Sure signs of the apocalypse #1: Another New X-Com game

[Vendetta]

Civilization developer Firaxis is making XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a re-imagination of the classic turn-based strategy game.

US magazine Game Informer revealed Enemy Unknown, saying it "introduces a wider console audience to what made the storied franchise great in the first place". It launches on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this autumn.

"Unlike 2K Marin's previously announced XCOM shooter, which sparked tempers among longtime fans for turning its back on the series' cerebral roots, this title is a full-on strategy game that puts players in command of a global anti-alien defense force," Game Informer said.

"XCOM's leader needs a worldwide perspective where threats are identified, populations reassured, and national leaders mollified - but a tactical mind is just as critical considering every shot XCOM's soldiers fire on the battlefield is under the player's turn-based control."

Firaxis boss Steve Martin added: "It's been a dream of ours to recreate X-COM with our unique creative vision. We're huge fans of the original game and it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-envision a game that is as beloved as X-COM.

"We were careful to keep XCOM: Enemy Unknown true to the elements that made X-COM such a revered game while delivering an entirely new story and gameplay experience for both die-hard X-COM fans and newcomers to the franchise."

Firaxis' XCOM has destructible tactical environments, and fuses a real-time strategic view with turn-based combat.

Turn based combat? Realtime strategic geoscape view? On consoles?

Has no-one told them this is madness and can never work?

[Chardok]

I dunno, People seemed to like Halo Wars pretty well. I....tried to...play it. it was....you know...a game.
Also End....War?

[Julhelm]

So that's two XCOM games I'm gonna buy. Awesome.

[Korgeta]

At last a faithful (hopefully) adaption at last, now I can ignore that 50's take without a worry!

[Stark]

If its 'faithful' does that mean it'll be fuck ugly, amazingly primitive and include never-patched fundamental bugs? How 'faithful' can it be when it has a totally different story and totally different gameplay?

Its alarming that they won't use pausable realtime for combat, but I guess fat people would say 'OMG APOCALYPSE' because Apocalypse was clearly the only way pausable realtime can ever work.

I'm prepared to say that if the geoscape has a mouse pointer you move, instead of rotating the world, it will suck. Happy 'shoulder-button jump to next contact'!

[Nephtys]

Faithful just means it has to be the same Genre and not-shit, Stark.

That's... shockingly hard to do for some ungodly reason. Just update the mechanics to be less cumbersome but keep the options open, keep it brutally lethal and make it actually BALANCED, unlike normal XCOM.

Something always rubs me wrong about pausable real time, to be honest. It always feels like after a bit you just say 'fuck it' and play it full realtime, with the lack of control that entails. In the UFO:A games for example, after some point I just ran my whole squad as a mob and gunned down things like a firing squad.

---

To be fair at least, it seems that the name itself, X-COM: Enemy Unknown splits the difference between the two names of the classic, indicating that it will try it's damn best to be 'true' to what made people like the originals.

[Stark]

Faithful just means it has to be the same Genre and not-shit, Stark.

That's... shockingly hard to do for some ungodly reason. Just update the mechanics to be less cumbersome but keep the options open, keep it brutally lethal and make it actually BALANCED, unlike normal XCOM.

I think you mean 'UFO is dogshit garbage that was rendered redundant by JA2 and all people really want is hunting aliens around the world with top-down combat'???

It MUST be hard, because literally dozens of fat-nerd remakes have utterly failed.

Something always rubs me wrong about pausable real time, to be honest. It always feels like after a bit you just say 'fuck it' and play it full realtime, with the lack of control that entails. In the UFO:A games for example, after some point I just ran my whole squad as a mob and gunned down things like a firing squad.

I fucking called it. All those games that use pausing in realtime to retain the ability for the player to keep an eye on a big map or complex situation? Irrelevant, because Apocalypse sucked shit. What's that? Entire modern RPG genre? Not in my XCOM! What was that horrible Russian soldier game that was pausable realtime? That was awful.

UFO:A just had really shit bland boring non-interactive combat, and it was just as crap in turn-based. At absolute worst I expect out-of-combat realtime, but if the maps are sensibly designed there shouldn't be too much downtime. Some reverse selection would be nice but obviously impossible to expect.

Odds of them having a half-decent system for interrupts is basically zero. I wonder if they'll implement cover beyond 'thing is in the way'?

To be fair at least, it seems that the name itself, X-COM: Enemy Unknown splits the difference between the two names of the classic, indicating that it will try it's damn best to be 'true' to what made people like the originals.

Talking about 'true' and 'faithful' is 100% useless window dressing. They are saying 'all you fat people who love this old game, don't buy that other game, buy this one, because it has 110% more truth and hope and change, honest' and then 'it has a new story and new game experience'. We can hope its better than those horrible Afterxyz games.

That people don't filter out marketing garbage is bad enough; you'd expect people would have learned to immediately react against such terms.

[weemadando]

At last a faithful (hopefully) adaption at last, now I can ignore that 50's take without a worry!

Yeah, because the shaved head SPESSSMEEEHRIIN in cover behind a car is waaaay better.

[Stark]

His gun is far too large. This is FAITHFUL to the original game and thus a positive. :V

If someone was going to make a real game and not a licence cash-in, it'd be a laugh to apply modern expectations like weapon modifications, decent vehicles implementations, streaming maps, and higher expectations of persistence to such a game. Hell, it should be pretty easy to make the combat a multiplayer mix of vehicle and infantry combat, or a complex timing and information strategy game.

But I hear being 'faithful' to a shit game is better than trying to do something good with the idea.

[Nephtys]

All that 'True' and 'Faithful' means is that if the game is as enjoyable as JA2, or even as decent in it's tactical elements as say, Silent Storm (with a few of it's biggest flaws fixed), it'd be just fine in that field. Add in a geoscape with marginally more functionality than original UFO and voila, something decent.

X-COM's main issues were largely due to age. A brokenly simple intercept mechanic, no diplomacy model, that damn item limit, small maps, stupid AI, and the design flaws of a few things like 'chase the last sectoid'. Oh, and that the itemization was horribly wrong. Every attempt to be 'creative' by some podunk eastern european developer has always ventured into the range of 'this fundamentally makes for bad gameplay' (Ala, UFO:A) or 'this looks like a four year old drew this with her off hand' (Ala: UFO:Ex) or 'my team made a geoscape after 7 years of development that doesn't work' (Ala every single goddamn fan-game). It doesn't take a particularly bright game designer to salvage the GOOD elements, and leave out the BAD.

As an aside, I AM hoping that the JA2 Remake isn't going to be shit either like that awful Hired Guns game. It's release date is within the next 3 months or so, we'll see.

[Stark]

Are they still making JA3? I heard it was 'coming' like three years ago.

I think focusing on the 'good' parts (or the parts that worked or were evocative) is absolutely the best idea, but I don't think that's what people expect when they hear 'faithful'.

Its ironic that games like Silent Storm arguably reacted against the crap in XCOM too much and ended up the other kind of bad (ie, XCOM guys miss a lot = in SS everyone is perfectly accurate hipfiring machineguns on full-auto, in XCOM the game was too easy = in SS the game will totally destroy you and constantly cheat, etc). Other similar games totally miss the point - like the ones that replaced the interception window with amazingly ugly sprites sitting still pew pewing on the geoscape, or that made combat entirely about how good your shields were.

I think games like Sword of the Stars, Galactic Civilisations 2 and even Battlefield have a lot to add to any XCOM game... but when I hear 'faithful', I think 'superficially similar rehash'.

[Korgeta]

At last a faithful (hopefully) adaption at last, now I can ignore that 50's take without a worry!

Yeah, because the shaved head SPESSSMEEEHRIIN in cover behind a car is waaaay better.

And Xcom had sense of hair style since when?

[weemadando]

Way to miss the point.

[Vympel]

Hopefully Firaxis can make something that's fun to play. All the attempts to recapture what made the originals enjoyable have so far failed.

[Vendetta]

That's... shockingly hard to do for some ungodly reason. Just update the mechanics to be less cumbersome but keep the options open, keep it brutally lethal and make it actually BALANCED, unlike normal XCOM.

Most people would say that super-high-lethality is one of the non-negotiable elements of X-Com, but actually I'd disagree. Y'see, what it means is that all the enemies are basically the same. If absolutely any enemy can kill you with equal ease, as was largely the case in X-Com, then the stronger enemies cease to be special. You don't have to use any kind of special tactics to take down mutons or ethereals, you just shoot them more. Or more likely not, because one heavy plasma shot will kill them as well.

And when you don't have to do anything different to fight different enemies, well, you're just playing the same rote steps out again and again. This is why most X-Com strategies in the later game, when tactical combat is unrewarding because you have infinite money and shiny, involve shooting down UFOs over the sea so you don't have to bother with the tactical combat.

As it stands, once you have solved the problem of getting out of the skyranger and not dying to the ridiculous high lethality combat in the first turn, you've solved X-Com's tactical combat. This is why the actual interesting part of the game, the part where the player was making choices, was all in the geoscape.

It also didn't help that the high lethality was married to a stat progression system whereby a raw X-Com recruit was more likely to shoot the end of his own nose than an alien the size of a cow five feet away, so players generally resorted to all manner of cheese so they didn't have to risk encountering the lethality of combat wherever possible and thereby lose an experienced agent.

What a new game will need is more variation in the tactical combat, and that will include more variations in lethality. The general response to an agent being shot should be him being wounded not dead, and highly lethal things should be rare and special and require special tactics of the player.

It will also need more interesting things to do. Not just in terms of having more mission objectives than alien genocide, because most objectives in this type of game generally devolve into "commit genocide, but also do X" anyway, but in terms of making the process of fighting the aliens more interesting. Give them highly accentuated strengths and weaknesses which require the player to take specific steps to mitigate and exploit. Increase the weapon variation a little (no need to have 5 different types of shotgun, but at least have something corresponding to PDWs, Automatic Rifles, and Marksman Rifles with different range and accuracy perfomances so that each soldier's loadout makes him feel different, and have those guns solve different problems on the battlefield, as one type of defence is better overcome by a single large hit whilst another is better overwhelmed by volume of fire, etc.)

I do think there's room to make a fully turn based game and have it be fun and interesting (which is probably an outgrowth of how much time I've spent on playtesting and development of tabletop wargames in the last year), but it will have to do more than the original X-Com, and it will have to do some things very differently.

[weemadando]

I think that having competent employees is one thing, but high lethality doesn't make "special" aliens less special. You just have to actually have them act in a special way. Have AI routines where Chrysalids don't directly engage you and seek out unarmed civvies to zombify. Where Ethereals hide in a closet while pulling strings map wide. Have Reapers able to run through certain terrain/obstacles.

That's how you do it.

[Stark]

Yeah, but we're talking about UFO here, where I'm not certain there was much AI at all, let alone specific behaviours or responses to stimuli. In a game where badguys walk around until they see you then press PEW PEW until someone dies, the game is simply about how big your accuracy stat is (and accuracy was so broken at a certain level it simply became 'will hit with zero chance to miss' which is apalling).

In another, notional game where the aliens were different animals that had different goals, targets, strategies and capabilities, it might be ok. But even then, all high lethality does is push everyone into save/load whoring, thus instantly ruining the game.

I can't even get through three months of UFO without being bored to tears by the amazingly long yet terribly bland tactical combat. Who didn't end up landing at terror sites and immediately leaving again because it reduced your penalty, and it just wasn't worth two hours of your life to actually fight it? The combat nerds want games to be 'faithful' to sucked shit. JA2 is far better, and STILL suffers from ennui after the first few game weeks.

[Vympel]

Heh, this is a funny interview from the Firaxis guys talking about the original:-

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/ ... -xcom.aspx

[Alkaloid]

I've been thinking lately that I would love to see a properly done 'tactical' first or 3rd person shooter, and this would be so perfect for it. Remember how in the first Rainbow Six you had to pick your team, then plan your mission and of the plan was bad try and adjust on the fly. That would be great. UFO is shot down in the geoscape like in the original, team is dispatched, again you've kitted them out as in the old X-Com, designated a team leader. Then you have to plan an sweep for survivors, and execute it, but you only get to play as the team leader and have to control the rest of the team through orders, and if it goes to shit try and come up with a new plan on the spot.

[Julhelm]

The thing with Rainbow 6 is that that too was a horribly flawed game marred by shit AI. Milsim nerds always talk about the amazing tactical realism of R6 while I distinctly remember it being an exercise in trial & error.

I'd rather they make something similar to Silent Storm but fixing some of the retarded shit like the broken leveling system and nerfing your guys at the start.

[PeZook]

The thing with Rainbow 6 is that that too was a horribly flawed game marred by shit AI. Milsim nerds always talk about the amazing tactical realism of R6 while I distinctly remember it being an exercise in trial & error.

Obviously, planning involves setting map waypoints for every soldier on your team

I always found it hilarious when people fawn over how "tactical" and "cerebral" R6 was.

[Stark]

Can you imagine the hilarity of an XCOM mission where all you can do is set your waypoints and watch your drones get shot in the head by aliens facing the other way, one after the other?

While its not really related to UFO, it's fascinating to me how people equate tactical and obtuse. Look at OFP2; you know it's tactical becuase it has a shit interface for giving orders - markedly inferior to even SWAT4. If its easy to play or learn, you know it's not tactical.

To cross genres we need an XCOM space tower defence game. Reverse DEFCON.

[weemadando]

The thing with Rainbow 6 is that that too was a horribly flawed game marred by shit AI. Milsim nerds always talk about the amazing tactical realism of R6 while I distinctly remember it being an exercise in trial & error.

Totally unlike XCOM am i rite?

I'd rather they make something similar to Silent Storm but fixing some of the retarded shit like the broken leveling system and nerfing your guys at the start.

Keeping the isometric perspective = twin stick shooter.

This is my prediction.

COME ON TEARS OF HATE FROM FANBOYS.

[Stark]

Hey I read a review for a twin stick shooter yesterday that said 'the game is the same 10m of play over and over' like it was a revelation. :v

Ando, you forgot 'faithful'! It'll be a twin stick shooter with VATS.

[Vendetta]

Keeping the isometric perspective = twin stick shooter.

No, that's what they need to do with Syndicate.