Quick Look: Xenonauts

Whoo!

Alex-com?

X(eno)COM

BEAST Quick Look!

Zee-no-knots!

Burt Reynolds wants to play tabletop games with you.

Spiritual the end of my fists!

Did you mean?

Burt Reynolds, Tommy Lee Jones, Alain Delon.

I understand having a desire to pay homage to your development history, but Xcom came out like 10 years ago so it probably would have been a good idea to update something... like anything, any one thing would have been fine, but this is literally the same game reskinned. Usually I like these kinds of developer resurgence knockoffs, but this is just shameless.

"Vinny Caravella, Defender of Earth" sounds like a scary future.

As an old x-com fan, who found the first x-com vastly superior to the remake. I can't recommend this enough, Xenonauts is not as difficult as the first x-com, but I think that's okay. This game is great, there are very few things in it I disagree with. 1) I like selling my own shit, thank you very much game. 2) explosions are not as satisfying as the first x-com. 3) Aliens don't panic.

However in Xenonauts research is very satisfying and descriptive. I hope they keep making these games.

The art style really reminds me of Archer. I can just imagine Cpl. Sucxks listening to her superior drunkenly breate her for incompetence.

Oh vinny...

You can click on your fighters and then at any point on the map (or enemy ship) to tell it to move there, the idea is to split them up and engage from the sides.

Absolutely not true. Combat mechanics are different from the original XCOM, in that Aliens have Morale, your soldiers can lay down suppression fire, and cover plays a larger role. The Alien AI is much improved over the original, and you won't have to spent half an hour playing "hunt down the final sectoid hiding in a hidden closet in the map" -- indeed, most of the "UFO Crash" missions have an alternate win condition of "Secure and Occupy the UFO for 5 Turns" if you don't want to kill every alien on the map.

The "scoring" of the game is different than the original, as you don't get "points" for completing clandestine (UFO Landing/Crash) missions; your National ratings typically only improve by clearing Terror sites, as that generates a huge amount of goodwil for XCOM by the general populace. Additionally, sometimes member nations will shoot down UFOs on their own and request XCOM back-up to clear the crash site, and sometimes civilians/militia forces will show up on the tactical maps to support your troops (read:draw alien fire). If you're undermanned and unable to clear a crash site, you can call in an airstrike to destroy the sight completely, which nets you a cool $20,000 (but no research materials).

Air combat is COMPLETELY different from the original, with you taking control over your air forces. You can have up to three aircraft in a squadron engage a UFO contact, which may or may not have fighter support. You can direct your aircraft's movement's and tell them what weapons to fire and which targets.

In short, Xenonauts is in every way a spiritual successor. You shouldn't have the gall to call it a "shameless clone" if you don't know anything about it other than a 45 minute first-impressions video by a few strangers on the internet. :b

New X-COM was my first exposure to the series, but this looks hella awesome.

X-Com came out 20 years ago, and Xenonauts changes a fair bit.

I keep stumbling over the word Xenonauts. I keep wanting to just say Xenauts

Alright, Giantbomb. Your multiple locations and new employees are now generating more content than I have time for.

But I have to watch this.

@alucitary: Xcom is still really good. Holds up well if you can see past the arcane interface.

I like how you can pick and choose your recruits based on stats like the original game. The early game in the new XCom got frustrating because you couldn't cherry pick the bravest recruits so they usually ended up going berserk if anything bad happened.

Being a new(er) member to the site, I came on after Alex had been outside of videos. When he did appear, he always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I was soooo wrong. This video (for some reason or another) has made me appreciate Alex on a whole new level and GB East is going place real fast!

High Five for Shawshank references!

The broken alpha from two years ago occupied my evenings, so it's great to see the game working so well now.

@dasakamov:

also, the game is highly moddable, if you have the game do yourself a favor and install the mod that adds 50 (great) new maps to the game (Skitso's Ultimate Megamix Map Pack)

Vinny also seems to be really bad at the game, you dont bunch up your soldiers and just leave one soldier standing looking at a tree behind, also not turning towards the enemy and not using crouch, not using the shield with rookie soldiers, etc etc...

pro tip: soldiers gain accurancy from any shot aimed at an enemy even if its a miss, so use the shield/pistol combo at start to give them a quick start.

Anybody else wish they would make xcom with silent storm engine? that games fight engine was basically xcom in world war 2 with full physics and collapsing buildings, as in blow the foundation and you can bring down the building completely.

"hunt down the final sectoid hiding in a hidden closet in the map"

you had a problem with this? the first xcom had a "feature" where the enemy came to you after about 20 turns that you could exploit.

Where's the cursor?

@cbarnes86: I think on the rare occasions when he showed up before he was sort of playing-to-type as the snarky guy, but now that he is on video regularly he can be himself more. I think that makes a difference.

Anyway, I think this looks really cool! I really wanted to like the old-school XCOM games, but I could never get over the super clunky interface, and this is coming from a guy who played a hell of a lot of Fallout 1 and 2. This looks much more user-friendly without removing the granularity of control of those old games.

After playing xeno then the xcom expansion it really made me appreciate a bunch of stuff they cut/streamlined (disclaimer I didn't play the original xcom). Like, I would rather get 5 engineers that make a huge difference as a reward rather then just hiring 20 then waiting a month for them to get to my base.

I hope this does alright, at the point Xenonauts was announced, only the XCOM FPS (which became The Bureau) had been announced, so at that point there hadn't been a traditional X-COM game in quite a while (the UFO series and Silent Storm kinda tried, but they didn't have destructible environments, which was a pretty big thing in the X-COM series).

Before Xenonauts was released Firaxis' XCOM had time to get announced and released though, I kinda wonder if it's harder for Xenonauts to compete after a relatively big budget project in the genre has been released, or if XCOM's release just led to more people being interested in the genre.

The lesson from this video is that the PMC division of Vinnco has some serious issues.

Lol dirtbag head scientist.

Whats going on, maaan!?

Vinny just discovered the renaming feature that I never found.

Unapologetically XCOM. Good stuff.

I was wondering the same thing.

It happened! Praise the gorb!

e: @fisk0: Silent Storm had destructible environments.

This game is okay ... if you ever wanted the og xcom here it is

also the Ceasean death noises make me laugh, like if you shot Zoidberg with a gun.

Both. Xenonauts will not be able to compete directly with XCOM, if only because of marketing reasons. But also, XCOM is more accessible. If you ask me, too many people are viewing the term 'accessible' as a bad thing when it really doesn't have to be. I think Xenonauts is needlessly complicated about stuff and things like the interface. It can be a great deal more streamlined while still achieving the exact same amount of depth. One does not have to be sacrificed for the other.

Putting it bluntly, I think Xenonauts is a game the uber fans of XCOM will probably enjoy (like myself), but not everyone who really liked XCOM will also like Xenonauts. I like Xenonauts, but I'm the first to admit it's not a game for everyone. And I don't mean that in the: 'yeah, you have to be a master and skillful to even play this game'-way. I just don't think it does a good job of being appealing to people who aren't prepared to dig in to it before they even start playing. If I didn't know what Xenonauts was, I probably wouldn't like it.

So much GBEAST content this week! Lovin it!

Some recording software lets you hide the mouse cursor, like FRAPS.

Sure. Most of them do. The point I was trying to make is that it's a little confusing to demo a mouse-based game with no visible cursor, and I assume that Vinny probably knows that and just made a mistake.

Wait a minute, am I seeing double... http://www.gamespot.com/videos/quick-look-xenonauts/2300-6420142/

Amazing game, I definitely recommend checking it out if you're a strategy fan.

Oh that's interesting. While they wouldn't be up to snuff even to "rookie" XCOM soldiers (which come on, would be among the most decorated members of elite special forces just to get your name on the list in the first place), I always thought it weird NO ONE else was trying to stop rampaging aliens. Especially in situations like on army bases. Would have really liked to have been able to recruit one member of the German LRRP squad that was killed in my XCOM tutorial...

Alex mentions the shotgun being too good, but I hear in real life shotguns are actually awesome and thus games nerf it for the sake of challenge. Hence why shotguns have become the "all power, no range" weapon.

Also BLAH BLAH it's the sound of the police!

Vinny said in the video he wasn't playing in a very tactical manner. He played agressively for the the sake of time. Quick Looks are just that, meant to convey a general sense of a game, not in-depth analysis/deliberate strategy.

@cooljammer00 said:

Video game shotguns do have a very unrealistic range, but the main reason shotguns haven't been completely replaced by assault rifles/carbines in reality is versatility.

There are all kinds of ammunition for shotguns, ranging from non-lethal rubber/beanbag rounds to armor-piercing flechettes to door-breaching shells to explosive rounds.

Shame about the cursor.

Holy shit, this game is old school X-Com. I need a copy ASAP!

I really miss something like X-COM's Geoscape music in this.

Huh, yeah, you're right.

Some X-COM clones have had alternate ammo types, UFO: Alien Invasion had at least two ammo types per weapon, including flechette rounds for shotguns and grenade launchers.