Audiosmurf wrote:Oh yeah I've played the old ones, save for Apocalypse, but as I understand that was was a wild divergence from the previous games. I'm curious about how you feel that the character progression was more tangible? Just through more stats/clearer effects in battle?
It was directly related to your actions: throwing stuff increased your Throwing skill, not panicking improved Bravery, hitting stuff increased Aim, and so on. It was exploitable, of course. But I liked the concept. And since it took some personal effort from your part, the characters were more meanigful.
I think there's an argument to be made that a lot of the difficulty in the early 90s titles was just from how cryptic they were right off the jump. Don't get me wrong, I love UFO Defence (Enemy Unknown 1994) a lot and had beaten it more than once years and years before the reboot, but in case you didn't play the new Enemy Unknown I think they actually have a lot in common. They're definitely different games, but I always felt that the developers did a really good job of staying true to what the originals were while making concessions to modernization. It's less hardcore than the original, for sure, but the missions actually feel a lot more tense when you're starting with a squad of 4 instead of (potentially) 14.
I did like the new XCOM, but it felt too arcadey to me. The mechanics were too neat, too symmetrical, and everything was too obvious and too black and white (with the exception of the final alien dialogue, that was some surprising grey area plot twist).