Abby is right about the medkits: as long as you're inside the circle, you can use it. Where it's tricky is where you're right on the edge, which is what caught you out before. As long as the centre of the square is definitely within the circle, it should be all right.
I don't think that's a colour temperature thing on Dan's camera; rather, it looks like the blue channel is low for some reason. That makes skin look weird and purple like that, and makes white look yellow.
I was wondering when they'd do Fighters Destiny. One of my friends at school had rich parents so they had a big house and we'd go there to play video games for hours and hours, and one time one of those games was Fighters Destiny. As far as I can remember I hated it - I wasn't even especially interested in fighting games, particularly 3D ones, and in my inexpert opinion it looked and felt muddy and gross and uninteresting.
Anyway, he gave me that same copy for my next birthday, so one of the few fighting games I've ever owned is also my least favourite out of all I've played.
To be fair, I don't remember if I even got him anything for his birthday, so, you know, no hard feelings or anything.
So about your question regarding the fans in the tunnel those are probably ventilation fans. I know that in Boston you'll see those humongous fans out in the tunnels out in the subway.
Yeah, I don't know about the States, but I think they're a fairly common feature in long tunnels here in Europe. The first time I ever noticed them was in a tunnel at Heathrow airport, and I thought they were just being cute and using plane-looking stuff as a gimmick, but I've since seen them in tunnels through mountains and so on.
Another solid performance from Abby, and in this instance the mission wasn't so long that she lost her nerve. I think this is the least nit-picky I've felt after an episode (I would probably have fallen George back rather than taking the risk with the grenade, but it worked out OK). And Vinny's advice was all sensible and none of it felt to me like it was overstepping the mark.
It's funny that Abby still apologises every time she dashes. There's really no need; she uses the move pretty reasonably. If a character can't do much from where they are, and aren't under immediate threat, it makes sense to put them in the best position possible for the following turn, or at least get them as close to that as you can. When she was retreating and closing in on the evac zone, dashing Jason was actually much less spicy than having him stop to shoot: there's no chance he could take down all those chryssalids before they reached him, so it was much safer for him to cover as much ground as possible as fast as possible.
To have a soldier move down a certain path, press CTRL+Right click to trace the path you want. Useful for going around fire and other hazards.
Oh my god, does the game tell you that anywhere?! Needing to path troopers is relatively rare, but when it comes up it's so annoying. I can't believe I didn't know this.
Honestly Dan did a pretty good job here and I feel like Vinny was often giving him overly cautious bad advice. The only real mistake he made was running Tim into an overwatch barrage but otherwise he just took a bunch of really easy shots. Who wouldn't take a 90/60 shot in this game? Weird to say he was lucky when the odds were on his side on almost every shot he took.
His shot choices were mostly fine. I think the part people think he did badly was soldier positioning.
He did miss an obvious opportunity to let George Smith finish off an enemy with something like three health left, instead having Zhang take him out. That was pretty frustrating.
But yeah, he seems to consider all cover equal, regardless of facing (and apparently even then not that important given the amount he was leaving soldiers out in the open). Missions like this do throw stuff at you from all directions, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't make at least some effort to reposition accordingly.
Well - that almost ended up going incredibly well. At least they survived. Took a turn for the worse when Vinny talked her into cheating up Jason leading to the mind control.
Yeah, that felt like the turning point of the mission, unfortunately. I kind of get the feeling as Abby got more stressed she deferred more to Vinny's judgement, which is a shame, because she was doing remarkably well until that point. Like early Alex, I think she needs to trust her own judgement more at this point. But that led to the understandable but reckless and ultimately highly damaging move of over-extending Swery, which only compounded their problems, particularly with careless errors like placing him outside the door rather than taking cover on the inside and shooting through.
What I found particularly frustrating and perplexing was that Vinny's pestering about the run-and-gun came right after his call for (excessive) caution just a few rounds earlier. I at least understand the reasoning with wanting to hold back in the command centre, though I don't think that's really how the AI works, and the funnel wasn't quite as good as it appeared (if the aliens were going to come after them, they probably would have jumped through the windows and presented a much more dispersed target than they were hoping). But what was the reasoning behind sending someone so far ahead of the line at such a critical point in the mission, when they knew there were more enemies than they could currently see? I just don't see the logic in that. And Abby resisted it for several turns, so it really did seem like he just eventually wore her down after the third or fourth time of suggesting the exact same thing. To his credit, Vinny's always tentative with his suggestions, but when he keeps repeating them it does make them more insistent.
I guess maybe the stress of the mission was getting to them, but I really think staying patient at that moment would have yielded a much better result. Not that nobody would have been mind-controlled, but at least if they were the enemies would have been at a more manageable distance.
I did think overall it went well, though. Things held together very well for the early stages; it's just a shame it fell apart a bit at the end.
I always complain about Vinny, so I feel kind of bad. No hard feelings! Nothing personal! Good job, gang!
JamesM's comments