X-COM (1994) vs XCom (2012) - KKK?

[sser]

X-Com's better.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Are you serious?

ban jools

The brainwashed will tell you that

IF ONLY YOU DO X AND Y BUT NOT Z, THEN YOU WILL FIND "FUN" AND "SATISFACTION" WITH NUXCOM

but you know in your heart that it's merely the maniacal cackling of Eldritch powers through their flesh-puppets. Gird yourself against such self-destructive non-aid and be a man, opposing the tentacles of decline.

Seriously, as Dayyālu said, real UFO: X-Com allows you multiple paths and strategies to employ on your path to victory. Just like JA2. You can even radically alter your strategy in the middle of your campaign. Not to mention that, god forbid, it's actually more "realistic" and/or "immersive" than nu-Xcom and anyone who claims otherwise hasn't actually played the proper one. X-COmutil fixes the few bugs left in the game and allows you to play it on modern systems and resolutions. There is absolutely no reason to play NuXcom except for Steam achievements and trading cards.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yes, it doesn't have the depth or replayability of the original, but I found its much faster pace quite enjoyable.

What? NuXcom is laboriously slow. By the time its finished animating a single soldier's action I'd have half my squad moved in X-Com.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I have a big-ass post about the original X-COM vs NuXCOM, I will post it tomorrow.

Can I get that with the Final Mod Pack somehow? I mean, nigga, that's sweet...

Seems it was added already! ;-)

Final mod Changelog

Added Healing Spray, Stims and Painkillers (all sprites stolen from jackstraw2323's War of Shadows mod, though the first one was heavily altered, and floorobs were added). Updated Hobbes' terrains to the latest versions and added Slums.

Dayum, I want it! Thanks bro!
I downloaded Final Mod Pack like two years ago and played some. I think its very fun in the sense it adds A LOT of the stuff fans have always wished for, and it can be a very fun to have a different progress with more enemies and new things and much more. In a way, its pretty much the closest thing to X-COM+1 we have. Even purists should try playing it, at least once. There's something funny in torching waves of Sectoids and Cyberdisks with a flamethrowner until the fuel ends while your other dudes spray the aliens with alloy bullets, then get pwned because you failed to kill a heavily-armed Sectoid with armor. Its pretty much a new game.

Also.. Slums, huh? Seems like a fun place for fighting Chrysalids.

 

[Baron Dupek]

I enjoyed Altair's UFO trilogy more than nuXCOM, with Aftershock+ACM mod stomping on the nuXCOM like a cockroach.
They're all shit but still...

 

[bonescraper]

XCom.

 

[Humanophage]

I am certain that the new X-Com, especially with Long War, would have been more highly regarded if it did not claim its fancy pedigree.

I find that the biggest flaw is the clunky interface. Unless you tamper with the files, you have to watch way too many slow animations, there is a lot of confusion with regards to height, etc. The game is annoyingly ultra-conservative, especially in the early stages, and the worst mistake you can make is to hurry or take risks. This would have been ambiguous in itself, since it is reasonable that extreme caution must be exercised in such operations, but animations make it infuriating. Do I really need to spend 3 seconds to watch the camera move from one soldier to another? Do I really need to watch them run slowly to their destination? This is especially pronounced if you play the game on a tab, because you cannot speed it all up 10 times.

I attempted playing the original X-Com, but the fact that the camera is so close makes it unplayable for me. I presume there are some mods that fix this.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I am certain that the new X-Com, especially with Long War, would have been more highly regarded if it did not claim its fancy pedigree.

but it'd be still inferior to a 20 years old game.

 

[ArchAngel]

Open Xcom >> Xenonauts> nuXcom(+longwar)> every other xcom clone

Why? No terror in xeno and nuXcom.

Open Xcom has you start with 14 troops and moving behind corner more often than not means a shot from darkness that kills your trooper.
In Xeno that is rare and in nuXcom enemies rush to cover....

By end of my Open Xcom superhuman runs I lose up to 100 soldiers and it feels like war.

Also only in Open Xcom your alien base assault can end in turn one when your spawn location gets nuked by a blaster launcher.

 

[The Glitterdust Golem]

Even divorced from it having the originals lurch across its shoulder, nuXCOM is just a terrible game. I tried to enjoy it as Baby's First Strategy, but the unholy lack of squad customisation options and completely dog-shit awful way of spawning enemies make it painful to sit through even with non-existent expectations. I will give it credit as being the quintessential modern-FPS in a turn-based skin, though. The atmosphere, the plotline, the camera angles and everything about it reeks of 'cinematic FPS' design.

 

[Drax]

good stuff

 

[Stargazer_]

Even divorced from it having the originals lurch across its shoulder, nuXCOM is just a terrible game. I tried to enjoy it as Baby's First Strategy, but the unholy lack of squad customisation options and completely dog-shit awful way of spawning enemies make it painful to sit through even with non-existent expectations. I will give it credit as being the quintessential modern-FPS in a turn-based skin, though. The atmosphere, the plotline, the camera angles and everything about it reeks of 'cinematic FPS' design.

It is essentially Babies first strat game, and you in detail described perfectly why.

 

[Mozg]

They're dissimilar games that aren't really competing over the same territory. X-Com '94 is largely a Dwarf Fortress kind of "interaction playground" game. 2012 is a gamey "interesting choices" game, hugely multiplied by extreme iterative elaboration and tuning in Long War.

Both have a very degenerate "failure mode" where the tactical level breaks down completely once you have reverse-engineered the systems and AI, but they're TB single player games and that always happens.

Long War has the additional problem of being way too fucking long and repetitive.

 

[Average Manatee]

Pretty sure blaster bombs either can't go up/down elevators, or the AI is incapable of using them in that fashion. I've never seen it happen and in fact hiding on the tops of elevator shafts is the only workable strategy for survival during the otherwise suicidally tough final TFTD levels.

But yes, clearing out your immediate area on turn 1 is a great part of X-Com.

 

[Nevill]

Pretty sure blaster bombs either can't go up/down elevators, or the AI is incapable of using them in that fashion.

There is a bug in the windows version of X-Com that sends any BB fired directly up or down to the south instead, making the aliens blow themselves up more often than not, and making it impossible to fire bombs in the elevator shafts unless it's at an angle.

It has been fixed by fan patches a long time ago (so those who play with, say, UFOExtender encounter total wipeouts much more often), and was never present in Open X-Com in the first place.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

can confirm. sectoid leaders enjoy bombarding my execution squads sitting near the exit of the battleships. 10/10 would die again.

 

[Average Manatee]

I've played quite a bit of x-com both with Extender and Openxcom and never seen it happen, always relying on the elevators to avoid blaster bombs.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

One guy being killed can be start of a disaster spiral where half of your squad panics, then a guy berserks and kills more, causing more panic.

That's my X-Com.

 

[Nevill]

That's my X-Com.

Never happens if you bring a high-ranking officer on the mission and don't let them die (say, by keeping them at the back of the ship). Rookies no longer panic quite as much if there is a colonel to coordinate them.

The level of detail in the old game is amazing, actually. How come there was separate limb damage (which affected stats differently depending on where you weere hit) in 1994, but only 'hit-points' are present in the 2012?

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I actually had fun with nuXcom


But yeah, in terms of gameplay design and depth they're not even comparable, X-COM is better.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I actually had fun with nuXcom


But yeah, in terms of gameplay design and depth they're not even comparable, X-COM is better.

i appreciate this approach. there's no shame in enjoying something, for as terrible as it can be. the problems raise when people try to sell that terrible something as the best thing since firefly.

 

[eklektyk]

man ....

i miss firefly .........

 

[Zeriel]

I actually had fun with nuXcom


But yeah, in terms of gameplay design and depth they're not even comparable, X-COM is better.

i appreciate this approach. there's no shame in enjoying something, for as terrible as it can be. the problems raise when people try to sell that terrible something as the best thing since firefly.

No one ever did that on the Codex. It was basically a war of "hey this is fun if you forget X-COM" and "NO EVERYTHING ABOUT IT IS TERRIBLE EVEN THE SHOVELWARE X-COMS WERE BETTER".

 

[Ludo Lense]

I actually had fun with nuXcom


But yeah, in terms of gameplay design and depth they're not even comparable, X-COM is better.

i appreciate this approach. there's no shame in enjoying something, for as terrible as it can be. the problems raise when people try to sell that terrible something as the best thing since firefly.

No one ever did that on the Codex. It was basically a war of "hey this is fun if you forget X-COM" and "NO EVERYTHING ABOUT IT IS TERRIBLE EVEN THE SHOVELWARE X-COMS WERE BETTER".

The problem is that the new X-com is an average strategy game with some high points and a lot of low points. But the Codex has never been able to judge average games correctly (something that 99% of fan communities are guilty of to be honest). It is always the best or the worst.

 

[Average Manatee]

No one ever did that on the Codex. It was basically a war of "hey this is fun if you forget X-COM" and "NO EVERYTHING ABOUT IT IS TERRIBLE EVEN THE SHOVELWARE X-COMS WERE BETTER".

Everything about it IS terrible compared to all of the X-Com-likes, at least without Long War.