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Offtopic / Detailed Critique of UFO 2012 Remake by Firaxis
« on: December 29, 2012, 03:44:22 am »
My brother passed me over his copy, and I just beat it after about 25 hours.
This game is a good example of how consoles have helped and hurt PC gaming over the last what, six years.
We've been helped because consoles have forced an oasis of stability into the PC gaming world for a long time -- I've been able to play a lot of A++ titles on my PC for the last couple of years, despite my PC having been built circa 2007.
[I splurged and got 8GB of RAM and a Core 2 Quad, paid a little bit more for long term sustainability]
The limited controllability of console gamepads compared to a Keyboard+Mouse has also forced game designers to simplify their schemes. This has been for the most part, somewhat useful.
Why?
Because it forces designers to consider what is important and what's not in terms of detail; something I approve of, now that I'm in my thirties, and I find my patience for irritating stuff much reduced over my teenage years.
Back then, I could put up with a lot of irritating clicky clicky stuff.
Now?
Putting up with that kind of stuff feels too much like work.
The problem is that 'consolitis' at times goes overboard and destroys useful options/stuff; and you see this issue throughout XCOM ENEMY UNKNOWN.
The most blatant example of 'consolitis' that appears in the game is the completely stupid geoscape base system and satellite system. There's no reason for it really to exist, when UFO/TFTD managed to do the job just fine nearly 20 years ago and allowed us to place our starting base exactly anywhere in the world that we wanted.
Area 51? Done.
Superman-like Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic? Done.
Hidden in the Swiss Alps? Done.
And it also let you place the base near your home, for added role playing 'involvement'.
So why is the XCOM EU base placement system the way it is, with much less functionality? Here's a hint -- because XCOM EU came out for 360 and PS3.
Try accurately placing a new base on a world map with a controller. It's really tricky and hard.
The new base selection screen and satellite system not coincidentally can be done with the restricted non-precision control that a console player with a gamepad has.
Onto more specific issues:
The streamlining of the inventory system into slots and other suchlike.
I liked the fact that you no longer needed to build storage space, or have to keep track of your initial starting stuff like Avalanche Missiles, LMGs, or rifle clips.
This made sense because an international unit of elite operatives funded by the entire world would not run out of warehouse space to store the Ark of the Covenant and they'd most certainly wouldn't run out of 7.62mm ammunition or machine guns.
I also liked some of the aspects of the inventory system streamlining related to your operatives themselves, in terms of reducing inventory to a bunch of slots; which were:
Slot 1: Main Weapon (Class Specific)
Slot 2: Sidearm
Slot 3: Class Specific Item (Rocket Launcher/Smoke Grenade)
Slot 4: Miscellaneous (Medkit, Grenade, etc)
The problem was the slot system was totally inflexible. It meant you couldn't carry a frag grenade and a medikit at the same time.
Shep: "Hey, Mr. Solomon, why can't we carry a grenade and medikit at the same time?"
Jake Solomon: "Because I want you to make hard decisions!"
Shep: "If making hard decisions is what you want, why can't we swap out other slots, such as the sidearm or class-specific items? Your character could carry a medikit and frag grenade at the same time, or up to three medikits, but you'd have to give up item slots -- like your heavy weapons soldier would have to give up his sidearm and rocket launcher?"
Jake Solomon: "Because I want you to make hard decisions!"
Shep: "Uh, you also do realize that there's all sorts of stuff like load-bearing vests in real life that integrate pouches and rings that you can clip stuff onto to increase your load carrying capability?"
Jake Solomon: "STFU, you'll get that single special item slot and you'll like it!"
With the new inventory system, a major gameplay element of the original was also removed. In the original, you could have your soldiers pick up items on the battlescape and equip them.
This led to many fun possibilities:
1.) You could actually execute a snatch and grab mission in UFO/TFTD that was not about recovering an UFO, but sending your men out to tag and bag an alien whose corpse/unconscious body would be picked up and humped onto the Skyranger and the mission aborted. You wouldn't get the full points value of recovering the UFO, but you'd get vitally needed researchable items.
2.) Reallocating weapons amongst the squad due to losses. This enabled you to keep specialist weapons even if the person originally carrying them was killed.
This was highly useful during alien capture missions because if your 'stunner' was killed, you could pick up the weapon and continue on with the mission.
In XCOM EU if your Arc Thrower equipped squaddie is killed; you're screwed. Reload the game or just accept that you've failed the mission objectives.
It's a major suspension of disbelief breaker to believe that a highly trained operative can't pick up items on the ground. It also leads to unnecessary mission deaths which could be avoided in the original -- e.g. a soldier picks up a medikit that a bleeding-out fallen soldier was carrying, and applies it to keep them from bleeding out -- something you can't do in the remake due to the locked inventory.
The Class System for Soldiers.
At first glance, the class based system has a lot to recommend it. It enables you to keep all the weapons useful throughout the game, instead of everyone going for the Heavy Plasma and ignoring everything else.
The problem is, like the inventory slot system, the class-system is so inflexible.
Snipers are the only ones who can fire a sniper rifle,
Heavies are the only ones who can fire a rocket launcher or LMG/Heavy Laser/Heavy Plasma, etc.
In real life, there's a lot of cross-training between special forces operators (which is what XCOM would be drawing its soldiers from); in order to accomodate possible mission losses -- if your mission was to blow a bridge on a river up, you wouldn't want to abort the mission because your demolitions guy's parachute didn't open during insertion.
If your only sniper gets killed early on in a mission, that's it. There's no flexibility in the system that allows you to have a heavy weapons soldier pick up the dropped sniper rifle and fire it (albet with a penalty).
Also, there's too many classes -- while it's easy to find a plausible explanation for the Sniper and Heavy classes, due to the specialized training/physical skills needed (fine motor control to snipe and physical strength to lug a 20+ pound LMG across a field)...
...why are Assault and Support separate classes?
Wouldn't it be better to combine them into a "Standard" class that can do either role, depending on their equipment?
The new movement/fire system
After a lot of initial irritation, I actually got used to it and it worked pretty well, particularly once I remapped the "overwatch" button to be the spacebar.
The problem was that it was so limited. You were always limited to two actions, no matter what. You couldn't gain a perk that gave you three actions, or powered armor that boosted your movement.
----------------------------
Major Issues I Had
Squaddies having to gain experience to get a class assigned
This was something that was kind of cool at the beginning of the game, then quickly became irritating, moreso when you send out four rookies on a mission to get experience and find out their classes...and ALL FOUR BECOME SNIPERS.
This is kind of tied into the trope of 'XCOM hires rookies'.
As director of XCOM, you should be able to send out requests for personnel and get a monthly roster of people from contributing countries to pick from -- like this month, the USA has Lt. Schmuckatelli available, he's a SEAL Team Six trained sniper, blah blah blah.
Player no longer has freedom to hire/fire scientists/engineers
This reduces your free will and forces even more pre-planning onto the player; since a lot of stuff now has minimum requirements to be built/researched, etc.
You must choose from three abduction/terror sites at a time, and can only complete one mission at a time
This basically means no matter what happens, even on the easiest mode, countries start dropping out fairly early. This is pretty irritating, because it's not due to your actions, but due to game design decisions.
I mean, I could understand it if I couldn't complete a terror site mission because I didn't budget for a second skyranger to handle simultaneous raids, or because I was so wasteful with my soldiers that I didn't have enough men left to fight a terror mission, but this? This is punching me in the face!
Nerfed AI
This is a major issue I have. Apparently on the easiest level (which is still pretty damned hard), they turn off a lot of the AI, and disable most grenade use and special attacks like Chyssalid Implantations.
Meanwhile, it appears they still keep the same amount of aliens in a crashed ship as they do on the harder difficulty levels.
So...yeah.
Sloooow speed of movement
There's no option for "fast movement" or "Fast combat", particularly important if you want to make a methodical advance to avoid casualties. I guess Firaxis had to find their "25+ hour gameplay" metric somewhere, and this was it....watching people walk over and over and over....ugh.
This game is a good example of how consoles have helped and hurt PC gaming over the last what, six years.
We've been helped because consoles have forced an oasis of stability into the PC gaming world for a long time -- I've been able to play a lot of A++ titles on my PC for the last couple of years, despite my PC having been built circa 2007.
[I splurged and got 8GB of RAM and a Core 2 Quad, paid a little bit more for long term sustainability]
The limited controllability of console gamepads compared to a Keyboard+Mouse has also forced game designers to simplify their schemes. This has been for the most part, somewhat useful.
Why?
Because it forces designers to consider what is important and what's not in terms of detail; something I approve of, now that I'm in my thirties, and I find my patience for irritating stuff much reduced over my teenage years.
Back then, I could put up with a lot of irritating clicky clicky stuff.
Now?
Putting up with that kind of stuff feels too much like work.
The problem is that 'consolitis' at times goes overboard and destroys useful options/stuff; and you see this issue throughout XCOM ENEMY UNKNOWN.
The most blatant example of 'consolitis' that appears in the game is the completely stupid geoscape base system and satellite system. There's no reason for it really to exist, when UFO/TFTD managed to do the job just fine nearly 20 years ago and allowed us to place our starting base exactly anywhere in the world that we wanted.
Area 51? Done.
Superman-like Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic? Done.
Hidden in the Swiss Alps? Done.
And it also let you place the base near your home, for added role playing 'involvement'.
So why is the XCOM EU base placement system the way it is, with much less functionality? Here's a hint -- because XCOM EU came out for 360 and PS3.
Try accurately placing a new base on a world map with a controller. It's really tricky and hard.
The new base selection screen and satellite system not coincidentally can be done with the restricted non-precision control that a console player with a gamepad has.
Onto more specific issues:
The streamlining of the inventory system into slots and other suchlike.
I liked the fact that you no longer needed to build storage space, or have to keep track of your initial starting stuff like Avalanche Missiles, LMGs, or rifle clips.
This made sense because an international unit of elite operatives funded by the entire world would not run out of warehouse space to store the Ark of the Covenant and they'd most certainly wouldn't run out of 7.62mm ammunition or machine guns.
I also liked some of the aspects of the inventory system streamlining related to your operatives themselves, in terms of reducing inventory to a bunch of slots; which were:
Slot 1: Main Weapon (Class Specific)
Slot 2: Sidearm
Slot 3: Class Specific Item (Rocket Launcher/Smoke Grenade)
Slot 4: Miscellaneous (Medkit, Grenade, etc)
The problem was the slot system was totally inflexible. It meant you couldn't carry a frag grenade and a medikit at the same time.
Shep: "Hey, Mr. Solomon, why can't we carry a grenade and medikit at the same time?"
Jake Solomon: "Because I want you to make hard decisions!"
Shep: "If making hard decisions is what you want, why can't we swap out other slots, such as the sidearm or class-specific items? Your character could carry a medikit and frag grenade at the same time, or up to three medikits, but you'd have to give up item slots -- like your heavy weapons soldier would have to give up his sidearm and rocket launcher?"
Jake Solomon: "Because I want you to make hard decisions!"
Shep: "Uh, you also do realize that there's all sorts of stuff like load-bearing vests in real life that integrate pouches and rings that you can clip stuff onto to increase your load carrying capability?"
Jake Solomon: "STFU, you'll get that single special item slot and you'll like it!"
With the new inventory system, a major gameplay element of the original was also removed. In the original, you could have your soldiers pick up items on the battlescape and equip them.
This led to many fun possibilities:
1.) You could actually execute a snatch and grab mission in UFO/TFTD that was not about recovering an UFO, but sending your men out to tag and bag an alien whose corpse/unconscious body would be picked up and humped onto the Skyranger and the mission aborted. You wouldn't get the full points value of recovering the UFO, but you'd get vitally needed researchable items.
2.) Reallocating weapons amongst the squad due to losses. This enabled you to keep specialist weapons even if the person originally carrying them was killed.
This was highly useful during alien capture missions because if your 'stunner' was killed, you could pick up the weapon and continue on with the mission.
In XCOM EU if your Arc Thrower equipped squaddie is killed; you're screwed. Reload the game or just accept that you've failed the mission objectives.
It's a major suspension of disbelief breaker to believe that a highly trained operative can't pick up items on the ground. It also leads to unnecessary mission deaths which could be avoided in the original -- e.g. a soldier picks up a medikit that a bleeding-out fallen soldier was carrying, and applies it to keep them from bleeding out -- something you can't do in the remake due to the locked inventory.
The Class System for Soldiers.
At first glance, the class based system has a lot to recommend it. It enables you to keep all the weapons useful throughout the game, instead of everyone going for the Heavy Plasma and ignoring everything else.
The problem is, like the inventory slot system, the class-system is so inflexible.
Snipers are the only ones who can fire a sniper rifle,
Heavies are the only ones who can fire a rocket launcher or LMG/Heavy Laser/Heavy Plasma, etc.
In real life, there's a lot of cross-training between special forces operators (which is what XCOM would be drawing its soldiers from); in order to accomodate possible mission losses -- if your mission was to blow a bridge on a river up, you wouldn't want to abort the mission because your demolitions guy's parachute didn't open during insertion.
If your only sniper gets killed early on in a mission, that's it. There's no flexibility in the system that allows you to have a heavy weapons soldier pick up the dropped sniper rifle and fire it (albet with a penalty).
Also, there's too many classes -- while it's easy to find a plausible explanation for the Sniper and Heavy classes, due to the specialized training/physical skills needed (fine motor control to snipe and physical strength to lug a 20+ pound LMG across a field)...
...why are Assault and Support separate classes?
Wouldn't it be better to combine them into a "Standard" class that can do either role, depending on their equipment?
The new movement/fire system
After a lot of initial irritation, I actually got used to it and it worked pretty well, particularly once I remapped the "overwatch" button to be the spacebar.
The problem was that it was so limited. You were always limited to two actions, no matter what. You couldn't gain a perk that gave you three actions, or powered armor that boosted your movement.
----------------------------
Major Issues I Had
Squaddies having to gain experience to get a class assigned
This was something that was kind of cool at the beginning of the game, then quickly became irritating, moreso when you send out four rookies on a mission to get experience and find out their classes...and ALL FOUR BECOME SNIPERS.
This is kind of tied into the trope of 'XCOM hires rookies'.
As director of XCOM, you should be able to send out requests for personnel and get a monthly roster of people from contributing countries to pick from -- like this month, the USA has Lt. Schmuckatelli available, he's a SEAL Team Six trained sniper, blah blah blah.
Player no longer has freedom to hire/fire scientists/engineers
This reduces your free will and forces even more pre-planning onto the player; since a lot of stuff now has minimum requirements to be built/researched, etc.
You must choose from three abduction/terror sites at a time, and can only complete one mission at a time
This basically means no matter what happens, even on the easiest mode, countries start dropping out fairly early. This is pretty irritating, because it's not due to your actions, but due to game design decisions.
I mean, I could understand it if I couldn't complete a terror site mission because I didn't budget for a second skyranger to handle simultaneous raids, or because I was so wasteful with my soldiers that I didn't have enough men left to fight a terror mission, but this? This is punching me in the face!
Nerfed AI
This is a major issue I have. Apparently on the easiest level (which is still pretty damned hard), they turn off a lot of the AI, and disable most grenade use and special attacks like Chyssalid Implantations.
Meanwhile, it appears they still keep the same amount of aliens in a crashed ship as they do on the harder difficulty levels.
So...yeah.
Sloooow speed of movement
There's no option for "fast movement" or "Fast combat", particularly important if you want to make a methodical advance to avoid casualties. I guess Firaxis had to find their "25+ hour gameplay" metric somewhere, and this was it....watching people walk over and over and over....ugh.
