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[Anvilfolk]

Everybody should totally preorder this so I get Civ 5 to play until it's released!


Also, I'm slightly worried about the levels. They mentioned they are not randomly generated, and I've seen a few too many who are "linear", like the second mission. You start at one end, and have to navigate to the other end. There's 1 or 2 different paths, but that's basically it. I guess this might be related to your having fewer people now, so you can't really cover everything and have several fire-teams or so.

[Thexor]

For those that haven't seen it, RPS provided a pretty good summary of the demo here. They compare the demo with the actual game, or at least their preview copy of it.

Their last line is particularly good:

Here’s what I think, a silly old theory of mine: if you weren’t already cynical towards this remake there’s a good chance the small amount of stuff that’s in the demo would have had you excited about the possibilites the full game might hold. If you’ve been bitterly expecting failure, the fact this demo is, quite frankly, a stinker that’s far too superficial and does a poor job of representing the obsessed, tense experience of the wider game is going to confirm your fears about it.

[Mephansteras]

That's a good review. Nice to see a broader view of the demo in context of the larger game.

I think I'll do the demo on Classic tonight and do an after-action report of it. Well...the second mission, anyway. Should be interesting to see how different it is from the same mission on Easy.

[Haspen]

So I coerced my bro to download this game and let me play (he has PC from 2010, I have from 2007, go guess).

And, well.

I want to like the 'remake' but honestly, this looks like another complex, classic game that had the 'better graphics, dumbier play' metamorphosis. Not that it is bad game, of course it isn't.

Mediocre would be a good word for it. Above average?

[nenjin]

I think it'd be disingenuous to all the work they've done to call it anything short of "above-average." Doesn't mean it's the best game ever, the second coming of our childhoods. But it not being the game people have dreamed of doesn't make a bad game.

[Aklyon]

Also, remember that the demo is mostly scripted. Theres only so much tutorial the game can throw at you.

[Sirus]

I plan to disable the tutorial once the game is released, if possible. Thanks to the demo, I now know the controls

[Mephansteras]

I plan to disable the tutorial once the game is released, if possible. Thanks to the demo, I now know the controls

From what I've read the tutorial is skippable in the actual game.

[Anvilfolk]

I always get amazed at the capability people have to make sweeping statements about something that they've only seen the tiniest sliver of. Complaining the demo is small/insufficient to demonstrate the game is an entirely different issue to claiming the entire game is over-simplified and dumbed down. The original X-com's and the new X-com's tactical engagements are in fact not directly comparable. The capabilities of one system do not subsume the capabilities of the other. They are simply different mechanics, and people will need to decide whether they capture the whole X-com feeling or mythos as they perceive it.

[Sirus]

You're basically saying that people are looking for excuses to bitch. Shocking, I say!

[Dohon]

RPS has an article up about the demo. I haven't played the demo (and probably won't beyond seeing my rig can handle it) and thus can't verify their claims, but RPS feels that the demo was actually a bad thing. Way too short for instance. Thus, they decided to clear up a few things.

If people want some more campaign footage (at the expense of spoilers), I can recommend four items.

First being a small (and nicely edited) series made by OXM. First video here.
Second being an hour long "talk and play" made by Giant Bomb.
Third being a German "Let's Play" of the Press build. Spoilers, yeah. Also, it's in German. It took them 6 episodes to actually semi-decent play the build. But it does show quite a lot of footage.First German vid here.
And last, some videos made by a Dutch guy. No comments, just footage. First vid here.

As for the countries, so far, there are 29 confirmed nationalities (so far):

Spoiler: XCOM COUNTRY LIST (click to show/hide)

Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
China
Egypt
France
Germany
Greece
India
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Netherlands
Nigeria
Norway
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Scotland
South Africa
South Korea
Spain 
Sweden
UK
Ukraine
USA

Also, for all you people who go modding, it appears that there are some massive spoilers located in the directory. I read something about almost all game cutscenes being accessible. You can read about the aliens, see all the class abilities, ... I haven't watched the stuff and I managed to get the hell away from the spoiler thread that told me about those movies. The topic was buzzing with findings, so, stay away if you don't want to be spoilered. If someone posts a spoiler here, I'll personally go over to your place and slap you with a trout. I already know enough about the game without someone talking about the ending. :p

[USEC_OFFICER]

The ending is

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

not going to be spoiled by me.

[fred1248]

The ending is that a massive 7 legged spider robot from 4th dimension descends upon earth and transforms aliens into heavily armored taco shells. The only way to beat them is to eat them.
I am totally not making this up.

[Urist McSpike]

I finished playing the tutorial through twice.  I noticed a lot of the complaints that were mentioned already, such as voice acting, but I feel the RPS article is spot-on.

First of all, they should have just made the entire first tutorial an intro movie, because it felt more like that than an actual game.  If you're still waiting to download it, keep this one fact in mind - that first one is a tutorial mission, not a demo; you can only do the actions you are told to do.  I actually missed the ability to rotate the map, on my first play through, because they disable & hide things until they point them out to you.  The second mission starts the same way, but only forces you to take a few actions before it lets you make all the decisions.

Firaxis committed what I view as one of the single greatest sins in modern game development - no frigging keybinding configuration!  Yes, you are forced to use WASD/arrows/mouse side scrolling to move around the map, and Q & E to rotate it.  The ONLY input device config option is to choose between mouse or gamepad.     (Yes, I mouse left-handed, and I HATE WASD!)  Hopefully, like with Skyrim, keybinds can be tweaked by editing game files.

While the movement option versus the originals Time Units is a simpler option, I think I like the cover mechanism, and the various soldier abilities.  I hope the actual voice acting is better in the full game, but the American accents on the initial squad (which included Japanese & Russian soldiers) was bad.  I also wish you could have at least explored the base a little bit, instead of only going to a place when the demo directs you there, so we could have seen a little bit more.

I also did not like the continual "click to use ability, click again to confirm choice", but I didn't look too hard in the options to see if that could be disabled.

Overall, I think if the demo was my only exposure, I'd wait until it slipped down to a $10 Steam sale event price.  But really replaying the 2nd mission, and watching the OXM series, I'm going to get it.  I'll probably even pre-order, because I actually took vacation for the 9th through the 12th, a while before I even realized what the release date was going to be.  Firaxis really messed up, I think - the demo should just have been a couple (or one each) of random small, medium or large maps, and let us flounder through.  And, you know, had the option to look at a keybinding list, to see what we could do and set them as we wanted.   

[Sirus]

Speaking of OXM, the fifth video in the series came out today. Features the death of several squaddies and a failed mission, which was possibly story-related. Must-watch for anyone who thinks the new game will be too easy or will hold your hand constantly