139: X-Com: The Truth Is Out There

[CanadianWolverine]

how about X-Com with multiple planets, new vehicles and weapons that actually change gameplay, new armor-types straight from the get go, new deployment methods (paradrop?), new gadgets (invisibility, CoH-style buildables?), and new enemies (some HUGE enemies, flying aliens, etc.)? i think that would be a sequel worth playing and buying.

OMG, I would so buy that. I think you just got my Alpha Centauri mixed in with your XCOM.

w0rd. i only played Alpha Centauri for a lil bit, but yeh, half-way between AC and XCom could make for an interesting game. really take X-Com's multi-level gameplay to the max...

Upon reading this post again as I was looking at the new excellent posts, for some reason that had me thinking of Star Control 2, which can be found as Master of Uraquan (spelling?) now, and Galactic Civilizations 2.

Come to think of it, as Dancing Muton mentions, in some regards, even though it may not seem to be the case at first glance, I think we have had other really special games like XCOM which were it 'spiritual successor', then and even to this day. I really do think being willing to mix and match what a developer sees as being the best parts from different genres allows for a better game. I wouldn't be surprised if today's developers have been inspired by games like XCOM and those who ignore it's lessons do so at their own game's peril. I really do hope XCOM history (and other extremely fun but unfortunately poor sales numbers games) does get dissected, so more developers learn from it and improve upon it.

 

[thenightgaunt]

I'd say that the true failing of UFO: Extraterrestrials was that it wasn't true enough to the original. The problem was that while it was an X-Com clone (which was what it was sold as and what we wanted), it tried to be unique at certain points which killed the illusion.

What was wanted was essentially "X-Com (Now with new graphics and Windows XP compatability!)"
But what we got was that but with a number of changes to the way the game was played that ruined the illusion. Things like the "immortal soldiers" change basically removed the ability to really manage your team, and the micromanaging and detailed strategy involved in setting up and running your bases was essentially removed. This was a shame as that was one of the nice things about the old X-Com games.
One of the drives you had to go after ufos in X-Com was in order to stock up on Alien Fuel and other materials you needed to either build new equiptment or keep your new alien-tech ships in the air. In UFO:ET, the only thing you can really do with the salvage from ufos was to research it then sell it. This removed alot of the motivation and strategy that helped drive the game in it's 2nd half.

It was a nice try, but they simplified it far to much to make it a true clone, which proved fatal.

 

[Dancing Muton]

Oh, I just recently played Star Control 2. From what I can tell, there wasn't an article on the game on the Escapist, and it definitely needs some love.
Since the impressions are still fresh, I'll just copy what I said on another forum:
The moment the intro started I knew this was one of "those" games, one of a kind, one that is truly a work of art. The way the title faded in and that sound that accompanied it which reminded me of a beating heart really struck a chord with me. After the intro I flew my ship to Earth and was immediately greeted by the Ur-Quan leaving a very strong impression on me given their appearance, their dialog filled with threats coupled with intimidating appearance and music. I was notified that the Earth was under an impenetrable shield which the Ur-Quan placed around it after they forced humans to be their slaves and blew up every trace of technology, throwing humans into stone age. Still under impression of that I continued to the orbital station which was in need of repairs. Risking my neck on the hostile Mercury I return with the materials, notifying the commander there that the Moon base is empty, and right then an Ilwrath ship closes in on the station and I am forced to fight.
All this happened in the first five minutes of the game. First. Five. Minutes. Think about that ladies and gentlemen. How many games have managed to draw you in like that?
There were so many little things that made the game fun: the humor, the battles, the interesting races, but for me the single most impressive thing was how it threw surprises at me at every corner. I had just won over the Zoq-Fot-Pik and was done mining. I opened the map to go home when all of a sudden they disappeared from the map. Then there was the time when I had convinced the Thraddash to attack the Kohr-Ah. Even though I had already seen quite a bit of weird stuff in the game, I still couldn't believe it when they started traveling across the map.
On a somewhat related note, I noticed there was a petition for a new game, but so far it doesn't seem to be going well.

X-COM has a lot of fans, not just among gamers, but developers as well. Did you know that Diablo was at first modeled somewhat after X-COM? In fact, in early builds it was TB, not RT. I think however that for Diablo RT was the perfect choice.
Which reminds me, "Diablo - the game that wasn't" would be an interesting article. There is quite a bit that was not in the final product. There was a website dedicated to that and it has a lot of information about some great quests and characters that sadly got cut due to time tables. At one point I had all that information about Diablo and its sequel in my head and I can say it's one of the better worlds in games. There is a lot of thought put into it and the missing information I got on Diablo has filled in the blanks somewhat. For example, remember the Summoner (Horazon) in the Arcane Sanctuary? I used to think that he was totally out of place and wasn't really fit into Diablo 2 all that well, but it turns out he was planned for Diablo 1 and there is a lot more information on him. Could be that Blizzard is planning something for him in Diablo 3. Well he's dead obviously, but he has a brother.

@thenightgaunt Have you tried Bman's mod? Reportedly it makes the game much more like X-COM. You know, now that I think about it, I don't recall the game ever having a public test version. It seems to me that it's a common mistake of new developers. Really, I think a lot of these problems could have been fixed has there been a public beta. Too bad. :/

 

[EGOinside]

:/Could be that Blizzard is planning something for him in Diablo 3. Well he's dead obviously, but he has a brother.

Pfft evil never dies anyway the world stone was destoryed cutting off the world.

 

[Jetbootjack]

Stab Lobstermen, don't shoot them

sTeVE

 

[BatAttack]

Alan, good article but I have to disagree with you about UFO: Extra-Terrestrials.

The poor reception was not because it was 'too much like the original', but rather that it was a direct but inferior copy the original. Ok, it runs on the modern OS, and has 3d graphics, but otherwise it has lower quality and less (functional) features.

-When it came out, it lacked decent interface elements like hotkeys.
-It was generally very buggy (I don't want to over-generalise, but you know how these eastern-european games often turn out).
-It did not allow you to build a second proper base (only the first base had all facilities).
-The randomised tactical maps were made from limited pre-fab elements, and were extremely repetative (to the point of not feeling random at all).
-The destructibe terrain was bizzarely tuned - a single bullet or two from an ordinary rifle would destroy an entire wall section (the original required heavy weapons to destroy walls).
-The alien AI was weak.
-The graphics were better in the sense that they were modern 3d, but the artwork was very poor - they looked to me like the models were made by students. The animation was also very weak - the walk cycles were very stiff. The original's 2 frame sprite walk cycles were less of an eye-sore because they were rough and fast. ET's were slow and bad.
-The research results (ie, the story delivery) were bad transaltions from the original (czech was it?) and were presented in small font in a tiny window - which could easily have been much bigger (the original had full screen reasearch results, with evocative pictures).

I could go on and on, but my point is just this: UFO:ET was not 'like X-Com' .. it was just a bad, sad, amateurish imitation.
If a real, quality X-Com remake came along, it would get a much better reception than UFO:ET did.

 

[Toadbrooks]

Real nice article, very accurate on all points. I myself fall into a rare niche where I LIKE sequels to be just the same game with new maps/units/graphics. I got X-Com as a birthday gift ages ago, and fell in love with it. TFTD was later released as a shareware demo in PC Gamer Magazine, and I fell equally in love with TFTD. Problem was, I never could score a copy. Along came Windows 95 and my favorite DOS games wouldn't work anymore, that was when I stopped playing X-Com. UFO:E was a godsend to me, and I love the game to death... It IS very similar to X-Com, but thats WHY I love it.

XCom remains one of my favorite games and this article was excellent. There is an excellent solution for those like Khell who want to pay old DOS games ... DOSBOX

http://www.dosbox.com/

Runs under Windoze as well as Linux. About twice a year, I fire up DOSBOX, start a new XCom game and once again take my frustrations out on Snakemen.

 

[Toadbrooks]

Do you know why its hard to do a different kind of XCOM? IMHO, it was because XCOM was one of the early hybrid games, genre spanning ... interestingly enough, it seems like other games either already or destined to be classic are very hard to class as being just one genre of game.

These days in games we are constantly seeming to get our peanut butter in with our chocolate - that RPG has a bit of RTS, that RTS has a bit of RPG, that FPS has a bit of RPG, and they all borrowed heavily from the dearly departed Adventure games or the casual platformer. Because of that, you could do XCOM again these days, just be sure to let us blow up the walls, build those secret bases where we want, play up those squad character building, and research a the booty we steal to use in interesting "human" ways.

Since one of my biggest problems with XCOM these days is just getting it to work at a reasonable speed, kinda hard to intercept a UFO when they only appear on the screen in the blink of an eye, since I haven't found any of those programs that supposedly slow your computer down to actually work, if someone would take the original and just make it work at the right pace for today's computers, I would play it again.

UFO: Extraterrestrials - I thought this version doesn't let you blow up structures, build bases around the world and research or maybe I have that mixed up with a XCOM mod and missed out.

I should have mentioned above that DOSBOX has a parameter that allows you to set the number of cycles given to the program it is running. DOSBOX itself tries to make a reasonable selection, and on my machine it seems to work just fine. I have an AMD X2 dual core processor running Ubuntu 8.04 at 2.0 gHz. XCom under that runs just slightly faster than the old DOS version, and is quite playable. YMMV

 

[GothmogII]

I still play Ufo Defense, Terror and Apocalypse regularly when the notion takes me. For nostalgia's sake, I still enjoy them as much as I did when I first played them, though, admittedly Apocalypse took a hit and after getting it again on Steam I found it not to be what I recalled it to be.

But as for Interceptor, the article was spot. On. That game stunk.

In relation to UFO: Aftermath and it's kin. On the one hand, it's not the worst series of games you could play. But still, the creature and level designs are dull and uninspired. I mean: Fungus Aliens? And mutated earth animals? Think of all the interesting shapes and forms they could have come up with. And what did we get? Floating potato monsters. Yay :\

Personally I haven't played Extraterrestrials, but judging by some of the comments here I'm glad I gave it a miss.

And for a proper sequel...I don't see what's so hard about it. I mean, taking the original: The game was dark and bright. It was scary, and colourful. The aliens were terrifying at times yet almost like cartoons. It shouldn't be so hard to do a simple artwork update, nor, tweak the tactics a little and use a modern engine.

But...I guess like the article says..that'd probably be sticking to close to the original formula. Just don't get what's so bad about that...I'd settle for a bumped up carbon copy if it were still good.

 

[itsoutthere]

I feel like I belong in this thread

 

[Dragoon785]

Ah, X Com. So very well thought out. Very fun and challenging AI, pulsing music that is simple and works for the game. I go back to this game all the time. If I see anything new or recreated from this without any of the details messed up or milked like crazy, I'll enjoy it. If someone were to change it even the slightest bit, it might not work out.

 

[theultimateend]

I have a hard time accepting that it is Nostalgia considering I still play Master of Orion 2 and X:Com quite frequently.

Basically anytime I find myself amidst the morass of billion dollar "just enough" modern day video games I slip back into a few older much less expensive titles.

Xcom provides a wonderful atmosphere and the unusual nack for making me care about my characters. I give them a name and now I care. When people die on me in XCom (and it does happen) I am left deeply sad.

One of my favorite things to do if I know someone is going to die is to go out "like a hero", grasping onto a high explosive with 1 turn to explosion and dashing towards the enemy as close as I can.

Once I get alien grenades it is a pretty good way to send my heroes off in style.

 

[Mogmoogle]

I bought X-com 1 & 2 when they first came out, and continue to struggle with windows as it updates to play the originals, its sad and its obvious to me why there has not been a decent sequal, first of all enough with the FPS games or RTS games, keep x-com the way it was originally,. heres my list of things they should do to make a successful x-com sequel who knows maybe someone will listen. (I'm sure you all have some.)

Story related
1.) Earth should be the primary focus, because we all want to defend earth.
2.) It should take place after the events of UFO, and TFTD
*-Since there are still aliens alive, after the destruction of their masters, we should
have some alien refuges that join the x-com ranks when you hire soldiers. (sectoid human
hybrids were in Apocalypse)

Geoscape
1.) You should have access to both the surface of the planet, and the ocean. and be able to
construct bases in both, which both can yield different research opportunity's, and
manufacturing benefits.

Missions
1.) There should be multiple mission types, not just kill the aliens win a prize. escort
missions, or rescue particular people. like protecting a cruise ship, or cargo
vessel(TFTD), or protecting a high ranking political official his family and home, etc.
(The Ufo trilogy has some of this)
2.) The environment should remain destructible, much like it was in the first 3,
(Apocalypse I likes some of the effects in this such as fire burning the upper floors)

AI
1.) Aliens shouldn't be so fly around and do nothing, attack you when it suits them. Aliens
Should plot different ways to attack you, and new mission types should result, for
example, Capturing an alien commander may reveal that the aliens are comprising a
biological weapon and a delivery system to target humans in some way, so you have to
infiltrate their lab, and destroy it. things like this, the aliens should plot new ways
to attack you when they don't succeed in a full force alien attack.

Battle related
1.) When Aliens attack your base, and vise versa. you should have to attack the ground level
to gain entrance to the base before you enter the underground level. (TFTD at least had
this with regards to the aliens) this would allow you to then develop exterior defense's
other then those that you would use to shoot down their craft.
2.) Alien ship combat should allow you to auto-resolve (Like heroes of might and magic),
reason being, I love the combat, but theres so many alien crafts. its annoying to have
to do them all especially when you have tactical superiority, 20 guys vs a scout craft.
is annoying, If there was more mission variation it would be ok.

Unit Related
1.) You should be given the choice when your soldiers level up, where the points go.
(Ufo: Extraterrestrials, Ufo Aftershock, Aftermath, Afterlight all had this)
2.) You should be able to train your troops. not just for psi-training. but weapons
training and piloting of vehicles. (Ufo Aftershock, Aftermath, Afterlight)

Equipment Related
1.) Tanks and Vehicles should not be useless, they take far to much damage in all the games
Including the new ones. for the cost of 4 units in your drop ship, they should be worth
4 units. and you should be able to select who is piloting the craft. vehicles should also
have multiple damageable parts. wheels, treads or legs being destroyed should result in
the vehicle not being mobile, which adds the dimension of having someone with an
engineering skill.
2.) Cybernetic Implants should also be available to increase your stats slightly or give you
new forms of vision to detect aliens (Ufo: Trilogy)
3.) New forms of equipment should be avalible such as the ability to have a flying or aqua
scout craft, with higher movement, but low health, no attack. to allow you to do
reconnaissance on the maps.

I'm not saying this would make a perfect game, but I'm saying if you want to find out what would improve the original game, and make a fitting sequel the game developers should check out the already vital fan community of the original's, and from that figure out what would make good additions to the game.

 

[Thurston]

Zombie Thread!

X-Com available on Steam. $5.00

And a quote from a PC game magazine, "Don't name one of the soldiers after you, thinking you'll protect him, and he'll be a total badass. The aliens always know."