Which Let's Play X-COM UFO Defense series should I watch?

[Extrocomp]

I've been watching Let's Play X-COM videos on YouTube and the ones I've seen so far are terrible.

 

LordFinisher played the game on Beginner difficulty and didn't bother to research any autopsies or live aliens he didn't have to, preferring instead to go straight to Cydonia.

 

Necroscope86's series was even worse. He picked the Veteran difficulty and claims to have used XCOMUtil to fix the difficulty bug, but the aliens' stats show his game was actually on Beginner difficulty all along. He did research some autopsies and live aliens, but his UFOpedia was nowhere near complete when he decided to end the game. He always pronounces psionic as "fizonic" even though he pronounces "psi" and "psychic" correctly. And worst of all, his strategies were often incredibly stupid and he used of repeated game loading whenever a valued soldier died.

 

I'm looking for a Let's Play series where the player has completed the UFOpedia, or at least come very close to doing so.

 

I'm also looking for a Let's Play series where the difficulty is Veteran or higher. On Beginner difficulty the aliens' armor and firing accuracy are halved, making the game disappointingly easy.

The only way I know to find out what difficulty they are using is to wait until the player mind controls an alien so I can look at the stats, but that only happens late in the game if it happens at all. I've also heard that it's possible to find out the difficulty by counting the number of aliens on terror mission and large ufos. Does anyone know if this is true?

 

 

There are dozens of Let's Play X-COM UFO Defense series on YouTube. Does anyone know which ones are good?

[silencer_pl]

That is an easy question - the best entertainment for - well at least me - though he doesn't use difficulty fix the pure entertainment is more than you should need:

 

 

Those are put in chronological order.

[Bomb Bloke]

The alien headcounts do increase with difficulty. This becomes more noticeable with smaller craft; for example, medium scouts will end up cramming in far more aliens then could comfortably travel inside the ship.

 

If the player is using the Windows version of the game, then the difficulty bug won't come into play. Most "let's player"s will probably stick with DOSBox as it offers recording functionality.

 

I suspect the only play I'd like would be my own, but I'm not so sure if anyone else would like it. I'd probably end up using it as an excuse to showcase my mods.

[Jman4117]

I second Kiko for the entertainment value. Also, there's Quickmind who's done X-com and is now working on the UFO series.

[NKF]

Being a late adopter of broadband, I'm still not really into watching gameplay videos, but are Let's Play videos meant to be a start-to-end series of videos, or are there one-offs or short series of missions as well?

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

Technically LP'ers try to play whole game.

 

Some set many rules and sometimes they don't win the game. It's more of a entertainment same as you were watching a movie - but you watch somebody else play your favorite game - you may learn a few tricks by chance - or rage to the screen because the player misses some obvious facts that you know of.

[Mero]

I always end up with an urge to click the action bar on the video (like save tu for autoshot or press end turn), then again finding out it will only pause the video

[NKF]

Funny you mention that, I was starting to feel the same way. Often I'd swing the mouse around thinking I could get a better view of the field before remembering it's only a recording.

 

After watching that Antarctic Superhuman Challenge, I'm amazed how far Kikoskia was able to make it with such deliberately poor strategies even if it did revert to beginner. Too many mistakes and bad moves, yet still managed to scrape by. Despite the outcome, I think he could have made it, but he started losing his steam towards the end. Quite notable during that Muton terror mission.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

IF he would not forget about that 80 items limit and noticed that the heavy plasmas not have ammo he would might actually live a bit longer.

 

Although I know I am watching it i sometimes scream to the screen "OMFG what are you doing.... Do that FFS".

[Stun Grenade]

LPs are the best thing to watch when tucked up in bed!

 

At the moment I'm in rotation between Necro (Legend of Grimrock) and Kiko. As for X-COM LPs, I second (third?) Kiko. He is great for a laugh too...

[NKF]

This was posted on the identical thread over at XComufo by imperialus,

.

 

Genius level with some XComutil fixes and the upgraded heavy laser and tracked HWP stat upgrades. Don't mind that so much, and does make brilliant use of the rocket tank in the early videos. Doesn't seem to have the hang of grenades (it's the roof), and doesn't make great use of the vertical advantage that the flying suits give him, but still a fairly entertaining game. But like Kiko's game, there were many times I felt he could've done some parts differently. Video #1 starts at no. 3 in the sequence as there are two prelude videos, a UFO Pistol challenge and TFTD Dartgun challenge just to see which names make it into the LP.

 

Look out for that base defense mission where one guy and a couple of fusion hovertanks repel a horde of aliens.

 

- NKF