X-COM, XCOM and their derivatives - Including: Xenonauts, Phoenix Point, and assorted tactical turn-based alien shoot-a-thons

[Corn Flakes]

I don't know if it's been brought up, but Mario + Rabbits is a very fun X-Com light. No where near the depth, and weirdly move-action combat focused, but when wanting something dumb and and not strenuous, it's a solid good time.

It can be challenging to when you're familiar with XCom and want to cover shooter, until you figure out how dashing through/jumping on allies/enemies is sometimes more important than shooting.

Mario vs. Rabbids was one of those weird little games that came out of left field, looked like complete shovelware at first glance, but then turned out to be a lot of fun. It was completely stupid as far as the premise went, but somehow I enjoyed it more than XCOM2.

This is one of Apocalypse's many regretable outright lies that it tells the player. Supposedly selling alien technology on the market will allow other organizations to get a hold of it, but shrewd players and eventually combing through the code revealed that all of the factions in the game will acquire the alien technology based on a set of internal timetables. So the illusion is there that selling alien tech on the market will cause the proliferation of it in other factions, but in reality it has nothing to do with what XCOM does. Factions that are allied with or sympathetic to the aliens apparently do develop the alien technology at a faster rate though, but eventually all factions will tech up sooner or later unless they're going bankrupt.

The tragedy of Apocalypse is that you can never tell when they're outright lying to you with things they never even planned to implement, or when the text on the game/manual simply wasn't updated after features were cut/rushed late in development. That game was incredibly ambitious in the design phase, but when the rubber met the road the project started hemorrhaging like the son of a Russian Tsar.

 

[Judge Dredd]

There's always 1 mission that just completely fucks my squad though and makes me quit and start a new one, always around the time I start hitting Sergeant/Lieutenant ranks. Usually a supply raid or alien assault.

I'm not trying to have the perfect save but damn does it kill motivation. How do you guys deal with it?

I have 3 ways.

1. I bring my lowest ranking guy on every mission that isn't a major plot event. This way I always have some guys who are at least somewhat leveled, and it gives me canon fodder should I need it.
2. I live with mistakes, but will re-load a game in the event of a full wipe or outright bullshit. Xcom 2 has a lot of that stuff to troll EU/EW fans.
3. Play on easy. I know most people hate doing that, but for nuXcom, the difficulty settings are mostly weighing RNG and adding/removing a couple of turns to any timers. As said in point 2, Xcom 2 is full of bullshit intended to troll fans of the previous game so playing on easy and coming back on normal or classic once you know all the gotchas and beginners traps helps immensely.

 

[Dark Edea]

I just use the console and cheat. Whatever. Fuck the Greys.

 

[BScCollateral]

I enjoyed XCom 2, playing more or less out of the box with a mod that didn't start the timer until my squad was detected. Overall I didn't find the game particularly difficult.

Some of the stuff I didn't enjoy was the progression; it felt less like "I am facing an alien army" and more like "D&D campaign where orcs vanish when the party levels past them." A lot of the mechanics felt a bit too much like a game; "If my ranger kills someone in hand to hand combat, she becomes indestructible for the rest of the turn." I got both the Hunt and the robot downloads; I really preferred the robots, and was a bit annoyed they more or less abandoned them with "War of the Chosen."

Overall, I should be a prime audience for something a bit more oldschool, but never really got into the other games.

 

[Dark Edea]

I enjoyed XCom 2, playing more or less out of the box with a mod that didn't start the timer until my squad was detected. Overall I didn't find the game particularly difficult.

Some of the stuff I didn't enjoy was the progression; it felt less like "I am facing an alien army" and more like "D&D campaign where orcs vanish when the party levels past them." A lot of the mechanics felt a bit too much like a game; "If my ranger kills someone in hand to hand combat, she becomes indestructible for the rest of the turn." I got both the Hunt and the robot downloads; I really preferred the robots, and was a bit annoyed they more or less abandoned them with "War of the Chosen."

Overall, I should be a prime audience for something a bit more oldschool, but never really got into the other games.

Did you play NuCom 1?

 

[BScCollateral]

Did you play NuCom 1?

Nope; I tried Xenonauts but it didn't quite grab me. I'm not sure if that's a fault in the game, or just me deciding I didn't really want to invest the time into learning how it worked.
I'll admit, though, despite my dislike of the sillier aspects of XCom 2 going to town on zombies with a sniper's secondary weapon really amuses me.

 

[Dark Edea]

Nope; I tried Xenonauts but it didn't quite grab me. I'm not sure if that's a fault in the game, or just me deciding I didn't really want to invest the time into learning how it worked.
I'll admit, though, despite my dislike of the sillier aspects of XCom 2 going to town on zombies with a sniper's secondary weapon really amuses me.

Give XCOM: Enemy Within a try if you can get it at a price you like. It is the game and expansion that came out before XCOM2 and it is a bit more old school and much more in-depth.

 

[Rich Evans Apologist]

I really preferred the robots, and was a bit annoyed they more or less abandoned them with "War of the Chosen."

So I was looking into this the other night. You know when you start a campaign it asks you what DLC you want to include? Untick that integrated button and then select Shen's Last Wish and the Alien Hunters DLC buttons. Then grab the mods that balance out SPARKs and the Alien Rulers.

That integrated button completely removes the story missions for both of those DLCs and their associated unlocks and so-forth. "Integrated" means that the overpowered alien hunters items now become proving grounds projects you can unlock way too early in the game for their power level, and makes alien rulers only appear at facilities (rather than potentially spawning in on any map). It means SPARKs can just be built as soon as you have a training ground, rather than requiring you to go to the abandoned factory and doing associated side-quests to fiddle with and improve. I think that's dumb and retarded.

Ruler Reactions Revised and Mechatronic Warfare: Total SPARK Overhaul mods offer you most of the benefits of the 'integrated' rebalances and then some (yes, they tied rebalances around you not doing the story missions at all. shit's retarded). The former I've talked about before - makes reactions more predictable and tactical, and the latter makes SPARKs more interesting by giving them some melee options and generally improving their ability tree. Overhaul does make SPARKS very very strong units, but given how fucking expensive and time-consuming it is to get them, I'd say it's worth it.

 

[OJ Simpson]

1. I bring my lowest ranking guy on every mission that isn't a major plot event. This way I always have some guys who are at least somewhat leveled, and it gives me canon fodder should I need it.

Perfect! That's what I'm going to start doing. I don't know man, for some reason I've just always brought my A-Team on every single mission. I guess the logic behind it for me personally is just having that much power, it's satisfying to see them wipe the floor with most missions. Definitely going to start bringing 1 or 2 rookies from now on when I can.

 

[AnOminous]

I'm not trying to have the perfect save but damn does it kill motivation. How do you guys deal with it? Do you just start from square one and rebuild?

I have to admit I completely sperg out when starting a game like this and do the "perfect save" thing where I ragequit the instant anything goes wrong. I don't really mind, I like getting early game strategy down, then progressing slowly through the game. I don't see any huge rush to get the whole thing done if I'm enjoying it.

 

[Rich Evans Apologist]

Perfect! That's what I'm going to start doing. I don't know man, for some reason I've just always brought my A-Team on every single mission. I guess the logic behind it for me personally is just having that much power, it's satisfying to see them wipe the floor with most missions. Definitely going to start bringing 1 or 2 rookies from now on when I can.

fuck bringing rookies after like the first two or three missions, they're useless. the first thing you should build is the guerilla training center - you get 1 open slot when you start the game and enough supplies to make something. Make that. Not only is that where you unlock extra soldiers for the squad in the base game, it lets you train your rookies as members of a certain class. Rookies are useless, but squaddies can be brought along to perform limited enough tasks to ensure you've got a decent crop of people to cycle through

 

[OJ Simpson]

I have to admit I completely sperg out when starting a game like this and do the "perfect save" thing where I ragequit the instant anything goes wrong. I don't really mind, I like getting early game strategy down, then progressing slowly through the game. I don't see any huge rush to get the whole thing done if I'm enjoying it.

Yeah that's my attitude as well, I enjoy the progress made early on to find which approach suits me best and the fine-tuning I do to build off of that for every new save I start. Even though I'm going to alter my approach a little bit now, I'll probably still speedrun the the exit to main menu option at some point, inevitably. But the great thing about XCOM is that it never gets tiresome to start over, it's a satisfying and fun game to play at the end of the day.

 

[Kane Lives]

Nope; I tried Xenonauts but it didn't quite grab me. I'm not sure if that's a fault in the game, or just me deciding I didn't really want to invest the time into learning how it worked.
I'll admit, though, despite my dislike of the sillier aspects of XCom 2 going to town on zombies with a sniper's secondary weapon really amuses me.

Xenonauts is way more old-school than NuCOM 1. Chances are that sort of retro-turn based games aren't for you. Definitely hoping Xenonauts 2 is more intuitive to newcomers because there are still plenty of improvements to make there.

I'd say NuCOM 1 is definitely a good entrypoint to the series, despite my complaints on how it abandoned some of the series staples and simplified others. Sometimes you just wanna be an action hero, y'know? And NuCOM 1 ironically is more in the spirit of the OG game intro rather than the OG game itself.

 

[White Devil]

I know it was passingly brought up here before, but has anyone played the Gears of War game, Gears Tactics? How close is it to XCOM if so, is the customization as extensive?

 

[Snekposter]

I know it was passingly brought up here before, but has anyone played the Gears of War game, Gears Tactics? How close is it to XCOM if so, is the customization as extensive?

As someone who was never able to get into these sorts of XCOM-styled games, I too am curious as to it.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Enemy Within for NuCom1 is mentioned a lot, can anyone give a brief rundown on what makes it a much better experience(and closer to the original). I stopped playing NuCom1 largely because it felt too simplistic and canned. I know the starting positions gets mixed up a bit, @Judge Dredd mentioned that previously, but what's going on other than that? The name is intriguing.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Enemy Within for NuCom1 is mentioned a lot, can anyone give a brief rundown on what makes it a much better experience(and closer to the original). I stopped playing NuCom1 largely because it felt too simplistic and canned. I know the starting positions gets mixed up a bit, @Judge Dredd mentioned that previously, but what's going on other than that? The name is intriguing.

There are a lot of small upgrades and additions, but there are 3 main ones.

The big new feature is "meld", which spawns on most maps. You have a limited number of turns to get to it. You can spend it on either super powers for your men, or on 8 foot tall cyborg people. Think Kane from Robocop 2, but with a mini gun and flame thrower. They're a lot of fun.

They added a rival faction of human enemies that have the same abilities as your men. Their missions are usually more objective based, it mixes up the enemies a bit, and it's satisfying to storm their base at the end. You can also salvage their weapons.

The third thing is more maps, and more variety in those maps. There's city UFO crashes, old maps have been remixed with new starting positions which changes more than you might think. There were times I didn't know it was an old map until the last couple of turns.

They have added new enemies and fiddled with the tech tree a bit. Sectoids are now present throughout the campaign, meaning you can get corpses if needed. They start making use of mech suits in the mid game..

If you weren't sold on NuCom, it likely won't change your mind unless you really like super heroes or giant mech dudes. eg. The base assault is back, but it's a bland fixed mission that I'd like to be able to turn off because it doesn't add anything. It's more NuCom, which is exactly what I wanted at the time.

 

[Spunt]

The MECs are amazing. Their flamers can hit an entire Chrysalid pod in one go if you get them into a choke point. Watching those skittering bastards flee in burning terror is one of the most satisfying moments you can have in that game.

 

[OJ Simpson]

Just a straight up marathon. First time reaching this part of the game. Veteran Ironman. Rushing plasma weapons is absolutely necessary.

Spoiler: Nonsense

 

[Titos]

I know it was passingly brought up here before, but has anyone played the Gears of War game, Gears Tactics? How close is it to XCOM if so, is the customization as extensive?

It's alot like XCOM but no focus on base customization and more of a focus on character customization and skill trees. It is not grid based in terms of movement, there's a decent amount of boss battles, and the turn system works kinda like Persona or Shin Megami Tensei where you can earn more AP by doing certain things in battle.