Firaxis + XCOM, that is all.

Sulphur on 27/8/2013 at 20:06

Rules for strategy games: save often, save in different slots. Just in case.

henke on 28/8/2013 at 05:26

RULES FOR BEING A TOUGH GUY LIKE OL' UNCLE IRONMAN HENKE: NEVER SAVE. NEVER LOAD. JUST PLAY. :grr:

Mr.Duck on 28/8/2013 at 08:33

THIS POST MADE MY CHEST HAIR GROW LONGER. I CAN NOW BRAID IT. RAAAARRRR!

}:V

Dresden on 28/8/2013 at 13:56

The first game of XCOM I finished was Ironman mode. It's really not that hard on Normal. Except for that final mission. I ended up beating it with ONE guy left. Never bunch your guys up on that mission.

henke on 28/8/2013 at 15:06

Decided against starting over from the beginning, prefering to go down with the ship instead. I sent my last bunch of rookies out to check out a downed UFO aaaand... it went surprisingly well! Not a single casualty, and it resulted in me having a squad-full of Squaddies. The next mission after that was a Very Difficult one which also mostly went well except for one point where everyone lost their shit. My pointman freaked out first and started firing wildly in the general direction of the baddies, then my medic probably felt he needed to calm down a bit so she prescribed a heavy dose of laser and administered it straight to his head, and the my heavy took this as his cue to open fire on my sniper. I'm getting the feeling that there were a lot of pent up aggressions in this squad. Anyway, mission was a success despite one casualty and the rest of the squad having to spend the next week in sickbay. Also got a couple of more satelites up which seems to have calmed down several of the countries. Egypt still isn't speaking to me tho.

Yakoob on 28/8/2013 at 17:47

Never played any of the xcoms but realized it is somehow magically in my steam game list (did someone here gift it to me?) so downloaded it overnight. Always been weird with either loving strategy and sinking in hours (knights and merchants, civ/alpha centauri, etc) or hating them after first half hour (settlers, rome, etc)

henke on 28/8/2013 at 18:16

I know what you mean. You gotta give XCOM more than half an hour tho. At least for me it was a bit wobbly for the first 2-3 hours and I couldn't quite see what all the hype was about. Then (during a mission in a subway I think?) out of the blue it just clicked, and all of a sudden I was loving the game.

All strategy games have a bit of a hurdle to overcome right at the start because there's a lot to take in, but XCOM does a pretty good job of sugarcoating it in pretty graphics, interesting plot developments and nice atmosphere. The tutorial stuff seems like it's going to go on forever, but in reality it's actually only about as long as it needs to be.

henke on 28/8/2013 at 19:39

And once again I have lost every single one of my units that's not completely worthless. I had that last Muton down to 4 blips of health when he killed my last guy.

I don't know. Maybe I'll play again tomorrow. Maybe this is it for me. This fucking game, man. This fucking game.

icemann on 29/8/2013 at 10:37

Take a break until the expansion comes out.

faetal on 29/8/2013 at 12:45

Try an easier difficulty Henk.

Maybe I'm just no good at strategy games, but I found it plenty challenging on the easiest setting.