XCOM: Enemy Unknown demo discussion

[Monkey Revenge]

Well Last night I downloaded the MASSIVE demo for XCOM: Enemy Unknown. (5.4 gigs for the demo, wow)

I must say I REALLY liked it, it was challenging and every step forward I was worried that there would be aliens out of nowhere.

Just wondering how everyone else liked the demo, how was your experience?

Lastly in the first real area when I went to texas and found my first Thin men, the game mentioned capturing one of them. Im just wondering how do you capture an alien alive in this game?

 

[Zhukov]

Promising game.

Crap demo.

There were only two missions. The first one was the tutorial which is completely scripted with every move dictated for you. (And some of those moves are extremely stupid. Hey, let's just walk up to the crazy armed guy shall we? Oh, and don't use overwatch in case of ambushes or anything... oh hey, you got ambushed, what a shock!)

The second one was a cakewalk. (They pretend to let you choose between two missions for your second outing, one in China and one in the USA, but both choices give you the same mission.)

You don't get to poke around the base or use the research options or anything.

Oh, as for your question about capturing aliens, in the full game you can get access to stunning weapons. If you stun an alien with them then you capture it at the end of the mission instead of collecting its corpse.

 

[Pipotchi]

I really enjoyed it, you can tell it's made by fans of the Original games but they given it some modern design choices. Action style running and window jumps etc.

Its looking very promising, If EA had taken this design road instead of going FPS then they might have actually made some money with Syndicate

 

[Wolfram23]

I thought it was pretty meh. I can see the appeal but I'm not sure that I really care to play that type of game. I was looking forward to trying it out but the demo was just pretty boring.

 

[Tyranicus]

I wish people on the steam forum would just stop complaining about a DEMO!!!! Its a demo make judgements after its out.

 

[Toasty Virus]

Same opinion as most, pretty good game but a truly AWFUL demo.

Looking forward to the full release though

 

[Aeshi]

I haven't played an X-Com game before but it does seem pretty fun.

Wish the demo would've demonstrated the base management/construction aspects, because not knowing about those is basically the one thing stopping me from getting this right now.

 

[GiglameshSoulEater]

I wish people on the steam forum would just stop complaining about a DEMO!!!! Its a demo make judgements after its out.

...the whole point of a demo is to provide a way to make judgements without having the game. Hence 'demo', or demonstration. The point of a demo is to impress. A subpar demo promises a subpar game.

OT: It's currently downloading. Maybe I'll play some Terror From The Deep while I wait (goddamn trawler missions!)

 

[drizztmainsword]

I enjoyed the demo, but I agree that it didn't offer much in the way of what the actual game would be like.

However, it did answer all of the questions I had about the transition of the game into modern game design language. The GUI was well developed and offered lots of information in a succinct manner, and the animations managed to inject a feeling of urgency into a turn-based game. These are my two largest complaints about the original, so I was very glad to see them rectified.

 

[barbzilla]

My major complaints about the demo were the length (only one real mission) and the lack of difficulty options (way too easy, I made mistakes galore and didn't lose a single unit). Other than that I enjoyed it a good deal. I know the game itself will be longer and that they will include difficulty options, so I have no real reason to fret.

 

[InsaneFool]

I really enjoyed the demo, I wanted to know how the game felt before I committed to buying it and this demo delivered. Sure I didn't get to play with the Antfarm or complete any research, but its a demo - it served its purpose well.

The only question I have now is this: Will the graphics options allow for more tweaks? I would like to turn off Anti-Aliasing and Ambient Occlusion completely rather than just setting them to "low".

 

[distortedreality]

I wish people on the steam forum would just stop complaining about a DEMO!!!! Its a demo make judgements after its out.

I remember the same thing happened with AvP (the recentish one). The demo was an ancient build that looked horrible and was clunky as hell to play. The forums exploded, pre-orders were cancelled, babies cried etc etc. There is really no excuse at all for a company to put out a sub-par demo unless the game is sub-par. From what I heard, the release version was somewhat better than the demo, but it was too late by then to get my money.


OT - Will wait for reviews. I'm not wasting 6GB of bandwidth on such a poor demo, I pretty much know what i'll be getting from the gameplay, and it seems that the demo doesn't even show much of that off. I hope they don't lose too many sales because of this.

captcha - toodle-oo.

 

[Krantos]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but the demo pretty well sold me.

The mission (singular, the first was crap) was great and I loved the various tactical options available. I found myself later reconsidering how I would have proceeded. The first group of aliens got some hits in because of poor choices on my part. The second group got a single hit in, because I thought one of my guys was in cover when he wasn't. The last group didn't stand a chance.

Yeah, the camera needs work, but other than that, I'm really interested in the game now, and I wasn't at all before.

 

[Tahaneira]

It isn't wise to judge a game by the demo alone, but I'm willing to tentatively say it looks like fun. I'll consider getting it, on one condition:

I want to see if the game has cheats.

Now, before X-COM difficulty purists show up to scream at me, hear me out. I don't play games for difficulty, or a challenge. I play games for one of several reasons: I like the story, I like the atmosphere, the game is just that fun, or because I want to kill things. I don't want to be challenged in strategy games, I want to watch my legions of invincible murder machines grind my hapless enemy into paste. Once I've played it for a month, I turn off the cheats to see if I'm actually any good (note: so far, I haven't been any good). Then I'll likely turn them on or off at random depending on my mood.

What I took away from the demo is that I love the concept and the atmosphere, so I'm willing to buy the game if I can be assured that my horrible RTS/TBS skills won't cause me to fail three missions out.

 

[Psycho78]

How the hell did they manage to make it 6GB? Did they give you all the resources from the full game?

 

[Slycne]

How the hell did they manage to make it 6GB? Did they give you all the resources from the full game?

Or simply uncompressed textures and what not.

I haven't played an X-Com game before but it does seem pretty fun.

Wish the demo would've demonstrated the base management/construction aspects, because not knowing about those is basically the one thing stopping me from getting this right now.

Well I was lucky enough to get a press preview build of it, which does cut off at a certain point, but it's a bit longer than the demo. What did you want to know?

 

[StashAugustine]

Just saying: The demo is locked in at easy mode, which a quick ini edit changes.
Also, there's a mod to change Sectoids into Commanders and Floaters into heavies. Also gives you Ghost and jetpacks.
http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?139746-Modding-the-Demo

I was kinda disappointed in the vanilla demo, but playing against 2 Sectoid Commanders on Impossible is exactly as much fun as you'd expect.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Lame-ass demo; still looking forward to the game.