I've got no friends who are deep into gaming and none that showed any interest in XCOM so I've really not been able to discuss it with anyone so I thought I'd just post here and say how much I love the game.

Granted the frame rate on the PS3 is disgustingly woeful (I've never seen such bad frame rate when swapping to cut scenes etc) it doesn't really bother me because the game is such slowly paced it's not like I'm waiting to rush to my next objective anyway.

I've never played a tactical game before though so I'm playing on easy and still finding it a bit of a challenge, mostly because the AI seems to react in a manner I would consider irrational, for example ignoring the easy shot on my stupidly placed marine and running the opposite direction. I just love my snipers at the moment and am struggling with using the heavy properly. I also seem to be running around like crazy trying to sort out what facilities to build, what to research, when to upgrade my squad and all that but that is half the fun. I've had one bad KIA on the first mission in when I did something stupid otherwise everyone is surviving although I restarted my game after about 4 hours of play once I felt I knew what I was doing. I also have a feeling the tutorial was bugged for me because this time around when I entered the situation room it actually explained how satellites worked which I swear it didn't before.

Also took me a long time to work out there were objectives to fulfill in this game....sounds silly but I really had no idea tbh. Anyway just wanted to say that I'm really loving this game, first of it's type for me and I'm hoping definitely not the last. While playing on easy is probably trivial to most people I'm hoping once I'm done to play on normal which will then open up avenues for other strategy games or even games I'd put in a similar category such as SimCity / Civ that require patience and more thought than games I am used to playing.

You came to the right place to talk about Giant Bomb's 2012 Game of the Year!

Anyways, I'm glad more and more people are getting into XCOM. I'm also relatively new to the turn-based genre as I've never found them to be particularly fun until this little thing came along. Snipers and heavy soldiers are the way to go! Normally I have at least one or two heavies to lay down suppressing fire when the going gets tough. Man, thinking about it makes me want to start it up again.

XCOM is cool as hell. I'm still working my way through the tougher difficulties.

I bought this game a while back and had only played the first couple of missions before getting side tracked by other games. It's going to be a while before I get back to it, but I'm really looking forward to playing it.

This game is phenomenal. I had to take a break from my ironman playthrough a couple of weeks ago after losing both of my Colonel-level support guys in the mid-game alien ship assault. It was a devastating loss, and I haven't had the heart to get back in there yet.

Is it like Valkyria Chronicles? I love that game so I was wondering if XCOM is anything like it ...

Yeah, it's very similar, but I think XCOM is the better game. The base building metagame is really interesting.

@kerned said:

Nice, but I bet the story isn't as 'moving' as VC!

Anyway, what's wrong with the PS3 version? The OP mentioned frame rate slowdowns. Anything else?

@tangoup: I play it on PS3 and haven't ran into too many problems. I agree that the frame rate can be a little rough here and there, but this isn't a game in which frame rate impacts gameplay at all, so I'm not bothered.

I have ran into an annoying bug a few times though. Sometimes, and only after long play sessions, the post-mission cutscene where your plane is flying back to base will get stuck. The plane just pans back and forth across the screen forever, necessitating a reboot of the PS3. Upon restarting you're always back in the mission on your last turn. Annoying, but not the end of the world.

Another minor bug occurs more frequently. Lets say I move Soldier Ryan forward and his movement triggers an enemy reveal/movement. He now has a red icon in the upper left indicating he has a valid target. But the same movement also triggered Soldier Vinny's reaction shot, which kills that alien. Now when Soldier Ryan is selected again, the red icon will be stuck for the remainder of the mission, always indicating (incorrectly) that he has a valid target. Again: annoying, but not the end of the world.

ON the PS3 the end boss battle froze on me. I had to start all over , and that is one long mission. Other than that great game.

No word on any patches?

@tangoup: It's been patched. :(

I'm glad you are enjoying the game, it was a blast when I played it last year. I would highly recommend looking back at older forum threads regarding this game. Many of the tips suggested helped me get through the game. For instance you comments about snipers/heavies, my snipers were the backbone of my squad until the first alien base. However, later in the game its important to have good heavies. The environments will be obstructed a lot making sniper line of sight nearly useless and the rockets of the heavy much more important. You also didn't mention much about satellites which are the most important objective to focus. I pretty much mortgaged every resource I had on the gray market to get global coverage.

I've been considering my top ten games of the generation list recently and I'm pretty sure that this is going to be in the top 5.

@james_hayward: It is a very well-designed game, a worthy contender for best-of-the-generation. It is a remake of a classic that retains the spirit of the original while putting its own spin on the game. One of XCOM:EU's best accomplishments is its accessibility, which has made turn-based combat cool again. Kudos to Jake Solomon (lead designer) and the rest of the Firaxis development team for this feat.

I hope the next expansion pack, Enemy Within, is just as good.