X Com Enemy Unknown Review

As most of you all know, I have been looking forward to this game since the day it was announced. I spent countless hours on X Com UFO Defense and Terror From the Deep during high school and was really excited at what was billed as a graphic and interface update to one of my favorite games. In that sense, I am very disappointed in Enemy Unknown. I will do a quick comparison and then try and judge the new game on its own merits.

UFO Defense was a real time management and tactical game that placed you in the role of the head of the X Com project, which was a multinational effort tasked with fighting off invading hordes of aliens. You were in charge of researching alien technology, maintaining an air force that would shoot down incoming UFOs, and managing the squads you sent to kill off surviving aliens and salvage technology from their craft. Occasionally, the aliens would launch terror campaigns that were basically invasions of different cities, and you had to wipe out the aliens and protect the citizens.

Enemy Unknown is a turn based tactical roleplaying game. Again, you are the head of the X Com project with similar duties as in the original. The word similar is very important here, because in the original game, your only contact with the aliens was shooting down craft and salvage, terror missions, the rare times when the enemy would invade your base, and the final mission. Enemy Unknown is built in a very different manner. All of your auxiliary resources (scientists, engineers, and even some advanced units) are based off of your mission play. Thus, instead of having to worry about balancing the number of scientists, soldiers, aircraft, and engineers you hire and ensuring you stay within a monthly budget, you just hire soldiers and go to town. The management side of the game is very barebones, reduced to just a few maintenance costs for aircraft and parts of your base.  Base construction is also changed and minimized, you have a set grid to work with and you get bonuses for stringing similar rooms together (e.g. two Power Generators together get a bonus, having The Foundry near Workshops gives a bonus) with really no thought of a potential alien invasion of your base.

The mission types have changed greatly as well. In addition to destroying incoming UFOs (which come up very infrequently) you now have alien abductions, which always occur in a group of three sites. You can only choose to defend one site, so from the start of the game you have to understand and plan for the fact that you will be losing council members, no matter how well you manage things. There are simply too many countries and the game seems to enjoy having the same one pop up multiple times in a row. There are also missions assigned to you by the council (which was a non-factor in the original) including bomb disposal and rescuing VIPs.

An additional change is that your soldiers now gain abilities as they earn ranks, and are randomly assigned to one of four specialties; support (medics and scouts), assault (fast moving point men), snipers (primarily support, providing overwatch from high ground and laying radar to help find aliens), and heavy (using rocket launchers and providing support through suppressing fire). The biggest and best change to the game however, is the combat itself. Movement is broken into two parts. On the map you will have a blue outline and a dark yellow outline. Blue is the farthest you can move and do something else, yellow is your maximum movement. Assault units have an ability that allows them to move their full movement and still fight, which allows them to seriously outpace the rest of your squad. Instead of reserving movement points for defensive snap shots, after your first movement you can place your unit on overwatch, giving them a shot as soon as an enemy is within their field of vision. When you take your shot, the screen zooms in for a small cutscene of you firing toward the alien. (One minor complaint, if you kill an alien, you know before the enemy is hit or damaged because the scene focuses on your unit. If you miss, it focuses on the alien.) The best thing about this system, you no longer have to worry about firing a fully automatic weapon into a squadmate standing twenty feet behind you for some strange reason, or emptying and entire clip three inches away from your own feet.

The most annoying thing in this game is that they added a head scientist, engineer, and assistant who are fully voiced and have numerous cutscenes which in my opinion disrupt the flow of the game in a clumsy attempt to add to the storyline of the game. They also will pop up when you’re in combat which slows down the pace of the fights. There are already cutscenes when the aliens appear, and when it’s a new type of alien, the scientist jumps in and tells you that you need to capture a live specimen. While that’s going on, you can’t do anything except listen to her talk.

Overall, I give X Com Enemy Unknown 3/5

Good

• ·         New combat system improves on a comically bad one from the original game
• ·         Many engineering projects, such as making new weapons, armor, and medpacs, are instantaneous meaning that you don’t have to hope and pray your armor is done before the next mission
• ·         Having more engineers reduces the price of construction, giving you a real reason to stockpile them, especially since you don’t have to actually pay them anymore
• ·         Research projects have a timeline attached to them, so you know when it’s going to be done

Bad

• ·         RPG style elements don’t really have a ton of place in this game. It feels like they’re trying to set up a Call of Duty style first person shooter as a possible sequel
• ·         Cutscenes every single time a new group of aliens appears on the map, even if it’s an alien of the same type
• ·         Aliens get a free movement phase when you first discover them
• ·         The management side of the game is completely done away with and replaced with mission rewards
• ·         (This is the biggest negative of all, and is enough to make me regret purchase) You must have a Steam account active at all times, meaning that even for a single player game, you have to be online. This “anti-piracy” measure has really done nothing except for make me not want to play new PC games

Let the Argument Begin!

To begin, here are Chris Osgood's career numbers.

Osgood

Now, the argument for Osgood being a Hall of Famer

3 Stanley Cup Rings as a goaltender. 2 time recipient of the William M. Jennings Trophy for best Goals Against Average (tied with Mike Vernon for one year, and Dominic Hasek the other). 10th NHL goalie to reach 400 wins. 4 time All Star. Osgood has been a gamer his entire career, and has never let any off ice pressures affect his game. Also managed to score a goal on March 6, 1996 in a game against Hartford.

Now the argument against

Yes he has three Stanley Cup rings, all won with the Detroit Red Wings, arguably one of the best defensive teams and easily the best offensive team of his era. His career save percentage is only .905 in the regular season, and .916 in the playoffs, and he never once cracked .920. In his years away from Detroit, he was decidedly average. He will always be remembered as the guy who would let in soft goals. Also, he was actually waived by the Wings in 2001, which led to his stints with the Islanders and Blues.

In my mind, Chris Osgood does not belong in the Hall of Fame, though I wouldn't be too terribly upset if he did make it in. He did win 401 regular season games after all, which puts him exactly 401 wins ahead of me. He was always a class act, and he was genuinely fun to root for. Hell, he even fought Patrick Roy twice, and was right in the thick of the best parts of the Wings-Avalanche rivalry.

Solomon Kane

Do you like action movies? Do you like supernatural movies? See this film. I will try and remain spoiler free.

Solomon Kane was a hero created by Robert E Howard (the Conan guy, since I'm sure someone is asking). He was a 16th Century witch hunter, and his stories are some of the oddest of all of Howard's stories. Full disclosure, since more of his work has been released, RE Howard has quickly become my favorite author, and I would argue one of the best of the 20th Century. Back to the movie.

James Purefoy stars as the title character, a reformed pirate turned Puritan witch hunter. My only real complaint with this film was that it really doesn't follow Howard's creation all that closely, however I will give it a pass because this film is almost like an "origin story" for the character, which for some reason has to be done in every film nowadays (I won't distract myself on that here, but I may come back to that subject another day).

The movie was actually a bit difficult to find, I had to get it on eBay, as it never had an official US release, which is really our loss. Instead of something different, we were subjected to another reboot of a failed 70's or 80's franchise, or Transformers 12: T&A on an Aircraft Carrier.

The effects and action sequences are top rate in my opinion. They more than adequately set the scene of stark otherworldliness that Howard strove for in this work, and considering how bizarre the source material could be, that's no mean feat. Purefoy does an excellent job, and director Michael Bassett does an excellent job keeping the movie going at a rapid pace as well as giving sufficient backstory and time for character development. The movie only checks in at 100 minutes, so that's another fairly impressive feat.

Here is a link to the official site with a trailer, so judge for yourself. I myself definitely recommend it. Oh, and another nice thing is that the trailer doesn't automatically start so you won't be diving for the volume on your browser right away.
Solomon Kane

A Blast From the Past

Wow, it's been over a year since I've posted on here. I really need to get back into this habit. So let's see, what has been going on in the past year?

I started a new job with the bank. Now I am an analyst and default database guy for one of our many, many departments. I can actually say that for the first time in all my years with the bank, I truly am happy with every facet of my job. Always before I either hated what I was doing but liked the people, or liked the people and hated what I was doing. This is a very nice change and has reduced my stress level immensely.

Still haven't settled into a good routine as far as writing, working out, and everything else goes. I'm looking into getting a set of Thai striking pads, I'll probably end up going with some Fairtex ones, and at least doing that. I need to clear out a little room so I can start shadow fighting again.

Still living with Pam and still loving it. No we haven't set a date yet, please stop asking! Guess I really don't have much else to say about that at the moment.

This is taking me a little longer than I had originally anticipated. I just recently bought a new keyboard (finally) and I'm still getting used to typing on it. I'm still in the process of deciding just exactly what I want to do with this blog, so you may have to bear with me for a bit readers, and any suggestions are of course welcome, as I do have an opinion on damn near everything, and sitting at a computer does kind of give me a chance to fact check a little when I'm ranting.

I will close by saying that I am going to make an effort to make this at least a weekly exercise. If nothing else, it gives me a little something to do in my own little corner of the net so I can fire off random musings and ravings into the depths of cyberspace. Who knows, I may even get ambitious and post a short story or two on here, but don't hold your breath on that one! For now, I hope everyone has a wonderful evening, and I'll be back soon.

Confession Time

OK so it's time to do a little soul-cleansing confession. I was watching Intervention the other day, and we were all laughing about how much of a sissy this guy on there was, and the way he let his girlfriend walk all over him.

I confess, while I wasn't quite that bad, I was dangerously close at one point with Lindsay.

When we were together, I was at a dangerously low point in regard to my own self-worth. There were a lot of contributing factors to why I was so low down and depressed, but suffice to say that's how it was. In her defense, she wasn't much better off, and she still has a terrible self-image based solely on the perceptions of others. Strange how the same lessons effect different people in such varying ways. But back to me being a big pussy.

I was so desperate for approval from a woman that I let her treat me in ways that I'd never allow one of my friends to get away with. If one of my friends put themselves through the shit I did, I'd feel obligated to try and drag them out of it, but there I sat, allowing myself to be browbeaten and trampled on by a woman who wasn't worth the time and effort I put in, and wouldn't do anything to step out of her way to meet me part of the way. I've been away from her for almost four years now, and I still let it eat at me sometimes. The lessons I learned from her are way too painful for me to give them away easily.

The first of my huge mistakes with her was in giving in to her pressure to isolate myself from my friends and family. She set herself up to become what my world revolved around, and I foolishly let her do it. She was never happy when I had other people in my life, and was intensely jealous of even my relationship with my parents. We were "together" for what added up to about three years (strung out along five years) and she never once met my parents, or even had a desire to, and I eventually stopped even trying.

The second mistake I made was not setting any boundaries on what I was willing to put up with. She got away with everything, and I put up with it because I thought I was in love, and thought I'd do anything for her. Every time I would try and assert anything, she would get upset and it would usually end with us breaking up for a few months. The thing that made me the most crazy of all was the fact that she always had to be right, even when she was quite clearly wrong. She confused me not caring enough to fight about a subject, such as who originally performed a song, with her being right, no matter what the evidence was. When I'd prove her wrong, she'd get sulky and throw a fit.

The third and biggest mistake I made was being too trusting. I never suspected her motives in anything, because I never thought of doing things behind her back, I thought she'd show me the same courtesy. In the end, this last mistake tore the scales from my eyes and brought me back to my senses, but it had to be done in the most painful manner possible for me to believe it.

Story Time! The day that things ended between her and I for good was after she had lied to me about going to a concert. She told me that her friend Shay had gotten tickets to the Beastie Boys and invited her. Right there should have been a warning sign since she didn't like them, but she told me hey the ticket was free, and I shrugged and let it go. It was a Friday, and I was home alone playing video games, which was fine by me, and around midnight, her dogs started going absolutely NUTS. I go upstairs to see what all the commotion is, and I see Lindsay's Explorer in the driveway, and in the passenger seat is some guy that I don't know. After a minute of heart-rending horror, I see Lindsay's head reappear, coming up from his lap area. Then she wipes her mouth and starts making out with him. I was absolutely numb. I went back to the basement, and started talking to Corey on AIM, and fortunately, he has the sense to know that I don't need to be around there right then, and he comes by and picks me up. Even the loud exhaust on Corey's Mustang didn't phase them, and as I was walking past her head disappeared again. It took everything that I had in me not to open the door to the truck and start swinging, but I knew right then that I could never touch her again, so what would be the point? I wouldn't feel any better afterwards, plus I'd have an assault on my record. I moved out the next day, never saying a word to her as she watched me moving things out. She asked me one time, in a very surly way "Where the hell are you going?" but I never answered. I never spoke to her again. She would email me from time to time asking what was wrong and why I left and what did she ever do to me, but I've never responded. I can't talk to her and be civil, there's too much pain, hatred, and rage.

After that incident, I spent about a day or so crying and reflecting, and pieces started falling into place. I realized how many other times she had done something suspicious and it all started clicking in my head. I won't go into how many times I'd let myself be played for a fool, but suffice to say it was more than just the once above and it will never happen again. I've become a little hyper-sensitive on the subject and now I'll bolt at the first hint of anything close to that. In the end, it all worked to make me stronger, but the cost was almost too high.