Xenonauts 2 [Early Access] – Round Two

I just finished the Early Access 180-day romp of Xenonauts 2 once again, and I got to say, I’m much more favorable to it this time. All in all, I just had a really swell time battling the aliens. The story is shaping up to be something more interesting beyond “the aliens are coming”. The battles are fun, and so are all the research and upgrades you can get for your men and vehicles (air fleet included).

Just going by that, I highly recommend the game, it is an improvement over Xenonauts, and you can’t be too picky when you are a lover of the X-com-like genre in the first place. However, Xenonauts 2 suffers currently from one major issue, and I’m afraid if this is not remedied it will make the whole alien-blasting adventure feel utterly lackluster.

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Jagged Alliance 3 – Mercenaries Unite

One of the most abused, but beloved turn-based tactical PC franchises is back with another game. Earlier attempts go from abysmal to somewhat playable but often lacking soul. Through some fantastic luck (and skill?) this time it actually captures the classic feeling and is fun to boot. Jagged Alliance 3 has the essence of what once was, which is a rare instance of something old being updated to modern times and still manages to retain an old-school gaming feeling. It’s not without faults though. For example, the laptop shenanigans from Jagged Alliance 2 have been transferred over, but it has not been fully explored, which makes it feel like a cheap copy of the original. The basics are there, yet, all the fun flair, or at least most of it, is gone. The A.I.M mercenary recruitment page no longer comes off as a normal website either. Luckily other parts have much more effort put into it – like the combat, and story, which in turn makes this a worthwhile sequel to a fabled game.

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Xenonauts 2 – Early Access Impressions

With Xenonauts 2 soon coming out in early access (18 July), I thought I would give it another go and give my impressions. The reason that I’m able to play it now already is that I was a backer on Kickstarter. It has been an incredibly long road since then with many up and downs. But I’m glad the end is near, as a release is finally approaching, even if it’s only the early access kind. So, how is it, is it worth the wait? Will it be a better game than Xenonauts?

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Aliens: Dark Descent – The Lethe Bug Crisis

In space, nobody can fix your bugs. Besides the fairly buggy nature of Aliens: Dark Descent, it is somewhat of an unexpected sleeper hit of the year. The gameplay, and general mechanics work well, and are clearly thought-out, which together with the visuals and audio creates a very nice Aliens experience. It truly feels like the movie when you slowly skulk the poorly lit and narrow space colonial corridors – then for it to suddenly switch from tension to high-octane action when your badass Marines with their cool outfits and iconic weapons open up on the deadly and terrifying Xenomorphs. It actually resembles Aliens to a fault, as it becomes a little too much familiar in the narrative. Seemingly, there is only one way to write games based on the Alien franchise.

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Brutal AI for OpenXcom Extended

I have been following Brutal AI (version 6.6.3) by the user Xilmi over at OpenXcom for a couple of weeks now, and recently I decided to take the plunge myself with the mods from my own compilation The Ultimate X-com Experience. At first, not much is changed, as this modification only makes changes to the AI, mostly concentrated on battle tactics. However, as soon as I got my first ground battle, the AI improvements showed themselves very quickly.

While I find X-com and the OpenXcom mods fun, the AI has always been on the more “predictable” side (to be nice), and this is regardless of the mods I have tried. Brutal AI changes all this, and apparently, it works with all modifications from the get-go, which is very impressive.

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