rhoenix wrote:Vympel wrote:I must here more about the game before I decide to get it- White Haven, you out there? Edumucate me.
Echoed. I'd like to see just how close the gameplay is to the original XCOM: UFO Defense, regardless of the graphics and sound being better. I'd like to know what the average UFO mission is like, what the average Terror mission is like, etc., and compared to how they were in the original.
That may be asking a bit much, though.
Well.
Having played to the 'late lasers' stage, in X-Com Terms, something around a half dozen UFO assaults, two terror sites and one alien base op, I think I have a good feel for the game.
The stock is awful. It's missing a crapload of features, a lot of annoying interface issues. I will list them.
- No tactical zoom
- Awkward Geoscape Panning.
- The way soldiers shoot is lame, and often you misclick the square of the shot type.
- No UFOPedia data that's helpful (Like what's the diff in stats between the 'Shotgun' and Rifle'
- Rifle bullets are apparently .75 caliber and travel at roughly 12 feet per second. Also, the camera tracks them in slo-motion.
- Male soldiers make 'SPLURCH' sounds when they die.
- Female soldiers make 'ALIEN!!!' noises when they die.
- Interceptions on the geoscape usually result in your basic fighter running out of fuel during the dogfight itself, which usually drags on across whole continents.
- A lot of alien weapons are pitifully weak early on (One basic soldier in starter kit took five plasma gun hits at point blank). Your rifles are pointless, just have everyone carry grenades and rocket launchers.
- When a UFO is shot down, the entire crew is alive, the UFO is intact, there's no wreckage.
- Burning down civilians for fun in terror missions is perfectly Kosher.
- Your starting craft is so small, there's no point in taking a tank. Unless you happen to only want a group the size of an SG-team to do the mission (4).
Okay.
The fan-mods fix pretty much most/all of that, and add tweaks to graphics, new interfaces, so on, so forth to make it pretty playable. I'm finding it almost a clone of X-Com now, but with a few minor twists that makes it interesting.
The improved AI is actually decent sometimes, and is at worst equal to Old X-COM. Once, an alien with psychic paralysis powers and a melee attack used paralysis to freeze my soldier in place looking down a hallway, then ran down another path to melee him from behind so nobody else saw what got him.
Despite my TOTAL HATRED of how SPECTACULARLY messed up the stock was (as I have ranted to White Haven, who likes stock), when modded it's a pretty ok X-Com experience, and I do feel the nostalgia coming back. It's got one-more-turn syndrome, and is nearly as tense as when you're praying nobody shoots the crap out of you. It's pretty cool too that the fanmods come with settings so you can tweak it exactly, like if you want to speed up research rates, or soldier XP advancement, so you can have a game move quicker or slower than normal.
UFO:EX is in my opinion, inferior in as a whole to the old game (which I indeed still play) or JA2, but has a few perks, and is superior to the UFO Games in all except interface, art style and polish. I'd reckon it's somewhat superior tactically than X-Com Apocalypse, if only the interface was a bit better.
Just be careful of the opening Intro. It's badly rendered, breaks continuitiy, and has such shoddy voice acting that it's actually rather funny. (They got Jane. They must be invincible.)
' doesn't cover it. 