XComforting: Happy Enemy Unknown Details

New screens and resultant info-nuggets have arrived for Firaxis' X-COM reimaginging, and they've assuaged some of my concerns. By which I mean "wahoooooooooooooooooooo! (cautiously)"

In addition to that, I'm hearing that XCOM - the shooter - has been delayed again, to 2013. Whether that means it's gone back to the drawing board yet again, is waiting to see how the Firaxis game does or has its head on the executioners' block I just don't know. It does mean that Enemy Unknown is now definitely the first game in the XCOM relaunch, which pleases me greatly.

An American magazine is hosting a few new shots of the game, plus an oddly shrugging attempt to make fans of assorted console franchises believe that XCOM is for them.

First up there's this, which demonstrates multi-tier levels and what I think are destructible environments, together with what just might be the new-look Mutons.

Also some pigeons, which might be another type of alien but honestly, I'm pretty sure they're just pigeons.

This one has the game looking particularly spangly, and shows it off from a close-up camera.

Sectoids! To-hit stats! Dead civilians! Hard-to-pronounce Russian names! All of these things are good, X-COMy things. Obviously there's a tell-tale console 'RB' icon in there, but that doesn't worry me too much at this point. The magazine posting these shots is primarily aimed at console gamers, after all.

Then there's the new-look geoscape, which is quite striking:

'Hold Y to scan for UFOs' is an odd one though - does this suggest you have to manually find them rather than are alerted by radar when one's appeared? Good to see funding and research all present and correct though.

The shot at the top of this post, meanwhile, shows a more recognisably X-COMmy perspective than we've seen thus far. I.e. the one I'll probably play from even if I have the option not to. I do generally like to be as zoomed-out as possible.

High-res versions of those shots are here. The magazine is also offering a video discussing the art of XCOM. Off you go.

I should be interviewing the devs later this week with a bit of luck, so we'll know more very soon.