I always hated when bad guys spawn in, move, and kill my guys before I can do anything.

Moving this video to RedSky's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

*beg

Sending this video to Beggar's Canyon to plea for a little attention - beg requested by original submitter RedSky.

*scifi *animation

Adding video to channels (Animation, Scifi) - requested by ant.

Yeah, I hope this was a pretty heavily scripted encounter to show things off rather than a representation of actual gameplay.

I'd really love to see a mechanic similar to the rewind from Invisible Inc. Purists would probably hate it, but I think turning what is basically save scumming into a limited resource does a lot to smooth out the dice rolls. I think it would be cool to have to agonize over whether you should burn a rewind to try and save that rookie or save it for a more valuable veteran.

I never played the original old school X COM, but I played all of Enemy Unknown on Ironman, and I have mixed feelings about a rewind system.

First, I think ironman really adds to the experience of X COM. There's a genuine sense of loss when one of your best troops dies.

I wouldn't mind an option for a rewind system, by with one caveat.
Invisible Inc. is clearly designed with the rewind system in mind (and it's a great game). But I'd still like to play X COM without the rewind without the game penalising me for it, i.e. the games get easier with it rather than harder without it.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining that very well.

Invisible Inc didn't always include the rewind mechanic and I don't think it was actually a planned feature. Later iterations probably balanced the game more around it, but I still think it is kinda amazing how well it works given it wasn't in the game until relatively late into development.

I'd actually very much like the game to penalise you for not using rewind. Or rather I'd like the game to be balanced with assumption you will use it. I like that rewind creates a nice middle ground between quick save scumming and iron mode. I think it allows for a more challenging game in other respects and that doesn't feel frustrating when a miss click puts your main girl in open ground surrounded by cyberdisks (especially when the UI was pretty bad when it came to different elevations...). It smooths the transition from too easy to too hard.

That said, there are a number of changes from Enemy Unknown that I'd like to have more priority. Borrowing from Invisible Inc again, the ever raising alarm level in that creates a sense of urgency that I never felt in XCOM, even in the bomb missions and with the meld resource. I never lost a soldier because I forced them to take an incredible risk for the sake of the mission, I really only lost people because an unlucky shot dinked them in head across the map when they were in heavy cover. It looks like they are perhaps addressing urgency with the threat of reinforcements, which is cool. The other frustration I had with XCOM:EU/EW is that it always seemed to punish scouting. You'd effectively "wake up" the aliens by finding them which really disincentivised spreading out to cover more ground. It was simply safer to move as ball and let the enemies run into you (with the possible exception of the terror missions). it looks like they might be addressing that by making you the insurgent force with ambush tactics etc.

So yeah. I'm hyped.

I'm not going to see this as final, since it's most likely a thoroughly planned and gussied up e3 trailer, but this does nothing to hype me up for the game. Heavily scripted, spawning enemies, ramped up 'dramatic appeal', and pretty much the same clunky graphics and interface as E:U... Depressing.