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Phoenix Point is basically unfiltered 1993 Julian Gollop. it’s not a bad game per se, but it guffaws at your weak requests for things like “a streamlined experience” and “a UI that doesn’t hate you personally” when, by god, it’s got simulationism to worry about. if “1993 xcom, heavily modded, with better graphics and better worldbuilding” sounds good to you - some of the text vignettes are really cool - then definitely get it. if you’re just jonesing for more xcom in general and it’s on sale, sure, give it a try, but don’t expect it to wow you.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:14
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Filthy Lucre posted:I don't have nearly the hours into Phoenix Point as I do XCOM, but I would say it's definitely worth picking up. Especially on sale. Phoenix Point is ok but the research is terrible sidegrades usually.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:16
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The soundbite I give people about Phoenix point is that while it is not a bad game, it fully explains why Jake Solomon did not aggressively seek Gollup’s collaboration on his XCOM game.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:40
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Phoenix Point is a good but not great game. If you've played the Firaxis XCOMs to death and want something similar-ish to them it's a good option, but tbh the comparison does Phoenix Point no favors.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:43
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Coolguye posted:The soundbite I give people about Phoenix point is that while it is not a bad game, it fully explains why Jake Solomon did not aggressively seek Gollup’s collaboration on his XCOM game. This is pretty much it yeah. Solomon is thoroughly of the Sid Meier school: gamify, maximize the fun, cut things down to the core impactful decisions. Gollop is a simulationist (which quite a few older game designers were), design based on (complex) systems that mimic something from reality--regardless of if they make gameplay tedious/finicky--and overly ambitious in this regard too. And that ought to tell you if you'd like Phoenix Point, the ideas of the systems are cool; they are also kinda tedious and/or finicky at times, and not all of them really came out the way they were originally intended. If you have a good deal of patience for bits of tedium/finickiness and/or enjoy playing around with systems that are maybe not the most fluid/smooth/well-thought out but do try and actually simulate something, then you'll probably get a solid bit of enjoyment out of PP, especially on a decent sale price. Autsj fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Jun 28, 2023 21:54
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If you do go for Phoenix Point, I would avoid the Festering Skies DLC. Adds a bunch of tedious plate juggling that just slows everything down.
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Jun 28, 2023 23:28
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When the game is based around shooting enemies in specific places to debilitate, and the enemies have idle animations such that they sometimes cover these weak points and only leave them exposed for a second at a time, it adds a pretty unnecessary element of timing to what is otherwise a totally non-twitch strategy game. It's also just not a very fun game. The fiction written around PP is by far its best part.
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Jun 29, 2023 00:28
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Starting a new game after importing most of the last game's A team to the character pool and then having a rookie version of an absolute chad die in the non-tutorial alternative to Operation Gatecrasher is really sad. Almost as sad as Jane Kelly being in two places at once and then being promoted as a specialist instead of a ranger.
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Jun 29, 2023 01:07
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Your Uncle Dracula posted:When the game is based around shooting enemies in specific places to debilitate, and the enemies have idle animations such that they sometimes cover these weak points and only leave them exposed for a second at a time, it adds a pretty unnecessary element of timing to what is otherwise a totally non-twitch strategy game. It's also just not a very fun game. The fiction written around PP is by far its best part. Also you have to learn to stomach the occasional annoyance like your aimer being directly on an enemies face and your guy pointing his gun barrel at the door next to him.
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Jun 29, 2023 01:43
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Shyrka posted:Almost as sad as Jane Kelly being in two places at once and then being promoted as a specialist instead of a ranger. Use this mod to make her always spawn in Gatecrasher as a Ranger. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2336174862
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Jun 29, 2023 03:24
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Zerbin7 posted:Not to hijack the thread, but what's the general opinion on Phoenix Point? I'm expecting it to go on sale tomorrow on Steam (like just about everything else), and I figured that this would be a good place to get a general consensus. Mzbundifund posted:If you do go for Phoenix Point, I would avoid the Festering Skies DLC. Adds a bunch of tedious plate juggling that just slows everything down. This. I played my first round with all the DLC and most of it adds complexity with some benefits, but Festering Skies just adds difficulty with nothing of value to be gained. You spend resources to deal with the threat and your reward for beating it is the effects of the DLC turn off. The air game Festering Skies adds is bad and not worth dealing with. The other DLC is okay and fits better within the strengths of the game imo, but they all suffer from the problem of adding complexity to a game that's already pretty challenging to manage, making them more complicated and draining for less reward than you might like. It's probably best to start your first game with the DLC off if you get it at all. marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 05:10
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Phoenix Point really made me appreciate the pacing in Xcom. So many levels took 20+ turns to limp my wounded, half-paralysed troops to the map edge while harried by enemies. So far (mission 3), Aliens DD is paced pretty well. I like the APC as a game mechanic; not just an extraction point but a powerful in-mission asset.
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Jun 29, 2023 08:24
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Unironically the biggest breakthrough I had playing Phoenix Point on Gamepass was not reloading my clips at the end of every mission. Saved me a whole bunch of resources. Also the actually improved technology seemed to be locked behind allying with multiple factions. The laser turret was the second biggest breakthrough. Not having to track its ammo was a major part of that, admittedly.
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Jun 29, 2023 08:31
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Zerbin7 posted:Not to hijack the thread, but what's the general opinion on Phoenix Point? I'm expecting it to go on sale tomorrow on Steam (like just about everything else), and I figured that this would be a good place to get a general consensus. Clearly not a very popular opinion ITT but my ranking of best x-com games goes UFO Defense > TFTD > Phoenix Point > XCOM 1 > XCOM 2 > Xenonauts It's much closer to the original in spirit and that makes it frankly more fun to me than the Firaxis XCOMs, despite its many obvious flaws. This is the same principle that makes me rank XCOM1 above XCOM 2. They're all good games though. (Xenonauts would be ranked higher if it wasn't so unbearably bland) deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 10:08
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Phoenix point feels like the worst of both worlds- the way the simulationism is interpreted in that game doesn't make it a smooth experience, and you're still limited to 6 people, max like in modern tactical games, so you don't have so many options. If Openxcom's modding scene didn't exist, I think i'd like Phoenix point more, but if I liked decision space, i'd go to OXC instead of the clunkier Phoenix Point. I think Xenonauts is significantly better than Phoenix point in pretty much every way.
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Jun 29, 2023 10:29
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Yeah every time i get "into" phoenix point i always get really bored by like, mission 10. I've pushed past and done more, but the late game is more of a drag than xcom, which is saying something. Xenonauts gives me the rewards of tracking as much as it does, whereas Phoenix Point is definitely something that should have looked at xcom and scaled back even more towards Xenonauts.
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Jun 29, 2023 10:56
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Xenonauts is like high-res reskinned OpenXCOM. Love both.
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Jun 29, 2023 14:37
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The thing is if you are going to do a simulationist game where explosives are king then really you need to scale it up to the Men of War level at least. That's been around for over a decade and just has simulationist RTS nailed down at this point.
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Jun 29, 2023 20:00
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I just absolutely cannot get into Xenonauts' world/atmosphere. I've beat it twice but all of the alien designs, the Cold War era setting, the overall visual style, the overall low tech level that you achieve, etc. are all unbearably boring to me in a way that stops me from firing it up again  It's a shame because the actual game mechanics are great, it just lacks all of the excitement that x-com has. Breaching UFOs with riot shields is something I'd love to see in the rest of the genre too.
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Jun 29, 2023 20:23
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Alchenar posted:The thing is if you are going to do a simulationist game where explosives are king then really you need to scale it up to the Men of War level at least. That's been around for over a decade and just has simulationist RTS nailed down at this point. I would really enjoy X-com at the Advanced Squad Leader level, where vehicles actually like, vehicle, but i doubt that's gonna happen with modern game design.
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Jun 29, 2023 20:30
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So it just occurred to me that I would really like an XCOM set with the invasion in 1935 or so, with a tech tree inspired by Command and Conquer. That's it, I just want that. Like and subscribe!
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Jun 30, 2023 23:17
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That's almost the plot of Silent Storm
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Jul 1, 2023 14:26
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Arven posted:That's almost the plot of Silent Storm The good half of it, sigh.
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Jul 1, 2023 14:36
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/538030/Xenonauts_2/ 25% off in early access. I was really pleased with Xenonauts 1 and feel at this price I can buy in early.
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Jul 19, 2023 22:54
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Imagine spending 10 years working on a game that's basically just an engine upgrade to your previous game and you release one week after an actually good Jagged Alliance sequel appears. Yeah that might have been an okay price if there weren't other options but their timing is awful.
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Jul 19, 2023 22:58
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Had no idea about the Jagged Alliance sequel lol. But I still really appreciated Xenonauts 1. 
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Jul 19, 2023 23:17
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the primary criticism for xenonauts 2 is that there's precious little to distinguish it from xenonauts 1. that said, xenonauts 1 was far from a bad game so if you missed out on it the first time it's a wonderful time to snag it. JA doesn't have the same strategic game, i find.
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Jul 20, 2023 07:58
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Arbite posted:It gets a lot right but the base pulse rifle holds 100 bullets, so let that set your expectations. Is this a gripe about how the in-universe pulse rifle was usually only loaded to 98? Cuz if so, neeeeeeerd BrotherJayne fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Jul 20, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 08:05
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Arbite posted:It gets a lot right but the base pulse rifle holds 100 bullets, so let that set your expectations. I appreciate this, 98 just annoys me. Same as the drone only getting 52. The gently caress? Just give it 50.
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Jul 20, 2023 12:52
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Coolguye posted:the primary criticism for xenonauts 2 is that there's precious little to distinguish it from xenonauts 1. that said, xenonauts 1 was far from a bad game so if you missed out on it the first time it's a wonderful time to snag it. I can understand where these criticisms are coming from, however Xenonauts 2 added a lot more to distinguish it with this Early Access launch. They have actually added named story characters to the base as well as plot conversations with a bradford style character, They added a human enemy faction that so far is well done. Most of the changes are lessons learned from Xenonauts 1. The art style for 2 is also much more refined than 1.
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Jul 20, 2023 17:56
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ulmont posted:Phoenix Point is ok but the research is terrible sidegrades usually. I also got incredibly disappointed in the fact that the early videos showed how your faction started as disheveled ragtag survivors and was supposed to progress into high tech as the game progressed. That was apparently changed and your team are basically equipped with superhero armor from the start, which just killed a lot of the point of the setting for me.
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Jul 20, 2023 21:05
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Phoenix Point i liked the vehicles, the cybernetics, and mutations you could give your soldiers. Being able to pick my soldiers helmets and armor and leggings let me make some nice custom suits that did better than default in how i wanted them used. Almost all weapons were balanced around the stuff you got from mission 1. Your basic rifle ended up doing 180 damage, across six bullets. Your likely first upgrade was a rail rifle that did 160 damage over 4 bullets. better armor pen, worse over all damage potential. shorter range. laser rifles, huge magazines, same damage as your starting ballistics, more range. If you want materials for your war effort, you need to steal it, or trade for it. growing food for instance once you get the tech. each faction had its own ending, which was nice. I liked the class system. At level 4 or so, you get a second class to pick, to make your character yours. there were some really broken combos, and building the right combo of innate abilities, class abilities, cybernetics, and gear was real fun for me. what i did not like was how the limb/cripple mechanic worked in practice. You would ALWAYS want to aim your shorts rather than just tell the soldier to shoot, good enough. There are some enemies in the DLC that have a loving hole in the center of their center of mass your shots can go through for no damage, depending on when you pulled the trigger in their jerky twitchy idle animations. sometimes the game tells you you dont have a shot. you aim, and yes, you do, through a hole in the terrain or similar. and tell you you do have a shot, and its one inch off the top of its head past a chainlink fence. I enjoyed it, but once I beat it once, I just looked up the other endings, as playing it out again isnt something i wanted to do. Been doing Xenonauts 2 as well. It feels nice. the animations are better, the 3d engine helps the game. Explosions and the destructable environment feels good. Having played a lot of xenonauts 1, the air combat in 2 feels tuned toward the aliens much more. but I am figuring out what works for me. Like sending 1 fighter loaded with armor breaking, low damage missiles with 2 wingmates with high damage low pen missiles to hold fire until the armor breaking missiles hit. The air war has some nice tactics involved. At this stage in the game, it feels like having so many items after every mission be vender trash feels wrong. but early access. there is a lot of placeholder art, interrogations have "Text to be done at milestone 2" and things like that. Armor is no longer This is your land suit, this is your flying suit, this is your scout suit. You build the base armor, then add armor modules, regeneration kits, jet packs, etc in your backpack to get the build you want. If you dont want an early access story experience, wait till next year to pick it up. Mechanically, I havent ran into anything that feels glitchy and jank as far as combat goes. But from my understanding nad looking at their roadmap, there is only 6 months of content for the war at the moment. Im coming on month three. winterwerefox fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 05:55
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I'm loving alien dark descent so much I actually bought it. The only issue is it's buggy as hell and I even have a big that on two different playthrough I haven't been able to finish one of the side quests because the datapad isn't interactable.
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Jul 24, 2023 01:22
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Coolguye posted:witness beaglerush straining the overwatch system to its hyper-violent limit Hey, did anyone save a copy of these gifs? They've been down for years, and I really liked them. I believe beagle was using a mod to put like twenty soldiers into a mission, and the camera was going nuts trying to pan between them all overwatch-reacting.
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Jul 24, 2023 06:06
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Just a quick shout out to Chimaera Squad for being a random $25 awesome game released with zero fanfare that I had no idea I needed. How does snek kick door? Now we know! When will X-COM 3 flawlessly combine the downed UFO outdoor terror element with the UFO-itself breach-and-charge mechanic? We cannot know. We are all pawns in Firaxis' silly silly game of chess.
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Jul 24, 2023 06:27
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Joke Soloman, the lead dev of the nuCom, has oficially moved on after like eight years of polishing the same game. So the series is probably gonna sit in the chiller for another few decades, until Oh, and as far as I could tell, snek never kicked door, she only punched them open =/
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Jul 24, 2023 07:21
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Firaxis have fairly successfully shepherded Civ through various lead devs, I struggle to think they're just going to let the XCOM IP lie on the shelf. In fact it needs a fresh pair of eyes at the helm - XCOM2 pushed forward a bit but wasn't that different, WOTC was clearly 'what if this was a superhero game' and Chimera Squad was 'what if this was secretly a card based superhero game?' Solomon was clearly working with an eye towards Midnight Suns.
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Jul 24, 2023 07:47
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Kazzah posted:Hey, did anyone save a copy of these gifs? They've been down for years, and I really liked them. I believe beagle was using a mod to put like twenty soldiers into a mission, and the camera was going nuts trying to pan between them all overwatch-reacting. aw gently caress. yeah that's exactly what was happening there, sucks that they died. i unfortunately do not have copies though, sorry. Alchenar posted:Firaxis have fairly successfully shepherded Civ through various lead devs, I struggle to think they're just going to let the XCOM IP lie on the shelf. chimera squad was explicitly released as an experiment on the xcom formula to see how people would react to it - like, there were literally interviews and press releases stating that specifically. i'm REALLY not sure where the card based stuff is coming from on CS. the game plays nothing like midnight suns. it makes much more sense if you think of it in the context of trying to work up to an XCOM Apocalypse sort of style, where you would be spending a lot of time in smaller engagement zones/going room to room. anyways, firaxis as a whole is kinda low ebb right now. civ is 7 years without a major entry and 6 is generally considered a step down from 5. beyond earth did quite poorly. midnight suns also didn't do great. it wasn't just jake that departed, a lot of senior staff left. it'll probably be quite some time yet before we see anything major on any front since at this point the only major leadership position that hasn't turned over is sid himself afaik.
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Jul 24, 2023 08:40
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Solomon was also not involved in Chimera Squad (well probably did some help, but wasn't credited at all). Wasn't WotC also said to be mainly Mark Nauta's project?
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Jul 24, 2023 10:19
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CS reduces the tactical experience to a series of small arenas, and the practical effect of balancing the game around limited per mission special abilities is extremely close to being card based for all intents and purposes, it's just lacking the randomness of the card draw.
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Jul 24, 2023 12:36
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