XCOM - Don't Stop Believing

[Jason]

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Alec Meer, one of the Rock Paper Shotgun folks, had an <a href="http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox360/xcom/preview/first-look-at-xcom/a-2010050715233230054/g-2010050715180181032" target="_blank">early look at XCOM</a> for PC Gamer UK.
<blockquote>What now? Your goal here isn&rsquo;t to kill every alien in the place. XCOM doesn&rsquo;t work like that. It&rsquo;s incredibly unlikely that you&rsquo;ll comb every area of one of its wide-open mission maps, as health, ammo and armour are strictly limited to whatever you brought in with you. If your bullets &ndash; or, more pertinently, those flame grenades &ndash; are in short supply, you won&rsquo;t be able to hold out much longer. The alien presence grows and grows the longer you stay, so you need to make a judgement call between trying to gather more evidence and simply staying alive. Your car&rsquo;s just down the road &ndash; you could leave right now, knowing the photos you&rsquo;ve taken and notes you&rsquo;ve scribbled will still be some use in establishing the nature of this enemy unknown. But that would make you a big wet wimp.
</blockquote>
The article ends on an embarrassingly enthusiastic note.
<blockquote>Expect an agonising drip-feed of information ahead of XCOM&rsquo;s expected 2011 release. It&rsquo;s going to be painful. But we&rsquo;ve waited this long, dealing with grotesque sequels, disappointing remakes and fan projects. XCOM may not be X-COM verbatim, but it&rsquo;s someone throwing money at the concept, not leaving it stranded at the pointless poles of fan-exploitation or slavish re-creation.

X-COM was a game about investigating an alien invasion of Earth at your own speed, by your own means. So is XCOM. You can start believing.
</blockquote>
Painful, grotesque, disappointing. You've got the right adjectives, Alec, but seem a little confused as to where they should go.<p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/">Rock Paper Shotgun</a></p>

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

dealing with grotesque sequels

The irony is killing me.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Subhuman journalists start their anti-fanbase smear campaign again. How surprising.
X-Com was Laser Squad 2. A tactical wargame at heart with a long ancestry of games made by a boardgame fan who made his boardgames on computer so that they could have more complicated rules.

 

[DraQ]

dealing with grotesque sequels

The irony is killing me.

A tactical wargame at heart with a long ancestry of games made by a boardgame fan who made his boardgames on computer so that they could have more complicated rules.

I felt a great disturbance in the hivedumb... as if several retarded voices suddenly -ed in (t)error and were suddenly silenced.

 

[YourConscience]

X-COM was a game about investigating an alien invasion of Earth at your own speed, by your own means. So is XCOM. You can start believing.

No, X-Com was not about investigating an alien invasion. It was about fighting it off. And no, I won't start believing these lies - they are too blatant.

Ah damnit, I told myself to not get worked up on this topic again but here it's happening again...

 

[Fez]

I believe in you, Timmy!

Amazing how we can recognize the pattern early when this kind of thing happens - immediately discredit the fanbase, lavish praise on it and the franchise, claim that it is better to get what you don't really want in the vain hope of it somehow spawning what you do later on. Is there some kind of guidebook for these writers that tells them this?

 

[madbringer]

Keep in mind that when EA remakes Syndicate as an FPS with constant health regen, checkpoints and rail shooter sequences and whatever else nonsense, first thing they'll do is make damn sure to convince everyone that that's exactly what the first two games were like, and despite a few changes to the franchise, to keep with the times, naturally, it stays the very same game it always was, at heart.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

This actually sounds like a fairly cool game, but an XCOM game? Hardly. Journalist trying to rationalize the radical genre and gameplay shift is especially lulzy.

 

[Fez]

This actually sounds like a fairly cool game, but an XCOM game? Hardly. Journalist trying to rationalize the radical genre and gameplay shift is especially lulzy.

I've heard a few people say elsewhere that the bad taste being left in their mouth is from the misuse of the X-COM name when without it they'd see it as an otherwise possibly interesting FPS. It does feel rather tacked-on.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Amazing how we can recognize the pattern early when this kind of thing happens - immediately discredit the fanbase, lavish praise on it and the franchise, claim that it is better to get what you don't really want in the vain hope of it somehow spawning what you do later on. Is there some kind of guidebook for these writers that tells them this?

Exactly. It makes me feel slightly annoyed. Anyway, if they try to discredit the fanbase, it means that a credible fanbase that dislikes the game is a threat to their sales.

Which is an excellent opportunity for us to troll them :D . If they have to pay journalists or lose sales, then we can have some fun countering their arguments, which means that some people will not buy their games (and they will lose some money) and that they will need to lose more money bribing more journalists :D .

 

[Oarfish]

What now? Your goal here isn’t to kill every alien in the place

It bloody well used to be. The risk reward payoff was capture vs excessive use of high explosives. Which admittedly became annoying in TFTD when the crappy AI randomwalked between cupboards in the hold of the too large cruise liner maps.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Somehow I'm not surprised at all.

 

[SCO]

I believe in you, Timmy!

Amazing how we can recognize the pattern early when this kind of thing happens - immediately discredit the fanbase, lavish praise on it and the franchise, claim that it is better to get what you don't really want in the vain hope of it somehow spawning what you do later on. Is there some kind of guidebook for these writers that tells them this?

Psychologists.

 

[Angthoron]

I thought that RPS had some shreds of credibility? Or was I gravely mistaken? I wish they would go and piss all over Bethesda fans, would be interesting to see the outcome. It's easy to be brave against dead companies and discontinued franchises and their handfuls of loyal fans, go earn some cred points by pissing off someone that's big now!

 

[GarfunkeL]

They took it down?

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Apparently yes. But why? Too much negative feedback maybe?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

How much of you, guys have commented on RPS?

 

[Severian Silk]

The alien presence grows and grows the longer you stay, so you need to make a judgement call between trying to gather more evidence and simply staying alive. Your car’s just down the road – you could leave right now, knowing the photos you’ve taken and notes you’ve scribbled will still be some use in establishing the nature of this enemy unknown.

Sounds more like "CSI: UFO Defense".

Honestly, though, I do think the first two games were a bit one-dimensional when it came to the plot. Some additional RPG elements like in Jagged Alliance 2 wouldn't hurt things.

Or maybe I just want JA2 in a sci-fi setting.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Or maybe I just want JA2 in a sci-fi setting.

You're not the only one.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Honestly, though, I do think the first two games were a bit one-dimensional when it came to the plot. Some additional RPG elements like in Jagged Alliance 2 wouldn't hurt things.

Or maybe I just want JA2 in a sci-fi setting.

X-Com3 tried to accomplish that. It killed the X-Com series. It featured diplomacy, kidnapping, espionage, multiple alien dimensions, etc. etc. They had to cut out most of the game because it was impossible to QA it. The game took 3 years to make and most of the work was wasted.
After such a disaster, Microprose didn't want any other computer boardgames in the series and started making cheap shooters.

 

[Raghar]

Who wants to read the original article, can read the original article. US look and feel. Why would anyone outside US like that? It's simple lick arsing the expected users in similar way as Witcher had references to sayings of Polish politics.

 

[Hory]

X-COM was a game about investigating an alien invasion of Earth at your own speed

Except it was the opposite, most of the time I felt like I could barely keep up with the aliens and wondered whether I'd get funding for another month.

 

[Fez]

True. Most players starting off would get completely overwhelmed. If you couldn't stomp the aliens and keep them that way they would grow and spread while they made deals and your funding collapsed.

 

[Achilles]

I thought that RPS had some shreds of credibility? Or was I gravely mistaken?

I thought so too, I actually thought that some of these guys don't follow the mainstream. After that verbal blowjob as a "thank you" for the exclusive, I'm deeply dissapointed in them. Especially Alec Meer, the guy who wrote the article, because he has said many times that he is an X-Com fan and even wrote a couple of articles about the greatness of the first game a few weeks back. Those articles were probably an attempt to convince us that he is a fan, so that we'd take his endorsement seriously. Well guess what you bastard, we're on to you.

 

[Fez]

Those guys have written for years for mainstream publishers too. I'd imagine they would follow the mainstream.