Pete

I thought I'd start a thread to show good and bad things that have happened in game. I've been playing on Classic difficulty recently and getting very annoyed with it - it's all my fault as I didn't research armour quick enough and bypassed Laser weapons altogether (so since I was hell-bent on plasma weapons I died a lot until I had them). I quickly resigned this playthrough to being an experiment as there seem to be some missions you simply cannot complete early in the game - I think it's the dev's way of trying to tell me I should know when to bravely run away Anyhow, here's a fun request that, when I completed it, basically allowed for massive advances in base facilities, barracks upgrades and some weapons and armour I sorely needed: And on the flipside, I had the most hideous mission earlier in the game that I had to re-load about 20 times just to beat as all my guys had light armour and basic weapons against this lot. Look at the compliment of aliens in this UFO - it's a tad ridiculous as it's quite a small UFO (plus I suspect Mutons would eat the other aliens... they look like they would ): Does anyone else have any amusing/horrendous screens to share? I did have another one recently in the same game where a coutry wanted just 3 alloy cannons for another 1400 credits, so I was happy to oblige on that one too I'm also purposely not doing the alien base just yet, but have already triggered whatever sets off the harder Mutons, Floaters and Sectopods (must be research advances). On the bright side, no Sectoid Commanders yet because I've not done that mission, so that's one less enemy to contend with. I also have a full squad of ridiculously high ranking guys now all in Titan armour, so I actually fancy my chances on the later and last missions of the game. Oh, and before I forget, I only foudn out the other day that the Blaster Launcher is in this game too - I raced through the Normal playthrough so fast I missed a lot of research (plus I just couldn't do the UFO that that tech stems from as I couldn't shoot it down the first time through).

So there's me whining about later missions and the final mission being a bit tricky on my first playthrough - I'm now playing on Classic, which is quite simply brutal, but I did read that the Blaster Launcher is available somewhere later in the game. Obviously my first playthrough was a bit rushed, so I look forward to entering the final mission again at some point with the right tools for the job this time, instead of light plasma rifles and pea-shooters Has anyone gone into the final mission with a Blaster Launcher? Did it help?

I thought all the shortcuts were in the manual? I seem to remember Steam offered me the option of RTFM, but I didn't. Thor also posted the manual somewhere too. I think they're all on one page so that would be a good one to print out (remember old flight sims where we used to do that? I do ).

Fingers crossed on £10 for the next one, but that soldier customisation pack was £3 odd (not that I minded as I didn't pre-order and was intrigued). I say £10 as a random number only because all we really know about it is that it's 3 missions and one playable character, so it's hard to gauge value based off that.

Had my first terror mission on Classic difficulty - needless to say one of my guys ran in blindly and just managed to eascape the close-quarters confrontation with a Chrysalid before bravely fleeing. I was able to make a decent last stand from the extraction zone which two of my squad sat on and everyone picked off aliens until I lost a guy (extraction zone is in the open, so no fun!). I aborted the mission whilst one of my squad had his second movement phase left - stupidly, the two that had no movement left were allowed to leave whilst the other one stayed on the extraction and it wouldn't let me leave the map at all - tried ending the turn again, using up movement but nothing works because the score board had already popped up and gone away. It's a bug that I suspect is related to remaining movement, so be sure to use up your remaining movement before bravely retreating from a terror mission Sadly I have to reload at some future point and do it again.

I still maintain that we are clones - same birthday etc etc, just different ages. Started Dodger now and loving it only a few pages in. Not going to rush it so I've got something to settle down with when I'm off for a week at the start of November.

I had it twice in a whole playthrough, but I don't use rockets often at all - once sadly was on a Terror site so instead of taking out some Chrysalids I wiped out some civvies standing nearby. "Friendly fire" and all that

I suspect Impossible is just less forgiving about mistakes, but I suppose that makes it more realistic (well, in terms of an alien invasion) in that your men are likely mown down with one-hit-kills a lot more.

Thanks - even I don't remember it so it must have been good

Sectopods have some fun attacks that I kept on forgetting about and getting lots of people badly injured on Normal. I don't fancy my chances on Classic. The fact that there are multiple of them in the very last mission worries me for a Classic playthrough

Oh, and hi Alan

Can't everyone just agree to disagree? Because I'm going to get annoyed with the next one of you who isn't polite to the rest. Everyone has their own points of view. Everyone sees the world and this game in a slightly different way. Deal with it, kiss and make up. Whether it be the original or the new game it's just a game.

@Matri - was watching a few after your last post - try this for mental, with a cool ending (after the noise of the piano blowing up):

And the age gap is...?

Why are we cutting out the "nonsense posts"? We've not done that in aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages (unless they're spam bots). Can we try not to rub folks up the wrong way please? (Don't spring clean my post ). On a more related note, there is a new feature in the next version of the forums due out "soon" that will allow moderators and topic starters to assign a reply as the "correct answer" so that it can easily be identified and it is automatically displayed beneath the original question. That way these threads can get as messy as you like and it still works fine.

Alliance follows on from Interceptor, or rather it's one of the pieces of news in Interceptor - it was a ship like the MacArthur that ended up stranded across the galaxy/universe (I can't remember which). Essentially it's near enough the time of Apoc too - I'm being lazy and not checking the timeline on the site here @Vet - but you love the game still even though it kicks you in the face right? Right?

But if you just use ghost armour for a turn on all your guys and line everyone up so they can see the Uber Ethereal when they decloak next turn and cut him down is that a more satisfying ending? Assuming that would be possible of course.

Also, at the time of writing, Eurogamer Germany and Sweden have given it 100 out of 100 according to MetaCritic

Okay, so you've been warned - this will be a thread to discuss the end of the game, but in case you didn't see the mention of spoilers in the title I'm going to insert a massive space below this sentence - scroll down if you have completed it or can't wait to see what happens. So... I rushed the last terror mission before the Gollop Chamber was ready, losing a good Psi soldier who could have used the device - that sucked but I had another guy and was determined not to re-load so I carried on and beat the terror site (good thing I only saw one terror site with Chrysalids, Sectopods and Mutons - that was tricky!). The final mission... I don't know, it was a bit of an anticlimax for me if I'm honest. I was doing really well up until the Sectopods - placed in an area where it's extremely difficult to kill them without losing someone. I ended up losing too many and after I'd killed them I got mowed down at the end - the last area is just plain silly for a number of reasons. Everything before the Sectopods was a breeze, and had a bit of fun with the mind control. The Sectopods were tricky, but on my reload (first of the game - not bad!) I had them beat. The last room is insane. I tried it half a dozen times - first one I ran in and tried gunning down the main Ethereal and got MC's a lot. Reload. Second one I tried to lure them all out of the room - that ended in failure as they won't come to you. Several failed attempts later, I enter the room but head immediately for the back corners on either side. One person is used as a spotter, running out and ducking back into cover. My main man uses the Rift ability several times in a row when aliens are spotted. When I realised that was working - hiding at the back of the room using Rift, I kept doing it until the Uber Ethereal walked right through it and topped himself. That was a massive anti-climax, but I didn't see another way of beating that room - 3 Ethereals all at once is just a bit much on Normal Add to that the fact that the voice of the high Ethereal was hard to hear and that there didn't appear to be a build-up to a cliffhanger... I dunno... I was hoping for maybe a hint at what's next in a sequel, but the ship just flies off into space and blows up rather than creating a black hole in Earth's atmosphere. I did think it would have been amusing if one of the pieces of debris took out the Skyranger in a morbidly amusing sort of way though That said, there was talk of an alien dimension in the research earlier, and we didn't get to go off-world, so my hopes are for a sequel - perhaps they do the whole "Elerium doesn't work any more" that they did in TFTD and you could start with laser tech? Set it in the future a bit and Psionic powers could be reduced over generations. Anyway, I did enjoy the game a lot. I'm glad they made it, glad it's scored so highly by reviewers and is already in a few top ten lists at the moment, but not so sure I'd score it 89/100 (Metacritic) myself. There was a lot of linearity, and as Vet has said there is an issue over whether these are Schroedinger's UFOs - are they there before you spot them or do they just pop into existence? In the original UFO's could be tracked across the globe and you knew they were there in the background whether you detected them or not (or at least you had the distinct feeling they were there but invisible until you went looking for them). I think I'm leaning towards 8/10 (more like the average user reviews on MetaCritic) because what there is there is done well - it's just that it lacks the depth of the original. To me, the research tree in this game is wonderful and rich, as are the engineering projects, but the rest is a bit light sadly. The Geoscape strategies are toned down, interceptions are toned down (no multi-interceptors on one target), aspects of tactical are toned down (though on the whole I love that side of it) and as mentioned I didn't much care for the linearity once I realised UFOs weren't popping up in the same manner they do in the original - an average game of the original can end up with over 100 crash sites, and I certainly hadn't had that many UFO missions by the end. The bits I do like make up for the rest, and it's certainly replayable and it's the first game in a long time that had me glued to my seat with a "on more turn" feeling that I've missed for so long. I doubt I'll replay it so much that I'll get that last achievement any time soon, but some of the new stuff is great - it's just falling short in a few areas that mean I can't give it more than an 8/10 personally. Very well done to the team for working so hard to revive the franchise though - you've had a cracking go at it and it's a great game, it's just that if you put your sceptical had on it feels like it's been streamlined a bit too much for the console audience and for accessibility whereas many people who have played the original know that it could have been so much more than it is, and it really does pain me to say that. I love the game, it's just that I love the original more still. Going to jump on multiplayer over the weekend if I get a chance, but now I need to do some work that I've been putting off FA is working on an official review as we speak by the way

I can't colour code because I didn't pre-order - no cool haircuts for me However I do give people the more varied colours of hair so I can spot them more easily on the battlefield. I never remember their names, but always know who's who by hair colour.

Any mods are also welcome here in our Files section - mod authors should feel free to get in touch.

We'd need an Elerium reactor to power the site then due to the frequency of updates

I suppose for a small squad size the perks enable you to make a unique enough squad, but I found myself wanting a third choice at some levels. It all depends on how you play as well of course. At my stage in the game now I'm happy enough with shotgun wielding soldiers on reaction fire and the burst mode on their next turn - great against Berserkers! Earlier on there were one or to occasions where I was picking a skill I'm sure I wouldn't use because it was the best of the two. Different strikes for different folks

I didn't mean the page, more the fact they were talking about "X-Gum" which is most certainly obscure

Yeah, that's what I meant. I enjoyed the reference in the Thin Man research, plus the fact they spit poison (you get the feeling Snakemen would have been poisonous in the original if that could have been programmed in).