The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 05

Once more unto the breach.

Come on Alex!

Love a good shitstorm.

Given that someone asked on the last Beastcast if they should start the with the older X-COMs from the nineties or skip them, I figured I'd comment here as well.

I agree 100% that you should start with X-COM: Enemy Within. However, if anyone is interested in old X-COM, I would recommend skipping the actual old games and trying Xenonauts and its upcoming sequel. The community overhaul mod for the first game is really great as well. If you want a really robust, modern game that is more in line with the original X-COMs, that's where you should go.

uh oh.

Oh man, missing that 5th man upgrade

If you're interested in the original X-COM, then check out OpenXcom! It's open-source!

Also I hope Alex can pull out a victory for us today, keep this series going a little longer :)

Edit: hearing he has done some work to familiarize himself with the game a bit more, and the low difficulty, I have hope!

I'd second this. You're way more likely to bounce off X-COM due to mid-nineties graphics and UI than (most of) the mechanics. Xenonauts is a good way to get the older style of gameplay. Make sure you watch some gameplay before you grab it though, it's *not* the same as XCOM1/2.

Great stuff, I hope Abby doesn't blame the game for her team's downfall ;)

Semper Fi, Alex!

Solid two missions there, missing out on meld isn't a huge deal when you just need some successful missions to get some money and guys promoted. Bit too much overwatch creep, I kept expecting the aliens to just blast you when they had multiple open turns to be honest but it worked out so hey. Got the satellites percolating and that'll help, you might be able to straighten out this run after this as long as you don't have another squad wipe.

…but then, who's next in line to play?

Alright, this episode is literally just Vinny playing the game.

Eeeeh "did everything right" is a bit strong at the start there. Closer to "made a lot of major tactical and strategic errors that led to an inevitable downfall". :P

Sweet XCOM

Vinny "Bad Advices" Caravella strikes again

It shows that Alex has been practising at home. I wonder if that's the extra piece needed to make this format "work".

That's not to say that the episodes so far haven't been entertaining, but it's even better when it cuts through the steps of re-familiarising the participant with the systems and gets straight to the juicy strategic decisions. Ultimately, I think the series is more interesting if the next player has to work with what the previous one chose to do, rather than simply who they were forced to mourn.

Also, I quite like the idea in a future run of Vinny being secretly "evil" and trying to steer the team to defeat with bad advice.

I thought for sure that council mission would fuck them up when this series first started and Alex did an amazing job beating it.

The team really needed this win.

Now it's ripe for Dan to throw all this progress away....

You're entering the Zhang Zone.

Great job Alex

Brad is a support in my game as well!

That's right, build it up so Dan can knock it all down.

I was talking to my screen telling Alex to name the Japanese soldier "Swery" and was very happy when he did. Loving this series, its about time we had a win too.

Hell yeah!

I know that the question of do Let's Plays etc. harm game sales is already buried but I just wanna say that I bought Super Mario Sunshine (and 14 other Japanese GCN games because there was no Sunshine for sale on its own) because of Steal My Sunshine, and thanks to this series, XCOM2 is downloading on my PS4.

Great Job, Alex! Get this ship back into shape.

Oh god. Austin Walker might actually become a mech.

It's good to see that 5 years later Vinny still has a thing with satellites.

yes! great job Alex!

man, good job Alex.

If Dan kills Austin I will be so annoyed

Because I didn't see it in the comments, I wanted to mention that you can kill two Sectoids with one shot. When they mind-meld and you kill the one that did it right away (not the one getting buffed), both of them die.

Alex did a great job. No casualties and starting up the satellite production is very good for the XCOM project.

Curious to see how Commander Ryckert will handle the responsibilities next episode.

I think maybe that's a bit extreme, but I would like it if he were a little more hands-off. Like, maybe he should mainly stick to the macro-scale stuff that needs some sort of continuity between the commanders (like the Alien Containment thing – I'm glad that was communicated), and being a second pair of eyes for drastic stuff like a person being out of cover (which Lang was for several turns), or there being no research on, or whatever.

I'm not sure that Alex would have played profoundly differently without Vinny's advice, though.

I never understood why people found this game completely impossible. I'm no expert and it is difficult, but not impossible.

Watching this series shows me how to play to make it impossible :P

Super fun though. Good work Alex!

I mean, I'd be the first to say that Brad deserves a medal but... I'm not sure "When used on this soldier" means what you think it means.

Great series! Really made me go play Enemy within again.

Solid job from Alex... a lot of Overwatch, though understandable, after seeing Dan "no cover" Rykert in action - some flanking in the right moments would help getting better shots.

Alex is The One.

Alex 65% Navarro

Alex has definitely been the best commander so far. Hopefully Dan can continue the string of successes.

Vinny keeps saying it, and good on him, but overwatch your sniper first, then move. This is especially true if you, for some reason, find your sniper in front of the rest of your team (in which case, hopefully you were planning to do this). If its a round where you have to move your sniper, move him last, so if enemy spawn in on movement then you will at least have a shot with him.

Let operation Steer This Ship Back Into The Right Direction commence!

Alex kicked a reasonable amount of ass! The rebuilding begins.

I laughed when Vinny stated "I'm not trying to tell you how to play," multiple times.

back on track!

Good hustle @alex , I appreciate your cautious approach, but nearly always better to overwatch over hunkers. I find your always better off to be able to return fire, hunker down in only really for when there is no alternative or for unarmed personnel.

But take that with a pinch of salt, your killing it!

Great work steering the ship back on path before Dan takes it into another nose dive, Alex.

Idea: in the middle of a PUBG match, aliens invade!

The only question now is which medal Dan will award to himself.

Omg I love this series...

Please play war of the chosen beascrew

Alex, you did great! Playing extra cautious paid off because you didn't lose anyone and now you have a squad with some decent experience.