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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   4085 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 9, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video game thread! What did you get over the holidays, what are you playing?

Having a blast playing Skyrim modded. Been playing a lot and also just looking through modlists. This is one area I've found AI to be extremely fun and useful to work with, which has been rare for me lately.

I was feeling an urge to play XCOM 2 over the Christmas break. When I opened it from Steam, I found that it gave me the option to play the War of the Chosen DLC, which I didn't remember buying. It adds so much new content to the base game that it's a bit overwhelming at first brush, but the base game is so addictive that I got into the swing of it pretty quickly, and I think I've logged a few dozen hours into it so far, having killed my first of the three Chosen assassins.

Any of you XCom fans tried Phoenix Point? It's a newer team shooter by Gallop, who did UFO Enemy Unknown which I loved so much but also XCom Apocalypse which I didn't.

Tried it, and found it a horrible mess. UX was bad, the free-aim gimmick didn't fit the grid-based movement at all, the campaign progression was very opaque, the troopers and items looked silly, the here-are-three-factions-with-one-unique-unit-each system seemed eerily similar to War of the Chosen, the DLCs varied from questionable to godawful...I didn't get far in it. I keep retrying it occasionally; there was a patch recently and a big old mod Terror From The Void ("The Long War of Phoenix Point!", they say), but every time I try it I just end up frustrated by the tactical layer and with no sense of direction in the strategic layer, and annoyed by the UX all throughout.

IIRC, @self_made_human enjoyed it, though?

@atelier I can't find a detailed review either, so it's up in the air if I've written one.

The TLDR is that Phoenix Point is incredibly mid. It's just teetering on the edge of worth playing.

The main issue is wasted potential. The ideas behind the mechanics are excellent, it's a simulationist approach, closer to the original XCOM than the new crop, but in 3D.

I particularly enjoy the ballistic simulation, since the RNG simplification of XCOM always slightly annoyed me.

But that's really all it has going for it. The gameplay was grindy, often unfun. The content didn't feel as diverse or interesting as XCOM. The story was so-so.

The balancing wasn't great, but don't listen to me on that now, because the devs implemented a community patch by a group of popular modders that redid the progression. I've seen people claim it's much better.

I'd say I like idea of Phoenix Point much more than actually playing it. I was an obsessive before release, but Julian over-promised and under delivered.

Thanks! I appreciate this review! I saw there was a demo so I'll give that a try. The other review makes it sound like something I'm looking for while this dampens my excitement so I'll give the demo a try and skip it or wait for a sale.

I think for some games the magic comes from learning it or the way it did something and once that's passed the magic is really hard to recreate. Tough position to try to rekindle.

Thanks that sounds like it has more of what I miss about the originals so I think I'd enjoy it. I'll poke around and see if I can find @self_made_human's review.

I've heard of it but I've never played it. The only XCOM games I've played are the reboot ones, I've never played any of the originals.

The original is probably my favorite game. It wasn't as polished as the new ones, but I loved the time unit system (you could take actions as long as you had time units so someone who didn't need to move could shoot multiple times and reloads varied with where you had to get the ammo from belt was just a fraction of a turn backpack meant a good chunk of a turn but you could carry more ammo and some ammo only fit there).

But what I loved was the story portential it unlocked in me. Having an early terror mission go bad against the floaters when all of the sudden the rookie picks up a heavy weapon of another troop's dead body and blows through all the remaining aliens like butter. She eventually became a colonel and led the fight all the way to Mars. Her mental fortitude was the highest I think I'd seen in thousands of hours.

Or the time I blew up half my psyonically strong team when I brought a rookie to get experience (mind control let you move the enemy for a turn) so I was grouping a huge ship of etherials up for the rookie to kill and I missed one who mind controlled the rookie with the bazooka and oh no as the realization set in and I dusted off with a much smaller elite cadre.

I played the new ones I think I've played all the tactical titles in the series, but I think I'd changed and they never had that same feel.

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