The demo is out right now. The game unlocks for download on Steam in 11 hours. One of my all time favorite games was X-Com UFO Defence.

This new version look promising. I will buy it.

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Musnicki

I wish so badly that I had a computer that could run it. X-Com UFO Defense was also one of my favorite games, and I still play it even now. It's installed on this laptop!

The game nicknamed my pair of snipers 'Solo' and 'Shadow' after a few missions. Heavy and Assault classes are resilient enough (and have just the right abilities) to sight and paint for a pair of snipers in the waaaay-back. It's a weird model, but it works for short engagements without a lot of movement: four heavies get line of sight on everyone, and then the pair of angry gods in the back smite everything at the rate of one life per sniper per turn, while the others spend their turns taking a few alive and disabling the bad guys' weapons.

It's a tough call for me, snipers are own (I love the animations from a sniper kill), my support is awesome (I run two in my squad, extra bag space is awesome), the rocket guy can just clear out buildings and what not and the assault guy is awesome as well once you start getting some new weapons.

They did real good with this game. I used to hate spending an hour looking for that last alien in the original X-Com but there is a feature that allows you to hear where they are and you can focus your efforts in the right direction. They did a good job.

My only dislike is bag space, I used to gear down my squads with grenades, medical packs, extra weapons etc. I liked that heavy weapon in the original X-Com, rail gun or something, that could shoot like 4-5 explosive projectiles...but thats small.

There are a lot of tips out there, make satellites as soon as you can to place over high unrest contries and they'll pay for themselves after the first month. Also, engineers are worth more than scientists. Build steam power generators.

Game is awesome. Feels almost like the original but with 2012 game technology.

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Musnicki

I made a mistake with my first sniper and did not pick the talent that allows them to shoot based on others seeing the aliens. I've found snipers to be very limited because of LOS. My personal favorites are the heavy and assault. An assault with the move/fire ability and a shotgun is pretty lethal.

I will say the base interface is pretty bad. It's somewhat less intuitive than even the original game. Also, it would be nice to have a better interface for equipping a squad. I've been rotating in my rookie squadmates to get them experience and it's very time consuming figuring out who has the better armor, un-equipping and then giving it to my rookies. It wouldn't be that hard to show them all in one screen and let you drag and drop the gear into place.

The snipers went Headshot, Squad Sight, Damn Good Ground, Disabling Shot, Opportunist, Low Profile, Double Tap. The assault troops went Run & Gun, Tactical Sense, Lightning Reflexes, Flush, Close Combat Specialist, Extra Conditioning, Killer Instinct. In most cases, I've found that a team of one each of those guys can kill anything on the battlefield in a single round, even when it's not alone, without exposing either soldier to excessive reaction fire. So I have two each of those, a Support, and a Heavy -- but I'm finding out the Heavy can't hit a damn thing, and beginning to wonder why I have him along.

This game is fantastic, but for some reason my frame rate slows to a crawl any time a Berserker takes a turn. My PC is 8 months old and runs everything else with literally no problems.

But yeah this game is fantastic.

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Try turning off V-Sync if it's on.

Well, here's some contrast. I bought this video card halfway through Burning Crusade, and it doesn't drop frames either -- except when a Berserker charges. I don't think your problem is video. A title update might fix it eventually, but I don't think your issues is hardware performance at all, but rather in the code itself.

It's a pretty widespread problem among PC users. I haven't heard any reports from console players, but seems like they have enough performance issues that this might not be noticed.

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I'm not sure how much better this game is on a PC, but on the Xbox it is garbage. Graphic glitches, aliens take forever to act, my guys are absolutely useless. I've had all 5 miss on the same target on the same turn, even with the Aim support from a Support.

The whole concept is pretty cool, by building a base, scanning activity, deciding who to help for the most benefits, etc.

The mechanics make it totally possible to miss five times in a row. The designers told GameInformer Magazine that they left that potential in place because it makes victories more real and valuable.

I think that a "miss" is hard coded. I would miss on all six of my troops and I would re-load the game a few times only to get the same misses from all six characters. I re-loaded on a miss 10 times in a row and still missed each time.

I still beat the game, but the last level was pretty tough. Was only doable with my two fully decked out assaults, two ghost snipers, and that useless psychic they force you to take along. I took out the thin aliens first, and lost both assaults because they got all the hits from the big fat ones using those plasma rifles.

To be totally clear on "misses are hard-coded":
The random seed for any given fight is part of the tactical save file. If you save during a mission, then take a series of shots, you can then reload and take the same series of shots, with the same exact results, if you try them in the same order. You can manipulate this condition by taking the events where your sniper missed a 95% chance and spend it on the Assault guys' Hail Mary shotgun blasts, then use the more potentially successful die results for the sniper fire later in the round -- but folks, that's cheating. And cheating is wrong.

The future is not writen. So I don't consider that cheating :)