Quick Look: XCOM 2

This game is rad as hell.

This game seems a lot better than the first game (which I gave up on about 2/3 through my playthrough because I got bored of the samey environments and lack of tactical options) but it's a damn shame about the technical hiccups, which are near constant for me on a 970 and 3770k. I'll wait until a couple of patches have gone through before returning to it.

I'm prepared for this QL to be more about Dan's Frankenstein celebrity team than dying to aliens!

I've put >30 hours into this game, and I adore it. Yes, there are a couple technical hiccups here and there; but I've yet to run in to any that have broken the game for me. So far my GOTY (ahead of The Witness, which I also loved)

Given Dan's ability to just dumb luck his way through anything, I don't stand a chance at beating this game.

Is that Riff Raff in the screenshot?

looks like that fallout app game

I loved the last game so much. I hope this comes to console as a GOTY or something eventually.

I DONE SHOT HIM LIKE MY NAME WAS OVERWATCH

Oh man watching Dan bumble through this is so painful. Quick Looks are no place for quality play. I would love to see the guys play this in a more relaxed setting, maybe have to endure the whole game on some ridiculous difficulty level.

I'll get this when it's on sale down the road with all the DLC. Plenty of other stuff keeping me busy at the moment and it will give them time to iron out whatever issues are presently causing such minor hiccups as corrupted save files.

@nickhead: LOOK AT ALL MAH SHIIEEEEYYYYYTTTT

So I hear this game is pretty hard. Is it comparable to the Long War mod? Although I have to admit there are a lot of things in the base coding of that mod that makes it more unfair than a challenge. I am hoping this alleviates that. Namely the enemies getting a free turn to run for cover when discovered.

Beaten it once already. Even though I had technical issues (to be fair my PC is not very up-to-date) I would still recommend this 100%.

This is possibly the best video evidence that Dan can dumb luck his way through everything. He should have had at least 3 soldiers killed within the first 3 turns of the mission given what he did.

For anybody playing and having issues turning off in game vsync, cloud saves, setting it to Windowed bordeless, has helped my performance improve ALOT. I still get occasional stutters and pauses especially during transition scenes, but nothing near as bad as when I started.

I guess Dan didn't come extrapolate a strategy from playing : "Never end your turn out of cover or being flanked"

Didn't enemy unknown have pretty much all the same technical problems at launch? Not to excuse it, just seems people are making a lot bigger fuss about it this time around.

I'd love to see a Breaking Brad feature on this game Ironman mode. Even on Normal difficulty.

Surprise Quick Look! Holy MacGruber, so many great games are coming out.

Damn, custom Dan Ryckert looks just like him.

It did but people probably should make a bigger fuss about it if they don't appear to have addressed what was pretty much the biggest flaw that game had.

I think the reason that people are making a fuss about it is because XCOM 2 is 100% a PC exclusive, so people were expecting significant optimization.

Oh man, you can instantly see why Dan was still having trouble on easy. :P

Breaking Dan, surely.

Actually, let's start working on alternate titles for Breaking Dan.
Likely game candidates will be any game requiring serious tactical/strategic thinking.

From watching him play strategic games in the past and listening to him talking about it on the Bombcast I just know it's one of his Achilles heels. (No, that wasn't a wrestling reference.)

I want to say Enemy Unknown used a seed that was set at the start of the battle to determine which side the dice fell on percent chances. If you had a 80% chance to hit, but the seed at the start of the battle said that shot will miss, it will miss no matter how many times you reload a save. Is that still the case for XCOM 2?

Hope it comes to consoles

Take cover. Oh my god take cover.

Yes. It generates a table, which is referenced when % results need to be determined. If you reload and repeat the exact same action same result will happen. But there are ways around it if you know how, like using up the generated values by other actions that require them.

@bassman2112: @efesell: fair enough. I'm not sure what caused this to have the same problems again when it doesn't seem to stray too far from EU in terms of tech and design. But I know game development's a hard business, and what do I really know about how different this game is under the hood anyway? I can wait as I haven't delved into EU as much as I'd like to, pretty confident they'll have this mostly sorted out by then.

Well Dan is pretty good at video games in general. Comforting to know he kinda sucks at tactical.

@hassun: Dansgaea (where he plays through the entire disgaea series and experiences anime in truly unlimited form)

@brad Here's instructions on importing/exporting character pools. http://www.pcgamer.com/how-to-share-and-import-custom-xcom-2-soldiers/

Hearing Dan say "Sasha Banks"outside of a wrestling discussion finally made me realize how porn-y women wrestler names have gotten.

Dan is anime fan. Riki Oh?

No, clearly it's Axl "Genius" Rose.

I played this to completion on my toaster; it has hitching and the action-camera glitches out every so often, but it's not really that much of a mess. It seems more that people are disappointed they're getting the same technical issues on every system, from tosters like mine to big beefy rigs.

I *did* get a bug where it said once if I evac'd I'd lose soliders, when all of them were in the evac zone, but I bit the bullet and evac'd anyway and no-one was left behind, so some kind of bug there.

But I'd recommend this game whole-heartedly to anyone who liked the first or has any interest, it's challenging and addictive and oh-so satisfying when your strats come off, not to mention the fun of creating and using custom characters.

I can't think of a worse genre to play while talking/being watched.

Give Dan a break! :D

Well first and formeost, it's very much the exact same engine (highly modified UE3.5). So to me it makes a tremendous amount of sense the same errors/quirks/bugs persist.

For some reason (beats me!) people think that persistent errors that exist in every game made in a customized engine are easy to root out year over year, when in fact there are usually very good reasons they are super hard to get rid of and so will always persist :( as "fixing" them may mean engine overhauls that would compromise / introduce a lot of risk. This to me is the only logical explanation to that **&@#%&* quirk that can make tile selection within a multi-floor building aneurism inducing. It must be nigh unsolvable.

I do think you're right in that people are giving the game a harder time this go-around, but I think as a, uh, culture, gamers are more sensitive to performance right now. (Though, that said, how is it Unity is getting blamed for Firewatch's performance on PS4? As if the devs had no idea what it was like? Anyways.. :S )

So, that said, I've had some performance issues and one hard crash but I'm really, really happy and loving the game right now.

Of COURSE the majority of Dan's multinational team is American.

Did anybody notice that David Letterman's call sign was Predator and does anybody else find this hilarious?

As to you character import question, @brad, all the character pools are saved in the game directory as a .bin that is easily shared. My soldiers are a mix of former US presidents and popular Marvel heroes, its pretty dope.

I've been meaning to make a pool of all the GB guys to upload, if anyone has beat me to it, please let me know!

This game is ridiculously good even with it's heavy technical flaws.

It's awesome to see Dan's squad. Really good stuff.

I just beat the game on Commander/Ironman. Took me four attempts, this last run went stellar. Only two names on the memorial from the first two months, after that not a single death. It's kinda ridiculous how powerful you become with plasma weapons, advanced explosives, WAR suits and psionics. To put it in perspective, my final successful shot percentage was 80%.

I was kinda surprised how intriguing the story of this game was. The enemy design was awesome, though they certainly lack intelligence. High ground and overwatch traps still makes for an absolute massacre.

Despite the atrocious performance I loved it. It doesn't have the tactical depth of Long War but the guerilla style makes for a better overall experience.

Why is xcom always so buggy? Its not that complex on the tactical level that it would be hard to test these things. I would expect more errors in the strategy layer where theres a million moving parts, not on the ground.

I really like what I've played of this game. I could've done without the timers even though I understand why they're there.

There are by far more complex mechanics going on and constantly interacting with one another on the tactical layer then on the strategic one. Several orders of magnitude difference.

The Long War mod even had a "Save Scum" second-wave option which randomized that table if you reloaded a save. It is a very deliberate design decision I'd imagine.

@donchipotle: Riki "Two Tap" Oh though.

Much like the 'Kojima' tracker for MGScanlon, we need a 'Dan mentions his gf' tracker.