First and foremost, I have to mention, I'm a die-hard X-Com fan, so this might be a little skewed.... but THIS LOOKS FUCKING FANTASTIC! Gameplay video is here.
To really preview this you have to understand what the original and follow-up were. Two fantastic games. Basically, the inital part of the linked video, you sit at your base, researching technology, building new weapons, upgrading your base, recruiting and sometimes enhancing your soldiers. You had funding from different countries around the world based on how well you dealt with the alien invasions. That's basically the overview of it. Then you get into the actual combat. After you shoot down a craft, or your radars detected an already landed threat, you would go in and engage the aliens. It's turn-based combat, where you have a limited amount of actions in your turn. Uncover the map, find aliens, kill or capture aliens, return home to continue research and what not. All in all, pretty fantastic, and not mention a real challenge. If you haven't played X-Com: UFO defense or Terror from the Deep you really should. I won't get into the other titles, since I never played them (couldn't get them to run on my pc at any time), but here's a link to the wiki if you care to learn about them.
Onto the actual preview!!! There is a bit of information about this game out there, and I've only seen parts of it, but what I have seen I like. So, same idea, you sit at your base, research, enhance, build, etc. It has a new "ant-farm" look, changed from the top down grid view you had before. Seems to be just a cosmetic change, but fitting for the updated graphics. I like the UI, a lot of games will show you how to navigate the UI and then you'll forget everything you learned two seconds later but this reboot informs you at all times what you can press and how to get into different menus or other parts of the UI. Fantastic! The base also looks nice, populated with random shit you don't really care about, but adds to the depth of the game. They could have easily just said "fuck it, its a base, let's make it static and boring" but they actually took the time to fill it with... well, filler.
Another nice thing, that I could see getting really annoying, cut-scenes or at least pseudo cut-scenes. They add a lot to the action and just overall feel of the game. If you watched the video, you see when they interrogate the alien and had the little video play or when they launched Raven-1 it actually flew out. Depending on how often, long, and if they are skip-able or not, it could get really annoying. They also put these action shots into the combat portion of the game, but it seems much less drastic and still adds a ton.
To combat! You've landed, exited your ship and are ready to drink milk and kick ass, but you've already finished your milk. They've added a nice cover system, its hard to tell how this will work (full cover/half cover/no cover, I assume) but it makes being a tactician very important. You can't just run in guns-a-blazin' and expect to win, you have to use the terrain to your advantage, and I think they show that off quite well in the video. Another win is it looks like your soldiers have a class system. Who knows how that'll work, but they show off heavy, support, sniper, and assault soldiers. The original you just had soldiers, basically what gear you gave them determined the role they played. No extra abilities like holographic targeting or a medic with healing, only whatever gear you outfitted them with. Good changes, that I hope are highly customizable.
I'm just really excited for this game, and I hope it doesn't disappoint. It really does look like its going to be an updated version of the original, and I can't complain with that since I have a mega hard-on for these games.
Here's another look at the the title: Enjoy.
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