GWG:
"The Kaminazis will have their revenge upon you for your apathy and dismissiveness!"
Yep, they can do that once they stop being incompetent enough to become swirling hell-holes of alien fuckery running a-muck. Whenever I went to those countries for aid, I noticed that their trucks, tanks, and helicopters lined the streets, all destroyed. No wonder they need us.
And for some reason, I was confused; it was India who withdrew from my council, not Japan.
"What are the German and Japanese soldiers? Or the Brazilians? Or the Albanians? Or the Aussies?"
Germans: Shooter People. All Germans I get always do end up utilizing their most offensive abilities.
Brazilians: Only have one Brazilian soldier, a Medic, and she's the savior of my team.
Aussies: Don't have any, except for a Australian Sniper recruit that I'll use if things really get bad.
Albanians: Don't exist. Like I mentioned before, only the biggest countries in the world are actually in game, the smaller countries are included into the borders of their major country, like how all of Eastern Africa is Egypt, West Africa is Nigeria, and everything else is South Africa. All countries in-game are:
North America: Canada, U.S.A., Mexico
South America: Brazil, Argentina
Europe: England, France, Germany, Russia
Africa: Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt
Asia: China, India, Japan, Australia
"Heh. I'm imagining a big burly guy with a minigun that has a scope stuck on top."
Precisely. They can't hit the broad-side of a barn anyways. Now that you mention it, I've noticed something strange: When male soldiers become Heavy, they get big burly armor. Female heavies however, look just as slim as their Sniper and Medic counterparts. Hmmph.
"They sound like they could be terrifying with good AI, good stealth mechanics, and maybe some (annoying) mechanics that somehow conceal the fact that one of your squaddies can't act."
They'd have to change the whole role of the Seeker at that point. The Seeker's ability is to turn invisible as soon as you see them, and then reappear when they strangle one of your soldiers. Seems scary, except that every soldier has the ability Overwatch, which instead of having them shoot immediately, causes them to stand in place and wait until they see enemy movement, at which point they'll shoot the first alien that moves. Because of this, as soon as Seeker reappears, the anyone on Overwatch immediately spots it and lights it up with laser beams.
"You probably wouldn't have lost half of that progress if you had closed the game with the task manager or something."
I'm playing on the console version.
If anyone reading this wants to get on me about 'Well you should play the PC Version, duh!' I currently own, and am typing on right now, a 2005 Model HP Laptop. Don't even start.
GWG, I'm surprised you don't own this game yet. Combat centers around tactical grid-based positioning and accuracy centers around accuracy and mathematical calculation. Then you have the Base Building portion of the game which revolves around determining which projects and items monthly revenue is put into, figuring out what to research and when. Finally, and the hardest portion of the game in my opinion, is the fact that while you are the best army in the world, you can't be everywhere at once. You have to make choices about who to save. And who you can't save, what will you do to repay them once they begin panicking? Will you forsake Russia or Mexico? You've got to plan it all out. The game will no doubt leave you screaming multiple times, but each time may be for a different reason, perhaps an alien instantly scored an instant-kill headshot on your best soldier, or your team somehow managed to survive a giant assault that could have easily decimated them all. It's a fantastic, emotional experience. I believe it's still on sale on Steam, if you've got the spare cash.
@Pyrodesu: I'll beat the game on Normal a couple times before I even touch Classic.