Recent reviews by NukeMaus

XCOM 2 is the (incredibly) anticipated sequel to XCOM Enemy Unknown/Within - but does it live up to the hype? Let's run down XCOM 2's very own feature list:

XCOM ON THE RUN: Pretty cool mechanic. I like flying the base around and picking what you scan for, it makes the waiting for missions etc. feel a little more pro-active and engaging. Shame it dips my FPS to Power-Point level trying to access the bridge, but whatever.

RECRUIT RESISTANCE FIGHTERS: The revamped classes is probably one of my favourite things about the game. Gunslinger sniper/marksman is a lot of fun, and the heavy/grenadier feels like less of a liability than in EW (though that may be personal preference on my part), as does the support/specialist (being able to heal from range is incredibly useful, and makes the specialist more of an actual soldier and less of a tag-along as in EW).

TACTICAL GUERRILLA COMBAT: Eh. There are some good changes to missions and combat, and some very, very bad ones. Among the good, tweaks such as reloads not ending your turn make combat flow a lot smoother, and help to compensate for the loss of the pistol from every class bar the sharpshooter. The fact that you don't need to worry about weapon fragments (as only some enemies drop loot that is destroyed in explosions) means that you can be a lot more grenade-happy, which helps the grenadier to feel much more useful - I barely used grenades in EW, now I'm firing off 3+ per mission.
However, most missions now put you on an 8-turn clock (12 for hostage escorts) to complete the mission objective by. This is incredibly infuriating - what's the point in devoting a section of the tutorial part of the game to overwatch ambushes from stealth when you can't afford the time to do them? It limits your strategy to running and gunning - good luck making use of that long-range-geared sniper most of the time.

A NEW BREED OF ENEMY: I feel like the balance of when enemies show up is way, way off. Sectoids (with 8 health and mind control) showed up for me in the first mission, and have appeared at least once in every mission since. A little over a month in, and I meet the Stun Lancer, who has 6HP, massive movement and a melee attack that insta-KOs any soldier (means they are effectively dead for the mission unless you can revive them, but are fine afterwards); I see about two per mission on normal difficulty now, and they are already starting to replace the standard ADVENT grunts. Maybe I'm just being screwed by the RNG, but still, the spike in enemy difficulty seems borderline unfair. I've been rushing down laser weapons after doing the research you need to do to advance the story - maybe I wasn't quick enough. I still feel exceptionally punished by the enemy spawns.
Also, I've had some issue with the enemies taking exceptionally dumb decisions (using both moves to go between two pieces of cover, overwatching when they could take easy killshots etc). Again, I'm not a massively experienced XCOM player, so this might just be standard for normal difficulty. If so, disregard.

RESEARCH, DEVELOP AND UPGRADE: Eh. The tech tree isn't massively different as far as I can see, though that may change later into the game. It's not bad, but there's nothing too new besides the modular weapon system (which I do rather like).

EACH MISSION IS A UNIQUE CHALLENGE: "There are virtually infinite combinations of maps, missions and goals." Some of them are piss-easy, and some are brutally difficult. There seems to be very little consistency in the difficulty, with lots of lulls and spikes. Again, that might just be me or my crappy luck.

I can't say much about mods, since I'm not using any - the three made by the Long War crew look pretty cool, and there's one for free camera control which I've been eyeing up (the default camera is horrible). Same with MP, might be good, I don't know.

What isn't good, however, is how the game barely seems to run for most people. Since I have a crappy laptop, the 10fps lagspikes whilst on the Avenger were what I expected, but they seem to be a problem for everyone else too.


Tl;dr (and I don't blame you):
+graphics and sound design are excellent
+combat is generally better
+classes are much more interesting
+scanning now requires some thinking
-game is about as well optimised as Arkham Knight, may well not run for you regardless of your rig's power
-turn limits on missions
-difficulty feels way off for me (may just be me due to procedural generation/me sucking)
-camera is terrible
-AI could be better


Overall, an excellent game is in there somewhere, but it's plagued by some silly design choices and frankly sub-standard optimisation. Definitely do not buy until a big optimisation patch drops - even then, approach with caution (especially as a less hardcore XCOM player). Be prepared to mod out some annoying features (like the godamn camera). Right now, I just can't recommend it, but that may well change in the future.

Incredibly addictive and engaging. Not too hard to learn, but pretty hard to master. Especially good with friends.

Also don't trust Gandhi, turn your back for one second and he will nuke you.

It's a fun game, but in it's current state, it lacks polish. At time of writing I've played for just under an hour, and it's crashed three or four times. No explanation, no 'not responding', the game just closes. This is a serious deal-breaker for me, which is a shame because the game has potential. The idea of being able to build your own airship and fly away sounds good, and the game itself is fun, even if the movement is a little glide-y, which makes some of the platforming a little difficult.

tl;dr: don't buy it right now, wait for a sale and/or until they fix the crashing

McPixel is a point-and-click adventure game. Sort of. The basic premise is that you have 20 seconds to defuse a bomb in each scenario, with various things you can click on to get various outcomes. However, there are some real problems with it:

1) There is no logic to the solution. It's really annoying as it's just trial and error until you get the right solution, which gets really dull really fast.
2) One of points of the game is it's humour. Except it's really not very funny. It's just "gags" most of which involve McPixel hitting or grabbing something and then dying 'comically'. It's just stupid, and not even in a ridiculous cartoon humour way. I played most of the 1st chapter and in that whole time there was one joke that I found remotely amusing.

Admittedly, I gave up on the game relatively early on, so it may get better later on, but I really don't think that's much of a selling point. I guess the best thing I can say about it is that it's really cheap, but there are far better free games out there, so again, that hardly works in the game's favour. Even at the low price, it's hard to recommend it. I paid about 50p for it in a sale, and even at that price, I feel like it's only just worth it. Overall, give this a miss, and spend your money on something better.