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Gaming XCOM 2 Review

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Combatus, 12 Feb 2016.

  1. Combatus

    Combatus Bit-tech Modding + hardware reviews Lover of bit-tech Super Moderator

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  2. DeckerdBR

    DeckerdBR Minimodder

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    Great review!

    But I am glad I didn't pre-order or get either this or the new tomb raider on day one.

    This would ruin it for me:
    Unfortunately, this extra detail comes at a heavy price. XCOM 2 has some pretty serious performance issues and its fair share of bugs. Weirdly, the performance issues aren't consistent. There were times when it ran as smooth as glass, and others where the framerate plummeted like a cormorant diving for a fish. But given we're running on a GTX Titan, the fact that it drops at all is a cause for concern. There are also long periods of downtime between player and alien turns, and even lengthy pauses between individual actions like the aliens spotting a player and the game running the appropriate animation. At times you can almost hear the gears squealing as the game struggles to calculate the moment-to-moment events.

    I am looking forward to it but am happy to wait for bug fixed, performance improvements.
     
  3. Ljs

    Ljs Modder

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    I've watched a few streamers play it and even the most critical of them seemed to be really enjoying it.

    I can imagine a patch to fix most of the issues is just around the corner (apparentlly the Chryssalids cause issues and crashes) and there are already mods to fix the downtime between turns and afew other things.

    Bit of a shame they couldn't do this on release but I'm more than happy to wait as I play through Enemy Within again.
     
  4. gosh

    gosh Minimodder

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    i run it on a g3258/750ti system with presets at high and i must say i haven't had any crashes or indeed horrible framerate issues outside of skyranger (the post-mission promotion bit for example crawls). loading missions again takes an age (though seems oddly much faster if loading a save rather than starting a mission, that pesky skyranger again) and waiting around for aliens to do their reveal animation then move is annoyingly jarring.

    still, superb game and every mission feels new, the strategy side is brilliant and i appreciate the time limits and urgency of the game - xcom did feel like a bit of a creep in battles and strategy side even with enemy within. it'll take something special for this not to be my game of the year.
     
  5. Guest-56605

    Guest-56605 Guest

    What makes the poor performance even more disappointing is the fact they pushed back the original release date also - it's one of the few games on my wish list but personally I'll be pulling the trigger when it's the game it should have been on release.
     
  6. gosh

    gosh Minimodder

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  7. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    Makes it the last 3 big budget pc games to suffer performance issues.

    Batman / Just cause 3 and now this.

    A worrying trend considering 2 of them where surely designed from the ground up to run on xbox and ps4 hardware which is basically just a pc.

    I wonder if people saying PC hardware in consoles would be good for pc gamers would now back track a bit as most of the recent cross platform launches have been awful.

    Even PC exclusives have really had alot issues the last year or so.
     
  8. Gunsmith

    Gunsmith Maximum Win

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    disable vsync and frame smoothing in game & make a profile for xcom and set vsync to adaptive.
     
  9. Panos

    Panos Minimodder

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    Indeed.

    Turn off Vsync and you are good to go. And make sure you have 4GB VRAM before you try high settings without AA at 2560x1440 (GTX970 doesn't count at 4GB card).

    The game runs fine, haven't see any bug that affects gameplay (maybe few second delays here and then) and already have clocked 45hours into it.

    Ah and if you have wife and chilren, kiss them and say goodbye for few months. The game is superb.
     
  10. DbD

    DbD Minimodder

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    Played on a laptop with what is now a relatively old GTX 675MX and it runs the game fine and graphics still look good. There's a difference between expecting the game to play maxed all the time on some super high end card and just wanting to play...
     
  11. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    My main annoyance is the occasional spurious inputs I get. Mainly left- and right-clicks getting doubled up (jumping you out of menus, dashing just past your destination as the screen scrolls under the cursor, firing when you just want to open the target selection, etc), and clocks randomly passing 'through' the UI and acting on objects behind it (e.g. a unit behind a UI button).
     
  12. raxonb

    raxonb Minimodder

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    I spent the first two days on my character pool. Completed it last night on Commander difficulty. Had a graphical glitch on the final mission which forced me to reload but apart from that the game ran pretty good - one thing that I noticed was that the game kept crashing with V-Sync off so I had to keep it on.

    The game itself it superb. Thoroughly enjoyed it with some proper nail biters - one particular mission I had my sniper bleeding out and on the last turn of my last squad member I hit an execution on a sectopod which finished the mission and kept my sharpshooter alive. The weapon upgrades are extremely helpful too and have definitely swung things around for me with one shot kills or granting another turn.

    My only criticism really is that right near the end of the game before you take on he final mission I had plenty time to rank up my soldiers and purchase any tech I wanted. Those few extra months allowed me to gain the supplies and intel I needed for weapons and armour. I created the psi lab very late but because of this I was able to just keep scanning and allow my psi ops to gain every perk (extremely handy) - the odd guerilla ops jumping in here and there.

    The final mission was very challenging - legend ironman players beware! Well done guys and gals for creating an epic sequel. I can see myself playing this for as long as I played C&C Generals, which easily ruined my life for many years!
     
    Last edited: 15 Feb 2016
  13. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    So far I've only experienced one really bad glitch, and that was fixed by quitting the game and re-loading. The AI basically locked up totally: aliens/Advent did absolutely nothing, they just stood there not reacting and not moving, even when being shot at. I wouldn't call it "game breaking" since it didn't corrupt my save game or anything like that.

    I bloody love this game. XCOM EU/EW is one of my favourite games to have been released in the last 5-10 years, and XCOM 2 is shaping up to be just as good. I'm trying to avoid playing through it too quickly, I want to experience as much as the game can throw at me before I start playing on ironman.

    That's not a fair comparison. The latest Batman game was so badly broken that it was unplayable and had to be withdrawn from sale while they tried to fix it. XCOM 2 has its share of performance issues but it's not unplayable - just turn off a few options here and there and it's fine. Doubtless there will be performance fixes & enhancements, which is more than you can say for Arkham Knight & Warner Brothers - IIRC they've basically given up on it altogether.

    EDIT:

    Been there.... I've had some serious OHCRAPOHCRAPOHCRAPOHCRAPOHCRAP moments, and I've had some genuine moments of joy. The first time I saw the sectopod I absolutely crapped myself - I crapped myself again when it "stood up".... They were bad enough in Enemy Unknown/Within but they were dumb, lumbering tanks in that game- they could be dealt with easily if you had high-ranking soldiers (particularly a sniper with Double Tap). Thankfully their relatively poor accuracy has carried over to this game, but their armour is so much tougher now. On missions I am now regularly encountering Andromedons, Sectopods, Heavy Mechs, Gatekeepers, multiple Codexes, Archons, often all on the same mission.

    Mind control was a fairly high-level psionic power in EU/EW, usually used in the latter half of the game. In XCOM 2 a Sectoid - A SECTIOD FFS - can mind control your troops in the very first non-tutorial mission. These games are brutal and I love it.
     
    Last edited: 16 Feb 2016
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