A the Geek Market a few weeks ago, I picked up Forbidden Desert.  I played once with my 5 year old that week, then again last night with the 3 & 5 year olds.  They were not the same experience.

The game is based on Forbidden Island and follows a similar structure.  There are 24 cards set up in a grid, with the center piece missing, acting as a sand storm.  The goal of the game is to find 4 missing pieces of a ship and reach the landing pad to escape.  To find a piece, you need to uncover 2 indicator cards and find their intersection, then go and get the piece.  Each turn allows you to take 4 actions, move or dig the sand, and most character can only move north/south or east/west, and 2 levels of sand means you can’t cross but have to dig through.  There are tunnels spread about that can speed play, and you do unearth various gizmos to help clear sand, protect from the sun or zoom around.  After the 4 turns, you flip over storm cards, and that’s where it gets rough.

Pic from Board Game Duel

The cards move the eye of the storm around the board, and based on that movement, more sand shows up.  There are a few cards that increase the storm force, thereby requiring you to pick up even more sand cards.  Finally, there’s the sun card, which drains your water (effectively hit points).  Too much sand and you die.  Not any water and you die.  RNG can be a pain here.

The first game was, or felt, like an even spread of storm cards.  It was manageable and fun.  We barely escaped mind you, but the idea that there was some level of control was key.  We needed to refresh our water supplies and working together made it happen.

The second game had horrible RNG.  Within the first 2 rounds, the storm had picked up 4 notches and I was down to my last hit point.  I tried to get my character to water, but the storm cards had put so much sand on the board it just wasn’t possible to move there.  My 5 year old had her turn and pulled out two more sun cards, which wiped 2 of us off the game.

I’m thinking back to Pandemic, which also has RNG, but thankfully places the bad cards in an “even” spread.  Back to back epidemics can (will) kill you in the mid game, so a decent spread is very good.

The next run through Forbidden Desert, I will be splitting up the storm pile and distributing the storm/sun cards evenly between the piles, my guess 4 piles should do.  Then I’ll shuffle each pile and stack them up.  While it’s certainly possible to have back to back poor pulls, it should be an extremely rare occurrence to pull up 3 in a row.  Random within limits, because really, who gives a crap about pure RNG except when it’s in your favor?

I hit level 30 over the weekend and the game took an odd turn for me.

Each sub-zone has one group mission, and on the penultimate one I was teamed up with 2 folks who were level 30 and had a high gear score (or it appeared high).  Yes, this game has a gear score, easy to identify with other players.  They were both near 150, which is the average item level across all pieces.  I was having a tough slog through the zone, taking quite a few hits to take an enemy down.  15K per headshot, which I thought was pretty decent – at least in the solo play.  These 2 guys didn’t even both hiding, they just ran through the entire zone, a clip dropping an entire room.  My first thought was that they had hacked the game.

And then I hit level 30.  I crafted some level 89 gear and went to do the last mission.  In it, I got a new sniper (marksman) rifle and was now doing almost 60K per headshot.  My mine skill was clearing out any solo mission in a single hit.  In the space of 30 minutes, I had quadrupled in power.  The sad part is the difference in power between me at 29 and 30 was about the same as the difference between me at 30 and those 2 guys at 150+ gear score.

Now, I’m all used to power curves.  Diablo 3 has one of the worst I’ve ever seen.  Most MMOs have bad ones as well, though dying while leveling is a rare enough occurrence these days.  The Division just takes it to a level I’m not used to.  It feels like I’m using cheat codes.

But, this is only related to the “normal” level gameplay.  I haven’t done any Dark Zone content, nor any challenging/hard missions.  I’m fairly confident a level of challenge exists within that space.  Perhaps this is like SWTOR, where once you hit level cap, they provide you with a set of epic gear to take on the “now relevant” content.  It does make all the solo-content essentially irrelevant to complete (aside from credits I guess).

So now, I’m looking for some builds and better understanding of stats in the end game.  From what I can see so far, having scavenging up to 99% has a dramatic effect on drops, though getting it to 100% causes a bug to make it worthless.  Crit chance has no impact on head shots.  Weapon Damage has diminishing returns, Skill Power affects pretty much anything you do, and there’s a bear minimum level of hit points you need to survive a sniper shot.  In a game where defence means little (from what numbers I’ve seen), optimizing offence seems to be relegated to a very small set of stats.  Curious as to the long tail in this game.

I’ll give it another week or so, to see where things fall into place.  Afterwards I think I’ll give Dark Souls 3 a try.  We’re a month in, someone is bound to have a 50% off sale right?

So I’ve been playing this one off-and-on for a bit now.  I’m not terribly far through, level 21 of 30.  I guess that’s about 70% of the map, based on what I’m able to see.  I’ve absolutely zero experience in the DarkZone (DZ) since that opens up in a level.  It’s a weird game.

The most obvious of all elements is that it’s mostly single player.  Aside from the shared hubs and the missions (that you can solo if you want), I never see anyone else in the game.  It’s quite jarring to be playing alone, having no help, then getting into a mission and having someone heal you.  I quite like the group aspect, I just wish there was more of it.  Maybe that comes later?

The RPG aspect is cool enough.  Gear drops with a multitude of stats, though only 3 really count (DPS, health and skills) in large portions.  Items have talents, there are mods for gear and skills, and there’s a fair amount of customization through talents.  I’m not certain the balance is appropriate mind you.  An even spread of stats doesn’t give much benefit compared to a high investment in DPS.  Even if you were to stack everything into health, you’d still get mowed down.  I do like that you can re-roll stats on gear (a tech room upgrade).  It allows me to keep the same stat balance, while getting general secondary stat boosts.

Guns.  There are many guns.  Machine guns, assault rifles, marksman rifles, uzis… you name it.  There’s a generic DPS stat on them, though it still requires you to pay attention to the other stats – namely rate of fire.  I have one rifle that allows me to unload an entire clip while aiming.  It does half the damage per shot of my other rifle, but shoots about 4x as fast.  Had I only looked at the damage stat, I would have been mighty peeved (I was on an earlier comparison). Mods on guns help tweak a few settings, thought it’s the talents that have most merit.  Kills that refresh skill cooldowns, or health on kill, or group stuns… all of it matters.  It’s different to have a game provide you with so much choice while leveling, but it’s refreshing.

The actual missions are all very similar.  Free some hostages, take down a bad guy, break up a deal, power up some towers.  All of them (minus investigation ones) require you to mow down a bunch of cookie cutter bad guys.  The controls are responsive, and the enemy AI isn’t dumb as dirt, so there’s some fun when they throw everything your way.

Group missions are different.  They usually cover big expanses of land, which only a few narrow hallways.  This allows for fairly large firefights.  The flamethrower and machine gun enemies are a right pain.  Solid team work, with a couple folk set to heal makes a big difference.  Bosses aren’t bullet sponges, and flanking is certainly required to make work.  Tight controls and the ability to perform quick headshots help a ton.

Overall it’s a good game.  I’m not terribly sold on the longevity, as I expect perhaps another 4-5 hours to complete the main portion of the quests.  The exploration part doesn’t hit any particular nerve and the grind for more stats died in my MMO raiding days.  Plus, it’s sunny and warm outside, after an un-ending winter.

I finished XCOM2 recently and wanted to put out some parting thoughts.  First and foremost, people should play this game.  It’s a significant improvement on the first one.  I do suggest people take a look at the mods on the steam workshop, some of them add some nice quality of life changes.  Either faster turns, overwatch for everyone (or evac), and some tweaks in the various gameplay elements.  If you do use mods, be warned that you have to keep using them on the saved game files.

Classes

Where the first game had a defense-first attitude, you could run most of the game with 4 snipers, a runner and a heavy weapons specialist.  For the first 3/4 of XCOM2, you’re on offense, and at a disadvantage too.  Your weapons are pretty weak, even with the magnetic ones.  It’ll take about 100 days of research to get beam weapons, which is a very long time.  So until that point, you need classes that can move.

The Ranger is a solid bet, with either a focus on melee attacks that make them invulnerable, or a stealth mode for those tricky missions.  They have a good critical chance and weapon damage as well, making for a pretty solid class.

The Sharpshooter is the sniper, hanging back and dealing massive damage.  I never bothered with the gunslinger tree since pistol damage is too low.  When you get Killzone (reaction shot for everyone who moves in front of you) and then Serial (keep shooting if you’re killing), you’re a frigging machine.  The downside is that this class required the magazine expansion weapon mod and either the spider or wraith armor to move quickly.  They are the main damage dealers in the last 25% of the game.

Grenadiers focus on heavy weapons and both skill trees have fun items.  Either more bullets or more bang, and I had 2 different build in my squad.  They are often the first to shoot, since they shred armor, destroy cover and boost aim chance for the rest of the team.  Essential for those buggers who love to hide.

Specialists focus on mechs and healing.  If you’re playing Ironman, you need the healing type, otherwise it’s a pretty useless class.  The odds of hacking are not high enough to be worth trying.  After completing the game, I had hacked (and taken over) 8 enemies, out of 414 kills.  They have really bad aim too.

PsiOps is stupid powerful but a very late game addition.  Insanity, Void Rift, Null Lance, and Domination change the game.  Void Rift is like a grenade with twice the range and damage.  They clear entire rooms.

Upgrades

Focus on beam weapons above all.  They change the game completely.  Your sniper can now 1 shot a Codex, which is the real end goal.  Once you’re there, I suggest 4 Spider/Wraith armor for easier movement, then 2 EXO suits for the free rockets.

Ammo upgrades are also really good.  Dragon bullets cause enemies to burn, and AP bullets ignore 5 armor (which I think covers everyone).  A sniper with AP can kill any mech in 1 hit.  With the proper world bonus, you can build ammo with no build time, so I save-scummed until I got what I wanted.

Avenger Building

Build 3 power rooms, 2 of which on the alien coils.  Keep at least one of the middle rooms for a Workshop.  Putting an engineer in this room gives 2 gremlins, which act as engineers.  An upgrade gives you 4, so try to keep it close to a power relay for a nice boost.  You’ll need 2 resistance comms to move forward in the game, both upgraded.  A Psi Lab when you have the materials too, as a PsiOps is super powerful.

I suggest ignoring a Laboratory or a Defense Matrix.  The Advanced War Center should be used for Ironman only, or you need to get a Steam Mod to make it worthwhile for regular games (for the rank bonuses).

The real big goal is getting the 2nd power relay up and running.  The game gets really hard until you do.

Avatar Progress

For a while, I was at 10/12 on the progress bar.  I was pretty sure things were going to go sideways for me.  But I got lucky and wiped out a bunch of bases in a row and dropped from 10 to 2 in a month.  Just remember that you can’t ignore any missions and if you’re given the option of missions, take the one that stops the double progress.  You can live with enemies with more armor, or poison or what have you.  You can’t live with a 12/12 progress bar.

Tactics

There are really 2 kinds of missions, timed missions and combat missions.  For the former, you want to get your snipers to high ground as soon as possible and rush the rest of the team until you find an enemy.  Moving as far as possible on the first turn, you want to save the Overwatch for later on.  Once you’re discovered, then grenades and cover make the difference.

For the 2nd half of the game, there’s a larger focus on combat missions without timers.  The last one is like 2 of these missions put together.  When there isn’t a timer, odds are you’re going to have a pretty tight group of enemies, so you want to avoid moving too far out.  Guns should be reloaded wherever possible (unless you have free reload weapon mods) and the team should never be too spread apart.  There’s nothing worse than charging forward and finding a group of mutons, sectoids, MECs, and a gatekeeper all cause you didn’t want to take cover.

Last Mission

Without spoiling it, the last mission’s objectives will end the mission when they are completed, regardless of what’s left on the map.  In the final room, once you trigger the main event, the portals will continue to spawn until you clear the objectives.  I think I ended up with 50 kills on that one level.

The game also sets up either a sequel or a DLC with a new big bad guy.  Curious as to how that rolls out.

Highly recommend this game.  I’ll be coming back to it in the future I’m sure.

More Pew Pew

I was able to finish up research on all the plasma weapons, though it took a bit to get the supplies (cash) to build them.  I’ll take the sniper rifle as an example.  The first gun was a 4-6 damage weapon, the Plasma is 6-10.  Combined with a particular set of perks, the largest normal hit I’ve had was 17, which is enough to take out nearly every enemy in a single shot.  So where my group of rookies would have had issues taking out 3 enemies, I can now take on 6 without too much worry.  Heck, I cleared a recent map in 4 turns, 1 of which was spent actually finding the enemy.  It’s a massive change in strategy.

Shadow Hunter

Well, more specifically the Ranger.  I have one that’s set up to be a melee fighter who seems to be all but unkillable.  She has great mobility, awesome damage potential, and one particular skill that makes her immune to damage if she lands a killing blow for 1 attack. That last item means she can chain kill an entire group, solo.

The downside is that I didn’t know what skills were in the class while levelling.  I opted for a team-based approach, where she would be slightly ahead of the team, acting as a scout.  There’s nothing wrong with that playstyle mind you, as it allows me to be pretty aggressive.

That said, I’m going to train another one and focus on the shadow line of skills.  The majority of missions are time-based and being able to move in the shadows to complete objectives would be a massive boost to productivity.  I’ll try a single one out and if that work, I think I’ll train 2-3 more to make a B squad.  With smart stealth movement, I should be able to complete the VIP missions, and X4 missions in a couple turns.  The abduction and relay missions would be ambush bonanzas.

Long Game

The Avatar project is at 9/12 now.  I had been blocked from progress due to the lack of comm relays, and I was blocked on that due to lack of power, and I was blocked on that with a lack of rooms to build in.  I had seen the limitation early enough but it’s 10 days to dig out the room, and another 10-15 to build what I need, with all engineers on hand.  That took a while.  Now I’m at 11 relays available, enough to start exploring more missions to bring that Avatar project score down.

And I think that’s one of the quirks of XCOM, in that it has a lot of stretches of preparation and then major plateaus of progress.  Going from regular weapons to Gauss weapons was weeks of research but made a massive difference in my ability to take down Advent forces.  Plasma weapons took even longer and that has allowed me to safely run through 2/3^rd of the enemies.  I still don’t have a Psionic combatant ready for battle as he’s still training.  I’d be curious to see him in action, given the planned skillset I want for him (and past experience in XCOM1).

And the progress itself is limited.  I only have so many researchers and engineers to do work.  I only have so many supplies and intel to trade, only so many cores, crystals and alloys to build with.  Even with a ton of stuff unlocked, I can’t build it all, I don’t have the resources.  The good news is that I don’t feel punished with that limit.  Each decision is simply a step to the next plateau and there are very few decisions that I would call “bad” or wasteful.  Sure, you can have bad timing like I did with the comms relays, but a bad call in the long-game is quite hard to do.  And that’s a rare achievement for a game today.

I’ve spent a fair chunk with XCOM2 so far, enough to have the Archon enemy show up on a recent mission and I’ve just unlocked Plasma rifles.  I think that’s a fair chunk of progress.

First off, the game is good, if not great.  A lot of improvements are found over the Enemy Within expansion and some key pieces of the Long War mod have been added for flavor.  The overworld map interface has been updated, so that you always have something to do rather than just run out the clock.  When a player gets injured on a mission, they sit out a very long time (which can be drastically reduced with the appropriate shop in the ship).  Most missions have a timer attached, which forces you to move forward, without really knowing what’s up ahead.  All these combined make for a significant risk/reward decision on every move.

I’ll give an example.  One recent mission had be counter an Advent attack on a rebel base.  These missions always have you rescue at least 6 people out of 13, and also require you to clear the map of enemies.  There’s no counter to the mission but the aliens will kill at least 1 person per turn if not discovered, and even when discovered will often go out of their way to hit a friendly.  This means that you have 7 turns or less to find every enemy on the map, or you fail a part of the mission.  Sometimes this works out and you find the enemies in small groups.  Other times it turns into a game of dominoes.

This particular mission I found two Mutons on turn 2 and they had a Berserker run away from view.  I take the first two down and while the enemies are moving the Berserker comes back and an Advent MEC shows up with 2 support in tow.  It takes 2 chain shots (double shots really) to take down the Beserker and I successfully hack into the MEC to take control.  Well, that MEC now has additional field of vision and triggers one group of section+support and another group of 2 Muton and a Berserker.  By the end of turn 3, I have found everyone on the map and I have 3 characters (of 6) that have used their turns. Did I mention I was hunkered down inside a gas station too?

Things ended up OK, with just 2 soldiers wounded.  I was lucky in that I had spent time/money on improving my gear and loadout.  If I had the gear of the previous mission I would have been washed out.

The game is full of these types of moments, where you think things are going OK and then it piles more onto the plate.  And all the time you’re thinking “just one more turn”.

Base Building

Base progress is limited to two factors – scientists and engineers.  The first do all the research and the latter excavate rooms, build new ones, and provide bonus to operating rooms.  You can acquire either through missions, through the monthly HQ store (go to home base to find them), or through the Black Market.  You need as many as you can get, particularly engineers.

Power consumption is a problem and to get all rooms to work as you want them to, you need 3 power plants, two of which on the special Coil Rooms, with upgrades. That’s 6 engineers working full time on those rooms.  I only have 6 total, so that’s a problem I’m trying to sort out.

Random Numbers

I’m sure it’s nostalgia talking but the original XCOM in the 90s had an aiming system that seemed to work more than not.  If it said 90% chance, then you were going to hit 90% of the time.  The reboot had turn-locked rolls in place, where once you started a player-controlled round, the odds of every shot were pre-determined.  (This is easy to prove as reloading a save and retaking the shot has the same results).

XCOM2 seems to have tweaked aiming a fair bit, where the odds are more in your favor than not and misses are infrequent enough to avoid frustration.  The enemy has similar aim penalties to you, so it does feel generally balanced.  That doesn’t mean you don’t find situations that make you scream though.  Cripes, I had an Archon stunned with 2 people point blank who missed and grazed the guy.  The heck?

Hacking and Skulljacking (a sort of unpleasant battle mind-probe) both have RNG as well, with multiple outcomes possible, based on chance and skill.  Aside from 1 item that’s class restricted, I haven’t found another way to increase that ability.  It’s frustrating to continually see a 10-20% chance of success, even after a dozen missions.  I need to figure that out…

Enemies Abundant

There are about 15 enemy types I’ve found so far, of varying degrees of challenge.  Where the previous game was either a Sectoid or Mutoid map, this one has multiple types per map, usually a dozen individuals per.

The Advent troops are military-like, though the Stun version is annoying as high hell due to his massive range.  Sectoids, so far, have a weak mind attack and ability to summon zombies.  Mutons are smarter than Advent troops and immune to melee attacks.  Faceless take the shape of normal humans until you get too close. Vipers can pull you into melee range and choke you to death.  MECs can shoot a rocket barrage and have decent armor.  Codex split into two when attacked, can teleport (which prevents Overwatch from working) and have a bullcrap AE attack that removes all ammo and blows up in a turn.  They are very annoying.

All combined, they pose an interesting challenge in every fight.  One group you might be able to pick off, another you may need to hack and melee down.  There’s always a priority target too, so there’s choice in the decisions.  The AI is also reasonably smart, making some fights difficult to predict.

End Goal

After a couple missions you encounter the Avatar project, with is the enigmatic goal the aliens are trying to achieve in 12 steps.  They move 1 step closer per month (sometimes 2) and you counteract progress by completing specific missions.  Think of it as a game clock, where you need to complete all your progress before they reach victory.  The issue is that you have no idea what progress is required on your end until you’ve completed your first play through.  When you’re given the choice between researching better armor or moving that game progress, which is the right choice?

So far, I’ve opted for personal research and player upgrades and deferred a lot of the high level goal progress.  My Avatar bar is at 7/12 and I’ve been able to keep it at that spot for a few months now. I know in previous games, Plasma weapons were the top of the chain, and I’ve just unlocked the first batch.  I don’t have any Psionic crew yet, though one’s in training.

Overall

Clearly, I like the game.  It’s an improvement over the previous iteration and the expansion.  There are some minor gripes (hiding information to make decisions is the biggest) but the general pace and feel of the game is excellent.  It requires a stability patch as I’ve had the game crash a dozen times so far, but there are no in-game bugs that I’ve found.  The highlights are the randomly generated maps, a better overworld map, the countdown clock on missions, improved skill trees, stealth/melee upgrades, and the overall risk/reward structure found in nearly every part of the game.   Highly recommended.