October 2015 Media Thread

ArisKatsaris

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown: 2012 turn-based tactical strategy (isometric 3D) game; on Steam for Linux. You kill aliens. Very heavy on the atmosphere and moody graphics, with many special effects and little cut-scenes. As a tactical strategy, it has weaknesses; units must be trained & upgraded over many missions so they are worth their weight in gold, one-shot kills are always possible, getting in the first shot is critical, and the level layout has the standard mechanism where clusters of aliens are triggered when one moves, all of which combine to force on you an extremely conservative gameplay style where you move as slowly as possible through the level with all your soldiers always in cover, lest you trigger 3 or 4 groups of aliens simultaneously and lose one or more near-irreplaceable units. As such, the snipers level up with the greatest of ease as they do most of the killing, and they only get more overpowered when Archangel armor is developed and they can now shoot across almost entire levels without having to move! The levels themselves are not very imaginative either, with all of them boiling down to search-and-destroy in levels which are copies of each other, even the hostage-rescue and bomb-defusing missions (where the best strategy seems to be to, yes, just killing the aliens as fast as possible). Tech upgrades are doled out sparingly, so that one only gets the funnest weapons like the Ghost armor (temporary invisibility) or Blaster Launcher (rockets that go around corners) as the game is ending. I have to contrast the tactical strategy aspect of XCOM unfavorably to the last game I was playing, Advance Wars: Dual Strike: units can be risked in gambits and attacks because losing them is not so devastating, the first-attacker still has a huge advantage but this makes for interesting ambushes and tactics rather than forcing passivity, and since the enemy is always in motion, you are constantly under pressure to act too. Overall, I enjoyed it, but don't feel any need to play it again.

When it comes to turn-based tactical strategy, Massive Chalice is my favorite recent game specifically because the units age and die.

In XCOM, you choose one squad and ideally no one ever gets hurt, so you use them in every battle. But this means that you don't get to see most of the options available to players; a team with two snipers and two assaults plays very differently from a balanced squad, for example, and if you go down one upgrade tree you don't see the others.

In Massive Chalice, your team might be different every single battle (since a unit will... (read more)

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