XCOM 2 has been well reviewed for Windows, but exactly how is it on Linux? I spent many hours defending the earth to find out.
Disclosure: Copy provided by Feral Interactive.
I had been waiting years to play the original remake of XCOM due to refusing to buy it on other platforms, and my patience paid off when Feral Interactive ported it over. No such wait with XCOM 2 as Feral worked their asses off to bring it to Linux for day 1. It’s not perfection—yet, but it is a cracking strategy game.
It has been about 22 years since the original X-COM/UFO game too, which makes me feel really old now.
The Earth is but a shadow of its former self, with it being lost to alien control. A new organisation named Advent walks the streets and pretends to be humanity’s friend. It’s time to rebuild the XCOM organisation, and take the fight to the aliens.
My review
I won’t touch on everything, as I will end up writing way too many pages on this game.
The game certainly feels a lot more personal than the previous game. In the early parts of the game you really are made to feel like a part of the world, part of the actual crew, rather than some nameless person giving orders. Well, you’re still nameless apart from “Commander”, but the way people talk to you and the general story involved do make it more personal. I really like this too, it feels much more engaging!
You also see a little bit of banter between staff pop up now and then when you’re back at your base. It’s the little things like that always make the bigger picture a bit sweeter. Some of it has even managed to make me crack a little unexpected chuckle.
The classes are also very similar to the first XCOM: Your Ranger is meant to be your close combat specialist (with their very own sword), you have the heavy weapons from your Grenadier, a Specialist with a little robotic drone pet (which is really bloody useful for enemies on low health for guaranteed kills), a Sharpshooter for your sniper shots and finally a Psi Operative to use special mental powers but they need to be unlocked later on. There will be another class later on in a DLC too in the “Shen's Last Gift” DLC.
The game mechanics will be very familiar to XCOM players, as the general in-mission strategy is almost identical to the original game once you get going. That’s a good thing in my opinion, why change up something too much that worked well before? You get the usual half/full cover system to protect your soldiers, an assortment of weapons, different abilities and overpowered aliens.
There’s only really two differences in-mission this time around. Some mission you will start hidden so you can plan out your attack better, and some mission the aliens will get reinforcements drop in with a cool cutscene.
Some parts of the actual mission can be funny too—I thought I had a Sniper on a rooftop at one point, but someone shot at them, and they fell through the roof. I actually went around looking for them, until I zoomed in to see the hole and found them in the shop below, hah.
That reminds me, I don't think my Sniper is very well camouflaged:
I do love the customization options, and no my entire squad is not pink.
It doesn’t just feel personal because you feel more a part of it, your soldiers also feel more alive in the game world. If you’re coming back from a mission and someone is wounded, they might limp towards you and then slump over. I didn’t expect to see that, and it’s a nice touch.
Another nice little touch: If you stay too long on the mission end screen shown above, the Skyranger will begin its descent into your base ship. That was really cool to see!
One thing I find a bit silly is that when you pick a new research option the research dude doesn’t speak, even though he’s right in front of you—another him pops up in a little corner of the screen to acknowledge your order. It’s a small niggle, but it breaks the flow a little.
One of my favourite features in XCOM 2 is the ability to train a Rookie into a specific class. No longer do we depend on the random generator to provide us with the classes we want and need. We can do it ourselves! With the right facility built to do this through of course.
An interesting new feature, and part of the game that tries to screw with you are the Dark Events. Events which each carry their own debuff against you, and sometimes the choice is pretty easy, you can bet I stopped them grabbing some armour:
They really do mess with you though. In my current game the aliens always get reinforcements during guerilla ops, and it’s making it quite challenging. I seriously can’t wait for that to be over, as it’s screwed me up a few times already.
There are no more alien terrorising events. What we have now instead are Advent Retaliation missions. They are just as brutal and downright frustrating at times too. My first one went as you might imagine—total utter failure. It doesn’t help that this guy was freaking me out a bit:
What the fuck are you?!
What gets me is still the little things about the game. Like the picture above, my soldiers know how big that monstrous thing is, and they point their guns and torches up at it. Shooting at people and missing shows the enemy looking behind towards where the bullets hit, and little bits like that come together so beautifully.
That “Faceless” is a real damn nuisance too. The first time I encountered one it went rampaging from soldier to soldier destroying everything in its path, and boy do they do a lot of damage. They swing their massive arms around and annihilate a line in front of them. The second time around I managed to end its existence while only losing one Rookie, and that was a very narrow victory. He was actually a bit terrifying with me sat in the dark with headphones on. I do love the sounds all the aliens make, really great work on that front too.
There seems to be a number of different types of missions for rewards now too, the first XCOM seems so locked down in comparison that I’m not sure I could ever go back. One example are Supply Raid missions, where you clear out a bunch of Aliens and nick their kit. The game is just so much more interesting with you being the ones doing the hit and run tactics.
Some parts of the game are hilariously over the top. I can remember a specific mission where “TheBoss” (yeah, I named my troops) ran towards an alien pulling out his sword, as he thrusted into the alien the entire wall of the building next to him and the adjacent car blew up in a huge explosion—I didn’t know Michael Bay helped make XCOM 2.
The voice acting is all around better and more varied in this release too. Each time I play I hear one or two new lines when my people are panicking, being mind controlled and generally being useless soldiers.
Your ultimate goal is to take this down, the Avatar project:
I won't spoil what it is.
The only thing I am still unsure about are the mission timers. On one hand I can see that they force you to make some interesting decisions, but they can also totally ruin the fun at other times. I’ve actually played a mission where all of my units were within 1 turn of escaping (not even dashing, normal movement), but I hit the timer and they were all MIA. I was a bit annoyed, but it certainly didn’t stop me playing (I might have reloaded a save on that one!).
If you need some icing on the cake that is this excellent strategy game: Mods are supported from Day 1. There’s already over 300 mods, which is insane. If you are finding the mission timers a bit troublesome you could try this mod to increase them, or this mod to remove them!
Almost everything about the game is just better overall. It’s bigger, badder, more personal and downright mesmerizing. I go through such a mix of emotions when playing XCOM 2 it’s unbelievable at times.
It’s going to have an insanely long playable life thanks to the mod support. I am seriously excited to see what people can come up with.
Issues
Rather than repeating myself, it’s probably best you head over here to see the issues I had with it initially. There’s performance issues galore, missing AA options, camera issues and more.
I don’t personally think it was ready for release, as there’s far too many niggling issues that have been left in—a lot of them easily reproducible. I have been enjoying myself rather a lot with it (obviously), but it feels rushed out and I hate that feeling. XCOM 2 is a PC only release, so I just don’t get how it was put out like it was, especially considering it’s not a cheap game either. I don’t blame Feral or Firaxis, it’s the publisher who is almost always pushing hard for a release regardless of issues.
Final thoughts: 89% chance of hit? Totally missed, died. Welcome back, Commander.
I really do love it, even with the obvious flaws right now. It’s fantastic to have it on Linux, and my hour counter in-game won’t stop going up any time soon. It’s easily going to surpass the previous title for played time.
Grab XCOM 2 from the Feral Interactive store, and support them directly. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Disclosure: Copy provided by Feral Interactive.
I had been waiting years to play the original remake of XCOM due to refusing to buy it on other platforms, and my patience paid off when Feral Interactive ported it over. No such wait with XCOM 2 as Feral worked their asses off to bring it to Linux for day 1. It’s not perfection—yet, but it is a cracking strategy game.
It has been about 22 years since the original X-COM/UFO game too, which makes me feel really old now.
The Earth is but a shadow of its former self, with it being lost to alien control. A new organisation named Advent walks the streets and pretends to be humanity’s friend. It’s time to rebuild the XCOM organisation, and take the fight to the aliens.
My review
I won’t touch on everything, as I will end up writing way too many pages on this game.
The game certainly feels a lot more personal than the previous game. In the early parts of the game you really are made to feel like a part of the world, part of the actual crew, rather than some nameless person giving orders. Well, you’re still nameless apart from “Commander”, but the way people talk to you and the general story involved do make it more personal. I really like this too, it feels much more engaging!
You also see a little bit of banter between staff pop up now and then when you’re back at your base. It’s the little things like that always make the bigger picture a bit sweeter. Some of it has even managed to make me crack a little unexpected chuckle.
The classes are also very similar to the first XCOM: Your Ranger is meant to be your close combat specialist (with their very own sword), you have the heavy weapons from your Grenadier, a Specialist with a little robotic drone pet (which is really bloody useful for enemies on low health for guaranteed kills), a Sharpshooter for your sniper shots and finally a Psi Operative to use special mental powers but they need to be unlocked later on. There will be another class later on in a DLC too in the “Shen's Last Gift” DLC.
The game mechanics will be very familiar to XCOM players, as the general in-mission strategy is almost identical to the original game once you get going. That’s a good thing in my opinion, why change up something too much that worked well before? You get the usual half/full cover system to protect your soldiers, an assortment of weapons, different abilities and overpowered aliens.
There’s only really two differences in-mission this time around. Some mission you will start hidden so you can plan out your attack better, and some mission the aliens will get reinforcements drop in with a cool cutscene.
Some parts of the actual mission can be funny too—I thought I had a Sniper on a rooftop at one point, but someone shot at them, and they fell through the roof. I actually went around looking for them, until I zoomed in to see the hole and found them in the shop below, hah.
That reminds me, I don't think my Sniper is very well camouflaged:
I do love the customization options, and no my entire squad is not pink.
It doesn’t just feel personal because you feel more a part of it, your soldiers also feel more alive in the game world. If you’re coming back from a mission and someone is wounded, they might limp towards you and then slump over. I didn’t expect to see that, and it’s a nice touch.
Another nice little touch: If you stay too long on the mission end screen shown above, the Skyranger will begin its descent into your base ship. That was really cool to see!
One thing I find a bit silly is that when you pick a new research option the research dude doesn’t speak, even though he’s right in front of you—another him pops up in a little corner of the screen to acknowledge your order. It’s a small niggle, but it breaks the flow a little.
One of my favourite features in XCOM 2 is the ability to train a Rookie into a specific class. No longer do we depend on the random generator to provide us with the classes we want and need. We can do it ourselves! With the right facility built to do this through of course.
An interesting new feature, and part of the game that tries to screw with you are the Dark Events. Events which each carry their own debuff against you, and sometimes the choice is pretty easy, you can bet I stopped them grabbing some armour:
They really do mess with you though. In my current game the aliens always get reinforcements during guerilla ops, and it’s making it quite challenging. I seriously can’t wait for that to be over, as it’s screwed me up a few times already.
There are no more alien terrorising events. What we have now instead are Advent Retaliation missions. They are just as brutal and downright frustrating at times too. My first one went as you might imagine—total utter failure. It doesn’t help that this guy was freaking me out a bit:
What the fuck are you?!
What gets me is still the little things about the game. Like the picture above, my soldiers know how big that monstrous thing is, and they point their guns and torches up at it. Shooting at people and missing shows the enemy looking behind towards where the bullets hit, and little bits like that come together so beautifully.
That “Faceless” is a real damn nuisance too. The first time I encountered one it went rampaging from soldier to soldier destroying everything in its path, and boy do they do a lot of damage. They swing their massive arms around and annihilate a line in front of them. The second time around I managed to end its existence while only losing one Rookie, and that was a very narrow victory. He was actually a bit terrifying with me sat in the dark with headphones on. I do love the sounds all the aliens make, really great work on that front too.
There seems to be a number of different types of missions for rewards now too, the first XCOM seems so locked down in comparison that I’m not sure I could ever go back. One example are Supply Raid missions, where you clear out a bunch of Aliens and nick their kit. The game is just so much more interesting with you being the ones doing the hit and run tactics.
Some parts of the game are hilariously over the top. I can remember a specific mission where “TheBoss” (yeah, I named my troops) ran towards an alien pulling out his sword, as he thrusted into the alien the entire wall of the building next to him and the adjacent car blew up in a huge explosion—I didn’t know Michael Bay helped make XCOM 2.
The voice acting is all around better and more varied in this release too. Each time I play I hear one or two new lines when my people are panicking, being mind controlled and generally being useless soldiers.
Your ultimate goal is to take this down, the Avatar project:
I won't spoil what it is.
The only thing I am still unsure about are the mission timers. On one hand I can see that they force you to make some interesting decisions, but they can also totally ruin the fun at other times. I’ve actually played a mission where all of my units were within 1 turn of escaping (not even dashing, normal movement), but I hit the timer and they were all MIA. I was a bit annoyed, but it certainly didn’t stop me playing (I might have reloaded a save on that one!).
If you need some icing on the cake that is this excellent strategy game: Mods are supported from Day 1. There’s already over 300 mods, which is insane. If you are finding the mission timers a bit troublesome you could try this mod to increase them, or this mod to remove them!
Almost everything about the game is just better overall. It’s bigger, badder, more personal and downright mesmerizing. I go through such a mix of emotions when playing XCOM 2 it’s unbelievable at times.
It’s going to have an insanely long playable life thanks to the mod support. I am seriously excited to see what people can come up with.
Issues
Rather than repeating myself, it’s probably best you head over here to see the issues I had with it initially. There’s performance issues galore, missing AA options, camera issues and more.
I don’t personally think it was ready for release, as there’s far too many niggling issues that have been left in—a lot of them easily reproducible. I have been enjoying myself rather a lot with it (obviously), but it feels rushed out and I hate that feeling. XCOM 2 is a PC only release, so I just don’t get how it was put out like it was, especially considering it’s not a cheap game either. I don’t blame Feral or Firaxis, it’s the publisher who is almost always pushing hard for a release regardless of issues.
Final thoughts: 89% chance of hit? Totally missed, died. Welcome back, Commander.
I really do love it, even with the obvious flaws right now. It’s fantastic to have it on Linux, and my hour counter in-game won’t stop going up any time soon. It’s easily going to surpass the previous title for played time.
Grab XCOM 2 from the Feral Interactive store, and support them directly. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Well, I'm enjoying XCOM 1, even though I'm no good at it, so it sounds like XCOM 2 will be a buy, if I ever finish XCOM 1....
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Quoting: etonbearsWell, I'm enjoying XCOM 1, even though I'm no good at it, so it sounds like XCOM 2 will be a buy, if I ever finish XCOM 1....
I'm with you on that.
Except I am not that big of a fan of strategy in general, so $80CAD is a bit much to swallow for me. If it were a new NIER game? Absolutely! Fallout or Elder Scrolls? Sure. Dishonored 2? Maybe. But $80 really is a whole lot for a single game, no matter how I slice it. I understand why prices went up here, but it doesn't change my paycheck or my bills.
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Quoting: TheBossQuoting: NovenTheHeroIt sucks that a lot of mods are not working as advertised.
If this is a problem with the Linux version, report it to Feral Interactive.
Has anyone gotten any mod to work on linux ? I installed 3 here, but none have any apparent effect.
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NovenTheHero Feb 15, 2016
Quoting: GnurfosQuoting: TheBossQuoting: NovenTheHeroIt sucks that a lot of mods are not working as advertised.
If this is a problem with the Linux version, report it to Feral Interactive.
Has anyone gotten any mod to work on linux ? I installed 3 here, but none have any apparent effect.
I sent in a support ticket and nothing back yet. From what I am seeing on the steam forums, mods are not working for Mac or Linux. No real surprise there since the SDK is a Windows exclusive.
Last edited by NovenTheHero on 15 February 2016 at 2:49 pm UTC
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edddeduck_feral Feb 15, 2016
Quoting: NovenTheHeroHonestly I think it has to do with case SenSitivitY since all the files in my install folder are lower cased and all the mods have a case structure like XComGameData.ini.
Quoting: TheBossQuoting: NovenTheHeroIt sucks that a lot of mods are not working as advertised.
If this is a problem with the Linux version, report it to Feral Interactive.
It's not case sensitivity, we made sure that was not an issue during development. It's a (relatively) rare issue on some people's specific setups and specific mod design decisions, however it's fixed on Linux (and Mac) in the next patch.
You can contact support and we'll update you once the patch is released and confirm if the issue you're seeing is the one we have fixed. Please note we're suffering from a little more traffic to our support system compared to normal so we have a little bit of a backlog on tickets but we're working through them and we'll reply to all of you as soon as we can.
Last edited by edddeduck_feral on 15 February 2016 at 4:50 pm UTC
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edddeduck_feral Feb 15, 2016
Quoting: NovenTheHeroI sent in a support ticket and nothing back yet. From what I am seeing on the steam forums, mods are not working for Mac or Linux. No real surprise there since the SDK is a Windows exclusive.
Mods are fully supported and should be 100% compatible on all platforms. As mentioned above some users are having issues with certain mods depending on their setup and the method used for installing the mods. We have tracked down this edge case and it will be fixed in the next update.
If you contact support we can keep you updated with when this update is available.
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I found a potentially game-breaking bug (on all platforms). If you are on a mission where there are Chryssalid pods, do not attempt to save. That save game will be corrupted. If you are on an Ironman run, you could potentially corrupt your game completely and have no way to fix it. You can read more about it on reddit.
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edddeduck_feral Feb 26, 2016
We’re happy to report that the 1.0.1 hot fix update for XCOM 2 (Mac/Linux) is now available. This update will automatically install when starting the Steam client. If it doesn’t automatically, restart Steam. This update includes all the fixes contained in the Windows hotfix released last week. Details of all the fixes are listed below.
Mac/Linux Fixes
* Player is unable to progress to scan in the Geoscape after completing the Resistance Communications research via Tutorial - This will fix previously affected saves.
* Unable to load saves with a Chryssalid Cocoon – This will fix the issue, and for previously affected saves.
* Using the preview voice button for a modded voice pack will no longer crash the game when in the armoury.
* Improvements to frame rate and in level hitching.
* Fixed issues with Mods not enabling on some machines
* Improved “Refresh” button behaviour in modding panel
* Fixed issue with Shen’s leg flickering
* Fixed issue when switching from Japanese to other languages.
* Various minor improvements.
Linux Specific Fixes
* Fixed rare corruption caused by LC_ALL flag in users .bashrc file
* Fixed discoloured pink/blue smoke on some Nvidia hardware
* Updated warnings for users using unsupported Nvidia drivers
* Fixed Red Lights above units in level on some Nvidia hardware
* Fixed conflict between depth of field and bloom on some Nvidia hardware
* Fixed crash on launch when VPN or other virtual networks are enabled.
* Fixed Fountains out of game area not correctly fogged
We will continue our patch support over the coming months with additional fixes and performance updates. If you have any issues or questions with the Mac/Linux hotfix please contact our support team via email [email protected] or go to our website http://support.feralinteractive.com
Mac/Linux Fixes
* Player is unable to progress to scan in the Geoscape after completing the Resistance Communications research via Tutorial - This will fix previously affected saves.
* Unable to load saves with a Chryssalid Cocoon – This will fix the issue, and for previously affected saves.
* Using the preview voice button for a modded voice pack will no longer crash the game when in the armoury.
* Improvements to frame rate and in level hitching.
* Fixed issues with Mods not enabling on some machines
* Improved “Refresh” button behaviour in modding panel
* Fixed issue with Shen’s leg flickering
* Fixed issue when switching from Japanese to other languages.
* Various minor improvements.
Linux Specific Fixes
* Fixed rare corruption caused by LC_ALL flag in users .bashrc file
* Fixed discoloured pink/blue smoke on some Nvidia hardware
* Updated warnings for users using unsupported Nvidia drivers
* Fixed Red Lights above units in level on some Nvidia hardware
* Fixed conflict between depth of field and bloom on some Nvidia hardware
* Fixed crash on launch when VPN or other virtual networks are enabled.
* Fixed Fountains out of game area not correctly fogged
We will continue our patch support over the coming months with additional fixes and performance updates. If you have any issues or questions with the Mac/Linux hotfix please contact our support team via email [email protected] or go to our website http://support.feralinteractive.com
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NovenTheHero Oct 26, 2016
Yeah I am still having the mod issue for months now. Nothing that support has told me has worked. I see the mods in the game launcher, but they are not enabling in-game. It is mildly frustrating to say the least.
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