XCOM: Enemy Unknown PC gameplay demo and Multiplayer footage

Wow that looks good.

My one critique is that it isn't dark enough.... there was something like terror i felt when i was playing the original, seeing aliens come out of the darkness, kill my guy, and disappear back into the darkness.
 
I admit that I'm looking forward to this game, I'm a big fan of the original. However I cant seem to be able to pay full price for this. I think I'll wait till a sale.
 
Really looks to be hitting all the right notes for a proper X-com remake.

One of the major must haves for me this fall.
 
UFO aftermath was good and this look good too. Nice video. Can't wait to play the mp of that.
 
This is the first time X-Com has ever come on to my radar, and it looks really good! Love the story. Customizing the base looks like fun too. Like most, I'll probably after the first couple price drops or a sale.
 
Very much looking forward to this. Steam has different tiers of unlocks for this determined by how many pre-orders they have. The first 2 tiers have been unlocked, and the 3rd is about 10% I think, with another 3 weeks or so till it unlocks.

The first 2 unlocks are kinda useless IMO, however, the third and final is pretty awesome. You get a FREE copy of Civ 5. While it's not the best CIV game to date, it's still pretty good! (I unfortunately, already have Civ 5, and the expansion, so I've gotta find someone to gift it to.)

Enough of a steam sales pitch, the game is looking great, quite true to the original, easier in a couple aspects (No more action points, now just 2 moves per char per turn) Still has the "This is X-Com" vibe. Your troops WILL die, you will probably lose the first dozen play throughs the game, and the game will not ease up on you.
 
What is the pre-order price?

Currently Steam has it for $49.99 with the following pre-order unlocks:
Reward 1

Elite Soldier Pack*

The Elite Soldier Pack will provide the ultimate tools for soldier customization in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, including:


■Classic XCOM Soldier
Players will instantly receive a new recruit in their barracks inspired by the original X-COM: UFO Defense. The iconic soldier with the blonde, flattop hairstyle will return fully modernized.
■Soldier Deco packs
Players can customize their soldier with several aesthetic upgrades to armor suits, including the new Hyperion and Reaper soldier armor kits.
■Complete color customization
A variety of colors and tints for all armor sets in the game allow players complete control to customize their squad’s look.



Reward 2

Everything Above, Plus:

3 Exclusive XCOM TF2 Items*


■The Crafty Hair
If you're ever planning on fighting aliens, this is the hair to have.



■Area 451
If aliens ever invaded Badlands and used their special alien powers to make all of our heads look like alien heads, this is a scientifically accurate representation of what Pyro would look like.



■The Vigilant Pin
This pin proudly states to all that you are at least vaguely aware of the possibility that maybe aliens exist.
 
Preordered. Now that I saw the gameplay footage I am getting so hyped up. I am also interested what have they done to the music, as the main theme (/gameover music) is something I remember forever.

Though I say it now, only thing I dont like are the bright colors. While the dull gritty colors pretty much came from the limited VGA palette back then, it fitted the game and added to creepiness. I wonder if the DarkD3 shader, which some people use to fix this same issue with Diablo 3, is compatible with this game...
 
Except for the small squad sizes, the tactical combat looked good.

Obviously done to keep single and multiplayer consistent (and managing a 12-30 man squad in turn based battles would drag forever).

The one shot kills from the originals made for serious risk in using even well armored, high ranking guys a tremendous risk. Send the wrong guy around the wrong corner and the guy with huge time units and awesome accuracy ceases to be.

With only 4-6 guys at a time, you can't keep running rookies across the alley way until the aliens run out of ammo, so now it take 3 shots to kill a soldier and the risk of sending someone across open space would seem to be diminished.
 
I like small combat squads. Late in the game on the original X-COM with a ship full of 26 soldiers I never controlled all of them. Just took about 10 well equipped out of the shuttle with the flying suits and left the rest in there as back up. Takes a long time to move that many.

The worst feeling in the first game was when you have one of your soldiers turn a corner to find an alien, but did not have enough action points left to shoot him or move out of the way.
 
Can't wait for this one. Now that Amazon taxes California... going to pre order on steam for the bonus items.

Played the original XCom's on 3 1/2" floppies back in the early days... great game and so much fun.
 
wow, this does look good...I wish the third tier unlock was something other than Civ5...I dont see that as an enticement, everyone who wants it has it at this point (including myself), especially after the steam and amazon sales. I'm not clear on just how much single player replayability it has though
 
so are the squad sizes capped at 5? that's the most I ever saw in any of the gameplay videos
 
i am very pissed off at the small squad size.. I agree that the huge squads made it messy in the original, but it also allowed you to use cheap guys as cannon fodder :D load em up with primed grenades and run towards an enemy.. watch the ensuing fireworks :) or to use them as scouts, that also worked.

with a small squad, you will not want to loose anyone, since that will mean a major loss.
Int he original, I (maybe you too) only guarded the higher up ranked units, or the really really skilled ones. the rookies were a dime a dozen otherwise.
 
x-com, borderlands, and dishonored have me totally done with Diablo 3.

I can't wait for this to come out, the gameplay footage looks great, it seems like they poured a lot of their collective gaming heart into making this a classic!
 
I admit that I'm looking forward to this game, I'm a big fan of the original. However I cant seem to be able to pay full price for this. I think I'll wait till a sale.

Same... I'm seriously thinking about getting at full price but.... something nags at me to wait a bit for a cheaper price.

and i loved the original 2.
 
Demo hits Steam today!


This is a one bigass demo. 5gb! :eek: I wonder how big the real game is, considering it is "merely" a strategy game where I dont really expect huge and detailed textures and so on.
 
definitely want to try the demo, having some mixed feelings about what I've seen so far.
 
Downloading the demo now, 5.4 GB in size.

Edit - fired it up for a couple minutes... pretty damn cool so far!!! Settings seem well done, played around with them a bit but I'm single monitor 1920x1080. Intro movie is pretty cool and the beginning part of the demo mission is cool as well.

Enjoy all... can't wait for release day!
 
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I beat the demo twice.

I'm less excited about it now. Not that it's horrible or anything... but the controls are failures.

Couple of things... which may change in the final release, I don't know...

Seems you can't rebind keys. And considering the controls they got in place, I feel like I will probably need to. Pretty much all of it seems completely unintuitive when playing mouse + KB.
You can't aim at things yourself, when firing, it seems you have to shoot at an enemy in your sights. Which is bad imo. I liked how it worked in the old system where you choose a target (alien, human, a corner of a building, or even a spot with nothing there) and the character fires.
Which brings me to my next point, in the old one you can miss and hit something else, it doesn't seem to be the case in this new one. If you miss, it'll still head the same way but the characters make a dodge motion, and all is well. =/

Finally, I'm fairly certain this isn't an issue, but if it is mission based, like it is in the what I'm guessing is the tutorial, then the game will suck. And it will suck hard.

Edit, the mouse to grid movement feels off... anyone else feel the same?
 
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I'm stuck at a family event and won't prob get to play until tomorrow, but Serpent's post has me pretty bummed out at the moment
 
Saw a post on the steam forums as well that was pretty brutal about the control scheme. Seems like it's terrible, and the fact that you can't even change the keymapping...

Isn't this the Civ developer? why would they not have basic pc controls? I read you can't even zoom with the mouse wheel (have to middle click + up) and you can't rotate teh camera half the time with w/s/a/d but edge scrolling....
 
Decent enough game, but unplayable with multi-monitors. This is on minimum settings.

Missing heads and cutscene FOV:
HhjSZ.jpg




More cutscene FOV:
Az6km.jpg




Upside down, but HUD is fine:
BKBwr.jpg
 
Is it known if the aliens can attack your base as in the original? And I am pretty disapointed you can have only one base.
 
Saw a post on the steam forums as well that was pretty brutal about the control scheme. Seems like it's terrible, and the fact that you can't even change the keymapping...

Isn't this the Civ developer? why would they not have basic pc controls? I read you can't even zoom with the mouse wheel (have to middle click + up) and you can't rotate teh camera half the time with w/s/a/d but edge scrolling....

you can rotate with q and e at 90 degrees like an isometric.

I didn't even know you can zoom. I know the mouse wheel controls height though. But scrolling down moves down. It sounds like nothing's wrong with that but look at it this way... scroll up is usually moving in closer and down is backing away. So it feels really weird how its reversed.

Honestly, I'm still looking att he game as potentially good. But playing the demo, I hope they push back the release date and polish it. Funky screens you got there.
 
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I beat the demo twice.

I'm less excited about it now. Not that it's horrible or anything... but the controls are failures.

Couple of things... which may change in the final release, I don't know...

Seems you can't rebind keys. And considering the controls they got in place, I feel like I will probably need to. Pretty much all of it seems completely unintuitive when playing mouse + KB.
You can't aim at things yourself, when firing, it seems you have to shoot at an enemy in your sights. Which is bad imo. I liked how it worked in the old system where you choose a target (alien, human, a corner of a building, or even a spot with nothing there) and the character fires.
Which brings me to my next point, in the old one you can miss and hit something else, it doesn't seem to be the case in this new one. If you miss, it'll still head the same way but the characters make a dodge motion, and all is well. =/

Finally, I'm fairly certain this isn't an issue, but if it is mission based, like it is in the what I'm guessing is the tutorial, then the game will suck. And it will suck hard.

Edit, the mouse to grid movement feels off... anyone else feel the same?

I had a miss that hit the box the alien was using for cover...I wish I had tried actually shooting the box on purpose..I had another squaddie that would have had an unimpeded line of site if he hadnt already missed (shot wide and hit nothing).

I agree, the pointer to grid positioning seemed off and at times the game seemed to run kinda badly. I'll give the performance a break since its a demo but the mouse thing and the camera scrolling sucked.

mildante said:
Is it known if the aliens can attack your base as in the original? And I am pretty disapointed you can have only one base.
only one base in the retail game too? that sucks, I got the impression I could eventually add others and perhaps be able to field more than one team or specialize bases...
 
Yea, only one base that you can build and you cannot even choose the spot, you just choose the continent.
As for my earlier question - I have checked the internets and it seems the aliens will not be able to attack your base. So no home base defense missions.
Also the mission maps are much smaller than in the original which is a con for me. Inventory is gone.
Even though they keep saying how they love the original they streamlined their remake too much I think.
Nevertheless I still like the demo so I will probably get the game.

Question - is the second mission in the demo always the same no matter if I choose America or China site?
 
I bet the additional features you mention will be in an expansion...thats how they do things nowadays...probably be out by christmas too (or right after the steam holiday sale discounts this game, THEN comes the expansion to get people to buy it at full price).
 
there are no expansion, just DLCs, I downloaded the demo while I slept, I'll get to try it out after work. I hate that developers think streamline = dumb down and its not the same thing. And base defense missions were some of the more fun ones in the original, sigh I'll try to keep an open mind.
 
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