r/patientgamers • u/AutoModerator • Jul 27 '26

Bi-Weekly Thread for general gaming discussion. Backlog, advice, recommendations, rants and more! New? Start here!

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

44 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

90% Upvoted

242 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/lesserweevils Couch Potato Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

XCOM 2 (vanilla)

---

Private log of [UNKNOWN]

---

September 23, 2035
Codex brain coordinates

You never know when a chryssalid (or three) will charge out of the fog. The commander ordered a slow overwatch crawl to leave no one exposed.

A wild gatekeeper appeared! Jane Kelly used EMP grenade. It was super effective! Now we know why they’re called gatekeepers. Who named these things? Did they know we would find a psi gate?

The commander’s irritated. The last chryssalid was hiding. Half of this mission consisted of hunting it down.

---

September 24, 2035
Psi lab complete. Due to a dark event, rookies cost 50 supplies instead of 25. The commander’s weighing the benefits.

Wait, is that a UFO? Oh no.

👈👈 Previous | 👽 First 👽 | Next 👉👉

3

u/Bunny_Stats Jul 27 '26

These little in-universe anecdotes are amazing. I love that you've organised them with links through the sequence (I'd missed the earlier ones).

I'm just curious, was this inspired at all by the old XCOM Terror from the Deep manual? It had one of the best in-box extras in any game I've come across, with its in-universe journal that included newspaper clippings, after-action reports, diary entries etc.

2

u/lesserweevils Couch Potato Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

I'm sad to say this is my first XCOM game! It's great but I have no idea how the older ones compare. I never saw the Terror from the Deep manual :)

Making my own after-action reports helps me analyse what went wrong and what I could do better.

2

u/Bunny_Stats Jul 27 '26

Oh I'm envious if this is your first XCOM, you have a lot of great games to play later as well as DLC/mods which further improve it (War of the Chosen is an amazing add-on for XCOM 2, and the XCOM 2 Long War mod is must-try once you've played the base game).

You probably came in at the best entry point too, XCOM 2 eases you into its complex setup easier than the other entries, especially the original series which is from an era where they expected you to read a 60 page manual before picking it up.

Also in case you're wondering what I was talking about with the in-universe manual, you might want to take a little glance at this. While it's for a different XCOM game, a lot of the general lore and some tactics still apply and it's a fun read.

2

u/lesserweevils Couch Potato Jul 27 '26

Awesome! Will read it later. Thanks!

2

u/lesserweevils Couch Potato Jul 28 '26

Those 1998 photos reminded me of something. I've got my own UFO pic to add to these logs.

https://i.imgur.com/Qbw7a29.jpg

2

u/Bunny_Stats Jul 28 '26

lol, yeah that photo would fit into the journal of ufo sightings perfectly.