XCOM: 1960s edition
Aug. 21st, 2013 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothApparently, it's a first person shooter. This came as a surprise as the screenshots and stuff I saw of it were all of you giving orders to your squadmates. This does happen, in fact -- you can sort of almost pause to give orders and even sort of queue them up. But there's a definite 'you' and definite 'squadmates' and the squadmates have AI and I think you can guess where this is going.
That actually isn't what frustrates me about the game, though. What frustrates me about the game is (a) limited ammo. VERY limited ammo. There's usually (but not always) enough scattered around that you can be full going into a fight, but you run out in the middle of every fight and have to sit back and let your squadmates slowly, slowly kill the enemies because they have unlimited ammo but severely nerfed damage. Not that your damage is awesome either.
The real killer though is (b) boss fights. SO MANY BOSS FIGHTS. Why does an x-com game even have boss fights?
...actually, why does any game have boss fights? Do people actually like them? I certainly don't. In every game ever they're an annoying, tedious roadblock to get past, or to fail at making you go redo a huge section of the game again in order to level up or whatever you need to do to be able to get past them. The mechanics you're used to using don't work, generally, and damaging abilities will probably run out before really making a dent. Unless it's xcom, where instead you literally run out of the ability to damage at all because, ammo.
For example, against the 'gunship' boss that kicked my ass this morning, the laser shotgun takes off about 0.5% of the boss's health per shot. You can hold a maximum of 28 shots. My other weapon was a sniper rifle that does no damage to anything unless you hit it in the head, and gunships do not have heads. Or vulnerable points. Or anything that would make taking them down less tedious, except maybe the ability to fly around quickly and shoot missiles and lasers at you from random angles so that your cover doesn't matter and oh by the way you can't even see them because the default point of view doesn't show the sky where the gunship is flying and even if you try to look up there are trees with leaves that utterly fail to shield you in any way from the lasers and missiles.
You know what would be nice? Being able to run back into the covered area that would be perfect for fighting a gunship from. But no, not only did the gunship collapse the archway behind me in a cutscene, but there was a 3-foot drop leaving that area making it impossible to ever go back.
...seriously guys. The 3-foot drop is not fooling anybody. Just put in an invisible wall, it breaks immersion less.
Did I mention this was the *third* boss of the mission? THREE FUCKING BOSSES.
Oh, and all the fights take place in square, open arenas with you pinned down behind knee-high cover while enemies with gun emplacements and grenades charge at you. A couple of times I tried maneuvering so that I wasn't sitting in the middle of the shooting gallery, but that just meant that the second and third waves of enemies teleported right on top of me which is not a good tactical situation.
It's aggravating, because the game as a whole is pretty good -- the squad control is miles ahead of something like Mass Effect 3, for example. I wish I could give my main character squad-like controls instead of having to rely on my own crappy aim.
There's just these... things. Called bosses. Fucking bosses.
That actually isn't what frustrates me about the game, though. What frustrates me about the game is (a) limited ammo. VERY limited ammo. There's usually (but not always) enough scattered around that you can be full going into a fight, but you run out in the middle of every fight and have to sit back and let your squadmates slowly, slowly kill the enemies because they have unlimited ammo but severely nerfed damage. Not that your damage is awesome either.
The real killer though is (b) boss fights. SO MANY BOSS FIGHTS. Why does an x-com game even have boss fights?
...actually, why does any game have boss fights? Do people actually like them? I certainly don't. In every game ever they're an annoying, tedious roadblock to get past, or to fail at making you go redo a huge section of the game again in order to level up or whatever you need to do to be able to get past them. The mechanics you're used to using don't work, generally, and damaging abilities will probably run out before really making a dent. Unless it's xcom, where instead you literally run out of the ability to damage at all because, ammo.
For example, against the 'gunship' boss that kicked my ass this morning, the laser shotgun takes off about 0.5% of the boss's health per shot. You can hold a maximum of 28 shots. My other weapon was a sniper rifle that does no damage to anything unless you hit it in the head, and gunships do not have heads. Or vulnerable points. Or anything that would make taking them down less tedious, except maybe the ability to fly around quickly and shoot missiles and lasers at you from random angles so that your cover doesn't matter and oh by the way you can't even see them because the default point of view doesn't show the sky where the gunship is flying and even if you try to look up there are trees with leaves that utterly fail to shield you in any way from the lasers and missiles.
You know what would be nice? Being able to run back into the covered area that would be perfect for fighting a gunship from. But no, not only did the gunship collapse the archway behind me in a cutscene, but there was a 3-foot drop leaving that area making it impossible to ever go back.
...seriously guys. The 3-foot drop is not fooling anybody. Just put in an invisible wall, it breaks immersion less.
Did I mention this was the *third* boss of the mission? THREE FUCKING BOSSES.
Oh, and all the fights take place in square, open arenas with you pinned down behind knee-high cover while enemies with gun emplacements and grenades charge at you. A couple of times I tried maneuvering so that I wasn't sitting in the middle of the shooting gallery, but that just meant that the second and third waves of enemies teleported right on top of me which is not a good tactical situation.
It's aggravating, because the game as a whole is pretty good -- the squad control is miles ahead of something like Mass Effect 3, for example. I wish I could give my main character squad-like controls instead of having to rely on my own crappy aim.
There's just these... things. Called bosses. Fucking bosses.
