What have you been playing recently?

Just a question since you seem to have played this. Have they made a time limit on all the missions and totally lost the faction maintenance part of the game?

I was sort of hoping they would go back into trying to maneuver through factions in the world while fighting the resistance, but if it is just pretty linear like enemy unknown I am probably going to chalk it up to a loss especially when they seem to be time limiting the turns in combat. I do not mind a few missions like that, but the run like an idiot into the situation thing is not my style of play. I like the new AI and how it really tries to flank and be aggressive towards you, but with limited squad size and people I need the turns to really coordinate a full sweep and clear which seems to be fucking me every time, and that is not how I like to play if you know what I mean.

I get bored with games like that where you have to rush into action and be quick on the trigger or die. If I wanted that I would find a PvP game I enjoy.

Can't remember if you can lose confidence completely. You don't actually start with much - you have to scout new regions and contact the local resistance to get the option to hit certain alien facilities (which allow you to reduce the Doom Tracker) and progress the story. Stopping the Doom Tracker is key. You can win pretty much every mission but still lose if you don't keep opening avenues to get missions that reduce it. There's one insta-lose mission similar to the "Survive the Base Assault" in Enemy Unknown, but you might not ever encounter it if lucky. War of the Chosen increases that to four (if you let the Chosen get too much intel on you, they will launch an attack on your base - and one random monthly event lets them share intel... they are normally rivals).

Terror missions are replaced with alien attacks on resistance havens. I've never lost one badly enough to know how it affects the resistance view of you.

With War of the Chosen, you can also send squad members on side missions (like the "Infiltrate EXALT" missions if you did the Enemy Within DLC for Enemy Unknown). This is vital to unlocking some story missions against the Chosen so don't ignore it.

Time-limits in missions are not universal. Some missions have "retrieve the alien data/resistance database before the server wipes" and some of these have ways to mitigate the timer (destroy the power nodes to the bomb, etc) by setting it back a few turns. Essential missions never have these. If you don't like them, there are mods to turn them off or make them easier.

picked up jagged alliance 3 on it's drop date back in November.

hoping they evolve it to the level of JA2's v1.113 as the AP system is still kind of broad strokes.

Otherwise I like the couple of new characters and what they've done with the legacy ones. You can start with a couple of weaker ones that only excel in one thing and over the course of a game they become pretty good all arounders.

A bit tricky getting both enough income and securing conquered sectors in the first game month, but doable.


They're still polishing it up with features and but it looks like finally someone is reimagining a classic game without fubaring it by going so far outside of the box that it becomes a bag.

I found building the team mate bonds strategically to also be essential in WotC.

Like Mox and the Reaver Sirtis plays... send them on a couple of side quests together once you have both of them.

I try to encourage medic/hacker+sniper and the tank/HW to become BFFs as well.

The Psi guy character you eventually pick up is pretty useless.

God damn, the save system sucks ass. I made a couple of bad clicks and the autosave overwrote my base save at the base. I don't mind fucking up a mission or losing a soldier, but to alter my base save simply because I right clicked something and pulled myself into a place I did not know, and then tried to recover and I was stuck just pissed me off.

I will porobably try again later, but I really hate this 4-6 person squad size. I do like that I can design the squad visually.

Maybe I am just too old for games like this now. It does seem to have a higher variety of missions from older versions, At least I did not spend a lot on it. It looks like it might be ok if I did not have COVID grumpy going on.

I seemed to have fixed my problem by restarting and saying FU to the tutorial. Knowing X-com like I do I am probably missing some things, but fuck yeah lets do this is the way I like playing. I have gotten the hand of the saves, which is always important in X-com.

I am actually really liking this new direction, and what they have added to Enemy unknown. I like the scanning areas thing, and choosing your missions rather than just being forced into the general one of the moment. They made the enemies a lot more diverse with some good big enemy battles. I like what they did with the drones, and the rangers.

I am, glad I bought this bundle now. I fully recant what I said before. Now that I see tyou can restart a mission so easily to improve on it, I like how they fit that repetition in over the old play the same fucking missions over and over again thing. I even like how the voice overs actually recognize they are annoying and start talking about muting the intercom.

I think I just had the misfortune of starting to play this with COVID grumpy. Yes, it is going to make me rage smash some plushies, but that is X-com.

Four more normal and four more expert levels to go in EDGE!

I was rerally enjoying the way X-com 2 worked, and I then I remembered there was talk about PvP in this version and......god damnit.

I really want an invite only PvP strategy game that involves turn based movement that had nice environments.

Finished BOTW and start TOTK. Much like Skyward Sword and Majora’s Mask, the second iteration of the game on this platform is not as intuitive as the previous game. Maybe I’m supposed to figure stuff out based on the previous game, but like all other previous games, I’m starting in a new place and there’s not a lot of ….guidance.

So I started in on war of the chosen, and it is like having the cast of TNG and the fucking disney afternoon yelling at me. Oh, did I run bitchy diana troy into that ambush on purpose? I am sorry, but I can't be bossed around by the ship's counselor.

I thought this all would be cool, but it is really fucking around with my whimsy. Whimsy being the eternal spirit of the idiot pathing in apocalypse.

Turns out the last three levels in each pack are locked until you collect all the shinies in each preceding level. So I've been working on that. But I'm down to the last three incomplete normal levels and, uh, I don't know how to get all the shinies. I'm probably somehow missing switches in each level, but I've been all over them and. Anyway. I've been working on the expert levels too, but the last unlocked expert level is just ridiculous. I've been grinding it and I've gotten so smooth at it like I would never believe, and somehow I'm still not quite fast enough.

So I took a moment this morning and played Sokobond instead. Had a couple of breakthroughs and unlocked a fun new area that lets you rotate molecules. Good stuff.

OK, so I have saved it for a long time, and now I am running out of X-com. Yes, I have now beaten X-com 2 multiple times includintg an ironman run and on the hardest most annoying setting. I love the new game, but I am a bit disappointed. Even with my present knowledge a TFTD or apocalypse run takes a few months of campaigning. I can whip the arc in less than a week on it's hardest difficulty.

I don't get to play the Switch much unless it's with the boys, but I finally got back to Ori after mumble mumble and just ran through from the beginning. Made it to the first big tree in "only" an hour this time.

If you're saying "which Ori? You know there's two now, right?" you will be excited to know that I've also uncovered one (1) memory in BotW thus far.

Blargh. I'm back into RDR2 because I bought it on PC (previously owned on PS4) over Xmas to avoid disappointing my Mum who gave me money towards Starfield, only for Starfield to not be on offer. So I bought RDR2 and Alan Wake 2. Still haven't summoned the will to really play the latter - I think I need to re-download it to my new NVMe anyhoo from the one time I fired it up - seemed sluggish.

And now SW:TOR is tempting me back because I had to re-up my sub. I still haven't finished Knights of the Fallen Empire, then there's a lot of content past that... I did a couple of story missions the other day which have wetted my appetite... but I really just wanna hang out as a cowboy robbing fools...

I'm starting to think the only game I really like anymore is GTA V, because of the complete freedom to do whatever I want in the game. Hell, I just like to drive around while it's pouring the rain, listening to the pop station, and the rain as it hits the roof of the car I stole. lol

Until something like that comes along, I think I'm stuck in a rut.

I just fired up No Man's Sky for the first time in years and it's like a whole different game.

Fallout 4, in all its nude modded glory.



Also the remastered Tomb Raider trilogy, because classic Lara is best Lara.