Julian Gollop (he who wot did the original XCOM) is heading a team that are making a spiritual successor. It features The Thing/Mist style enemies that have been corrupted by a once dormant virus that causes the creatures adapt depending on how you fight them - snper heavy tactics will cause them to adapt heavy army or high powered bio-weaponry of their own.
The game also has factions, which can be allied with for tech bonuses and branching story elements.
Instead of fog of war that is just unobserved space, mist clouds the battle field. Enemies in it are just silhouetted unknowns until they finally break out.
Despite it's similarity to X-COM, Gollop isn't happy with it being Squadies v Squadies - he wants to up the scale, and reportedly the closed doors demo ends with an Oil Rig being attacked by something colossus from the sea.
Aye video is great, I just wonder how they are going to get all that stuff into the game without it being either really badly done or really limited if they are crowdfunding the game for $500k unless they have a big chunk of publisher money also sloshing around in the background.
"Let me tell you, when yung Rouj had his Senna and Mansell Scalextric, Frank was the goddamn Professor X of F1."
I WENT INTO THE TUTORIAL AND THE FIRST THING I NOTICED WAS THE MUSIC HAS THE SUPER QUIET DU DU DU DU DU DU QUASI HEARTBEAT/TENSION SOUND JUST LIKE UFO:ENEMY UNKNOWN
12/10 ALREADY BEST GAME.
STREAMING THIS EVENING FO SHO.
"Let me tell you, when yung Rouj had his Senna and Mansell Scalextric, Frank was the goddamn Professor X of F1."
Get in my dudes, someone couldnt make drinks tonight so it's been postponed until sunday!!!
That means it's strim time tonight for Phoenix Point. Will start at 20:00. Tutorials are done (I think) so come and watch me die horribly at the hands of these alien, but not really alien bastards. Prepare your best Aliens/Starship Troopers/Grimdark 40k one liners.
Well. That was kind of a mixed bag imho. Aside from it absolutely not playing ball with OBS and running like a pig when streamed, which I'm not going to hold against it, it happens sometimes, there was something else I played a while ago that didn't seem very taxing that would barely run when streamed.
The UI is a big clunky fucking ugly mess. Straight up amateur hour, worst UI I've seen in a game for donkeys years, totally inexcusible in 2019.
The levelling system for troops seems like it was just copied and pasted from somewhere else, like why does my sniper have access to a skill called Thief, that just makes him more stealthy? He's an elite soldier, what does Thief have to do with being sneaky? Unless you are just lazily using a character class trope from games in general? IMHO having troops with semi RNG stats who improve their stats based on what they do in missions (if they continually use up their AP their stamina increases more quickly, if they are carrying the heavier gear their strength increases more quickly, etc.) than just having all your solider be Level 1 with all identical stats that you pick which to improve as they level up was a better system and it also added to making your troops feel more like distinct individuals than just cookie cutter assault/heavy/sniper classes with arbitrarily locked off lists of gear they can and cant use.
The way that you interact with the other factions and NPCs outside of missions seems quite stilted. Like you just send your ship to an area of interest and do a scan, and then the dialogue/conversation with someone from that area just abruptly starts. It's like it's missing some kind of "incoming transmission" or other transitional segway between the overworld and mission start, it's really jarring when it happens.
The diplomacy aspect might actually be pretty interesting, although I need to play more to find out properly, as it looks like it might be difficult to appease one faction without affecting your reputation with their rivals.
The combat seems pretty good, although it's still early doors, it has most of the stuff I was looking for like completely destructibe scenery, cover (although handled automatically). I do prefer the "old" snap shot/aim shot/auto shot firing mode from the old games, as well as having overwatch handled automatically if a character has enough action points and good enough reactions when they detect an enemy in their turn.
Will definitely be sticking with it to see if it improves once I've gotten used to the clunkiness of the interface, it might flow a bit better on a controller so I'll give that a go. Buuut there's a little nagging voice in the back of my head at the minute that is saying no way does this seem like a game that should be on sale at full £35 rrp.
"Let me tell you, when yung Rouj had his Senna and Mansell Scalextric, Frank was the goddamn Professor X of F1."