GhostofAnakin

I need to find something to play. Finished XCOM 2, and Heavy Rain isn't drawing me in.

Wasn't this supposed to be out earlier this year?

How does it compare to the Obsidian-made one?

Moved on to Heavy Rain. I'm not digging it so far. Maybe it gets better, but I thought Detroit Become Human did a better job of pulling me in quickly.

XCOM 2. Never before has the "bladestorm" ability been so effective for me. I made a bad positioning choice by sending one of my soldiers too far forward near the end of my turn, which resulted in a new crop of enemies showing up out of the fog of war and me having no more turns to shoot at them. So I figured I'd be losing at least one soldier, with others taking some damage. Enter bladestorm. The first enemy (a muton) moved to melee my ranger. But bladestorm activated and I scored a critical hit, killing him outright. Then the second enemy (a viper) used its coil thing where it pulls the soldier toward it to then squeeze it. Unfortunately for the viper, he pulled my ranger toward him and as soon as my ranger was in striking range, bladestorm activated and killed him. The funniest part? None of that was planned. I only sent that soldier ahead because he was closest to the target (I believe it was a beacon that had to be turned off), not really thinking there'd be more enemies in range to attack him, and not even thinking he could defend himself from melee attacks with bladestorm.

Mafia III is free to download on PSN this month. How is it? I know it's free, but I don't want to waste time downloading and playing it if it's not good.

Damn, looks like I only killed 457 enemies. I think I needed 500 for the trophy.

Finished XCOM 2. Hated it when I started, but enjoyed it about halfway through. The difficulty learning curve was ridiculous and almost made me rage quit early on. In contrast, about halfway through I kept getting "flawless" on missions and the final battle was relatively simple (I did lose a soldier, but it was more due to a lucky shot than because of any sort of difficulty).

Ugh. XCOM 2 crashed three times on the final "mission". Luckily all three times, the autosave had saved pretty much right at the point of the crash. Otherwise I would have had to re-play some tediously long fights just to get back to where I was.

Up to 4 Psi Operatives on my team, though one of them is still in training for most of the good offensive powers.

I think I'm nearing the endgame in XCOM 2. I'm researching the avatar corpse in the Shadow Chamber, and there's nothing else on my map to do (no alien construction projects, no main story missions).

Oh you annoying gatekeeper death star looking thing. With one health dot left, its final move is to do this exploding thing where it damaged like 4 of my soldiers within a pretty large radius. It's the first time I've even seen it do that. On my next turn, I easily destroyed it. But now I've got some guys in the infirmary instead of completing a flawless mission.

I remember an old interview during the time of XCOM 1 where they explained the inverted difficulty curve was somewhat intended, because the retry cost for failing a campaign late in the game was crippling, whereas if you failed early it was no big deal to start afresh. With the ability to save scum (unless you play ironman), I don't know why that would matter? I pretty much create a new save after every mission, so if one wipes me out, I won't have to start again just to get back to that point.

More XCOM 2. Now I've got two PSI Ops soldiers in my squad, upped my squad size to six, and have the ability to mind control with each operative. So most missions I essentially have a squad of 8 soldiers. It's so weird how they made it so difficult and frustrating early on, and so easy late on. Usually games take the opposite approach.

Having a PSI Ops soldier in my squad has made things so much easier now. He just mind controls the other side's toughest soldier, they focus on trying to kill that one (I usually pick the shield guy since it takes forever for the enemy to knock down his shield), and I pick them off while they're distracted.

Okay, a switch flipped after two things: building a PSI Ops chamber and upgrading my weapons to the "alien" version. As long as the enemy doesn't swarm me with those snake things, I don't seem to be having issues with the combat anymore. So either I'm learning well, or the designers did things ass backwards by making the beginning ridiculously hard and the middle/ending easy. If it's the latter, that's a bad game design, no? You kind of want people to get into the game and continue playing early on so they become invested in the game, not give up because it's too difficult and never give it a chance.

My A Team is always injured, so I usually get a pretty solid B and C team going. How, though? There doesn't seem to be enough "side missions". Everything seems to be story based, and usually it requires your very best soldiers.

Another issue I have with XCOM 2 is it doesn't seem to give you any chance to actually level up some soldiers other than your "A Team". There aren't enough side missions that are moderately easy in order for you to level up some extras, so I end up having to bring along my best soldiers every time. It's like the designers made this game when they were hopped up on sugar where there's not even a second to take in what's going on.

I'm a glutton for punishment. Since I'm a completionist, I'm trying to push through XCOM 2. Yet another mission where it's basically impossible. Two berzerkers, two mutons, a couple of those lancers, and a couple of shield builders. And all while I have to rescue 6 hostages. Yeah, that's totally fair. The worst part is it takes so damn long to build anything. So I haven't built the shadow chamber, haven't built the PSI ops chamber, haven't been able to upgrade my squad to 5, etc. I feel as though I'm essentially a Level 2 character who is suddenly being put in missions that require Level 20 abilities I don't have access to yet.

XCOM2 does it again. So, I know I said I was giving up, but I tried to slog through again. I'm doing a mission to lower the Avatar project bar, and everything's going well. My squad is handling the enemies and even sets up the bomb with minimal issues (one of my soldier's took a hit, but survived). So now I've cleaned up the map of all enemies and set the bomb. And suddenly those snake men drop out of literally nowhere as I'm about to escape. Like, what? They weren't there, then 3 of them (plus an insectoid) just show up out of the blue. This is supposed to be a strategy game where if you plan properly (ie. position your troops well), you should do well. But when the game literally makes enemies pop out of thin air for no reason other than to heighten the difficulty of reaching the extraction zone, it becomes idiotic.

My biggest issue as I go farther in the game is the fact everything happens so quickly (the "timer" for the enemy finishing their project and me being forced to do "main story" missions), except for my scientific stuff. It's moving at a snail's crawl, and honestly I can't even keep track because most of the projects seem to just be main quest related. When I try and do equipment or technology-related stuff, it takes forever and I end up falling behind in the timer. It feels almost like they don't even want you to explore the various different things you can research and instead should just focus exclusively on the "mission" related stuff.

I thoroughly enjoyed the previous XCOM game. This one, for whatever reason, just seems to throw way too much at you too soon, and doesn't seem to give you even a second to breath or opt for "side missions" before forcing some major decision on you. All the while, your engineering and science stuff is crawling along at a snail's pace while they're pushing you deeper into the story.

I think I'm giving up on XCOM2. It's just way too unforgiving. I even put it on the easiest setting and the enemies scale up way, way faster than my ability to upgrade soldiers/equipment. I just got my entire squad killed because one random mech comes out of the fog of war and is allowed to basically walk across the entire map to then shoot my soldier, then the other soldier (who also came out of nowhere) finishes off my other soldier.

They certainly don't give you much preparation before tossing you in the deep end in XCOM, do they. I've already got a million missions on my queue, a bunch of random research and engineering projects, and have to decide which ones to do and which to leave until later. And all while I'm still trying to get a hang of the game. I remember why I got frustrated with the last one. It never seemed like I had a second to even figure out what I want to build without getting constant notifications that I need to build this or that, or that I need to go on this mission or that mission instead of the one I was going to choose.

The fog of war always gets me in those timed missions. I spend like 2 or 3 early turns just moving my squad methodically forward to find where the enemies are, so by the time I actually see where the bad guys are, I'm down to a limited number of turns left before the timer runs out.