Duck and Cover

Cimmerian Nights wrote:Kind of burnt out on Civ games myslef

This. Haven't touched a CiV since and including 3, otherwise am a bit homo for Meier, particularly his/Microprose's old shit. I'll still have a go at Civ 2 or SotS or Pirates every now and again. If anything, the worrysome part of the new XCOM is whether or not he's involved in it in some capacity.

Small aside: Schick (project lead on SotS) is now lead writer for the TES MMO. Reynolds (lead on Alpha C/Rise of Nations) is now chief game designer for Zynga.

Dino, your reasoning is sound/ understandable, but a guy your age/ of your background should really know better than to watch promo material.

Edit- And wouldn't you know it, we might actually be in luck.

With all the burden of expectation and doubt, it manages to be both a hugely respectful reimagining and, all ties ignored, one of the best turn-based tactical games I’ve played in, well, forever.

At least if RPS man is to be believed.

Blargh wrote: LACKEY #1 : HEY WE WANT YOU TO BLOW UP THE LAB, SO GO DO THAT, OKAY ? GREAT.

- 3 seconds later -

LACKEY #2 : HEY I JUST HEARD SOMEONE ASKED YOU TO BLOW UP THE LAB, WELL, DON'T DO THAT, OKAY ? GREAT.

- 3 seconds after BLOWING UP THE LAB -

LACKEY #2 : HEY I'M MILDLY DISAPPOINTED WITH YOU BECAUSE YOU BLEW UP THE LAB, BUT I'M STILL GOING TO DELEGATE TO YOU IN THE FUTURE EVEN THOUGH YOU KEEP GOING AGAINST MY INSTRUCTIONS, OKAY ? GREAT.

Yeah, that was pretty much the extent of it. But this is the sequel to the game where you could do whatever you wanted for 99.9% of the game and then at the last minute choose one of maybe four options, which by that point, I usually just pick the easiest to accomplish.

Branching ?

DX was never really branching, more like an ingrown hair.
Even the limited choices were only tactical and artificial at that (hack the door, take down the guard, or, what's this? the ubiquitous, conveniently placed air duct that takes me to the same spot!)

IW is what you get when you consolize a game that was pretty light on the RPG elements to begin with. It's pretty...blah.

Skinner Box Conspiracy wrote:four

Dance party supremacy.

Zen Stifler wrote:artificial

Never LAM'd Anna on a plane in the pale moonlight ? Never left Walton all alone, < 20000 leagues 'neath the sea ? Never debated the work(s) of Olaf Stapledon with a patchily voiced clone bartender ? What a shame.

blargh wrote: Never LAM'd Anna on a plane in the pale moonlight ? Never left Walton all alone, < 20000 leagues 'neath the sea ? Never debated the work(s) of Olaf Stapledon with a patchily voiced clone bartender ? What a shame.

I'm not big into books.
I guess I should say there's no consequences. Spare, kill or passively let Lebedev die - doesn't matter. Kill Anna now or later. Save Paul - doesn't matter. Choosing one door doesn't close another, regardless of what you've done. Letting Simons live is not an option, he must pay for his crimes against tonality.
But the game is a hybrid, and a great one at that, and never pretended to be a full-blown RPG. I'm a sucker for those Thief/SS2/DX era of Warren Spector games.

That IW gives factions to side with, none of which seem to be exclusive, or offer anything appealing at all, it just devolves into utter apathy. Kind of like an American election year.

Wimble in the Gabe wrote:mangina

Indeed.

Diablo... what more can I say? It is what it is. And that is bad.

Was relieved to find a cheap 600 dps dagger so my 50 wizard can advance finally. I just beat nightmare, after a death filled stint of 'leveling' and glitched monsters running amok around town in the public game I was playing.

Can't say I am looking forward to the aptly titled inferno mode. Apt simply for the fact that that's what it turns your nerdrage towards the game into, an inferno.

Protozoa Jihad wrote:matter

Regarding inhuming Anna - some minor dialogue changes. Once, fairly standard, I know. You can spare her, though, through the judicious use of gas grenades and the merciful exploitation of AI pathing issues. That they bothered to retain recorded camaraderie with Gunther in Paris for this eventuality . . .

As for Paul, have you not been offered an end game pep talk by Gary Savage ? That certainly compelled me to metaphorically shut a door in his face in subsequent playthroughs. Usually by engineering the brutal, meaningless death of his poor, misguided daughter. And not permitting Paul to snuff it.

Cyst Celebrant wrote:appealing

I concede that it may just be me, but, by the time I arrived at the climax, I thought the Omar and their Kill Everyone-and-also-usher-in-a-Russian-as-fuck-post-human-post-earth-future-of-give-no-fucks-ever was wildly appealing. Also, cathartic as hell due to the aforementioned requirement of tearing down the dreams of a gaggle of irritating twits.

Other than that, we seem to agree. Mostly. Glad I have an epipen on hand.

Blargh wrote:Boiling Point

Wasn't that one the one riding on the whole "ITS GOT THE GUY FROM THE MUMMY IN IT!"?

Apparently. And he portrays an over-the-hill Israeli/'Merican SPECIAL FORCES MAN with NOTHING TO LOSE (except his daughter). Gripping stuff. Also, this wonderful bug where everyone in the game world start firing their guns at nothing, without end. It would also persist into savegames prior to the issue manifesting. Complete, irrevocable paralysis of game. Also, wonderful (i.e - 'fixed: jaguar floats across screen at treetop level') patch notes.

Oh, and while it has been out for a while, Faster than Light just reminded me of its existence by appearing on GoG the other day. I vaguely recall noticing it when it was in Kickstarter infancy, and promptly forgetting it. It's a spaceship roguelike with pseudo-turn-based-ship-to-ship combat, permadeath and a deceptively complex system management aspect. By way of a for instance, I just lost a game after a narrowly won combat, and subsequent controlled venting of most of my ship to neutralise the fires (shrewd spacers don't fly near stars) that had effectively cut it in half, and while waiting for my engines to spool up so I could jump to somewhere less hazardous ; had my most of my (heavily injured) crew cloistered near the medbay, which they couldn't access or, indeed, use, because fire, atmosphere gone, fires subsiding, about to toggle the airlocks and restore my ship to some measure of functionality, one last solar flare, one last fire, in door control . . .

It's as unforgiving as it is fun. Highly recommended.

Blargh wrote:Lighter than Fast

Cannot for the life of me put this shit down. Let the fuck go, game!

Its pretty fun, I have to admit.

Ahaha the slugs are such horrendously unapologetic cunts. Wow.

A team with at least one rockman and an engi or two works absolute wonders, I've found.

More partial to the Mantii, for speed, combat prowess and willing (if stilted) plumbing ability. Not finding much of a use for rockmen, other than as fire extinguishers. Capable fighters, yes, but 150 health and 50% speed is no match for 200% damage and 120% speed that the crickets pack.

Now the Engi ship, with the 3 second ion gun? Bloody murder. Also, invader drones. Beautiful.

I think I'm biased of the aliens. If I can help it I always have humans working the ship systems.

Whereas I seem compelled to switch them around for the purpose of skill refinement and (eventual) redundancy. Engines and piloting in particular, seem to progress very quickly.

The rockmen are great if you're running with an incendiary weapon or two. Set the entire enemy (or, amusingly, your own) ship on fire, then stomp their faces in with (almost) complete impunity. It's even a decent way to train maintenance. Just keep in mind that sub-system destruction causes hull damage . . .

My last run had four (4 !) zoltan and two AP droids by the third sector. Boarding parties were met with the cold of a ship almost entirely in vacuum, and the warmth of two remorseless metal clad killers. The RNG is, as always, utterly mercurial.

The Osprey is my favorite ship chassis so far. Just for that sexy artillery beam. That can do a straight 4 damage to a ship and not miss. I love it.

Even though the Osprey's my top score holder so far, I've developed a penchant for the Noether (Zoltan type B ). You start with 2 8 sec ions and a 16 sec Pike, so you get 4 shots to neutralize shields/guns and then a beam to cut that sucker in half. Works wonders, even on Autofire. And then there's 3 Zoltan crew and that handy 5hp shield. Smart layout, too.

Then there's the Red-Tail. It's great on paper but seems prone to spectacular failures. It's eaten full crews on 2 different occasions, now. :cursed:

Blargh wrote:incendiary weapon

The thought has occurred, I've just not been able to get both (and a teleporter) at once. Easy as it seems, I still haven't managed to get the Rockman ship.

I get 4 Rebel Scout encounters in a row, each with 4 shield and 3 weapons and this little fucker gets this.

Fucking Zoltan are superior. So they have a lower hp-pool, so what? They're walking bundles of energy, batteries for your heavy artillery. Gotta say I appreciate the context-sensitive quest options in regards to crew employed, like sending a rockman in to stop fires at a neutral base or letting the appropriate crew handle alien hostage situations and diplomatic missions for an added chance of success. But droids could do most of that stuff anyway and a Zoltan crew gives you the added edge of branching out into all fields with less of a drain on your generators.

I'm not far into this, but it's fun. I just wish there was a second tier, with bigger crews, battleships, more mannable stations, more tech. Guess it's only a matter of time, following economical success.

Considering the difference (or lack thereof) between the various systems, it's odd that they went for a mere 2-way branch -- making the global map even slightly more convoluted could add to the d&#822;u&#822;n&#822;g&#822;e&#822;o&#822;n&#822; space crawler experience. Fair enough that it's logical in view of the "plot" which seems to suggest urgency, but the plot may as well be there to excuse it. Still, for all I know completing the game enough times unlocks some free mode, though I'm not sure it would cut it in comparison to other roguelikes.

Where the game excels is the combat encounters. Hectic and glorious, no particularly glaring problems. My problem really lies with the motivation for fighting, when not fighting purely out of necessity. In a dungeon crawl, my primary concern would be my character's ability to withstand further punishment so as to go even deeper into the furthest bowels of hell.
I mean, there is that to some extent at the start of the game; gaining veterancy for my crew, collecting scrap for various ends, scavenging weapons. But then, you either get a set that works, or you end up half-assed and probably get fried along the way; and this is still fairly early on.
My inventory gets packed pretty fast by mediocre weapons, that I then have to lug around with me until some event lets me exchange them and now and again I'll save an engineer who insists on repaying me by installing some god awful augmentation -- whatever happened to repaying people with cash huh? Or, whatever happened to saying "No"? And what about discarding obsolete equipment? Are they trying to keep space clean, or is there some unintuitive process behind it that I haven't grasped?

Either way, at this point in the game there's little personal progress to be made, and it becomes the typical adventurous dungeon romp with a clear story-related goal. Too bad no-one cares. Fair enough that I'll have to fight the rebels head on, it's only to be expected, but it's their own fault -- they're literally pushing me down a narrow tube at the end of which lies either their or my demise, and barring my destruction along the way, there is literally nothing to stop me. It's literally the story format of arcade mode in fighting games.
Making the player actually hunt for the goal, even if only slightly, might be enough to turn an essentially random arena game into a clever rogue-like. If taking on the rebels meant finding one of three conveniently placed "solutions" scattered along a mesh of inter-branching systems, with sidelines of optional quests for flavor, you'd completely kill the "phone app" vibe with, in my opinion, minimal effort.

Okay, there are side-quests that require course alterations. I doubt I've had more than 2 on a single play-through, so they're sparse, and for the most part they're picked up in haste as you're fleeing from the rebel fleet. I mean, they're hardly more demanding than having you touch down on a specific point of space and 'OK' a dialog-box, which is a shame. Rebel fleet presence also seems to erase quest locations -- ffs, let me take my chances, so I'll fend off a rebel ship first and then drop off the package, no big deal.
There are a ton of events, but they are limited in number and a few runs in and the looping becomes very evident. Well, maybe not as bad as that. What happens is you start to learn the nature of the events, they never develop into anything particularly interesting. Either you'll earn some junk, with the possibility of taking some damage or losing some crew, or you fight some dudes, or possibly both. Haven't come across any particularly fluffy events, but that may just be me. Getting boarded out of nowhere could qualify I guess.
A space-station blueprint would be enough for expanding a number of events and adding new ones, revolving around abandoned stations. More resources of less immediate benefit would be nice. Picking up, say, a mechanical part somewhere that can either be sold for a bit of scrap at a trader or delivered to an npc for a unique piece of equipment.

I don't know, I'm having fun with the game, but I also can't help but see it in terms of unused potential. Some things, like having to suffocate your crew to hire (mainly Zoltan) replacements, I consider a great and disturbing way of solving what otherwise would require an interface. Only wish opening the airlocks actually shot people into space, but instadeath would probably cut it.

Yeah, Zoltan supremacy - until six mantii shiv you in a nebula.

With regard to crew, I like to think of the 'dismiss' button as 'jettison'.

As for future content expansions, there's a bloody good chance that modding will be relatively successful, also possible that the developers might pitch in, be it with official mod tools or actual new stuff. It'd be ducky to see a mod introducing an economic/trading model similar to Elite, for instance.

Some of the blue event options are wonderful. Found a pirate in the process of shaking down a colony, decided to 'show them how it's done' by incinerating their crops with an anti-bio beam. The pirates were so awed, they gave me a glaive beam.

My least favourite aspect of this game is easily the sheer caprice of the RNG when it comes to unlocking certain (i.e - Crystal) ships. Good luck having the requisite sequence of systems, and hitting the necessary nodes, blindly, before the tide of inexorable mooks cuts them off, and (assuming you get that far) not having the event critical NPC ignominiously die due to any one of the myriad causes . . .

A gilded skinner box.