Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Oh dear, it turns out it’s a first-person shooter with quick-time events and checkpoints after all. Move along, nothing to see here.

X-COM is back. I’ve waited 15 years for this, and now I can wait no more. Here’s what I think. (Note – this write-up covers singleplayer only. Thoughts on multiplayer will follow at a later date).
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The XCOM demo arrived yesterday, and immediately, violently divided opinion. This game could only ever divide opinion, of course, being as it is a remake of one of the most revered PC games of all time, but in this instance I think it’s dividing opinion for the wrong reasons. For various reasons, mostly due to its very minute amount of content (one entirely scripted mission, one on-rails tour of the base and one more too short, too-easy mission), it gives an impression of the game that isn’t altogether accurate. As a result of this, comments about the demo are a warzone of disappointment. In some ways – both good and bad – the demo does tell a true story. In others, it’s suggesting a much smaller and far more shallow game than the preview code we’ve been engrossed in, and for that reason I think it may have been a bit of a gaffe. Let me explain, in the form of a list.
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For some reason, I’m away whenever the chance to play Firaxis’ XCOM remake arises. Last week, any inexplicable wailing noises anyone might have heard in the region of Marseille can now be ascribed to my grief upon discovering an email containing XCOM: Enemy Unknown preview code then realising my PC was in another country. So it was left to the able hands and brain of Adam, then later Jim also, to tell you all about this turn-based reimagining. I might be a Johnny Come Lately here, but I am undeterred, having spent sunrise til sunset playing the code yesterday, and now wish to share with you those aspects of XCOM that have most delighted me. For they have truly delighted me: this is the tense, tactical time-sink I’d hoped it would be. Quibbles I might have, one of which you can also read below, but I’m so relieved, and so pleased: this is X-COM but not slavishly so, capturing the key beats and the essential tension while also nosing at new terrain.
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We’ve been getting stuck into a preview version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown this week, and that turn-based tactical taste is fresh in our minds. Jim and Adam sat down to have a bit of a chat about it, following on from Mr Smith’s excited hands-on preview. What on earth would they make of it all?
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I’ve been playing a preview version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown for the past few days. I haven’t really been doing anything else, except occasionally falling to sleep in front of my computer and dreaming about XCOM. I apologise in advance for the length and possible incoherence of what follows. I’m giddy, maybe I’m rambling, but I’m as excited about a game as I have been in a long time. No coy introduction here; XCOM is marvellous and now that I’m not playing it, all I want to do is talk about it, write about it, and jump up and down hollering about it.

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After something in the region of 30,000 words across four interviews, the odyssey that is my series of chats with XCOM: Enemy Unknown lead designer Jake Solomon finally comes to an end. While my battered transcribing fingers are inordinately relieved about this, I’m strangely sad otherwise – it’s been fascinating, and no matter how the finished game actually turns out, one thing I have no doubt of is that Solomon is yer bona fide X-COM superfan with only the best of intentions for the remake he’s heading up at Firaxis.

In this last part, we talk about the Guile haircut, how the alien AI works, which obscure aspects of the game he’s most proud of, soldier/armour customisation and bagpipes.

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Not content with a mere three interviews with the lead designer of Firaxis’ upcoming X-COM remake XCOM: Enemy Unknown, I recently settled down for a fourth lengthy chinwag with the effusive Jake Solomon. In this first of two parts, we talk about the difficulty of describing the essential X-COM/XCOM experience, why people shouldn’t immediately start playing in Iron Man Mode (or perhaps why they should), what’s yet to be revealed about the game, some of the near-catastrophic mistakes made during its creation and how designing boardgames/arguing with Sid Meier might just have saved it.
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