Path: csiph.com!goblin2!goblin.stu.neva.ru!cyclone01.ams2.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!voer-me.highwinds-media.com!news.ziggo.nl!not-for-mail From: "Skybuck Flying" Newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.x-com,comp.games.algorithms,comp.games.development.programming.algorithms,comp.graphics.algorithms Subject: Skybuck's Review of X-Com 2: 10 out of 10 stars ! Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 22:57:41 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="Windows-1252"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Importance: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Windows Live Mail 15.4.3555.308 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V15.4.3555.308 Message-ID: <91c14$56c39b2a$d47876e2$23252@news.ziggo.nl> X-Complaints-To: abuse@ziggo.nl Organization: Ziggo Lines: 118 NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.120.118.226 (212.120.118.226) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 22:56:58 +0100 X-Trace: 91c1456c39b2a71ddd34723252 X-Received-Bytes: 5807 X-Received-Body-CRC: 2445322098 Xref: csiph.com alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia:3986 alt.games.x-com:7 comp.games.development.programming.algorithms:120 comp.graphics.algorithms:1402 Hello, I think it's about time I wrote a little review about X-Com 2. I finished it since a few days, I gave myself some rest to see if my oppinion of the game was change, but it has not. In short X-Com 2 is GREAT ! I found it about 10x better than X-Com 1 from 2012 and it's expansion pack. I will sum it up shortly for you: 1. Graphics/design much better. 2. Sound effects better. 3. Music much better. 4. Enemy Artificial Intelligence much better. 5. Mystery GREAT ! It has it's own story now and has nothing to do with x-com 1 original... story-wise... so that's great. Except that it continues from x-com 1 story line and world was lost, now in X-Com 2 you have to reconquer it and make the people rise up against their overlords ! ;) =D There was some bugs here and there but no real major show stoppers for me. The only thing I wished that the game did a bit better was attack me more, so I would like to see some alien groups roaming around more... and going through buildings and such. There were some patrols of enemies going about, but I found it too little and too inefficient and such. They rarely catched me really. Though I had lots of struggles playing this game at first mostly... and in middle game... the game is much more difficult, and ofcourse you have to re-figure out which technologies to invent, and which buildings are best/most important to build first... and how to get income and stuff like that. This I found pleasant... this game challenged me which is good ! I lost plenty of soldiers at start... now sure what the hell I was doing lol. I cannot give this game less than 10 out of 10 points basically ! This game was created with love, pasion and convinction ! That's for sure ! I was worried before I played the game that I may not like the story of x-com 2, that somehow it would make the game suck, that being in the future would suck, but it was actually the opposite ! It was very cool. Think of this game like "mirror's edge" meets a darker and more gritty and a little bit more horrific version of x-com 1 from 2012 ! =D As far as I am concerned X-Com 2 hit the sweet spot graphically ! Also the players/characters looked jummy/delicious/beautifull.. during the landing procedure I just was in awe always... it's so cool to watch them in the drop ship. The enemies look much better this time too. Some slight surprises though: Not all enemies from x-com 1 are present again... actually most are missing, so most enemies are actually new ones. I did kinda miss the old ones... like the muton bosses, though rest assured the cool beserker still in it... and some very cool new ones... I am a bit surprised that the old ones got removed. Ofcourse those that were updated like chrysallids is logical... thin man is missing... it was indeed a bit a strange character. The snakemen look very cool and are to be feared somewhat, the chrystalids are also to be feared they have some new tricks up their sleeves ! as well as snakemen ! ;) One last thing: I would like to see some more blood and gore and intestinals of animals or human beings. I kinda missed the horrific experiments that aliens did in x-com 1 original mostly. There are some incubators in x-com 2 but it wasn't horrific enough ! ;) More like a green fancy pancy hospital... So make it a bit more horrific next time with some more intestinals in jars or glass thing or something, that would be cool ! ;) To add fun to it, add some extra blood/gore/juicy which drip out when the jars are shot kaputt ! :) LOL. In short: This is 100% a game not to be missed, especially for x-com fans ! ;) =D BOOOYEAH ! ;) =D ( Oh by the way, I played it on AMD X2 3800+, 4 GB of system RAM, and Asus/Nvidia GT 520 with 1 GB of video ram I played it on mostly low resolution and minimum settings ! So yes this game can be played on a 10 year old computer with a slightly updated graphics card/directx 10.1 or 11. Which is crazy cool ! ;) =D Perhaps playing it on low resolution is even more beautifulll so the textures are more blurry though I also saw animations on faster systems which look a bit cooler than on my slower system :) Also playing at slightly lower speed might give you more time to think... and such... to stay calm... I see some youtubers... wow they play crazily fast like overwatch on all units in 1 second, that took like 30 seconds on my system or so lol, and they seem to panick/nervous a lot or something... like they feel more rushed... but that's ok, one most get used to that... or perhaps it just seems that way ! ;) I was just very happy that this game played on my system ! So devs well done (on the (mostly graphics) scaling of the game) ! ;) =D ) Bye, Skybuck.