Feral Interactive have been great for Linux with their ports, and it's time we took a proper look at XCOM: Enemy Unknown. This has been played through with the expansion Enemy Within which I feel is an essential extra.
Further to Samsai's GOL Cast we are taking a full look now that the game has been out for sometime. Even though I streamed it a lot when it first came out on Twitch, looking back I never really gave it a write-up, and considering how much I've written about the botched launch of Dying Light it's only fair to give a great game like XCOM the proper written treatment.
XCOM used to be a bit of a love/hate relationship with me, and I've been a long time fan of the series due to having an original boxed copy on the Amiga (R.I.P Amiga), and it stole quite a number of hours from my childhood. I often regard the original XCOM as one of the best games ever made that can stand the test of time, and I think a lot of people agree with me.
We will look at how good/bad the game is, and let you know what the port is really like after having spent so many hours dealing with it.
The first thing to note is that a 64bit operating system is required, so it’s yet another reason to update that ageing 32bit install of yours.
The next thing to note is that you really need the expansion pack, as it extends the game in many ways, and just makes everything so much more interesting. That isn't to say the game isn't fun without it, but the expansion is just all around better.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown revolves around a special military organisation named XCOM that specialise in dealing with the extraordinary, and it's your job to command their soldiers, pick research, and generally deal with the menacing alien threat to Earth. It's a strategy game with turn-based battles, and an interesting base-building mechanic shown from a pretty sweet looking side-on perspective underground.
How is the port?
Testing it on Linux Mint 17.1 64bit, and Xubuntu 14.04 64bit the game is nearly flawless. We don't get to say that about a game very often, and it's simply fantastic to be able to. On Linux Mint it seems I couldn't alt+tab without bringing up the Steam Overlay, so a minor nuisance, but nothing wrong with the game directly. Apparently it works fine on Ubuntu's Unity though.
We say nearly flawless as there are a few very minor issues, like the one mentioned above, and most of them are from the game, and not as a result of the porting to Linux.
We came across zero crash bugs as well, and I cannot remember any other game that has been that stable.
As for how smooth the game is, the game is silky smooth in all areas tested. I was constantly hitting at least 80FPS with highs over well over 110FPS in most situations, so performance really isn't an issue, and Feral did an outstanding job on this Unreal Engine powered title.
You can see the glorious FPS I am getting in the top left with the Steam Overlay counter.
We are seriously excited about how well done it is, that we can’t wait to see more from Feral Interactive.
Gameplay
I played through the game on the Normal difficulty, as I feel it gives the most balanced gameplay, and most importantly I find it to be the most enjoyable. The difficulty in the other modes is seriously hard.
I mentioned that this is with the Enemy Within expansion which adds tons of new content, like the “Meld” substance. Acquiring and researching this opens up new facilities, and options to equip your soldiers with. In all honesty, the game without the expansion feels empty if you try to go back with it, so I feel it’s as essential addition.
One of the facilities the expansion opens up is the Genetics Lab, where you can augment your soldiers. This is exciting, as it opens up even more strategic options for you to think through. You could do something like giving a Sniper better accuracy, and who wouldn't want to do that?
This isn't all the expansion adds, as it would take too long to list it all.
Save early, save often. That's the most important bit of advice I'm going to give you when playing XCOM. It's incredibly frustrating to see members of your squad die during combat, and with no way to bring them back if you don't heal them in time, all your progress for that character will be lost. Although, if you do manage to finish the mission while they are in critical condition, they won’t die, however, they will be out of action for quite some time.
It may feel a bit like cheating to reload every time someone dies, but the enemy is ruthless, and saves are one of our secret weapons, and this isn't some sort of permadeath roguelike, so it's okay.
Some of your squaddies can be pretty important too, like the Heavy who can fire rockets when levelled up even once, so it can be infuriating if they die.
If you aren’t going to be a save-a-holic like me, then do not get attached to your soldiers, as one tiny little mistake, and it’s all over in this ruthless strategy game.
I touched on the base-building in XCOM earlier, and to expand on it a bit: When you start off you pick a location for your base, and this is where it diverges from the original, as where you pick defines what major "boost" you get for the duration of the game. If, for example, you chose Africa like me, you would get 30% more funding each month. It's an interesting idea that already has you doing some strategic planning before the game has even begun, and the original had nothing of the sorts.
Something completely new to this XCOM over the original is during planetary scanning you can detect three “abduction sites”, and you have to choose which one to engage and defend with your squad. Each mission gives a different reward, so if you’re looking to speed up research on new weapons, you may want to go for the mission that rewards scientists, for just one example.
The downside, is that panic levels in the regions you don’t pick will rise, and if panic levels get too high they can withdraw your funding, so it’s more strategy to be aware of outside of the battles. The game certainly does a good job of keeping all aspects of the game interesting outside of the battles.
The only things I dislike about this newer generation of XCOM are the action cameras when firing and running, as often the camera will zoom in behind the soldier when firing, so it blocks out some of the view, and when soldiers running sometimes it will do the same. Luckily, you can disable these in the options, so it seems the original developers knew some people wouldn't like them, and we love the fact that they thought of us when doing it. Too many games add in silly animation sequences that aren't needed, and options to remove them, which make the game feel smoother, are very welcome.
One of the great things about the game is the use of rooftops. If you place some of your squad at a height it can give you a real advantage with accuracy, so it’s a really good idea to dispose of any aliens on rooftops quickly due to this.
Having a sniper handy is always a good idea, and I tend to always place them at a height wherever possible to give them a good view, and to really give the aliens hell. Watching a sniper take down an alien from the rooftops never gets old in this game.
Just don’t be a moron like me and put a soldier with a shotgun on the rooftop, as you might already know, they are pretty useless.
In addition to the action cameras sometimes acting a bit weird (seriously, just turn them off), occasionally the normal view of the battlefield can also be a bit wonky. Especially when you have enemies or soldiers on varying levels of the battlefield. Moving up and down the levels with the scroll wheel can sometimes be a bit confusing and it can sometimes lead to you not being able to see exactly where enemies and your own soldiers are on the battlefield. There can be times when you don’t see what you’re firing at due to this.
Luckily this is mostly a minor thing as you don’t usually play in environments that have huge amounts of height variation. You also get used to it rather quickly.
The battles are constantly intense, and I rarely feel such intensity from turn-based battles. It has successfully managed to capture the feel of the original with the battles, and then some. The battles are actually more interesting in this newer XCOM due to having many more abilities, and the introduction of the cover system. The cover system actually feels useful, and not tacked on like in some games, not only that but it's automatic cover, so you don't need to press any special button or have any special skill. You could duck behind the car bonnet for half cover, or the wall of a building just next to a window for full cover, but to make it even more interesting the cars can explode and cover can be destroyed, ouch time.
The thing to remember about turn-based battles is that the characters aren't technically standing still, so if you are really close to an alien and miss you have to remember that in "real life" they would be moving about somewhat, so that's where the accuracy percentage comes in. It used to infuriate me missing a shot from two tiles away, until I reminded myself of this. Once I got that firm in my mind, the game turned from infuriating into an absolute joy. This is where my previous comment came from about it being a “love/hate” relationship, as I kept getting annoyed by missing shots so close, but I always come back for more.
XCOM really does make the combat feel good. If you select a sniper from a rooftop who is going to shoot an alien across the way, then the game will give you a near x-ray view of the area in between them, so any rooftops or obstacles covering your view of the carnage don’t get in the way, and I absolutely love that. I've played many games that obscure combat when inanimate objects are in the way, so the developers thought that through too.
The music during battles is brilliant too, and it really helps set the scene of the combat to have music that helps keep you pumped for the action. The drum beat is especially good at keeping your heart racing, and certainly helps the atmosphere feel urgent.
The game features multiplayer too, but that’s the only place the game seems to fall short, as it’s just simple matches between 2 players in a duel of sorts. You just have to wipe out the enemy human/alien squad and that’s it. It’s nice to have, but when you have a fantastic single-player experience it’s really not an issue, and not really worth bothering with unless it’s against a friend.
Final Verdict
We don't do review "scores" here at GamingOnLinux, as we don't think a score out of a random number gives you any real indication of what do to. We generally tell you to pick something up, to wait for a while, or to avoid it.
Thankfully, we can easily tell you to pick it up, now. Seriously, if you haven't already picked it up, why haven't you? It's fantastic.
Check out XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Steam right now. Considering the game is only £24.99 for the complete pack it’s an absolute bargain we don’t want you to miss out on.
This review was written with some help from Samsai, who is our GOL Cast video specialist after both pumping hours into the game. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Further to Samsai's GOL Cast we are taking a full look now that the game has been out for sometime. Even though I streamed it a lot when it first came out on Twitch, looking back I never really gave it a write-up, and considering how much I've written about the botched launch of Dying Light it's only fair to give a great game like XCOM the proper written treatment.
XCOM used to be a bit of a love/hate relationship with me, and I've been a long time fan of the series due to having an original boxed copy on the Amiga (R.I.P Amiga), and it stole quite a number of hours from my childhood. I often regard the original XCOM as one of the best games ever made that can stand the test of time, and I think a lot of people agree with me.
We will look at how good/bad the game is, and let you know what the port is really like after having spent so many hours dealing with it.
The first thing to note is that a 64bit operating system is required, so it’s yet another reason to update that ageing 32bit install of yours.
The next thing to note is that you really need the expansion pack, as it extends the game in many ways, and just makes everything so much more interesting. That isn't to say the game isn't fun without it, but the expansion is just all around better.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown revolves around a special military organisation named XCOM that specialise in dealing with the extraordinary, and it's your job to command their soldiers, pick research, and generally deal with the menacing alien threat to Earth. It's a strategy game with turn-based battles, and an interesting base-building mechanic shown from a pretty sweet looking side-on perspective underground.
How is the port?
Testing it on Linux Mint 17.1 64bit, and Xubuntu 14.04 64bit the game is nearly flawless. We don't get to say that about a game very often, and it's simply fantastic to be able to. On Linux Mint it seems I couldn't alt+tab without bringing up the Steam Overlay, so a minor nuisance, but nothing wrong with the game directly. Apparently it works fine on Ubuntu's Unity though.
We say nearly flawless as there are a few very minor issues, like the one mentioned above, and most of them are from the game, and not as a result of the porting to Linux.
We came across zero crash bugs as well, and I cannot remember any other game that has been that stable.
As for how smooth the game is, the game is silky smooth in all areas tested. I was constantly hitting at least 80FPS with highs over well over 110FPS in most situations, so performance really isn't an issue, and Feral did an outstanding job on this Unreal Engine powered title.
You can see the glorious FPS I am getting in the top left with the Steam Overlay counter.
We are seriously excited about how well done it is, that we can’t wait to see more from Feral Interactive.
Gameplay
I played through the game on the Normal difficulty, as I feel it gives the most balanced gameplay, and most importantly I find it to be the most enjoyable. The difficulty in the other modes is seriously hard.
I mentioned that this is with the Enemy Within expansion which adds tons of new content, like the “Meld” substance. Acquiring and researching this opens up new facilities, and options to equip your soldiers with. In all honesty, the game without the expansion feels empty if you try to go back with it, so I feel it’s as essential addition.
One of the facilities the expansion opens up is the Genetics Lab, where you can augment your soldiers. This is exciting, as it opens up even more strategic options for you to think through. You could do something like giving a Sniper better accuracy, and who wouldn't want to do that?
This isn't all the expansion adds, as it would take too long to list it all.
Save early, save often. That's the most important bit of advice I'm going to give you when playing XCOM. It's incredibly frustrating to see members of your squad die during combat, and with no way to bring them back if you don't heal them in time, all your progress for that character will be lost. Although, if you do manage to finish the mission while they are in critical condition, they won’t die, however, they will be out of action for quite some time.
It may feel a bit like cheating to reload every time someone dies, but the enemy is ruthless, and saves are one of our secret weapons, and this isn't some sort of permadeath roguelike, so it's okay.
Some of your squaddies can be pretty important too, like the Heavy who can fire rockets when levelled up even once, so it can be infuriating if they die.
If you aren’t going to be a save-a-holic like me, then do not get attached to your soldiers, as one tiny little mistake, and it’s all over in this ruthless strategy game.
I touched on the base-building in XCOM earlier, and to expand on it a bit: When you start off you pick a location for your base, and this is where it diverges from the original, as where you pick defines what major "boost" you get for the duration of the game. If, for example, you chose Africa like me, you would get 30% more funding each month. It's an interesting idea that already has you doing some strategic planning before the game has even begun, and the original had nothing of the sorts.
Something completely new to this XCOM over the original is during planetary scanning you can detect three “abduction sites”, and you have to choose which one to engage and defend with your squad. Each mission gives a different reward, so if you’re looking to speed up research on new weapons, you may want to go for the mission that rewards scientists, for just one example.
The downside, is that panic levels in the regions you don’t pick will rise, and if panic levels get too high they can withdraw your funding, so it’s more strategy to be aware of outside of the battles. The game certainly does a good job of keeping all aspects of the game interesting outside of the battles.
The only things I dislike about this newer generation of XCOM are the action cameras when firing and running, as often the camera will zoom in behind the soldier when firing, so it blocks out some of the view, and when soldiers running sometimes it will do the same. Luckily, you can disable these in the options, so it seems the original developers knew some people wouldn't like them, and we love the fact that they thought of us when doing it. Too many games add in silly animation sequences that aren't needed, and options to remove them, which make the game feel smoother, are very welcome.
One of the great things about the game is the use of rooftops. If you place some of your squad at a height it can give you a real advantage with accuracy, so it’s a really good idea to dispose of any aliens on rooftops quickly due to this.
Having a sniper handy is always a good idea, and I tend to always place them at a height wherever possible to give them a good view, and to really give the aliens hell. Watching a sniper take down an alien from the rooftops never gets old in this game.
Just don’t be a moron like me and put a soldier with a shotgun on the rooftop, as you might already know, they are pretty useless.
In addition to the action cameras sometimes acting a bit weird (seriously, just turn them off), occasionally the normal view of the battlefield can also be a bit wonky. Especially when you have enemies or soldiers on varying levels of the battlefield. Moving up and down the levels with the scroll wheel can sometimes be a bit confusing and it can sometimes lead to you not being able to see exactly where enemies and your own soldiers are on the battlefield. There can be times when you don’t see what you’re firing at due to this.
Luckily this is mostly a minor thing as you don’t usually play in environments that have huge amounts of height variation. You also get used to it rather quickly.
The battles are constantly intense, and I rarely feel such intensity from turn-based battles. It has successfully managed to capture the feel of the original with the battles, and then some. The battles are actually more interesting in this newer XCOM due to having many more abilities, and the introduction of the cover system. The cover system actually feels useful, and not tacked on like in some games, not only that but it's automatic cover, so you don't need to press any special button or have any special skill. You could duck behind the car bonnet for half cover, or the wall of a building just next to a window for full cover, but to make it even more interesting the cars can explode and cover can be destroyed, ouch time.
The thing to remember about turn-based battles is that the characters aren't technically standing still, so if you are really close to an alien and miss you have to remember that in "real life" they would be moving about somewhat, so that's where the accuracy percentage comes in. It used to infuriate me missing a shot from two tiles away, until I reminded myself of this. Once I got that firm in my mind, the game turned from infuriating into an absolute joy. This is where my previous comment came from about it being a “love/hate” relationship, as I kept getting annoyed by missing shots so close, but I always come back for more.
XCOM really does make the combat feel good. If you select a sniper from a rooftop who is going to shoot an alien across the way, then the game will give you a near x-ray view of the area in between them, so any rooftops or obstacles covering your view of the carnage don’t get in the way, and I absolutely love that. I've played many games that obscure combat when inanimate objects are in the way, so the developers thought that through too.
The music during battles is brilliant too, and it really helps set the scene of the combat to have music that helps keep you pumped for the action. The drum beat is especially good at keeping your heart racing, and certainly helps the atmosphere feel urgent.
The game features multiplayer too, but that’s the only place the game seems to fall short, as it’s just simple matches between 2 players in a duel of sorts. You just have to wipe out the enemy human/alien squad and that’s it. It’s nice to have, but when you have a fantastic single-player experience it’s really not an issue, and not really worth bothering with unless it’s against a friend.
Final Verdict
We don't do review "scores" here at GamingOnLinux, as we don't think a score out of a random number gives you any real indication of what do to. We generally tell you to pick something up, to wait for a while, or to avoid it.
Thankfully, we can easily tell you to pick it up, now. Seriously, if you haven't already picked it up, why haven't you? It's fantastic.
Check out XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Steam right now. Considering the game is only £24.99 for the complete pack it’s an absolute bargain we don’t want you to miss out on.
This review was written with some help from Samsai, who is our GOL Cast video specialist after both pumping hours into the game. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Xcom and Borderlands run so great on Linux that I wish all games were built on Unreal. All of them. I would not mind. Nor do I mind if they all are ported by Feral or Aspyr. Just gtfo and take my money.
But Liam, dude, the action cam adds SO much to the immersion! Can't believe you turn that off! It's what elevates the experience from being just another "chess board" strategy game with a static view, to enable me to dive down there in the grit and see my lil' soldier babes (I got an all-female all-star team that kick serious alien nuts) fight like the heroes they are!
But Liam, dude, the action cam adds SO much to the immersion! Can't believe you turn that off! It's what elevates the experience from being just another "chess board" strategy game with a static view, to enable me to dive down there in the grit and see my lil' soldier babes (I got an all-female all-star team that kick serious alien nuts) fight like the heroes they are!
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This is a great port of the game and the game is fun. You should get it.
I'm playing it on an AMD Evergreen card (HD 5850) with the open source driver (r600g), it's very stable and the frame rate is good.
I'm playing it on an AMD Evergreen card (HD 5850) with the open source driver (r600g), it's very stable and the frame rate is good.
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Quoting: edddeduckferalQuoting: InterzeroidUnfortunately Linux port need much more resources, than Windows version.
We're fairly similar in performance to the Windows version of the game, I don't think we need "much more resources". We supported a smaller set of newer cards (however many older cards will work if you get the right drivers and setup).
I'd be interested in what your reasoning is, could you email our support with your information?
This is false. In fact, how could you know that your game runs equally well on Linux systems when the listed system requirements for Linux are significantly higher than the ones for Windows? You didn't even test with older cards, from what I've heard. Performance for those older cards is abysmal. In fact, it was months before the game could work on a GTX 275. The game runs very choppily on my system in Linux, but flawlessly on Windows. Your own steam forums indicated at launch that this was a common experience, so I don't see how this is news to you.
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edddeduck_feral Feb 12, 2015
Quoting: SkarjakQuoting: edddeduckferalQuoting: InterzeroidUnfortunately Linux port need much more resources, than Windows version.
We're fairly similar in performance to the Windows version of the game, I don't think we need "much more resources". We supported a smaller set of newer cards (however many older cards will work if you get the right drivers and setup).
I'd be interested in what your reasoning is, could you email our support with your information?
This is false. In fact, how could you know that your game runs equally well on Linux systems when the listed system requirements for Linux are significantly higher than the ones for Windows?
We tested and officially supported a smaller number of cards as older cards on Linux sometimes don't have as good a support and also we targeted a smaller subset of cards so we could make sure the game was tested fully and optimised. When we tested Windows and Linux performance on the same machines the Linux version was within a similar range to the PC. In most cases the PC was a little quicker to be fair but the Linux version was never slow.
Quoting: SkarjakYou didn't even test with older cards, from what I've heard.
Yes, we mentioned we didn't support older models cards, XCOM for Linux came out after Windows by some time and it was one of the first complex AAA titles on the platform. We wanted to make sure we shipped a stable and good experience so we officially supported a smaller number of cards so we could make sure we could test the support hardware in detail and guarantee performance. Testing all the cards from all the manufacturers (including cards that are no longer manufactured) isn't feasible there are just too many cards and drivers.
Quoting: SkarjakPerformance for those older cards is abysmal. In fact, it was months before the game could work on a GTX 275. The game runs very choppily on my system in Linux, but flawlessly on Windows. Your own steam forums indicated at launch that this was a common experience, so I don't see how this is news to you.
Even though the card was under spec the issue with the GeForce 200 series cards was found and isolated within a week or so of release thanks to help from the community in isolating why some people had problems and others didn't. I have to say the community have been great with helping people out especially with things like unsupported cards or distros. Usually it's some small library that once fixed allows most people to play even on some pretty strange setups. :)
In your case it turns out some older drivers versions have a bug on the 200 series that massively hampers performance. If you upgraded to the latest Nvidia beta drivers the issue went away. I know we had a few people running happily at 60+ fps on 200 series cards. I did some googling and I found a number of examples of people playing smoothly.
"Xubuntu 14.04 x64
Intel i3 Quadcore
6GB RAM
NVidia GTX275
Okay... Back from work and back on the 331.38 driver from the default repos. Everything's fine! It runs absolutely smooth!"
I also found another person mention using the 337.25 drivers run well on Arch64 with a GTX275 (completely smooth @1080p)
We then released an update to help fix a few issues (like V-Sync on some cards) and VPN's (it was our first ever Linux title so we didn't know exactly what customised setups some people ran). Since this patch we haven't had any major issues or problems reported, we had had the odd email from users which we usually can fix (setup issues or drivers usually) but nothing out of the ordinary.
If you have issues I highly recommend you check the forums and your specific setup, I know most people on cards like yours have smooth rock solid experiences even though they are under the officially supported specification, I know with a few setup changes (likely the drivers) you should be playing with similar experience to Windows. I hope you get playing smoothly soon, even though your under spec I'm sad to hear you had issues.
Edwin
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I always upgrade to the latest drivers. Still choppy. Still not choppy on Windows with super old drivers I haven't bothered to upgrade in ages.
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Quoting: SkarjakI always upgrade to the latest drivers. Still choppy. Still not choppy on Windows with super old drivers I haven't bothered to upgrade in ages.
Which CPU performance governor are you using?
Changing mine helped for a few games, although dozens of other ran well with the default.
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Quoting: SkarjakI always upgrade to the latest drivers. Still choppy. Still not choppy on Windows with super old drivers I haven't bothered to upgrade in ages.
Do you use a compositing graphics environment like Ubuntu's Unity? That sometimes messes even with Source games. Try disabling compositing in your graphics environment or install an alternative graphical environment where it can be disabled if you cannot disable it in your GUI.
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Quoting: SkarjakI always upgrade to the latest drivers. Still choppy. Still not choppy on Windows with super old drivers I haven't bothered to upgrade in ages.
Google it, bro'.
How do other, comparable games perform by comparison?
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Quoting: SkarjakI always upgrade to the latest drivers. Still choppy. Still not choppy on Windows with super old drivers I haven't bothered to upgrade in ages.What exact card and driver version are you on? It will tell you in the nvidia control panel.
Also, switch on Steam's FPS counter and let me know what you get, interested to see!
If possible, try recording it using something like SimpleScreenRecorder :) for us to see the choppyness.
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Stupendous Man Feb 13, 2015
Quoting: edddeduckferal... When we tested Windows and Linux performance on the same machines the Linux version was within a similar range to the PC. In most cases the PC was a little quicker to be fair but the Linux version was never slow.PCs run Linux too... I guess you mean Windows when you say PC. ;-)
...
Anyway, to actually contribute to this thread, I bought X-Com the very day it was ported and have played it a lot (88 hours according to Steam). I love it, it's a great game and a great port, I haven't had any issue with it whatsoever except that at first, the in-game movies were overly loud, but this was quickly fixed in a patch.
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