Be Excellent To Each Other

play through the game without anyone dying should be my goal.

Does not compute.

Anyway, so I'm basically setting myself on mission impossible if I try to complete the game with any of my soldiers dying?

It's not impossible, but it would certainly be a) frustrating, and b) not really what the game is about. The whole point of the X-COM games is that losing men and failing missions is expected. You can pull the game back and win it from seemingly hopeless situations, so it doesn't matter if you lose occasionally.

apparently, it is harder to "pull it back from the brink" in the new one simply because the panic levels increase so rapidly

It'd be like expecting World War II to have ended with no allied casualties.

How can someone be "mortally wounded with a long recovery time"?

I have an unusual recommendation to make. If you should try out XCOM: Enemy Unknown, try the following settings for your first game: Easy difficulty level, and under Advanced Options select Enable Ironman. If you played a lot of the original XCOM and many tactical games since, you might try Normal and Ironman, but for most people I'd recommend Easy. By enabling Ironman, and thus not being able to constantly save and reload when things go wrong, you will get a real sense of consequences. And using a lower difficulty level instead of the "hidden" way of making the game much easier with saves and reloads will make your first game a lot less frustrating. You can work your way up from that afterwards.

XCOM is a game about consequences. A game about interesting decisions. And the only way to make decisions interesting is to offer the possibility for any decision to turn out to be wrong, and to have negative consequences. XCOM is a great game for that, but for people who weren't around when games like that were made in the early 90's, that can be a bit of a shock. If you are too cocky, especially in the first game where you don't understand all the strategic impacts of your decisions yet, you can easily end up with a "game lost" instead of a "game won" screen. There aren't many games around these days that have an actual loss condition, unless you play against other players. Even more shocking: While some negative consequences are a result of bad decisions, sometimes you lose a soldier just by bad luck. It is interesting to read on the internet how many people have a problem with that concept.

There are two major parts to XCOM: Enemy Unknown: The first is a strategic part, where you plan the defense of Earth against the aliens. Resources are scarce, and you need to make sure that you have both adequate means to detect and shoot down UFOs, and to battle aliens with your soldiers. The latter is the second part, a turn-based tactical game. There are tons of different maps, and different scenarios, from alien abductions, rescue missions, capturing a downed UFO, to invasions of an enemy base. The strategy part looks a lot simpler, but is in fact somewhat more devious: Bad decisions can have strong consequences several hours of gameplay down the road. Thus my recommendation to learn about strategy and consequences on Easy Ironman.

XCOM currently has a Metacritic score of 89, which is unusually high for a turn-based tactical game. Especially since it isn't without flaws: The tutorial sucks with too much hand-holding, which is unfortunate because that is what you get to play if you download the demo. The character animations in the cut-scenes aren't great. And the free move the aliens get when you spot them gives them a rather unfair advantage. But compared to other turn-based tactical games that have come out this decade on the PC, XCOM is probably the best.

Bought from Game and am installing now. Bafflingly Disc 2 says, "For sale in India only."

How much was it from Game?

Because of this thread, I want this now. Would it be easier to play on a PC with a mouse or do the Xbox controls stand up?

How can someone be "mortally wounded with a long recovery time"?

Just finished my first containment facility after about four tutorialish missions. The tutorial hand-holdy nature vanishes about half way through the second mission, but helpful advice is offered instead and it becomes pretty much the standard game it seems. I'm playing on Ironman-Easy, like AE's quote suggested. Lost no one except the three belm's in the first mission so far, so hurrah! *Knock on wood.*

Because of this thread, I want this now. Would it be easier to play on a PC with a mouse or do the Xbox controls stand up?

I wouldn't play Ironman at the moment, there's a few bugs in the game that can screw you right over through no fault of your own and if you're on Ironman, you're boned.

What sort of bugs are we talking about?

I think I'm going to start again on Ironman-Easy rather that carry on with Saves Allowed-Normal, I must confess I did use a save yesterday to go back in time and avoid a fuck-up, and then immediately felt like I'd cheated.

Ironman-Easy sounds like a nice idea, I think I'll do that, and I can skip the tutorial this time as well.

So I used RUN & GUN to get to a tile that's adjacent to a baddy (one of the tall men gimps), he was on Overwatch but he took his shot as soon as I came into view and missed as I'd rather hoped he would, Sgt Britney Spears (nickname 'Emo') then ran right next to him, literally, she could have punched him in the face.

Anyway, can't mourn forever, aliens are abducting folk in Canada! Don't worry Meaty, my six men are coming to save you and your cities!

"The Axis are invading Europe, North Africa and the Pacific Islands! Where do you want to send your sole troopship, General?"

Obviously if you can avoid it, you should stop the rookies getting wasted - but it's far better to lose a rookie than a Sergeant or other officer.

Jeez, bit cavalier with your men's lives, aren't you?

Congratulations, you've successfully won a battle in EUROPE! However, panic levels over Axis activities have reached high levels in NORTH AFRICA and PACIFIC ISLANDS and the funding for World War 2 has been withdrawn! Game Over.

There's also a lot of the game I'm a bit vague on, for example, should I be getting interceptor cover over as many continents as possible, or is that just a useless cash drain? The more interceptor cover I have, the better the chance of engaging a UFO, shooting it down and getting to attack the wreckage, I guess? I'm hesitant to get a load of interceptors if they're just going to drain my cash and not really do anything.

I probably shouldn't have put both my satellites over Europe either, but I felt the UK deserved its own.

Keep yacking. Meanwhile, all the Beexers who have actually played it are having huge fun.