What are you playing?

[Jaedar]

Really? Singleplayer is where "true" gaming is at in my opinion. Multiplayer is great for competition and community but singleplayer has stronger immersion and story etc.

The question of singleplayer vs multiplayer is pretty common. Lots of people favor each side.

[AEmer]

Well, I enjoy singleplayer and all, but some of my best gamer stories are from playing DayZ multiplayer or from doing tabletop roleplaying games.

Right now, it's just where I get my fix, but arguably, this has much more to do with who I play with than the game type itself.

I play a lot of coop and I play a lot of team vs team games. I love geeking out about games too, I love talking about them and I love sharing the rush of gaming. With multiplayer on voice, all of that is just right there in my headset.

Even _when_ I play singleplayer games, I think I love them the most when they're social experiences, and I sit next to someone and each of us have a controller. Some games don't work for that, and some games you gotta play by yourself - so those games really have to offer me something special. At the moment, that's just how I play games.

On the flip side, it is incredibly rare that I actually play multiplayer games without playing with friends.

[bobby 55]

Yeah, multiplayer with strangers is something I won't ever do again. Co-op with people you know is a blast though, and that's coming from somebody who loves his singleplayer.

[Hassat Hunter]

I barely do mp.

Any co-op I would like (Orcs Must Die 2) never gets off the ground...

[bobby 55]

I finally got Saints Row 2 running at the correct speed and have the controls mostly to my liking. It's not as mad-cap as SR3 but it's a pretty entertaining game in it's own right. The racing side quests are bit difficult even with the better handling mod installed, there's too much drift, and the deceleration is extreme.

[AEmer]

xcom: Enemy Within.

I like everything so far about this expansion. There's a higher risk-higher reward type deal going on with getting all of the new stuff. I very much approve of where they've taken the game.

We'll see if power creep makes the later stages more boring, but I bet that there's a bunch of second wave options that may be turned on to get the difficulty curve just right for just about anyone now...

[Jaedar]

xcom: Enemy Within.

So for some reason, this games flaws must have slipped my mind and thusly I am too.

So, the first thing I notice is that you can research robits before you even learn how to autopsy aliens. I mean seriously, that's huge fucking narrative disconnect. My people don't know how to take a knife to a sectoid, but they can take a guy and replace every single limb in his/her body and teach him/her to use the robotic body perfectly in 3 days? Of course, this got me thinking into all the other ways XCOM is seriously gamey. Why are the aliens peppering meld all over the place only to try and blow it up? Why can't I build a second skyranger to respond to more abductions? Why does a huge fucking robit take the same space on the skyranger as a person? Why do I need an officer to build an officer training school? Why can I use the same grenade once on every mission, but never twice on the same mission? WHO WAS PHONE?!

Oh and the game is still buggy too. I've been shot through solid walls and been unable to see the enemy from the same square that got shot, I've had injured soldiers fall through the level geometry and disappear forever. I've had chryssalids noscope civilians through walls.

That being said, they HAVE added a lot more options to the early game, which is nice. I don't really see how you'd have enough money to even try and use half the stuff before its made irrelevant, but options are always nice.

Oh and Classic/Ironman is too easy for me, but impossible too hard/tedious.

[AEmer]

Yes. The game isn't a story. It's _a game_. Next, you'll be complaining that riflemen in civilisation aren't ranged and archers are ranged.

Meld was introduced to solve a problem which both you and I admitted we couldn't solve: Giving players an incentive to being _agressive_ and not slow-going.

Say what you will about the mmo-like proc'ing of packs - this time around, because they're generally very mobile, it's much more common that they will casually come upon you if you take your time. And if you don't beeline for the easier solutions within the metagame between missions, certain things become quite tricky.

At the end of the day: If C/I is too easy, just enable the second wave options which make the game harder. There's a lot of those.

[Jaedar]

Yes. The game isn't a story. It's _a game_. Next, you'll be complaining that riflemen in civilisation aren't ranged and archers are ranged.

It's a game, but just because its a game doesn't mean it the people(who the game keeps having monologue and talk in cutscenes so I'm obviously supposed to care something for them) in it have to be stupid. It's not a coherent universe, not even close, and yes, this bothers me even if it is a game. Possibly more than it rightly should, but since the game is trying to tell a story, I think it should attempt to do it better.

Say what you will about the mmo-like proc'ing of packs - this time around, because they're generally very mobile

There seem to be a few more wandering packs, but it's not really that significant.

If C/I is too easy, just enable the second wave options which make the game harder. There's a lot of those.

Yes, but most of them will probably make the game feel very disjointed.

[AEmer]

They don't make the game feel more disjointed so far as I can tell.

For instance, using hidden potential and not created equal makes impossible significantly easier. You can also use the flanking=crit option to give yourself a bit of a break.

You can use marathon and elerium half life to make it punishingly hard to get elerium-based equipment on classic. Now you basically have to capture aliens to get good weapons. Make additional satelites more expensive, and good luck winning that game. I'm not sure where the disjointed feeling will enter exactly...

Also, you criticized the meld mechanic as being insensible. That's a stupid criticism because that mechanic is _exactly_ what was needed. You should always put game ahead of story, meaning that if you want to criticize it, you should at the very least recognize that it still makes the game as a whole better that it's in there.

Unless that's a paradigm you don't believe in, that is....

Anyway, yeah, you can criticize the story segments, but really, this is like the story that was in Alpha Centauri: It's window dressing for the game. You can skip the cutscenes if you don't like the characters and just focus on the gameplay.

[shadowblade34]

I completed Alan Wake and the DLC over this past week, it was worth the £4 I had paid for it, and maybe even a little more. Now I've moved onto Call of Juarez: Gunslinger that I bought during the Steam Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and CoJ double pack. It's a shooter that acknowledges it's just a goofy shooting gallery, without any pretensions and it's actually pretty fun, and it can get away with simply being a shooting gallery because it's played out as a bounty hunter telling his story in a bar with the excessive use of hyperbole.

[Jaedar]

For instance, using hidden potential and not created equal makes impossible significantly easier. You can also use the flanking=crit option to give yourself a bit of a break.

Maybe, but from what I hear, the first 2-3 missions are by far the hardest part of Impossible, and it gets significantly easier the longer you play. Those things mostly seem to make the game easier after that.

Also, you criticized the meld mechanic as being insensible. That's a stupid criticism because that mechanic is _exactly_ what was needed. You should always put game ahead of story, meaning that if you want to criticize it, you should at the very least recognize that it still makes the game as a whole better that it's in there.

Actually, meld kinda makes sense in that the aliens want humans to reach their genetic destiny or something. It's stupid, but it makes sense. And imo, sometimes the correct choice is to not have a story, but they chose to add one and I find that it doesn't fit with the gameplay, which detracts something for me.

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts after all.

You can skip the cutscenes if you don't like the characters and just focus on the gameplay.

Yet I still can't buy a second skyranger because...... :shrug:

One of the things that made the original so great was how it all fit together. neuxcom is similar enough that it makes it hard for me to not compare them, and it is a comparison it unfortunately loses in almost every respect.

Also, exalt missions are completely trivial until the AI decides to actually use rockets, then they become hell. Perhaps not the smoothest design, but they are a nice change of pace from aliens.

[AEmer]

What is the most important part of XCom? That you're fighting a war against alien invaders. That is the single most defining aspect of the game. There's a lot of other things, but to even be considered an xcom game, you _have_ to have that.

So, the game has to take place within a certain _setting_. You cannot take that out of the game.

There's a whole bunch of things you can take out, but not that. In fact, a key part is reinforcing this aspect. Which is why you have the ufo takedown minigame, and the research metagame, and the soldiers with names and unique gear and little customizable details.

Firaxis has chosen - rightly, I might add - to reinforce that setting in other ways. The role of the commander of XCom is given to the player, and in order to support that, the player is given several subordinates. That is the 'story' you mention.

Nearly all of your criticisms would change the gameplay in order to accomodate the story, and that's just a bad approach to game design. The way it is done is generally such that the story gives simply fleshes out the setting - that is good - and gives purpose to the various gameplay elements - also good.

I'm sorry, but there's no room for listening to nitpicking when correcting the nits would entail abandoning good game design processes in favor of bad ones! More on the point, yeah, you could totally have the option of an extra sky ranger, only that would change the feel of the game: No longer do you have to make a sophies choice every time you're hit by an abduction during the start of the game! Notice that I say the start of the game: You can have total coverage of the world by the end of the 3rd month, and at that point you no longer get abduction missions: Effectively xcom is at a level of preparedness where they respond to every alien threat on the globe!

Xcom is supposed to feel woefully underprepared and understaffed. Putting in that extra skyranger would ruin that.

[Jaedar]

Which is why you have the ufo takedown minigame

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOdRt_c8nfY

Nearly all of your criticisms would change the gameplay in order to accomodate the story, and that's just a bad approach to game design.

Well, actually I'd like to change both so the gameplay could accommodate stuff like a second skyranger without dying horribly in a fire.

No longer do you have to make a sophies choice every time you're hit by an abduction during the start of the game!

You'd still have to drop 1 mission. Not to mention that the skyranger would obviously cost money, delaying other stuff, and you'd have to split up your team. These all seem like fairly interesting decisions to me. Do you invest in satellites to save panicking countries, or try and prevent them from panicking by trying to deal with more abductions at once?

Xcom is supposed to feel woefully underprepared and understaffed. Putting in that extra skyranger would ruin that.

I disagree on both counts. X-com is supposed to be technologically inferior(not the same as unprepared). Although it is true they're supposed to feel grossly understaffed in the new one.


So I've reached the endgame in my game(decided to finish it to maybe unlock some more second wave stuff). Basically just waiting for the overseer ship to show up somewhere I have a firestorm, and pretty much ignoring everything else except for ufo recoveries so I can get the raw materials to cover more of the globe with firestorms. The final Exalt mission was woefully underwhelming. Sectopods are a major chore(seriously, they have something like an effective 50+ health). I can't help but feel the point of the base defense is somehow lost when you're not defending the base you built(pretty neat mission otherwise though).

[AEmer]

I...dunno. I feel like if there's anything the game currently does right, it's the first 2 months. If the tradeoff was to get a second skyranger at 4 soldier capacity, or upgrade the first one to 6 soldiers, ok. I could see that.

Otherwise, it's just...you're messing with something that's already pretty tight. You already have a tool to manage panic: Build more satelites and be less greedy about mission reards and the funding countries contribute. There's a solid mechanism in play for making the strategic choices interesting.

It might _seem_ like an extra skyranger makes things interesting, but so far as I can tell, you're _already_ making interesting choices. The extra skyranger is a wrench in a machinery where you can already weigh the pros and cons and make up your mind. At worst, it'll be a binary choice that has to always be answered the same way to be successful. At best, it'll be a hard choice that makes the other hard choices easier whichever way you choose.

Also, you just linked me some music.