Quick Look: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Aliens invade Sao Paulo.

Man, Rockstar went a weird route with Max Payne 4

@CaLe said:

@Xshinobi said:

@Humanity said:

@SlashDance said:

@Teizen said:

Less than 24 hours to go

Damn you americans. :(

You could use Spotflux to mask your IP

Steam can ban you for that now. I was thinking of using a VPN until I read the eula. I will just wait it out.

Plenty of people need to use VPNs for legitimate reasons. I've never heard of a single ban due to unlocking a game early. The only banning that happens is when people use the VPN to buy games cheaper from another territory.

Well I wonder how all that stuff works. I am from the US but I'm currently working in Europe on a 2 year contract so technically I should be getting stuff from the EU store but my bank account and everything is still American in dollars so uhh I dunno. All I know is that Europe and US having separate release dates especially with digital distribution is completely ridiculous these days.

Kinda reminds me of Valkirya Chronicles.

@strangeling: Then clearly you should ignore both X-com and Dishonored and buy Deadly Premonition.

Somewhat a shame that the only interesting games to come out all year comes out the same week. Now I'll have to choose, and I hate that :/

Looking forward to the Bombcast-discussions on XCOM and Dishonored, hopefully Vinny won't use to much time on RE6 even though I want to hear his opinion on that game

@Borklund: why not? it's hilarious.

Loved the quick look, I've always felt that you could make a marvel civil war or at least marvel superhero war game using this general structure, have the helicarrier be the main base, recruit mutants/superheroes etc. I would play that.

@Xshinobi said:

@Humanity said:

@SlashDance said:

@Teizen said:

Less than 24 hours to go

Damn you americans. :(

You could use Spotflux to mask your IP

Steam can ban you for that now. I was thinking of using a VPN until I read the eula. I will just wait it out.

You can use a VPN to unlock early. What they don't want you doing is buying something out of your territory.

@KevSlider said:

Kinda reminds me of Valkirya Chronicles.

Well, that game is also a turn-based tactical strategy game. It's a pretty well-defined genre (thanks to games like...the original X-COM), but it doesn't bubble up to mainstream attention very often. See also: Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Jagged Alliance, etc.

I have zero knowledge or experience with X-COM, but I am really enjoying the aesthetic of these aliens.

@Ares42 said:

Take for instance the "always move into cover". It seems to me like one of the absolute best ways to scout in the game is to move out as far as you can (regardless of cover) on your first move, then either dash into nearby cover if you don't see anything or dash back to your former position if you encounter aliens. If you got caught in overwatch while moving, moving towards cover wouldn't help any way and this way you can counteract the free move the aliens get.

I believe moving past the blue radius uses all your moves.

SKELETON suits?! 2spooky4me!

As soon as Ryan grouped his three duders all together at that log, I cringed so hard my asshole fell out.

HAVE YOU NEVER FOUGHT ALIENS IN REAL LIFE BEFORE RYAN!?

GOD.

Great quick look guys but I was already set to buy this game after the Quick Look EX you did last week. You were very informative and now I feel better prepared to tackle this game tomorrow. I kind of wish you didn't say the names of the aliens. It would've been a lot cooler to learn about these crazy aliens upon playing the game. It's supposed to be "Enemy Unknown" but now I actually know the names of a few enemies. It's a petty gripe to an otherwise fantastic video. This really makes me appreciate Giant Bomb's existence since I would have never paid attention to this release otherwise. Keep up the great work.

@Benny: Pure genius!

@Ares42: I think Jeff's point was the aliens always get a turn when you find them even if you were hiding. That basically means you can't catch them off guard as it just isn't possible.

Also if you find aliens while out of cover you will be blasted then and there before you can do anything

@Blimble: So if you send in a sacrificial lamb the aliens won't move into cover when you find them and you can just blast them to pieces with your other soldiers ?

Loved that first contact=missle to the face. XCOM!

@Fattony12000 said:

As soon as Ryan grouped his three duders all together at that log, I cringed so hard my asshole fell out.

HAVE YOU NEVER FOUGHT ALIENS IN REAL LIFE BEFORE RYAN!?

GOD.

I felt like this SO MANY TIMES during the quick look. I just wanted to go to the GB offices and slap him for dumbness.

I'm going to buy the eff out of this game. More Tactics games, please!

@Ares42: When you could just play it safe and then not loose your soldiers it is a better strategy. If you are just throwing one away each game then you aren't going to survive. Your strategy is just a bad way to play. Also I don't see why you want the aliens to move into cover and it is inevitable anyway as that is how you play this game

Could be wrong on this but if I remember right from the original xcom was that if nothing else capturing the aliens again gave you some extra bonus when it came around to selling excess gear. Might be different here. Game looks awesome & high insane levels of stress.

Can't wait for my copy to arrive!

@Blimble: I don't think you understood what I meant. Basically you're saying that if I use my first action to move a soldier somewhere with no cover and he discovers aliens they will all shoot at him instead of disperse into cover (as they are doing with their initial half-round in the video).

If that is true I would think a valid strategy at points would be to just sacrifice some rookie you brought to allow you to completely decimate a group of aliens quickly, as you would be able to take shots with the rest of your crew on aliens out of cover. Not something you would do all the time ofc, but it could be quite effective when necessary.

@Iodine: here here, i agree.

Looks awesome!

@Ares42: What's the point though when you could just move up slowly and have the aliens shoot at the guys in cover meaning you are very much less likely to get someone killed. You want to limit the deaths as much as possible and being able to take a couple of shots of aliens out of cover isn't worth losing a soldier when your going have to waste money on buying a new one with no skill on top of what you will lose just in normal combat.

The advantage you will get for a round just isn't worth the sacrifice when you consider all the aspects you have to deal with not just the field of combat.

I hope like hell that this game is successful, cause more XCOM is a good thing for gaming in general.

Fuck yes, the return of XCOM. I can't wait for this game to release and I can begin spending way too many hours in front of my PC like I did with the originals.

Do you get to make your own dudes if you want? Or are all of them randomly generated?

Saw two minutes of this before I headed over to Steam and pre-purchased.

Looks great.

12 MORE HOURS

This'll help make the wait less painful.

@Gothmoogle said:

Saw two minutes of this before I headed over to Steam and pre-purchased.

green man gaming selling for £21.75 steam code inc free civ v awesome deal (UK)

If this comes out and someone cracks the exe i wonder if i can use the cracked exe to run my UK steam version till the 12th....hmmmmm

Why do they keep doing Quick Looks of PC games on 360? I don't mean to be that guy, but come on, X-COM on console is not the proper way to show off the game.

Both this weeks games look pretty amazing, but I can only afford to get one more new release this year and it's gonna be Hitman for me!

"Man, I hate Patrick Quick Looks! He's the only guy who stands around and talks without doing anything! I'm watching him do nothing! None of the other guys do that!"

Hah. I wonder if those people watch these Quick Looks while stabbing themselves with a fork so they don't remember it.

This is probably an unpopular opinion on the internet where everyone claims to be amazing at all games but as some who is historically bad at video games, especially strategy games, this scares me a bit. I'll definitely play it at some point but I'm not sure how much I'll get out of it.

I was hoping they would show what the PC KB/M controls looked like.

@captainanderson said:

Why do they keep doing Quick Looks of PC games on 360? I don't mean to be that guy, but come on, X-COM on console is not the proper way to show off the game.

Because that's what publishers send them.

@captainanderson said:

Why do they keep doing Quick Looks of PC games on 360? I don't mean to be that guy, but come on, X-COM on console is not the proper way to show off the game.

Just saying, it looked better than Dishonored. Dishonored is by a small margin my first choice, but I liked what I saw also in this QL , and I allso noticed the appearance difference on console twixt the two pretty quickly.

Both are eventually going to be on my PC. I'm not really arguing, just what I felt I saw.

@Cataphract1014 said:

I was hoping they would show what the PC KB/M controls looked like.

They look like crap.

@captainanderson said:

Why do they keep doing Quick Looks of PC games on 360? I don't mean to be that guy, but come on, X-COM on console is not the proper way to show off the game.

Console audience is likely to be the larger and also the more indifferent to a game like Xcom. A PC purist interested in strategy already has this firmly on his/her radar. The average console player, not so much. Ergo in an effort to be representative of the medium they use the mean denominator. With firaxis' efforts to streamline the experience for both the consoles and mass market i would even go so far as to say a Pc quicklook would do the game a disservice, in that it should be obvious that it would work well on PC. Having been designed and created by the single best PC, turn based, game production studio in existence. Whats more interesting to me, is to see how they have made the game accessible while retaining core gameplay mechanics.

Fact is it will play the same on both anyway, ill just look a darn site better on a good PC.

Goddamnit I am so skinned this month, and both this and Dishonored looks really fucking good..

Ramen all day, err' day

@gladspooky said:

"Man, I hate Patrick Quick Looks! He's the only guy who stands around and talks without doing anything! I'm watching him do nothing! None of the other guys do that!"

Hah. I wonder if those people watch these Quick Looks while stabbing themselves with a fork so they don't remember it.

Nobody says this. People have been complaining about how Ryan quick looks games for years now. Pay attention.

Do they have a busted Xbox controller? the camera was drifting to the right throughout the whole QL

Looks so fucking good. And hearing Ryan and Jeff freak out at the overwhelming odds was really amusing. Definetly will be getting this soon.

@Blimble: Went and tested it in the demo, and even if I moved into a position with no cover almost right next to an alien when I discovered them for the first time with my first action they would scatter into cover instead of blast my guy down. So it doesn't really matter. Seems like my first theory was true though, they can't fire weapons during that initial half-move.

Holy shit, the tension when Ryan knew there were more aliens but had no idea where they were was unbearable. Terrifying.