XCOM 2

Good luck, commanders!

These UK commercials are pretty smart.


Link to video.


Link to video.

I've been playing for a couple hours thanks to VPN, and my goodness the difficulty has been ramped up from the streams. Haven't lost anyone yet on Commander difficulty but many injuries have occurred. The performance is also fine if you turn off AA and SSAO, I get 50-60 fps on high at 1080p with a 780 classified.

Why yes, of course I have to install an update despite having previously preloaded the 30-odd gig download.

Update time: 2 hours, 1 hour, 20 minutes, 1 day.... Pick one!


"By default, XCOM 2 s enemies don t get more accurate at close range like you do—a big departure from Enemy Unknown which sees a lot of hilarious incompetence from charging ADVENT Troopers." Huh.

Got the game. Damn it is hard starting out.

It is super easy to misclick in this game, so be attentive.

Monado said:

I'm on the fence about buying this game. I mean, I really want to as I loved the last one, but my graphics card doesn't meet the minimum requirement (though the rest of my laptop system seems fine). I've done this with some games before and everything was fine if I lowered some of the graphics. The last game I tried though, MKX, would barely work

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Okay, so my computer is a Toshiba Satellite P-75. It is a two and a half year old laptop with an Intel on-board GPU. It is not a gaming laptop. I have a regular old spin hard drive and 8GB of RAM.

It runs XCom 2 okay. It defaults to the minimum graphic settings, which is noticeable. There are some shudders, but no significant problems with the graphics (no artifacts or anything like that). The framerate drops at times in a noticeable but not awful manner. If your laptop is in line with mine you probably can play the game just fine.

Hopefully that is helpful to you in deciding whether or not your machine can run the game.

I also want to note that I recently tried Mad Max on the same machine. That did not work well. However, Steam was generous enough to give me a refund when I found the game did not work. So it might not be a bad idea to buy from Steam and rely on their return policy if it doesn't work for you. I myself bought XCom 2 from GMG and while I benefited from a 20% off coupon, that's the first time I bought from them so I cannot comment on whether or not they have a return policy for downloaded games.

I can however say that I do have access to the Steam Workshop w/ my Steam key purchased via GMG.

I am at work so I have to wait until the end of the workday before I can play XCOM2.

Also, according to Steam, XCOM2 has surpassed Civ5 in most current users playing the game.

This game is incredible; having a blast with it. I never played with the Long War mod, so I'm not sure which things were inspired by it, but there are a lot of improvements over the original XCOM. Overall, the design of the game is solid and smart. Effects-wise, I'm even leaving the action cams on (used to always disable them in the original XCOM) since they're done so nicely.

The graphics are a bit demanding as you start to raise the overall quality preset. It seems a lot of folks are having issues, even with modern GPU's. Though, thankfully, the game can still look great at the lower settings.

For me, the game isn't about sexy, realistic graphics; I favor gameplay and ultra-smooth frame rates and performance.

I think with some tweaking of the graphics settings, beyond just selecting the preset option at the top of the list, one can get an even better looking game without sacrificing smooth gameplay. For instance, anti-aliasing is a very demanding setting and will drop your frames fast.

Here are my settings so far with my two old GTX 560 Ti's in SLI:
(Also, a few days ago, I finally "took the plunge" into Windows 10 and did a clean install with it... things are running nicely overall.)

Oh my god being stuck at work sucks SO MUCH right now. 6 more hours here before I can go home and murder some X-Rays.

Wolfbeckett said:

Oh my god being stuck at work sucks SO MUCH right now. 6 more hours here before I can go home and murder some X-Rays.

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I know how you feel. XCOM2 is loaded on my home computer since this morning but I am here at work. I have 3 hours until I go home.

Well, im 6 hours in and it is everything i had hoped for. And there was me worried that the difficulty might be problematic. This game is TOUGH. Might be even tougher than vanilla x com. Those damn turrets are a menace. It looks great and very slick. And the voice acting is brilliant.

Can anyone tell me where the hell the black market is located? Ive looked all over my avenger and i cant find the bloody thing.

My understanding is that the black market is a place on the geoscape that you have to physically fly to and visit, it isn't in the avenger.

Wolfbeckett said:

My understanding is that the black market is a place on the geoscape that you have to physically fly to and visit, it isn't in the avenger.

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This might explain why i have not found it lol.

Really enjoying the game!!!

I was worried when I saw all the complaints in the Steam Discussion groups, but I've had no problems at all (lots of complaints about "timed missions" / game crashes / performance problems)

Only thing that kinda bugs me is the facial hair. It doesn't seem to look right on their faces, all the other graphics look great ... dunno maybe it's me

Saw an interesting article @PCGame on modifying ini files. Going to come back to that - one point they made was the enemy does not get a to hit % increase the closer they are but the player does (not sure I like that )

got acclimatized on Classic mode, now it's off to start the real campaign on the next difficulty level !!!

Good luck commanders


Edit: I had the prepurchase bonus, it listed one of the bonuses as " instantly unlock a survivor to add as a recruit in your barracks" ... I was thinking this was a person from the first game... turns out its just an armor set from the first game

I ran home during my lunch break and play the tutorial mission, I can definitely see what people are saying about the optimization problems. I select Overwatch and the game sits for several seconds before the command goes through. I fire at an ADVENT scumbag, same situation, after I've pushed all the buttons it still takes several seconds before everything starts. Not a huge deal each individual time but over the course of an entire mission I can see how it could be quite irritating. I'll be playing around with my video settings when I get home from work to see if I can resolve that.

I never played XCOM:EU. Starting right in with XCOM2. Played 3 hours. WOW. The game really pulls you into the narrative. You really feel like a desperate resistance group. And the tactical combat is incredibly intense. I don't remember breathing the whole time I was in the mission. My last mission to save a VIP was right up to the wire. Literally, with only 1 turn left on the clock, I pulled all my soldiers and the VIP to the extraction zone and out. I finally exhale when the after action report pops up. 2 gravely wounded and 2 promotions.

ImperialGuard said:

Really enjoying the game!!!

I was worried when I saw all the complaints in the Steam Discussion groups, but I've had no problems at all (lots of complaints about "timed missions" / game crashes / performance problems)

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Why are the "timed missions" not an issue?

Rubin said:

Why are the "timed missions" not an issue?

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I think the timers "fit" the theme of XCOM 2 -- You're a guerrilla organization, and when the mission starts, you have to leave soon, before the ADVENT/aliens come in with reinforcements

It adds another dimension to the missions -- instead of like XCOM where you could take all day on a mission, doing the same thing every turn, (go to high cover and overwatch while waiting for the enemy)

Of course having said all that, I do find that it does takes some of the enjoyment out of the missions, because you are so rushed you don't get to enjoy the tactical part of the game.

I've only played maybe 8 missions into the story, and feels like maybe 40% of the missions had some kind of "timing element". Not sure if it keeps that kind of ratio, but it might be nicer if it was a little lower ratio on timed missions.

I haven't failed any of the timed missions either, so that hasn't hurt my perception of them

So far my experience with the timed missions is that they keep you on your toes but you have plenty of time as long as you're moving forward normally. You have to play aggressively, but not suicidely, you have enough time to be careful and move in a smart way. I often find myself getting to the objective with several turns to spare.

Also my issues from earlier today appear to have not lasted beyond the tutorial, the game moves... if not smoothly, at least not badly enough that it detracts from my experience. Really enjoying it at this point. The load times when entering and exiting missions are quite long though, and I have an SSD, I'd hate to see how long it takes on a normal platter drive.

Wolfbeckett said:

So far my experience with the timed missions is that they keep you on your toes but you have plenty of time as long as you're moving forward normally. You have to play aggressively, but not suicidely, you have enough time to be careful and move in a smart way. I often find myself getting to the objective with several turns to spare.

Also my issues from earlier today appear to have not lasted beyond the tutorial, the game moves... if not smoothly, at least not badly enough that it detracts from my experience. Really enjoying it at this point. The load times when entering and exiting missions are quite long though, and I have an SSD, I'd hate to see how long it takes on a normal platter drive.

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Yea i suffered a squad wipe on my first timed mission because i didnt move aggressively enough. I simply didnt make enough use of the concealment mode and there was a group of ADVENT i tiptoes around. You're right - you have to play aggressively not suicidal. They are a bit less challenging than Gangplank was in EW (certainly the longwar version). And they are not too dismillar to bomb missions either. I like the mission variety.

Wolfbeckett said:

So far my experience with the timed missions is that they keep you on your toes but you have plenty of time as long as you're moving forward normally. You have to play aggressively, but not suicidely, you have enough time to be careful and move in a smart way. I often find myself getting to the objective with several turns to spare.

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Yeah, I think the key is not being scared to move aggressively in the beginning. You have to double move the first couple turns but keep your soldiers in cover. If you are too timid and always move within the blue line and overwatch, you'll take too long to reach the objective. You also can't be too defensive against the aliens. Don't just sit your soldiers behind cover and overwatch. Once you find a group of aliens, make a plan for how to eliminate the group in 1-2 turns by using all your soldier's strengths. Execute the plan and then move your soldiers on closer to the objective. Sometimes I achieved the objective with only 1-2 turns left. Remember that you don't have time for prolonged battles of attrition.

I actually like the variety in missions. The timed missions are fun because they do add some pressure to more quickly.

On a different note, I am pretty impressed about how smooth the game runs on my average laptop. The screens sometimes lag a bit but overall the game is imminently playable.