XCOM 2 (2016)

ALIEN CHEESE PAIRS WELL WITH SCUMM!

Apologies to grab your attention so violently.

I have a brief story of ill gotten achievement.

I've been playing Xcom2 and have been taking on the Alien Rulers. It's been a challenge, most notably the Archon King. After chasing it away on multiple occasions by the skin of my teeth, I discovered it again, among a tightly packed crew of 5 other Archons and a Andromedon. Xcom reminding the player whose boss, no doubt.

Steeling myself for the incoming pain storm, I was ultimately shocked to encounter one of the most egregious bugs and cheesing efforts in my entire gaming experience.

What makes the Alien Rulers so challenging, is their reaction phase. They take a turn after every single action your soldiers take. Move once? Their turn. Shoot once? Their turn! etc. This and their enormous health bars, make the Alien Rulers not to be taken lightly. The Archon King specifically is an enormous adversary with its range of abilities. Artillery barrage, laser beam, power slam bullshit.

It also happens to have a game breaking bug.

Xcom2 itself likes to briefly hang during various turn transitions. It eventually comes to its senses but in the case of the Archon King, it will hang during its reaction phase. this is where the game locked up on me. The King wouldn't react at all and ultimately induced an unending purgatory to the battle. I thought the play session was lost. A detriment to my limited free time.

A solution found online, was to save the game and reload. In doing so, it returned my control but I noticed it skipped the Archon Kings reaction step completely. I would enact a soldier action and eery sequential Archon King reaction phase would again lock up. Requiring me to save and reload again. This process repeated again and again, forgoing he Archon Kings onslaught entirely, but most egregiously, the ENTIRE alien phase as well. The kings crew would stare at me for a moment and then end their phase. Leaving me to intact tactical damage at will, with zero repercussions. Aside from tiresome process of saving and reloading.

I triumphantly won the battle and left unscathed. I'm worried I may have fried the inner workings of the save game data for subjugating the xcom gods but the difficult achievement registered (19% of players obtaining it) and all is well. I like to think I would have won the fight fair and square but having ultimate power over a King felt good for an afternoon.

Winning is my pleasure
Started on Veteran (normal), started getting rekt in earlygame (despite having completed XCOM:EW 2 times on normal-hard), didn't understand how to contact regions at first, lost a lot of time, got frustrated, restarted.
Started on Rookie (easy), earlygame was still enjoyable, now I'm in midgame and I'm steamrolling most missions. Still very enjoyable, and I don't have as much time as I used to have for savescum.

Nvidia GeForce Now:
I got beta access to Nvidia GeForce Now, which allows me so run games on their remote hardware.
My notebook is quite old by now, and this service allowed me to play games I can't normally run on ultra graphics.
Finally, XCOM2 went on sale and I got it for less than $9 (Steam sale price for Ukraine). No dlc, vanilla.

WIMP difficulty: I like the how in Butcher they had WIMP difficulty. Which was an acronym for "Winning is my pleasure". Butcher provided fair challenge and quick restarts, so I still beat it on "hard" and enjoyed it. XCOM2 sometimes feels like BS, with the way they implement difficulty and punish you, so I don't regret playing on easy for the first playthrough.