This is brilliant "Old Man" Welby. And you've clearly got it spot on, I am obviously a nerdy looking black man.
Hoping to get playing this soon. Praying my laptop will run it.
This is brilliant "Old Man" Welby. And you've clearly got it spot on, I am obviously a nerdy looking black man.
Hoping to get playing this soon. Praying my laptop will run it.
I have to say it is quite performance issue-y. Playable on my very low end of the specs laptop, but the frame rate can be a problem and the loading times can be excessive.
Hopefully they can improve that in a patch, because otherwise this is top stuff.
The loading times are pretty shit even on my fairly swish machine. Though oddly the only issues I have performance-wise are on the loading screen, oddly, when it pans in to those otherwise really cool menu screens. Otherwise I'm fine. The camera is wonky as fuck sometimes, panning through walls during "dramatic" mid-level cut-scenes and the like.
Anyway, Vowels, see what CanYouRunIt says:
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri
Incidentally it says a lot that a few of you are right into this and I'm not even really reporting on missions much, let alone posting video AARs or anything. Just dressing up avatars with your names who don't look especially like you.
If I owned a gun, I would 100% name it "Science". Not even a joke.
I just can't be bothered putting up whole missions, I should be doing more mini-AARs and amusing anecdotes though.
For example, in a mission I played there was a train carriage made up of some sort of explosive container which I had the option to shoot and blow up, but didn't. I forgot this was basically a giant explosive barrel until I had Mahow perched atop it, with about four aliens drawing beads on him....
Yeah, select missions is the way to go, I intended to do highlights depending on how much interesting stuff happened. Same with CK2, roundup videos would be the way to go as there would be massive amounts of tedious footage.
So I decided that since I'm recruting pre-levelled people sometimes anyway I might as well transform these two gimps I've had with me since the start into TTHers.
Firstly is the story of an Irish bird called Jane Kelly, who it turns out had been a man masquerading as a woman all along. But thankfully the XCOM doctors have managed to solve her identity crisis and revealed "his" true persona...
Lt. "Banned" Baz, who for the purposes of this photoshoot is also modelling my new "EXO" armor, which includes a wrist-mounted rocket launcher and is the business.
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Be thankful you're here, Baz. Mahow had to carry your previous, womanly incarnation through basically an entire mission after you immediately got knocked unconscious by a muton. This probably also means he copped a feel while you were knocked out.
Similarly, what was previously thought to be a small Polish woman named Lena has in fact transpired to be a large, ginger man with a ridiculous haircut/face/fashion sense by the name of:
Lt. Slaven "Hammer" Byron, who calls his rifle Big Sam.
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Fred Dineage, its good to see you.
Time for the Akehurst Boys to mess some shit up!
Love the mullet on Baz!!
For anybody who played Enemy Unknown it's worth pointing out that they've done wonders with the procedurally generated maps in this. No more rocking up to the exact same petrol station for the 43rd time. You'll obviously get some where they're based on being the same sort of area but they've generally mixed them up really well.
Can I be in this?!
Anybody who posts in here will get a shot as I recruit more soldiers. Currently Shinners and Phonics are ahead of you but there'll be plenty of death to come, no doubt. Might actually buy some recruits, I could probably do with them.
I've got this running. It's amazing.
Where are you up to Ian? I'm just past the black market and starting to figure out the comm links.
Had one mission where all but 1 rookie died. The last rookie took out 4 alien scum by herself and finished the mission with 2 bars of life. By far the most intense and closest XCOM win I've had. She looked fucking sad and alone on the Skyranger trip home too. Really short of leaders in my team at the moment, just hanging on with squaddies.
I just had a nice and useful bug where the enemies stopped moving or attacking me.
Still only completed the mission on the last turn
I think this save is ballsed, possibly due to the bug, and also because I've now got only 3 Avatar project bar things to go. All I'll say to people is build a comms room thing early. The game doesn't tell you that, but you're screwed if you don't, as far as I can tell.
I've taken my first Black Site and have built a comms room so I can head to Australia for the next one because my Advent bar is looking worrying. Got magnetic rifles and shotguns, plated armour, that EXO armour I showed off and now a set of Spider armor which will be for the use of snipers. Mostly through luck I think I'm in slightly better nick than Cord.
I've taken 2 Black Sites and am aiming for a third but I have almost no upgrades or supplies so I think I've fucked this run tbh.
One thing the developers have done very well on (being massive bastards), is that unlike Enemy Unknown, there are now absolutely no enemy types that I'm happy to see appear. On EU, there'd always be a sigh of relief if you saw some Sectoids or Thin Men taking up some of the enemy force, whereas on this every enemy type has some sort of unique ability that makes them troublesome.
Sectoids basically have the same abilities as the bosses from EU and since the ADVENT troopers on mine have gained the heavy armour with the deeply, deeply irritating ability to give everyone around them an armour boost, they've gone straight up in my estimation from the mookiest mook to ever mook to the ones I look to kill ASAP.
Yeah, I think as I went through EU I had a pretty firm hierarchy of what had to die first in a given group of enemies (FUCK YOU, CHRYSSALIDS) but now it's way more situational.
And the second TTH death is............
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And here's what happened.
Tasked with destroying a transmitter so as to disrupt the aliens' network and slow down their progress on the "Avatar Project", I had snuck through a run-down urban area and set up the perfect ambush. Spotting a trio of armored infantry patrolling on an overpass, the squad carefully scaled the pillars ("Old Man" Welby grappling his way up courtesy of his new Spider armor) and set up the perfect ambush of the three. And it worked. But A touch too much caution meant that by the time the armored soldiers were dealt with (two dead, one had fled half-dead) there were only moments to spare to take out the transmitter before they completed their transmission and the moment had passed. The two specialists, Corporal Mahow and Lieutenant Byron, rushed to the edge of the overpass to get line of sight on the transmitter. Between them and their shiny new magnetic assault rifles they took it down, but not without drawing the attention of two snakemen, a codex, a muton and three new armored infantry brought in by dropship as reinforcements.
Realising that we were never going to kill them all without taking serious hurt, the Avenger was called in to provide an emergency evac from the overpass.... but just as the squad were making their way to safety Mahow was tongue-grabbed and hauled down to surface-level, far out of reach of his comrades, to die in the coils of an 'orrible snake twat. Whilst also being shot by the other aliens. Ouch.
RIP, Mahow.
But despite, or possibly even because of, Mahow's gruesome death XCOM continues to recruit.
Shindig, a rookie sharpshooter has joined the ranks with his porno tache and a braided ponytail I forgot to include in this shot. He is also wearing the Spider armor, for showing-off purposes.
Also in is MF Phonics, who will be sent for further training before he goes out on any missions as a medic and specialist to fill Mahow's gamer chair in the mess.
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I'm wearing a hat so that's my character nailed.
Relax, Ian. I've done Movember so I know what I look like with a suspect mustache. Ponytail, though. Those days are long gone.
Forgot to post Shinners:
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Also just hit a bug Cord mentioned where the enemies randomly stop moving or attacking you, which made my first encounter with the new (fucking huge) berserker an anti-climax.
Still, Vowels and Cord became the joint-first Captains among my ranks, meaning I can start taking six people at a time as soon as I have ANY MONEY.
Just quit after some massive bullshit. Ran into yet another group of 4 people activating them as usual. They all ran past the guy who activated them, slid across the entire map (I assume it was a bug) and killed 3 people in one turn. I quit.
I think I've lost this save. Advent bar is about 70% full, and I've only just got enough soldiers to make a squad. Worried about taking the Black Site, and have just failed to stop a Dark Event (missed it by 1 turn!).
I've only reloaded once when I completely failed the mission. I'm going to carry on until I lose, but after that I'm not sure if I should go back to a previous save point, or restart altogether.
I've got two or three Advent bars left but I've now also upgraded my heavy cannon things, I'm up to 6 chaps per mission and another set of EXO armor so somebody else gets a) a free rocket-launch per mission and a bit more armor. I've also got access to a Black Site in Australia so hopefully I'm on the road to bringing it back a bit.
On the flipside I've now encountered archons and muton berserkers so shit's getting real.
Some RPS XCOM diaries:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201.../xcom-2-diary/
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...com-2-ironman/
For players having performances issues (#oioi). Mine's actually running fine 95% of the time so I'm loathe to fiddle with it. But here it is:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...rformance-fix/
And some stats:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...1/xcom2-stats/
Me and Cord were discussing the slight rubbishness of grenadiers before I then totted up the stats and learned that two of my biggest hitters are grenadiers. I think in part this is because they have more armour and are thus able to take more hits and be in more missions, etc. but still, I think they're better than they actually seem early doors. I know that now a well-placed grenade can make or break an engagement with a group of enemies, whether it be shredding armor or destroy cover for the other lads to take their shot.
Oh, and what's the deal with hacking? I haven't done it since basically the first 2 missions. Am I missing something in the environment? When do you get the chance to hack (other than mission objectives obviously).
I haven't found anything to hack outside of the surveillance towers if you don't have the Combat Protocol Perk.
There are mission-specific chests and things as well. The game suggests there will be other supply chests and things but I don't know.
The game also lies even more about your chances of hacing success than it does about shooting, Lies to you and then punishes you when you fail.
I think I need a moment to celebrate just how fucking mad my hair is. How the aliens won't spot me a mile off I've no clue.
You get to hack robotic enemies as well, either to disable them or sometimes to take control completely. I'm quite a big fan of my techie fella.
I'm going to have to start again though, which I'm slightly struggling to find the enthusiasm for at the moment, despite really enjoying the first go.
Well this has convinced me to break out the copy of XCOM Enemy Unknown I got as a gift for Christmas.
You should definitely do that. It's still ace. Even if, given you got it for free, it ends up as you deciding to jump up to XCOM2 when we tell you about some of the EU gripes which have been fixed.
A satisfyingly flawless (and therefore slightly anticlimactic) sabotage mission to an alien facility sees me knock them off their stride for the Avatar project and no less than FOUR promotions for the six soldiers who completed it.
Specialist Vowels becomes Major, Byron makes Captain along with my best sharpshooter, Disco. Rastafarian grenadier P_3 becomes Lieutenant.
Major. I like it.
What difficulty are you playing on? I'm about to turn mine down to easy - I'm really struggling to keep my team alive.
This thread has made me dust off Enemy Unknown. Disappointingly I never finished a run I had back in 2014 and haven't a clue what I'm doing.
Just on normal, Vowels. I've been fortunate in that my biggest losses were in early missions where it made me replay them because absolutely everybody died. I've been uber-cautious quite a lot of the time.
Anyway, welcome to the newest recruit. Raoul Duke, who has been trained in grenading things and terrorist headscarf-wearing skills.
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And more news! I had a mission where
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Picked up a few injuries but everybody lived. I rode my luck hard early on and now my squad is really very handy.
For their heroics, there were promotions:
Slaven @Byron who becomes a Major.
@Cord also makes Major
@ItalAussie makes Captain
As does @Andrew
Also introducing a new recruit and first psi ops soldier Laurent Robert, who will of course be nicknamed @Samadini once he's progressed enough for a nickname to be available. He currently has the ability to put enemies briefly in stasis but I'm going to keep training him and have him able to mind-control aliens as well.
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Aww yiss. I look fucking badass
You actually do. That pose looked better than I thought. I just got bored of waiting for you to look at the camera and took the shot.
Me and Cord tried a multiplayer game there. It went... hm. So it took us ages to a) fix our voice chat (team speak and in-game clashing) and b) disconnects. We eventually got in and got started and it was fun and tense and all that and then.... yeah, it disconnected. Dunno if the issue was at one of our ends or if it's the game.
We'd also done a bit of a shit job at making the most of our aliens. I couldn't work out how to get my berserker to hit anything, neither of us made the most of our snakeman skills, Cord had started to abuse his sectoid before I ran it through with a sword.
My Codex was doing quite nicely and ruining Cord's day but then the game dropped. I think we'd both got three soldiers left at that point.
Hero of the hour but no promotion.
I'm a twit
As far as I can tell you only get promotions for killing aliens. You didn't do much of that. Which is a bit wank, really, I'd say anything that's a mission objective should get you XP.
The game clearly thinks your luxuriant barnet is it's own reward.
El Capitano.