Be Excellent To Each Other

True enough.

Wait. Weren't you spunking all over Dead Rising back in the day?

Which only rushes you if you let it.

It's the definitive example of a videogame with a timer. It's literally all timers all the way down.

But what's under the timers?

But the penalty for missing them was slight.

Can the same be said for this?

Umm, it meant you couldn't actually get the proper endings.

The timings to get that were more than generous. No rushing required. Generally you were having to occupy time.

Escapist review not exactly in full-bummage mode.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... M-2-Review

Go on, buy it. The whole forum is getting hot and sweaty in anticipation of you not really liking it but playing it obsessively...

That's kind of his job, though.

But sometimes he well bums things though.

Mostly though he just slags the shit out of decent games. Which is totally fine, he's doing it to be entertaining and happily I watch every video he puts out, but if you're going to look to him for balanced criticism then you're going to have a bad time.

Pedant note: The Escapist is the website, the video series is Zero Punctuation. The Escapist does other genuine serious reviews like their actual XCOM 2 one here.

RE: fixed link; that link is genuinely the URL for the second page of their review so it's a bit weird it doesn't work. Though linking to the first page makes more sense anyway so it's not a problem in this case.

You put "here" as the URL and the URL as the text to display.

Sounds to me like Bamba will be the first to get captured by the aliens and CONVERTED, so watch out for him looking at you a bit funny.

Also I do know how ZERO PUNCTUATION works (apart from, like, getting the name right), and I've been watching him for years, so whilst I appreciate he does do 'comedy slagging off' a lot of the time, you can still basically determine if a game is a 'thumbs up' or a 'thumbs down' - and in X-Com2's case, it feels very much like the latter.

Ah. I managed to confuse myself somehow as I was going in to edit the link to point to the first page of the review probably right after you'd fixed it and though it was the ".2" that was the problem. Or something, I dunno, I was doing that and trying to book a holiday and trying to convince four of my colleagues that making a change to our release for this weekend was probably a bad idea as I'm not around tomorrow to test it (translation: I'm trying to book a holiday and this looks like you might want me to do some work this afternoon so could you just fuck off?).

And yet the game has received almost universal acclaim elsewhere, despite the bugs and crashes (ironically, none of which I've suffered from)

After I completed XCOM, I didn't really fancy going back to it (and still haven't, not even Enemy Within) but I can easily see myself replaying XCOM2 - the skill trees add to the possibilities for replays, and subtle changes to things like grenades and rockets make the game so much more enjoyable than it's predecessor it's unreal.

It's almost like it's…

…wait for it…

…CONFIRMATION BIAS!

XCOM Not the Latest is now out on vita.

Annoyingly I'm about 7 hours into a new campaign on Enemy Within on my PC, so any portable XCOMmage is going to have to wait.

XCOM 2 is out on PS4 and XBOne in September. Rejoyce, console-folk!

My poor wife...

I'm going to buy this again, aren't I? My PC play through is rather stalled because I just don't want to sit at my PC.

Go for the myp solution of steam link?

My PC is also only just capable of playing it on Low details at 720p, and realistically I shouldn't be upgrading it for a handful of games. It'd be a lot cheaper to buy XCOM again.

but you can buy a $5000 graphics card

Yeah, if it's not a case of "there's plenty of pc games that I'd play if I could do it on my tv" it's the correct choice.

There's plenty of games I could play, for sure. But would play is the sticking point. I already have more games than I have time for on PS4 alone, so getting the PC on the TV is arguably solving the wrong problem. Christ, GTA:O alone could be enough to overrun my free time.

We moved last month and I'm somewhat sad the PC no longer fits in my living room, and the guts of it are full-ATX so it's not like I can recase the PC I have into something smaller that fits under the TV. There were a few undemanding Steam games I had on the go that I would like to play some more of, e.g. Gunpoint. Sometimes I ponder buying a small and lower-powered PC just for stuff like that, but again, I strongly suspect I'd build it and it'd go unused.

I also sometimes contemplate selling my iMac and moving my primary personal computer to a Surface. In this daydream I'd get two docks: one on my desk with a nice big monitor, and one in the lounge wired to the TV. I think the Surface would be enough for casual gaming on the telly and Lightroom either on the big monitor or on the couch.

Just started a game of Long War 2...for the love of god it's difficult, brain tormentingly hard as nails...enjoying it so far.

This is not XCOM, but it looks noice

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-11-all-walls-must-fall-is-always-running-out-of-time

Not X-Com, but this sounds like it's right up my shitter.

https://www.pcgamesn.com//phantom-doctrine/phantom-doctrine-release-date-gameplay-trailer

That does sound pretty good.

Finally started playing XCOM 2 on the peecee.

It's bloody wonderful (as everyone knows).

Love the little touches in it, the Living Quarters, the Bar, the holographic wanted posters in the cities of your (I presume) most lauded trooper.

It looks so, so much better than Enemy Within, too.

I appear to have a barracks of nearly exclusively women, which is fine (obviously), but I did like having a troop of comic celebrities, with the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Gazz Topp in previous games. The only bloke I have is Pat Sharpe (because he has long blonde hair), and he has a crack troop of Nigella Lawson, Louise Wener, Annika Rice and Annie Lennox bringing up the rear. Basically I ran out of inspiration with those. I think there aren't many women I find basically ridiculous, which is why I'm struggling to name my troops.

Aside from that, I'm enjoying it enormously, even though I'm all too conscious of the fact I'm making some likely piss-poor base planning decisions in the early stages.

I never rename my troops, it is time for engage and I like to see how the dice fall. My star trooper right now is 'Wildchild', and she's a hard-as-nails assault class from Norn Ireland. I have made all my snipers Australian this game though. I don't really know why.

Vanilla XCOM2, or War of the Chosen?

I wasn't sure I'd be keen on WotC, but it makes a massive difference and really completes the game.

Vanilla XCOM 2. If I stick with it this time, I'll get WotC later.

Vanilla. I've just established comms with my first group of the resistance, so I'm early on in the game. Worth restarting?

I like the idea of exclusively aussie snipers.

Oh it's £35 quids? Sticking with vanilla!

My snipers were all Korean, solely because the game decided that Koreans become snipers, it seems.

That's one of the reasons I wasn't sure about it, but IMO it's totally worth the extra outlay.

I'll wait till it comes down, plenty of fun to be had in vanilla as it stands.

I made all my troops people from Beex.

Gaywood was the #1 hacking Specialist
Grim... was the heavy weapons Demolitionist
Jazzy was an insanely good sniper (she ended with most kills, including six individual kills in one turn once).

Christ, I'm a nerd, Grim...'s devoid of subtlety, and Jazzy's an accomplished murderess. Talk about typecasting.

On that topic, I was looking for a way of sniffing HTTP traffic on iOS earlier and came across a post you made on Engadget talking about Burp Suite.

So, thanks!

Jesus wept, that’s a long time ago.

Mario + Rabbids has whetted my appetite for something like this. Am I best off playing the first new XCOM considering I have that on Steam?

The first (new) XCOM has some foibles that you may not get on with, that are not quite completely fixed in XCOM 2 but are made better.

XCOM 2 has its own problems though (mission timers in particular weren't very well received)

I've not played M+R (its on the purchase list though) but if you've already got XCOM, may as well give it a whirl. I may have a Steam code for XCOM 2 kicking around somewhere.

I hate mission timers and think they serve to just make you rush for stupid reasons. In XCom2 they are at least well judged and stop short of frustrating, thankfully.

WotC is on a one-day Steam sale for 25% off, BTW. I might pull the trigger.

I don't mind the timers. It mixes things up nicely and, as you say, although they prey on your mind they're not often all that tight. I had an 'extract a target' one the other night that had an eight turn limit; I finished with three turns to spare despite pausing to scrape up loot and spending two turns positioning my guys before luring some reinforcements to overextend into a fire corridor rather than press forward and engage them where they stood.

If you can, play enemy within rather than enemy unknown. Same game but much better. I was also recommended the long war mod though I never had the stones to try it.