VektorT

I will go on murky waters here: XCom Apocalypse. I always thought it was a good game, a hidden gem lost in the overall feel that every XCom sequel was bad until Firaxis one. It changed the formula quite a bit but overall I still like it and it did things no other game did before and some no other game did since. First of all: Destructive environment on a 1997 game. And it did it quite well for the time and even when compared to today games. I would argue that appart from bullet penetration it did it even better than Silent Storm. In XCom Apocalypse basically everything could be exploded with a strong enough blast and while things don't go flying across the screen, building and roofs does collapse other than just disappearing. What it means is the roof can colapse in someones head doing damage or killing it, and who was standing in that roof will fall with it also taking fall damage. Also unlike JA2 you could have multiple floors and they are everywhere. Sometimes one floor may collapse over another causing a chain reaction. Destroying a building foundations and making the whole thing collapse killing or damaging everyone inside was possible. To make all of that more enjoyable, the game features a lot of scenarios with scaffoldings and elevated passages that make use of this feature. An alien is sniping you from a elevate position? Aim the rocket at the building supports and if the blast doesn't kill him, the fall may do the job. The city map. While XCom Apocalypse doesn't have a world map like most XCom games, it have a single city map (and a posterior alien city one) that is quite complex. When you move stuff and troops from base to base, you have to actually send them there by plane or truck and choose wich vehicle will do the job, so you need more than just fighters. When you buy something from somewhere, it have to psychally arrive too, wich means sometimes a dick alien may show up at the wrong time and shot that small cargo flying car that was going to deliver you new stuff. It's rare and "unintentional" but possible. What is fun is that all I said about the destructive enviroment before also applies to the city map. When fighting UFOs your planes and vehicles could damage the city infraestructe and also make things collapse, so you have to be careful to don't destroy everything in your path because... Everyone is a faction on the map. Literally. The ingame store where you buy ammo? They are a faction in the map. The guy who sell you ships is one too. There are different suppliers for everything you don't produce yourself and they all have buildings and vehicles in the map. You have the Police who will also try to fight the aliens and a lot of other minor factions that may or may not benefict you in some way or another or just be alien cooperators. While fighting in the city map their building may get damaged by accident by you or intentionally by the aliens, they get pissed, they also get pissed if you fight the tactical battle inside their building and do a lot of colateral damage. From time to time you have to root out aliens infiltrators and search different buildings and they may get pissed if you go to the wrong one uninvited, but if you take the risk sometimes you can just follow an UFO and see where it's landing aliens to know where the infiltrators are, but expect strong opposition. Granted, it doesn't go very deep in the relation system, but still is more than most games where there is only you and the enemy on the map and neutral parties means little outside that specific tactical encounter. Weapons options and niches. Unlike most games, XCom Apocalypse doesn't have a clear weapon progression. While you do develop new ones or could even learn to use the aliens ones, even starting weapons may or may not become obsolete depending on your play style. The starting machinegun still is the fastest firing weapon in the game and while it damage and penetration does becomes subpar later on, it still is great in close encounters with less armoured enemies where you can shot A LOT of bullets precisely. While it does lack some sense of progression, at least it got it covered by making every weapon feels different. All in all, I think XCom Apocalypse had a lot of innovation and ambition, but sometimes it could be a buggy mess. There was some mods and unnoficial patches to help out, but back in the 90s it could not savage a broke vanilla game reputation. I do think it still is a good and unique enough experice worth of going back to, but to be honest I played it so long ago when I was way younger that I'm not sure how it would feel now in 2023.

You guys are asking the wrong questions about this rifle. The proper ones are "will it be in the final game?" and "does the dual wield perk works with it?"

Oh, man, that's a classic! Three top lines in JA history to me: - Fidel being busy. - Dimitri forgetting things "again" - Ivan saying anything in russian that I have no idea what it is