Be Excellent To Each Other

Blimey, you're a bit hobbled on everything there. CPU, graphics card and RAM are all unsuited to running pretty much any modern game.

You might get some mileage out of chucking a cheap graphics card in there (a £60-£70 job), but your CPU and RAM will still leave it all a bit borderline.

Got! did realize you didn't have to play tutorial. On Normal but doing ok, only lost a couple of soldiers but I do keep getting them gravely injured. I thought the game was too easy, then I found the spidery things. Ouchies.

Ta. I don't think I'll bother to be honest, I can get it on Eggbox for £35 so might do that. No sense throwing money at it, but i'm not £100 wanting to play it on the pC.

What does it mean when one of my dudes has a little green arrow as part of his 'stats graphic'?

As you can here, Neil Kinnock has said green arrow, but none of my other soldiers on this mission do.

I think I've seen red ones as well?

I think it means that they have an increase/decrease in critical chance or hit chance, or something.

At first I thought it meant they were on higher or lower ground than enemies, but that doesn't make sense.

green = buffed
red = debuffed

press f1 and it'll tell you why

Ahhh yes that does indeed work - cheers

Shot down my first big purple UFO last night thanks to my Firestorm - YAY!

Armored Mutons and Ethereals - NAY!

Also, good blog here about a dude determined to finish Ironman mode in Classic difficulty. (3-parter.)

http://screammonkey.wordpress.com/2012/ ... ge-part-1/

http://screammonkey.wordpress.com/2012/ ... ge-part-2/

http://screammonkey.wordpress.com/2012/ ... ge-part-3/

Heh, my first soldier with psionic abilities (after the 10 day testing period) is called 'Jon Pertwee' - he was the sixth out of six to go through the testing.

Out of my entire soldier roster his name is the only one that fits the 'psi' profile in any way whatsoever, and I created him long before I even knew there was any psionic type stuff in the game.

Five of my six majors are psychic. Score!

Think it might be time to ramp the difficulty up to 'CLASSIC' as I'm generally owning 'NORMAL' pretty regularly now, to the extent that all six of my squadmates get back home without a scratch on them.

30 hours in and still loving it to pieces, I may actually get to the end of this playthrough as it's going pretty well overall (I've managed to get my second wave of squadmates talented up properly now, and they're all packing plasma too), but I think CLASSIC difficulty is definitely going to be the way to go.

How long does a game go on for? Is it 12 months of game time or something, or does some sort of spectacular UFO/base thingy happen?

There's set story missions, but other than those the game can go on forever. You'll know when you've hit the last story mission because the game will physically tell you that once you agree to play that mission, there's no going back.

Up to that point, you can play the game as long as you want.

Gonna ramp it up to Classic again myself.

Ahhh right, that's pretty interesting then, I have no idea how far in I actually am to the story mode, although the globe can spin for days and days and days before something new comes up alien wise, and I have nothing left to research.

I haven't had a single country leave yet, either.

A-ha! Yes, I am at that point now, and it does say clearly (and repeatedly!) THIS IS THE END OF THE GAME IF YOU START THIS MISSION.



What's really struck me is how it's impossible to 'do everything' in a single game. Well, I suppose it would be if you simply never started the last mission, but basically, you have to sacrifice some stuff to develop other stuff, like those SHIV things that take the place of a soldier, I haven't even built one of those, much less explored what they're capable of.

Still, 37 hours played and still not finished my first run through is some solid value for money, and I've still got my Classic difficulty game to come!

I found SHIVs to be borderline useless once you get decent soldiers.

The last mission is hilariously easy by the time you get there, too.

Still a bloody good game though, hopefully they'll do some DLC for Terror From The Deep.

I'm working my way through the ship now, but there appear to be several doors that I can't get through, do I have to completely clear everything out behind me before I can carry on?

Correct.

Yay finished it, that was cool. Although you are quite right Gaz, the last mission isn't exactly, ahem, challenging.

Maybe it'll be more so on Classic difficulty, as I'll be getting started on my next playthrough fairly sharpish.

So the ending then......

Blimey, Classic Difficulty is a real change of pace innit

Finished this on Normal. GOTY contender for me (although the award will go to Dark Souls. Again. Just 'cos).

Once I've finished Dark Souls again, I'll start a second Ironman Classic playthrough - and treat the game like a roguelike.

Yup. Panic is really quite something in Classic mode. Just one bad hit can nullify your entire team if a panic chain gets going.

This is going to take some getting used to

As far as I can tell there are twice the number of aliens as there are in Normal mode, they play more tactically and more aggressively, and as you say Gaz, the squad starts to panic far more quickly into a CRESCENDO OF MADNESS with frightening ease.

I do like it, but it's gonna be Overwatch and Overwatch and Overwatch again, and by fuck don't activate two packs of aliens at once.

No fucking way am I going to try Ironman

Don't get too reliant on Overwatch, the game is more tactical than that. Don't be afraid to fall back and force the aliens to move forward to find you again, and thus use up their movement slots.

Don't be afraid to hunker down if necessary.

This game is beyond glorious, despite the sometimes-serious bugs (teleporting aliens, for example). I thrashed it on Normal, despite making several mistakes due to inexperience; I've started over in Classic and to my surprise am finding taking on Sectoids and Thin Men with assault rifles huge fun. I'm playing a lot more tactically now, paying much closer attention to flanking and cover, and I'm developing a feel for things like where the aliens are going to spawn and what the mix of aliens might be going into the mission that means I'm having to save-scum much less. I'm making a conscious decision to roll with it more often when things go wrong, although I might start breaking that rule when it's star soldiers who are dying instead of rookies and squaddies.

Might try Easy Ironman at some point. I suspect that'll feel like a very different game.

Got this for my birthday and have been having an absolute whale of a time. My squad are all named after comic writers because of course they are. My only (somewhat self-inflicted) gripe is that twice I've had the game crash and lost the hour-plus since my last save.

You'd think I'd have turned Autosave on after the first time it happened but no, I'm a complete idiot.

I couldn't find the motivation to play this through a second time on Classic difficulty, TBH I wish I'd done the first playthrough on Classic, as for the last third of the game on Normal difficulty (maybe more than that) I was basically stomping all over it.

Still, Borderlands 2 has taken its place

Apparently, it happens because when the game is patrolling the aliens around the map, if they're out of the line of sight of any of your units, and their movement path stays out of line of sight, it just teleports them there rather than wasting time physically moving them.

The game is full of weird LoS bugs, so I guess it's mainly down to that. I've had a soldier standing directly next to a Muton before now (with nothing in between them) and not be able to take a shot at him.


Thin Men are bullshit on Classic and above. Not only do they get a 10% (or 15%, can't remember) Aim bonus for the higher difficulty setting, they also get a 10% Aim bonus for their weapon (the light plasma). Essentially, they hit every time, especially on targets that are only in half-cover. It's bad enough that their poison spit is near-enough 100% hit, too.


That's one thing that I don't like about this version of XCOM. If you suffer a bad loss later in the game, it can be virtually impossible to recover - in the original, at least you had a fighting chance.


Doing that myself at the moment, but with a twist - only one soldier. It's... interesting.

Ooh, I'm doing it with three soldiers!

With only one soldier, what class/load out are you using?

I bet it's support. My support guy (The Ugly) is probably the most useful.

Yeah, it's support. Load out wise, just the best of whatever area of the technology I have. At the moment i'm at Carapace Armour with laser pistols and rifles.

Ironically enough, provided you're not a numpty on the battlescape, the game is even easier with just one soldier as you only have one lot of equipment to manufacture/buy.

He's had a couple of close shaves (fucking Thin Men) but it's not too bad.

The bit I'm dreading is getting a bomb defusal mission - a couple of those are on maps that I think would make it pretty much impossible with just one guy, even on easy.

Makes sense.

I think you're going to be boned. You might need to take a rookie along to disarm bombs. And I hope you took Sprint.

Is 24.95 for this from Zavvi the best deal?

I need a new single player game after finishing Deus Ex: HR.

Waiting until Wednesday at the quiz is the "best deal".

/glances at Zio

I'm on it, I swear!

Always. The other one (is it Covering Fire?) is chuffing useless.

£20 in Morrisons! (360)

Deffo worth a punt at £20, even if you just play through single player and never bother with multiplayer.

Yeah I yoinked it of course! Gonna settle down for a game after the afternoon's footy!

Based on my experiences I'd suggest playing Classic difficulty and 'cheating' with saving/loading.

On my playthrough at Normal difficulty I was pretty much stomping all over the game for the home straight, to the extent that I was starting to feel overpowered, even without much in the way of saving/loading.

By all means give Ironman Mode a go but the potential for game-breaking frustration is huge IMO.

Personally speaking I don't think there's enough there to want to play through it again, although YMMV on that of course.

This is good! Playing on Classic difficulty. Bit annoyed at how often high percentage shots seem to be missing, though.

And are all the stages at night? I recall the original having some daytime bits, didn't it?

It was very much to your advantage to fight during the daytime in the original... to the point of ordering your Skyrangers to wait if dawn was only a few hours away before landing at a crash site/landed UFO.

I would actually do a save before a 'critical' move, because however well you've planned what you're going to do, you can't reasonably factor in a couple of 95%+ shots missing in the same turn, which can have squad-devastating consequences.



You know, bizarrely, I can't answer this question, despite having playing the entire game through!

Erm, erm.....

Hmm. I'd advise people to start on Normal, because until you've figured out the interplay between the game's systems, you're going to make mistakes through no fault of your own, and Classic is going to kick sand in your face when you make mistakes.

Not at all. It's presumably just worked out that way for you. Unless you are mistaking the fog of war for night-time...

I know what fog of war is, Rich.

Yeah, there are some daytime maps, but they are few and far between - which is a shame, even though there's functionally no difference between day and night (unlike the original) I generally prefer daytime missions simply because it's easier to make out what things are.

I respectfully disagree with the Doc, once you get your eye in on Normal mode, it's too damn easy.

I really regret playing the game out on Normal mode, even though I could (and should!) have bumped it up to Classic.

Once you get into plasma weapons you'll just fucking own everything on Normal.

As someone who played a lot of XCOM, I'm not really struggling on Classic. Nor am I having difficulty working out the interplay with the game's systems, as far as I can tell...

Have you seen any Fog Of War yet? You need to watch out for that.