By Jim Rossignol on September 23rd, 2011 at 8:17 am.
Still filled up with indignant energy and ready to type “This is not my X-Com!” in response to whatever comes out of 2K? Then you are in luck, because there’s a brand new video about the development of the squad-based UFO-shooter, with a couple of guys from 2K Marin explaining what they are up to. Watch it below! Jonathan Pelling, the project lead, says: “It’s about experiencing the origins of this organization from a really zoomed in and boots-on-the-ground perspective. We really wanted you to feel like what it was like to be one of the squadies in the original game, and not the all-knowing, top-down commander.”
In case you missed it, we also got a 20-minute walkthrough a month back, which showed the game in some serious detail.
23/09/2011 at 08:23 DHP says:
“We really wanted you to feel like what it was like to be one of the squadies in the original game, and not the all-knowing, top-down commander.”
Surely that would be Xsquad, then?
23/09/2011 at 08:26 Tom De Roeck says:
Nope. [insert explanation why not]
23/09/2011 at 09:29 aircool says:
Well if it was one of my squaddies, it would be practising dispersal patterns from the transport, then a lot of kneeling down, covering a kill zone whilst team mates moved into advanced positions.
And shooting the crap out of buildings to smoke the alien buggers out into the open.
And planting explosives on the top of UFO’s to make your own doorway.
And getting caught in the blast and hitting the load save game button.
Bottom Line: The fluff behind XCOM was only part of what made it a great game – the turn-based action and geoscope gameplay contributed in equal amounts. No Mutons, no Floaters, no mind-control disasters AND NO SNAKEMEN? What are these guys thinking?
23/09/2011 at 09:31 Bull0 says:
@aircool fully agree on all points.
God, but it was a masterful game.
23/09/2011 at 10:24 Teddy Leach says:
“Squadies.”
How do you pronounce that anyway? “Sk-way-die”?
23/09/2011 at 10:30 Bull0 says:
’twas Jim’s mistake.
Given their propensity to instant violent screamy death I should think the “dies” bit has a hard I. “Skway Dies”
23/09/2011 at 11:08 thegooseking says:
I don’t remember geoscope gameplay or anything turn-based in Interceptor or Enforcer. While those were not exactly the highlights of the series, it’s not like doing something different with XCOM is anything new.
23/09/2011 at 11:23 Bull0 says:
Interceptor had an equivalent of the Geoscape, but because it was in space, it was centered around a clutser of planets rather than one planet. Enforcer was a terrible piece of shit.
23/09/2011 at 11:28 Shazbut says:
Squadies = SKWOD-eez
23/09/2011 at 11:46 food says:
Isn’t the ‘real squaddie experience’ getting smoked on the Skyranger’s ramp? Possibly mind-controled inside said Skyranger before fragging the rest of your team?
23/09/2011 at 11:59 aircool says:
RE: Interceptor and Enforcer – they were crap, which kinda reinforces my point.
23/09/2011 at 12:04 MrNice says:
Considering how short lived squaddies were in the original game, most were just cannon fodder. I’m not really sure that’s what you will want to play in a FPS.
23/09/2011 at 12:36 Bull0 says:
@Shaz, the point is that it’s meant to be “Squaddies”. We’ve found ourselves making fun of a typo.
23/09/2011 at 12:43 Shazbut says:
@Bull0 – I knew I was missing something there
23/09/2011 at 14:33 Archonsod says:
“RE: Interceptor and Enforcer – they were crap, which kinda reinforces my point.”
Interceptor was one of the best games of the series. TftD on the other hand should have been shot at birth.
23/09/2011 at 16:20 briktal says:
@MrNice See, that’s the problem I have with Apocalypse and the UFO series of games. Your squad isn’t full of disposable rookies, which is really one of the core elements of Xcom.
23/09/2011 at 16:53 Synesthesia says:
@aircool
goddammit, now i have to play it again. What a great game. Now where did i leave that DOSBOX exe?
23/09/2011 at 18:34 Soon says:
“Your squad isn’t full of disposable rookies, which is really one of the core elements of Xcom.”
This way of playing is new to me, though is apparently common. All my soldiers were precious to me and generally stayed alive throughout.
23/09/2011 at 08:29 shitflap says:
This is not my X-Com!
ED: If they had of called it UFO Enemy Unknown, however, I’d be in a foetal ball, crying at the indignity of it all, raging at the likes of Diablo, Syndicate, Jagged Alliance and any other remakes de jour.
The ridiculous part is, if I want to play the originals, I do.
I still own them and still play them any time I feel nostalgic.
There’s no point going “Burnout Paradise is less good than Burnout 3, but I hope my tears will create a prism like effect, transforming the game into the earlier sequel”
When the squad based remake of FFVII comes out, that’s when the hordes will assemble.
23/09/2011 at 08:39 binjajer says:
Try the UFO After* series, if you want something along the lines of the original x-com.
Though, I must agree: they should have went with a new IP instead of using the X-Com name – but that’s been repeated over and over for ages now.
23/09/2011 at 08:48 shitflap says:
binjajer, I’ll check them out. Cheers :)
23/09/2011 at 08:55 Tom De Roeck says:
Theres that Czech X-COM clone which was actually pretty good, if you got the gold edition. (or if not, you got bmans mod) I forgot the name though.
23/09/2011 at 09:02 Bull0 says:
Well, say your name is David Andrews, and you walk into school on the first day of term in year 1 and say “Hi guys, my name is David Andrews”
And then five seconds later an older kid on a motorcycle slams through the wall and starts handing out cigarettes and says “Hi kids, my name’s David Andrews”
You’d be sad. And that’s kinda like what’s happening here.
23/09/2011 at 09:31 aircool says:
UFO: Extraterrestrials – yeah, pretty good if somewhat lacking in certain areas.
23/09/2011 at 09:40 Anthile says:
“When the squad based remake of FFVII comes out, that’s when the hordes will assemble.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirge_of_Cerberus:_Final_Fantasy_VII
Close enough.
23/09/2011 at 16:57 Synesthesia says:
“When the squad based remake of FFVII comes out…”
God, no. Please no. Just this game was enough.
23/09/2011 at 21:26 Bret says:
On the other hand, someone jumping through the wall on a motorbike?
Pretty awesome.
23/09/2011 at 08:44 baby snot says:
Jonathan Pelling sounds just like Julian Assange and I don’t just mean the accent.
23/09/2011 at 08:45 JackShandy says:
This game looks beautiful and entertaining. Men VS Aliens done right.
23/09/2011 at 10:58 Echo Black says:
It looks pretty lame to me
23/09/2011 at 22:12 BeamSplashX says:
But can you talk to the VS?
24/09/2011 at 17:28 wodin says:
Like the overall style\look of the game…I hope the gameplay and story are immersive…other wise it will be just another sci fi shooter.
Oh I loved the old XCOM aswell…we have Xenonauts coming out with that kind of gameplay plus a new UFO game in the making.
23/09/2011 at 08:52 Inigo says:
I don’t trust people with giant deer ticks under their lip.
23/09/2011 at 08:53 Lars Westergren says:
I’m looking forward to this game.
23/09/2011 at 12:00 aircool says:
I find it difficult to masturbate to these images.
23/09/2011 at 08:53 stahlwerk says:
I wish all developer diaries would begin with “Dear diary,…”
23/09/2011 at 08:55 thepaleking says:
“It’s about experiencing the origins of this organization”
But the X-Com organization was formed in in 1998, after first contact with the aliens. Could they really not follow the fairly minimal plot of the original?
23/09/2011 at 09:02 jalf says:
Would that have made a difference to you? Really?
Would it have made fewer people unhappy?
I think it’s good that they create their own story, for two reason:
1: the “real” X-COM universe was run thoroughly into the ground already. The first two games made a kind of sense. After that? Not so much. You’d have to be severely brain damaged to want to try to append another game onto the canonical timeline.
2: given that the gameplay here is going to be radically different, I’d rather see it happen in a “separate” X-COM universe than in the “canonical” one. I’d be much more upset if they made a FPS game which differs so radically from the “real” X-COM games, *and then pretended that it was canonical*.
23/09/2011 at 11:21 LionsPhil says:
Bear in mind that when X-Com was made, 1998 was the future. When your “future” ends up in the past, it’s hard to continue with that without ending up horribly “retro”.
So presumably they said “fuck it, go the whole hog and throw it in a time period before any of us or our target demographic were born”.
23/09/2011 at 12:31 Screwie says:
The origin story of X-Com could have been very interesting to do from a commander’s top-down perspective too. Securing your funding would be a mission in itself, gathering evidence to convince skeptical government(s) and the like.
23/09/2011 at 08:58 Bull0 says:
“It’s about experiencing the origins of this organization from a really zoomed in and boots-on-the-ground perspective. We really wanted you to feel like what it was like to be one of the squaddies in the original game, and not the all-knowing, top-down commander.”
So we completely eviscerated the origin story and instead gave you a game where you play john hamm in mad men fighting doctor who aliens. Because we’re LIARS.
23/09/2011 at 11:09 mejoff says:
And yet that still sounds cool!
23/09/2011 at 12:37 Bull0 says:
And if they’d called it “Mad Men: UFO Defense”, I’d have pre-ordered it already, but they didn’t and I haven’t
23/09/2011 at 08:59 pkt-zer0 says:
“We really wanted you to feel like what it was like to be one of the squaddies in the original game”
I seriously doubt you’ll be dying that frequently in this game.
IT’S NOT X-COM
23/09/2011 at 09:09 DHP says:
Yeah, I’m not sure I’d want the experience of being the guy on the avenger next to the mind-controlled rocket specialist.
23/09/2011 at 16:18 Bfox says:
@DHP
Oh man, a team based multiplayer FPS where players control both sides?
That would be sch-weeeet.
Would totally pick being a Chryssalid just to fuck with everyone.
23/09/2011 at 17:06 TsunamiWombat says:
fffffffff SCREW YOU TERROR MISSION BFOX *reloads save*
23/09/2011 at 09:00 Muzman says:
I think, realistically, if videos like this consist of anything other than sobbing developers apologising pathetically as they announce the game being abandoned purely out of shame, it’s only going to get a heaping helping of rage (if current trends are anything to go by).
23/09/2011 at 13:36 Cinnamon says:
They don’t have to cry but at an honest admission that they are inadequate and that they can’t make good games would be less annoying.
23/09/2011 at 23:00 Squiddity says:
Cinnamon, they could never honestly admit to being bad developers, seeing as they are 2K Marin, and they’ve never made anything less than a great game.
24/09/2011 at 15:41 Cinnamon says:
If they can make good games then why are they putting forward this disgrace as something worth bragging about?
24/09/2011 at 20:35 GloatingSwine says:
@Squiddity 2K Marin made Bioshock, kinda, but then people like Ken Levine who were actually involved in designing Bioshock left, so they made some more Bioshock. Then they got the X-Com license, and made it into Bioshock. When they showed it to the public the first time people said “hey guys, this is Bioshock again, isn’t it. We’ve kinda played that”.
So then they made it into Mass Effect, and are hoping we don’t notice.
23/09/2011 at 09:03 CMaster says:
“We really wanted you to feel like what it was like to be one of the squadies in the original game, and not the all-knowing, top-down commander.”
But that’s the point. We know what that feels like. If every other game was a tactical squad management game, we’d probably be hailing the bravery of them making a shooter like this. But when almost every other game released in a year is a humans vs aliens shooter, turning a game that everyone expected to be a strategy & tactics game into a shooter is kinda losing the key selling point.
23/09/2011 at 09:28 Unaco says:
You know, putting it in bold doesn’t make it any less hyperbolic. I see what you’re trying, but it doesn’t work. You should have thrown a ‘literally‘ in there, maybe it would have helped.
23/09/2011 at 09:55 CMaster says:
I meant “other” in the colloquial sense of “every other week” or similar, which I realise A) isn’t clear and B) is an exaggeration.
However, let’s just try thing. Games released this year based around being an individual human shooting an alien (limited to those on wikipedia’s list, for the sake of berevity:
Mass Effect 2
Dead Space 2
Killlzone 3
Crysis 2
Duke Nukem Forever
Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon
Resistance 3
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
Gears of War 3
List of games where you exercise both tactical and strategic control over your squads:
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of war: Retribution
You see why I suggest that one would be a much more interesting and worthy of attention path than the other?
23/09/2011 at 11:43 Spakkenkhrist says:
Splitting hairs here (but that seems to be the norm) but the aliens in both Killzone 3 and Resistance are humans, albeit mutated in the latter, and they’re both PS3 exclusives.
23/09/2011 at 11:46 CMaster says:
@Spakkenkhrist
Not played either, just read plot summaries.
There’s a lot of PS3 stuff in that list actually – as well as the two exclusives, ME2 is the PS3 version, the PC/X360 version being older. I don’t really know what that says.
23/09/2011 at 12:02 aircool says:
Generally, generalisations are generalisations.
23/09/2011 at 14:38 Archonsod says:
Surely you mean almost every other game is a man in a uniform shooting another man in a uniform game. Shooting aliens is so 1990s.
Besides which there’s shooters and there’s shooters. SWAT 4 was more tactical than the original XCom imho, Unreal less so.
23/09/2011 at 16:05 Nick says:
“SWAT 4 was more tactical than the original XCom imho”
Er. How?
23/09/2011 at 16:13 Archonsod says:
SWAT was far more demanding in terms of co-ordinating officers, target ID and general procedure. It also didn’t have an AI of slightly lower ability than a carrot.
24/09/2011 at 15:54 Nick says:
and FIFA 95 was far more demanding in terms of ball control and scoring goals.
23/09/2011 at 09:04 coldvvvave says:
Syndicate FPS reboot will be better.
23/09/2011 at 10:29 Teddy Leach says:
The funny thing is it probably will.
23/09/2011 at 11:04 CMaster says:
Looks likely.
It’s also (potentially) less of a departure from what people were expecting. Although there’s still the chance for Syndicate to be a completely on-rails corridor experience, and this to be a lot more open than we expect I guess.
23/09/2011 at 16:17 TillEulenspiegel says:
They’re both going to be on-rails corridor shooters.
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
23/09/2011 at 16:23 Bfox says:
Funny how Syndicate took massive inspiration from Xcom in the first place :(
@TillEulenspiegel
Yep, but Syndicate would suit it more honestly.
23/09/2011 at 09:09 Joe Duck says:
I watched that 20 minute video and I have two thoughts to share.
First, I have to speak the classic lines of a rabid XCOM fan: this is not my XCOM, it has nothing to do with the original and… you know the drill, it’s been said over and over. This video made it very clear that they are using the name exclusively for marketing reasons. That is the cold truth and the more time they spend saying how this is not true, the more credibility they lose.
Second, the new game looks awful. It is going to be Brothers in Arms with humanoid aliens and superpowers. It is going to be a superscripted corridor with very narrow tactical situations and, exactly as in Brothers in Arms, it’ll feel more like a puzzle game than anything else. The “agent superpowers” are extremely stupid and the decision to use the technology or save it for research makes no sense.
So I guess that my position about old franchises being misused is that if you decide to do it, at least make a kickass game with it and be unrepentant. At the moment, this seems like a game designed by the marketing department, not good.
23/09/2011 at 09:10 JYzer says:
‘What is XCOM?’
2K don’t hurt me
Don’t hurt me
No more
23/09/2011 at 10:09 Shooree says:
that was beautiful! Needs Jim Carrey bobbing his head to it, though…
23/09/2011 at 10:30 dwl says:
…or WIll Ferrel and Chris Kattan?
23/09/2011 at 13:59 eclipse mattaru says:
@Shooree: That is not my A Night at the Roxbury!
23/09/2011 at 09:11 Commander Gun says:
Still waiting for the time that they will make the Civilization series into a shooter, as i rly want to feel what it it like to be in a squad of musketeers!
23/09/2011 at 09:15 Bull0 says:
You haven’t got the gunpowder DLC though because you live in the UK
23/09/2011 at 09:15 CMaster says:
If you can think it, it’s been FPSed
23/09/2011 at 09:28 Joe Duck says:
“If you can think it, it’s been FPSed”
Rule 34bis?
23/09/2011 at 12:07 MrNice says:
Pikemen could stop Tank assault in previous civilization, that would be fun to see in a FPS, kind of like spartan meet blitzkrieg and win.
23/09/2011 at 09:18 Theodoric says:
Dit is niet mijn X-com, vriend. ;)
23/09/2011 at 11:35 DeCi says:
Dit is inderdaad niet mijn X-Com. Stelletje kneuzen daar bij 2k.
23/09/2011 at 13:40 stahlwerk says:
Ceci n’est pas mon MOCX.
23/09/2011 at 17:06 Synesthesia says:
carajo, esto no es XCOM che!
24/09/2011 at 09:56 Doesntmeananything says:
Тысяча чертей! Это не мой XCOM!
23/09/2011 at 09:19 Baytor says:
Wouldn’t a proper “zoomed-in and boots on the ground” X-COM game from the average squaddie’s perspective only last about twenty seconds?
“Okay Jones, let’s secure the landing site while the assault group- oh sweet Jesus! Where the f**k is that fire coming froaaaarghhh!!”
23/09/2011 at 10:36 Wilson says:
@Baytor – It does depend when you join the team. If you get in later, when you’ve got decent tech and a bunch of veteran squadmates to lead you, then maybe you’ll be okay. But early on? Yeah, you’re screwed*.
“Okay guys, we’re here. It’s a night mission, but we have no flares because HQ messed up our launch times and our ship loadout. Also, you only get a pistol and one clip. Sorry about that. Now go get ‘em!”
*At least based on how competent I am at first after having not played for a while.
23/09/2011 at 11:22 mejoff says:
Replicating one of my more hilariously successful missions would be pretty good too.
On Skyranger 4
Sgt Gruffvoice: OK men, High Command have said they’re fed up messing about on these night time raids interrupting the final research phase, so we’re going to do this quick, clean and by the numbers…
Skyranger lands
Sgt Gruffvoice: GO GO GO!
[follow sgt Gruffvoice]
Sgt Gruffvoice: All eight of you, form line! Ready weapons!
[press 4 to select blaster bomb launcher]
Sgt Gruffvoice: FIRE!
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
Sgt Gruffvoice: OK men, we’re done here.
23/09/2011 at 22:35 Bret says:
Depends on luck.
I had four soldiers survive an ironman run from first contact to Cydonia.
One of them, the Commander?
She was immortal. Shots bent around her. Things that killed rookies hardly slowed her down.
She was the spotter in spotter sniper tactics against a night time snakeman terror mission, and the sniper was the one who died.
Wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been there, but there you go.
23/09/2011 at 09:21 Dariune says:
The problem is, they have taken what is commonly thought of as one of the best games in PC history and destroyed it,
Im sure another FPS with light RPG elements has a place in this world which is full to the brim of FPS’s but they should not have called it XCOM. They should not be pretending its based on the XCOM IPbecause its not. They can justify it, bring out new features etc but i hope it fails. Because it reduces what was a fantastic turn based tactical game into yet another FPS.
23/09/2011 at 09:37 Hanban says:
“The problem is, they have taken what is commonly thought of as one of the best games in PC history and destroyed it”
I love X-COM, but let’s not go wild here.
23/09/2011 at 09:38 Unaco says:
You’re right! I just checked my copies of the original games, and tried to play them. They’re broken! Destroyed! How did they manage that. It’s quite remarkable. They worked just last week… but not now.
23/09/2011 at 10:59 Dariune says:
lol thats funny Unaco. But i didnt say they destroyed your copy of the game. (though if they did i think i would have more respect for them) I said they destroyed the game, and im right. If you take a game (actually at this point im gonna say IP which is more accurate. So if you take an IP, change it, remove the lore, remove the genre, make it into a FPS (what else?) and change the setting you have destroyed what the IP was in everyway.
Therefore my statement is not that inaccurate.
23/09/2011 at 14:20 Bull0 says:
They were being facaetious, but you were being pretty over the top yourself there slugger
23/09/2011 at 09:27 jezcentral says:
I don’t have a problem with this any more, not since the new approach unveiled at this year’s E3. It’s not the first X-COM shooter (that was Enforcer), and it’s not even the first attempt at an X-COM tactical shooter (that was Alliance).
Yes, we’d all like a triple-A version of the original game, but I’m looking forward to how this particular game turns out.
23/09/2011 at 09:35 Unaco says:
That’s a remarkably reasonable attitude to have. I commend you for it.
I’ve calmed down a lot since this was first announced. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not the end of the old XCom games… they’re still there. No studio is likely to be throwing AAA budgets at a modern XCOM style game, and they’re still being made, by smaller studios with smaller budgets. Why not be optimistic and hope this turns out to be a good game? Just ignore the name.
23/09/2011 at 10:46 jezcentral says:
Agreed. It’s just looking at the visuals for Diablo 3 has me slavering over what could be done for X-COM.
23/09/2011 at 11:03 Dariune says:
I agree. My biggest concern is that this happens a lot these days. Take an IP, remove any resemblance, make sure it caters to lab rat IQ and release it (normally as a FPS)
When Fallout 3 came out, i was a little disheartened but i played it, felt it was an average to above average game and that was that. But now everone is doing. Its not really a trend i like, hence my opinion of “Stop!”
23/09/2011 at 11:16 Biscuitry says:
This thread seems remarkably reasonable and mature. Very out of place.
23/09/2011 at 12:05 aircool says:
Nice to see you again Jezcentral – been a long time eh?
23/09/2011 at 13:39 jezcentral says:
@aircool
Hey, dude! Good to see you. :)
P.S. I still think the 50s setting isn’t great, but I’m still going to judge the game in its own merits.
23/09/2011 at 17:08 Synesthesia says:
yeah, nothing’s in a name. From now on call me Bacon Broccoli.
24/09/2011 at 10:28 Stellar Duck says:
But judging the game on it’s own merists surely also means judging it as an X-Com game?
If they don’t want it judged and compared to the first games, then they should damn well have chosen another name,
23/09/2011 at 09:27 Jajusha says:
Can’t wait for the next “Microsoft flight simulator” myself. With 32 diferent weapons, RPG like leveling system, a good inventory management it will likely be the best FPS in 2012.
23/09/2011 at 10:02 Joshua says:
I bet you never played Combat Flight Simulator 3. Its already there!
23/09/2011 at 09:32 JackDandy says:
What a bunch of bullcrap. This still looks terrible.
23/09/2011 at 09:33 godgoo says:
God that’s a beautiful logo, I’t makes me want to fire up Cinema 4D.
23/09/2011 at 09:33 Anthile says:
I don’t care about the original X-Com but I really don’t understand the reactions. There’s the three Afterwhatever games, the upcoming Xenonauts and even the open source clones. What more do you need?
23/09/2011 at 09:38 Hanban says:
More RAGE!
No seriously. I’ve still got my X-COM: Apocalypse, so I am satisfied.
23/09/2011 at 09:46 Bull0 says:
“Afterwhatever” is right, because they were rubbish.
The open source things are all amateurish and unfinished, although admittedly the high-res UFO remake (I think it’s called UFO The Two Sides) is very good and entertained me for days.
Xenonauts has potential but I’m not a fan of the art style.
I’d restate the reasons why 2k’s XCOM is objectionable but if you don’t understand it by now I don’t see how me restating it will help
23/09/2011 at 12:06 aircool says:
You weren’t there man. YOU WEREN’T THERE!
23/09/2011 at 12:37 coldvvvave says:
@bull0
Afterlight may not be a great game, but it’s far from rubbish. I’d say it’s one of the best game with real-time +pause squadmanagement mechanics.
23/09/2011 at 13:14 hosndosn says:
Here’s where the self-fulfilling prophecy of “us not knowing what we want” breaks: I don’t want a clone of the game from the 90ies. I want a modern X-Com, one that actually respects the genre the original was all about: Strategy. Not “alien invasion”, the genre is called “deep strategy”. You look around and see all those games… Paradox titles like Mount & Blade, the Total War series, StarCraft II, lolHonDota2… it’s not like you can’t do a modern game with some level of micromanagement in the year 2011 that actually sells. But they just can’t resist trying to compete with… well, I dunno. CoD? Mass Effect?
They act like it’s unthinkable to do a strategy game nowadays and frankly, I think that’s bullshit. And why abuse a beloved strategy franchise for pushing out yet another generic FPS “with a twist”.
They yell, loudly, “Your taste is irrelevant in today’s gaming industry”. And write “XCOM” on their flags. As long as I even care, how can I not feel disappointed and ridiculed? Just makes you angry for a variety of good reasons.
24/09/2011 at 11:52 jalf says:
were they now? Did you try them all?
The first one was pretty rubbishy.
Aftershock and Afterlight were both genuinely good games. They weren’t X-COM, that’s true, and I consider that a point in their favor. They’re inspired (heavily) by X-COM,but then they went off to do their own thing. That’s much more interesting than the half-arsed open-source clones that forever and ever try to recreate a game we already have.
24/09/2011 at 16:02 Nick says:
“What more do you need?”
A good game.
26/09/2011 at 12:09 thebluemonkey81 says:
Imagen you loved battlefield 2 or CoD.
Now imagen how you’d feel if the latest incarnation of that game was more like the sims where you build your guy a home, then send him off to war for months at a time (which you couldn’t contol) and had to maintain his house and family for his return.
It’s like that, only every other game getting released isn’t a remake\reskin of the xcom series.
23/09/2011 at 09:45 Jimbo says:
“We really wanted you to feel like what it was like to be one of the squadies in the original game, and not the all-knowing, top-down commander.”
I’m not entirely convinced that would pass a polygraph.
23/09/2011 at 09:49 dopefish says:
There’s nothing wrong with their approach to the game, even makes sense, you want people to get a better feeling of the world, change it to a first person perspective.
but !
I think they fail in the art department, it looks too cartoonish for a game that is supposed to scare the hell out of you, or at least try to be serious.
23/09/2011 at 10:05 Kolchak says:
You know it’s not that this game exists that offends me. It offends me that it has nothing to do with X-Com and because it has parked its ass on our beloved Turn Based Strategy series we’ll probably never see a real addition to the X-Com series.
This game could have been given a million names but no it had to be called XCom. Meaning that a talented developer that can do more than shooters like Irrational Games or Firaxis will probably never get to touch X-Com.
23/09/2011 at 10:11 Robin says:
I don’t care anymore. Whatever I say the corpse-rape will be consumed. gg
23/09/2011 at 10:45 Moni says:
It’s called XCOM, not X-COM, that’s X without a dash COM. It’s obvious, really, it’s clearly something completely different to X-COM.
23/09/2011 at 10:49 KillahMate says:
As John Walker might tell you, it’s easy to be flippant when it’s something you don’t care about personally.
And I actually think this might be an interesting game – but it’s really not anyone’s X-Com.
23/09/2011 at 10:50 Caddrel says:
Well, after I’ve played through Diablo III, Skyrim, Battlefield III, Gears of War III, Batman: Arkham City, Terraria, and Xenonauts… Hmm.
To be honest, after doing all that, I’d probably replay Battlefield III or Diablo III. Or play more Xenonauts.
Who knows, maybe they’ll get some sales from the Mom & Pop crowd who’ve never heard of X-Com.
23/09/2011 at 10:57 Bull0 says:
Well I read that as “I’ve played skyrim battlefield 3 etc”
And I was like… :O MY TIME MACHINE WORKS!
23/09/2011 at 10:50 rustybroomhandle says:
Sooooo, anyone remember X-COM: Enforcer? Or is that like every Highlander movie after the original – deny that it happened?
23/09/2011 at 10:52 wodin says:
There is a decent free indy game UFO:AI…google it then give it a try…not bad.
Actually here is a link
http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/News
23/09/2011 at 11:11 Groove says:
I’m still on the fence about the game in general, but I’m not terribly impressed with how the video highlights the change in location.
So now it’s just a ‘humble’ organisation in America. Right, removing the globe spanning nature is a good thing, it was a brave move and it will give us a real insight into the lives of our everyday heros. Except that it’s a lazy cop-out, because playing a non-American character would shatter people’s worldview.
23/09/2011 at 12:06 RegisteredUser says:
As smarter people already have said: NONE of this shitstorm would have happened had they simply said we’re making our own little game, this is what it’s about.
Would actually have gotten some nods and approving grunts from many.
Saying it’s X-Com is just asking to be perma-raped.
Seriously people, stop acting out of franchise cash-in greed and admit that you are doing a seperate and new thing WHICH IS ACTUALLY A GOOD THING (that’s the irony here, although it does feel a lot like Ghostbusters meets Mad-Men FPSing).
23/09/2011 at 12:27 Nafu says:
This is not my X-Com! And after watching the above video, I’m beginning to think they’re just trolling us. Maybe any publicity really is good publicity?
An X-Com game being an FPS isn’t necessarily bad (some of my best friends are FPSs).
Being set in 1960s USA isn’t necessarily bad.
Replacing the international organisation with an American one isn’t necessarily bad, considering X-Com wasn’t around at that time (but the American organisation shouldn’t be called X-Com).
Having totally different aliens isn’t necessarily bad, although I’m personally not fond of the ones they went with.
The lack of strategic control isn’t necessarily bad (wait, hear me out).
The lack of destructible terrain is, well, pretty shit whichever way you look at it.
But all of these together?
If they made a FPS where you deploy as part of a squad of ordinary people (as opposed to three invincible guys with super powers) tasked with recovering a UFO, and deal with all the crap the poor bastards in the original dealt with (such as heavy plasma weapons, mind control, Chryssalids, and, as has been mentioned. an untimely lack of electro flares), that could maybe work, so long as you could still blow up farmhouses “just in case” there’s an alien inside.
If they made a game with the same gameplay but a different setting, aliens, weapons, etc., that could also work, but they shouldn’t call it X-Com (see Xenonauts).
If they made the game exactly as it is, but called it something else so it could stand on its own merit, that would be fine too, albeit forgettable (unless the rest of the game is way cooler than what they’ve already shown us).
Instead, they made an FPS without any of the cool things the original had, with a different setting and so on, called it X-Com anyway, and now they’re acting like it’s the same thing when there is clearly nothing in common.
/nerdrage
23/09/2011 at 12:55 hosndosn says:
The best I’ve seen it put is that the “genre” of the original X-Com is not “alien invasion” but “hardcore strategy”. Because this is a game, not a movie (or story, for that matter) franchise. Gameplay is what makes a game, no matter how good and atmospheric the decoration.
It’s like doing a TV series spin-off for The Terminator that is a sit-com. And that’s why everyone complains.
“Still filled up with indignant energy and ready to type “This is not my X-Com!” in response to whatever comes out of 2K? Then you are in luck”
Can we stop that please? This is worse than your headline puns. We’re not entitled idiots for having the most obvious opinion possible about a future X-Com game. If we want to criticize, if we want to discuss games at all we have to stop hating ourselves for being disappointed with boring AAA productions. Scream it from the rooftops: This game looks utterly shite. Fuck, even if it didn’t (“Make Love To” – Ed) the name it would look generic. Ebert up, be a little hateful for once!
I have no sympathies for those devs, no matter how often they say how much they “love the franchise”. I want this to flop, all their programmer slaves to be fired and not be able to feed their children. Get a job in finance, it pays better and has similar creative depth.
23/09/2011 at 14:16 Dariune says:
Despite the rage i actually agree with everything said here.
23/09/2011 at 17:13 Synesthesia says:
yes. Yes! Burning people! He says what we’re all thinking!
no seriously, good points, sans the rage.
All alien worlds should create chest high indestructible cover when terraforming their target planets. eugh.
24/09/2011 at 09:31 Kieron Gillen says:
But at least you haven’t lost your sense of humour, eh?
KG
24/09/2011 at 20:44 eclipse mattaru says:
I really like how you DEMAND THE RESPECT THAT YOU DESERVE! because we should be able to cry and whine all we want about our little playthings not being exactly what we wanted them to be and not being made fun of while at it goddamnit, and then you jump right ahead at wishing a bunch of people lose their jobs. Aren’t you one nice piece of work?
23/09/2011 at 13:00 BloatedGuppy says:
I’m sure they would’ve liked to make a sequel that more rigorously captured the spirit of the original. But you know, strategy games. They’re not CONTEMPORARY.
23/09/2011 at 13:01 Nameless1 says:
The main picture should be the “explain this bullshit” one.
23/09/2011 at 13:03 Coins says:
This game looks pretty great. It’s just such a shame they had to use the X-COM name for it, but meh. The proper games are still on GOG or Steam or perhaps even in your CD-cache. Yeah, I’d have liked to see the game with some fancy new effects and a slightly better UI, but it appears that’s not going to happen.
23/09/2011 at 13:10 rollermint says:
A whole load of marketing crap.
23/09/2011 at 14:00 whodatninja says:
I fucking hate this… Still. I’ve tried to be open to the idea… but this video just makes my blood boil. Nothing is the same except aliens. Every fucking person in the video is spewing out about re-imagining, different perspectives, different everything. They should have just said “We wanted to make a game called x-com that had nothing to do w/ the first game except aliens… oh and between missions you go to a base.” The missions all appear to be fucking canned sequential levels, with a few optional missions on the side. Lame fucking conversations with fucking secretaries. Level up powers for my magical human soldiers, and their character screens looked like they have an amazing 3 stats! Anyone that says they played the original game and are working on this knows this game is a fucking joke. Why does everything have to be fucking “re-imagined” Just fucking admit it’s 1st person to attract a younger audience who has no idea what the fucking franchise is about. JUST ADMIT IT’S FOR FUCKING MONEY!!! At least just be honest and save some fucking face.
23/09/2011 at 14:13 Daniel Klein says:
A lot of these devs have unreasonably handsome beards. Really quite fetching.
Or to put it in Internet: OMG WHY ARE YOU SPENDING ALL YOUR BUDGET ON MALE GROOMING?!
23/09/2011 at 14:24 bill says:
This looks pretty cool… is it still an FPS? It’s starting to look more like a 3rd person shooter rpg. *
I love the art style and the fact it’s NOT a generic setting… though i’m a little sad it’s another USA setting rather than being global.
*said as someone who never played x-com. as a syndicate lover, i understand the pain of those involved.
23/09/2011 at 14:44 MFToast says:
It’s funny, Bill Hicks’ coke commercial idea comes to mind. Oooh, look at all the charismatic developers, look at how serious they look, with a tinge of genius flashing in their eyes. You can almost hear their Sectoid voices echoing in your head… You want XCOM… buy XCOM… It is a good game… It is a remake of the original… You need XCOM… Shoot your partner…
But really though, if you don’t like the games a company is coming out with, stop giving them your money. End of story. They will only listen to your dollar, they don’t care about what you think. All the words in the world can’t talk like money anymore.
23/09/2011 at 15:20 buzzmong says:
I think it should have been called XCOM:Origins.
You can see in the first few minutes the dev goes “in XCom…er, OUR Xcom….”
23/09/2011 at 16:09 Nick says:
Basically.. SWAT4 style only Xcom would have been awesome, this looks like shit.
23/09/2011 at 16:25 Bfox says:
This video could make me cry, what has happened to the pleasure of gaming?
Is this how we respect our elders?
Does every game need to meet a certain requirement of ADD adrenaline rush before it’s marketable?
23/09/2011 at 18:12 BobsLawnService says:
If I decide to eventually buy this I’ll probably just pretend that it isn’t called X-Com and try to enjoy it for what it is. Just because the developers have doesn’t mean I need to drink the Kool-Aid myself.
But let’s face it – every X-Com game which wasn’t a strategy game sucked and flopped so I’m surprised the bean-counters didn’t shoot the idea down based on historical trends.
23/09/2011 at 19:17 OJ287 says:
2 rival houses…
The battle between Light and Dark…
Choose your character from a roster of warriors, nobility and battle priests…
The sequel to the worldwide smash hit…
F P CHESS
24/09/2011 at 00:04 Joof says:
I took a game design class in college, and one of the projects we made was FPChess. We put in fog of war, so you could only see limited amounts of field, and you could only see about 1-2 squares around you with most pieces. Each time you took out an enemy piece, the winning piece also got a vision increase, so it could see further away. It was actually a pretty nifty twist.
23/09/2011 at 19:37 DK says:
“It’s about experiencing the origins of this organization from a really zoomed in and boots-on-the-ground perspective. We really wanted you to feel like what it was like to be one of the squadies in the original game, and not the all-knowing, top-down commander.”
And yet it’s as far away from that as you can possibly get. You know what happened to the squaddies in the original game? They got mind controlled and killed their team. They watched their squad get mowed down by plasma bolts when the Skyranger ramp came down. They were sent in with stun rods because Command didn’t trust them with lethal weapons. If they were very lucky they were relegated to medic duty till they got some combat experience under their belt.
Most importantly squaddies were disposable. It would be childsplay to actually model a genuine XCOM FPS (SWAT 4 with persistance, done) but they chose to go with the “he can’t die” hero and waist-high walls as cover.
23/09/2011 at 20:39 sizzlord says:
I was trying to give these guys a chance, I really was, but after that video I fucking hate this game already. I disagree with nearly every ‘re-imagining’ decision they made and now have even less desire to give them money for this shit.
*ahem*
This is not X-Com
23/09/2011 at 22:27 kud13 says:
Це не моя UFO.
When reviewing UFO: Aftermath, the first of the more modern attempts to recapture the magic of the original, one Russian reviewer defined the key unique features of X-COM,
multiple levels(as in, multiple storeys)
total destructibility
suspense.
these are the aspects that made the game brilliant–the absolute freedom to do whatever the hell you wanted on a square click of mixed terrain, with deadly sectoids/floaters/mutons/snakemen/GODDAMN ETHEREALS trying to kill you before you kill them.
if 2k’s Bioshock with Aliens had at least this (I mean, FFS, their title uses the Bioshock font! really?), i’d be willing to maybe give this a chance.
instead we get a set of linearly scripted setpieces, riddled with chesthighwallitis (TM), using Mass Effect’s biotics that came out of nowhere to jazz up the experience.
hell, if you wanted to feel like a squaddie from UFO, you’d need a proper RPG mechanics for weapons, where your green recruits would shoot the aliens point blank distance in the head, twice, to have another alien blast a hole the size of a fist in your chest from a shadow 200m away.
true UFO experience would have you watch your squaddies die left and right, have you survive by the skin of your teeth for the first few dozen missions, untill your scientist would roll out their first armour kit. instead…. you gt to revive your fallen comrades.
but this….this is Bioshock with aliens. call it what it is, and I may even buy it.
but if you insist on calling it XCOM… no sale, no how.
23/09/2011 at 22:33 7Seas says:
Well said. No need to be apologists for idiot studio decisions.
24/09/2011 at 01:07 The_Great_Skratsby says:
Alien invasion first contact: Build waist high walls.
Sorry lads, that’s not X-Com, you can say it as much as you like.
24/09/2011 at 04:23 barfmann says:
I think this game looks like a lot of fun. People are so weird.
24/09/2011 at 10:54 RegisteredUser says:
Wanna bet the game sells despite all these comments?
Because people, theysa them LOVE their chest high walls. They are SO DAMN HUGGABLE!
24/09/2011 at 14:55 BurningPet says:
Do you think that every game succeeds in this highly competitive, highly production costly genre?? on the contrary, i am Willing to bet it will hardly break even.
the game just looks boring, even without the XCOM title that just makes the bad looking game look worse.
24/09/2011 at 16:09 Dominic White says:
I’d like to thank the internet at large for finally making ‘Wait and see, then judge it on its own merits’ the inflammatory, dangerous position it is today. People were getting weak and soft. People were actually playing finished games before they passed judgement on them! Can you imagine that? It’s good to see that knees are jerking all around the world once again.
Internet, you make me proud.
24/09/2011 at 20:50 GloatingSwine says:
In the days before the internet we had much less exposure to games before they came out, because all we had to go on was maybe a preview or two in whichever gaming magazine you read (and you were only allowed one, gaming magazines were as tribal as the platforms they reported on. If you were a Crash reader you’d sooner get a dirty commodore than a copy of Sinclair User).
So now we can see them before they come out, that means we get to moan about them preemptively rather than moaning about them when we’ve already spent money for the privilege.
24/09/2011 at 17:19 cptgone says:
XCOMmunicate 2K!
24/09/2011 at 18:39 Nidokoenig says:
If turn based strategy games are completely unprofitable and they couldn’t turn a profit with one if they tried, they should release the source code for Enemy Unknown, Terror from the Deep and Apocalypse. That’d shut all the antis up.
Alternatively, throw some money at an indie dev to make a turn-based X-Com on the cheap to build hype and shut down the argument that this kills X-Com as a strategy game. 111,289 people bought Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars for the 3DS, a game produced by Julian Gollop and which feels very much like X-Com, despite being rather heavily scripted and forcing you to reload/restart if a character died. If they only made ten dollars a game, they made a million dollars on that, and that’s more than you need to spend to get a game like that made.
Personally, FPS is pretty much a deal breaker for me. I suck at FPSes due to poor hand-eye coordination, and can only play most for about half an hour before succumbing to motion sickness, meaning I can’t practice. Some titles, oddly, I’m fine with, but I can’t work out why(might be stealth-based, since there’s less motion there) and that just makes this game too much of a gamble.
If they manage to make a game that is fun in it’s own right and doesn’t screw with my system, and let’s me kid myself it’s a decent game that’s making a vast quantity of cute references to a game I love like Bethesda did with Elder Scrolls: Capital Wasteland, yeah, I’ll be happy with it. But I won’t be pre-ordering, I’ll wait for a price drop and a chance to play a demo or a game on a similar engine, so the way the video game market is set up right now, they don’t give a shit about what I think, so why should I bother? There are other games to play.
26/09/2011 at 11:49 thebluemonkey81 says:
At no point are they going to be honest and turn around and say “we would make an actual xcom game but fallout showed that turning a turnbased stratergy game into an FPS makes way more money”
It’s been said before, the “AAA” games industry seems to be going more and more polar where everything either super shiny fps minimal attention span console games or so casual it’s hipster.
Luckily this leaves an awesome gulf for indie developers to fill, here’s hoping anyhow.