ‘broken’ game just to feed their after-work habits. Fix the core game and I might consider dropping some cash for addons.
I’ll give Firaxis this – their marketing campaign with all those YT videos worked wonders on me, typically the person who waits months for the price to drop 50% or more. Did just that with Sword of the Stars II; waited a year and got it for about $1.60 and the game is almost worth that much!
@Adam – I’m figuring the title of this article should be “Thinking of Buying XCOM:” instead of “Thinking in Buying XCOM:” Just sounds weird.
Bad day hum? I mean, putting XCOM in the same context as Sword of the Stars 2 at release day, boy you hate the game with love I see. I guess there’s no point in arguing with you about it, right? I mean: “had nothing but frustrating times”… when we’re talking about one of the best gaming experiences of recent years.
$15 for this game is a great bargain for, like I said, people who like sci-fi strategy and a great deal of tactical combat, or people who just love the X-COM formula, Jagged Alliance, that kind of thing. Slingshot for the cost of one or two beers, I mean, seriously. It’s not a brilliant DLC but many people will still find it fun. And, to my knowledge is at sale (30% off) for the first time now.
I suspect that when you talk about frustration, I feel that you, like myself and any XCOM fan, is disappointed with 2K’s/Firaxis communication policy, and the very slow and troubled patching work, which the lead designer admitted to have been very bad.
But even so, even with the remaining bugs and the quite questionable communication policy (not unusual with Firaxis if you follow them for years) this is still one of the best games to be released in years. Will everybody love it, no. But, “broken game”, “combat is basically a joke” and “nothing but frustrating times”, I feel that something is completely out of place here. Or you’re having a very bad day or maybe this is most probably not the right kind of game for you.
Yup I was having a PMS day! So now that I am feeling a lot better, I concur with other posters, the game is well worth the steep discounted price. Only. I will never pay full price (sounds like a commercial) for another Firaxis game.
The thing that ticked me off was how snobbishly they posted all those YouTube videos well before release and they had to know most if not all of these bugs existed. How could they play this game time and again and not encounter any of the issues their customers later paid through the nose to go through? Yeah sure at the end of the day my fault for paying $60 USD for the title but I sure would have felt better if I waited until today to buy this game, letting others be that guinea pig instead.
And Adam, I still think the title of your article has a typo.
There will be more typos, unfortunately… :( I want to think I’m improving in that department though.
May I ask you what bugs are you talking about when you say “letting others be that guinea pig instead”? And why do you think those bugs in question ruin your experience to the point of being a “broken” experience?
And, by the way, how many hours do you log on the game currently (check Steam)? And which difficulty levels do you usually play, or are playing now?
Maybe I can help you with some tips on how to avoid those bad experiences/bugs.
GreenManGaming announced on their twitter feed that they extended the 60% sale on XCOM:EU for one extra day.
60% off is a good deal indeed. Another game I preordered for I loved the original.
The tactical combat part of this game is superb. There is no other game that can challenge the immersibility(is that a word?) and action that this game brings into a turn-based combat, nail-biting awesome. While the hit % are sometimes a bit wonky, overall the tactical combat wished for nothing more being deep, creative and diverse.
Though this game utterly failed its predecessor in the strategic part. This game is so streamlined that while offering you some decisions they were always limited and never made any real changes to your further progression or on a replay.
I played through this game 5 times on every difficulty of normal and above, once on iron man. I never did anything game changing differently, not because I always followed the best way or the most effective one no its just you couldn’t do anything else. The biggest choices were do I skip laser weapons for plasma or do I take a robot over a soldier. And that’s it.
Research stays very linear throughout the game always ending up at the same end.
Base building looks nice but from apart of a bit planning ahead it isn’t deep or challenging.
The worst part was probably the way you reacted and acted(which you didn’t) to thwart the aliens on the world map.
For example the Terror mission. In the original there was an UFO showing up before a terror mission, which could be shot down to prevent it, now they just happen. Then you get prompted with 3 mission choices to go to. Giving 2 country’s a popularity drop and the one you choose a decrease.
In the original it was about managing your resources on how many UFO crash/terror/abduction sites you could be at once with different teams. Which making you think about choices like do you make one strong primary squad or do you make 3 evenly strong squads, which sites you visit not only based on current panic value but also factoring in how far are they or what do you gonna meet there.
Psi powers were kinda shaped up as a major choice but even that wasn’t. You unlock psi powers so late in the game that you had a completely trained team were you just ran all your soldiers through the analyzer and if lucky they had some new nifty toys.
Still I recommend this game for 60% off, hell for 80% I would jump into an ice cold pool to get it. This game is built around the turn-based combat which is the best (not hardcore) I’ve seen so far, so don’t expect anything else from it.
And sales are still on.
Guh this ended up big and maybe a bit more formatting.
“Though this game utterly failed its predecessor in the strategic part.”
All my research leads me to believe that this is very true. The old Xcom is superior to the new Xcom in every way, which is why I wont be buying it, even if it becomes very cheap.
Try the demo Mark. Don’t deny yourself a great game experience just because you feel that it may not be as good as an old game (unless you tried the game already of course). If you do, you’ll be missing a hell of a ride ;)
I’m an X-COM veteran, heck I’m even a Rebelstar veteran, an old Gollop’s precursor to his later work on XCOM: UFO Defense (UFO: Enemy Unknown). I can tell you that this new XCOM captures the essence of the original X-COM games. And, while it changes many things, it’s still succeeds on its own way, and it is indeed a true and great XCOM game that I highly recommend to any X-COM fan or anybody who likes turn-based tactical games, not only X-COM but also the Jagged Alliance series.
I’m in two minds about this.
On one hand I have it confirmed from many sources that the new X-com offers absolutely nothing (that I care about) that the old X-com doesn’t have. In addition, the old X-com is actually deeper, more complex and tactically superior in every way and lacks the horrible bugs that still plague the new version.
On the other hand Adam, I do respect your opinion as a gamer and it certainly seems that you have seen something in the new X-com that impresses you. I haven’t played it yet, just read lots of reviews, so I’m guessing that whatever this “something” is, it somehow makes the gameplay a lot better than the sum of its very mediocre looking parts.
I *do* love turn-based tactical games and Jagged Alliance 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. So I’ll do as you suggest and give the demo a go. I suppose that if I end up hating it, all I’ll be wasting is a bit of time and bandwidth. Hopefully though I’ll be pleasantly surprised and see whatever it is that you have seen in this game.
Mark, it’s not like I saw “something” in the game, because you said it yourself to have read “lots of reviews” about the game, so, you effectively must have read that this game is great/excellent confirmed by many, many other sources. It’s just a question of going to metacritic and check that for oneself. Not that metacritic is science, but in this case with so many reviews available it must count in your analysis.
You said to love Jagged Alliance 2 (one of your favorite games of all time – mine too), and you seem to be an original X-COM lover as well. So, I can’t see how it’s possible that you can’t at least enjoy this game.
XCOM:EU is indeed different from the original game in many ways, but that doesn’t make it inferior to the OG just because of that, as in fact it is superior in as many other aspects as well.
There’s more scripting feeling (this aspect is worse), the maps are fixed and not very large (not splendid also), time units have been replaced by a different – more streamlined – mechanic (which doesn’t bother me at all, and in a way I prefer it this way), ammo management is lighter (doesn’t bother me), you can’t pick up stuff from the ground (not good yes) and you can’t equip your soldiers as you please but adapt to the game’s constraints, as certain soldier classes can only equip certain weapons (doesn’t bother me).
But, your attachment to your soldiers, the thrill to upgrade them with new skills, their progression, the graphics (with outstanding animations at places), the X-COM feeling, and basically the highly addictive gameplay, make this a can’t miss experience.
Sometimes we just need to let go of our old passions and let new experiences come into our lives. XCOM:EU is one of such cases in my opinion. And, if the money is the issue, then grab it at 50/60% off, which was what this blog post was all about. I’ll keep signaling when the game enters in sale.
But, try the demo yes. It’s just a taste of what’s to come but should help you decide. However, if I my positive description about the game doesn’t convince you AND you think that this isn’t the right game for you after playing the demo, then my advice to you is: don’t buy it.
You may be interested in this XCOM story. http://www.ruzkin.com/?p=1624
Disclaimer; the author is a friend of mine, but it’s still a great story