E3 2010: XCOM Is a "Strategic Shooter" in Name Only

Kandon Arc

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The main reason this is going to be an FPS is simply because there isn't a big enough market for a AAA version of the original X-COM. It's far too risky to attempt for a major studio so they're trying to make XCOM accessible to many more people. If you want another X-COM type game, it might be worth checking out Xenonauts; but expecting 2K to do it just isn't realistic.

The game looks like a might be a shooter with a lot more depth than usual so I'm tentatively looking forward to it, but I'm hoping that the squad mechanics are somewhat more interesting than they presently seem.
 

TsunamiWombat

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And the older fanboys bias countinues unabated.

Mind you, I can think of some ways to make a new X-Com how you like it, but it would be a PSN XBLA title, not a triple A.

I'll admit the squad mechanics have be concerned. Squadmates seem pretty damn stupid to be so valuable. Now I know you lose squadmates like nobodies business in the early stages of X-COM, so maybe the power armored super agents come later, but damn, I hate escourt missions and babysitting.

If you played Battlefield: Vietnam's story mission (or was it some other vietnam game?) it had real time combat that you could freeze at any time, and jump between controlled teammates. You could also level up your soldiers with skills in various stats, though they came with preconfigured specializations (I remember the main character, 'Cherry', was the medic, and the black guy was the machinegunner, etc etc).
 

Atmos Duality

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To the people who told me to stop assuming 2K games wasn't going to treat the X-COM name and premise with respect, rather than shitting out another utterly generic first person shooter meant to wring the last few pennies out of an old popular title.

I TOLD YOU SO YOU NAIVE FOOLS

Why does this game have the name X-COM on it again?
Anyone who has actually played the games knows that they aren't the intended audience.
You want proof that remakes are nothing more than market exploitation? Here it is people.

To the new market, this is just another shooter, outshined by its competition in every way.
But to me, this is my childhood sold for profit by talentless hacks.
 

zombie711

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no offense but I have never herd of X-COM until this new game came out. I dont see the big deal. going first person worked for fallout
 

obisean

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More Fun To Compute said:
obisean said:
RTS doesn't work well on consoles.
X-COM was a TBS. They work perfectly on consoles. The predecessor to X-COM was designed to be controlled with a one button Atari type joystick.
Why make an intuitive interface for console when everyone will just throw up their hands in frustration after 10 minutes screaming that it has too much of a learning curve? Back in the day when games were simpler the one button approach was not too hard to pull off (click to shoot, and that was about your only option). Why make things complicated when you can make it a first person shooter, sell more than you ever would have as a TBS (I played it and know it was one, but RTS was just easier to relate to for most people).

Consoles have poisoned everything PC gamers hold dear about non-FPS games. If it wasn't for people like Sid Meier (Sim City would have a mention here, but they are focusing on The Sims as of late, which is for the most part console friendly, if only consoles had the processing power necessary and didn't require a small dumb down on some features and graphics) making "complicated" games that really only work on PC, most everything would be an FPS or TPS for the sake of appealing to a wider audience. Which is where X-COM comes in to play.
 

GothmogII

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zombie711 said:
no offense but I have never herd of X-COM until this new game came out. I dont see the big deal. going first person worked for fallout
Fallout 3 is first person in the same way Oblivion is first person: It's third person with the camera zoomed all the way in. At least, that's how it always felt to me, I've noticed some FPS'es when they do this, and it feels quite awkward. It's mostly the way they seem to 'anchor' the camera to the player model, always felt clunky to me. Compare say, Fallout 3 to Team Fortress 2, ever feel that the movement in TF2 is just more fluid, even though like Fallout 3 you can zoom out (like when using the Bonk!) and see the player model, but still retain a proper feeling of movement?

With Fallout it just seems off. This could be the fault of the animations however, and I did eventually get used to it.
 

DJPirtu

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So, unknown, hostile alien force attacks earth.
A team is assembled and they go into battle, knowing just about nothing about the enemy.
They fight, die and scalvage what they can from the enemy.
They research their enemy and their tech as they go.
They get money for doing their job well, less so if they screw up.

I've only played the first three X-COM games and got into any depth with only the first one, but this does seem to be the basic formula of the series.
And as far as I can see, the new installment does follow along those lines.
 

ZephrC

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Kandon Arc said:
TsunamiWombat said:
Look, everybody here knows a TBS game wouldn't sell particularly well. Nobody's asking why 2K isn't making a sequels that the fans would actually like. We just want to know why they're making an XCom game at all.

I would personally love to get a new PSN/XBLA sort of game or something else like that. It's just... They must have payed good money for the right to slap the XCom name on their random 50s era alien shooter. Why would they do that? Not one single person on the face of the Earth will buy this because of the XCom name, (I exaggerate of course, but XCom is pretty obscure and this is not popular with its fans. Fans of XCom will not contribute anything meaningful to sales of this game.) and it has absolutely nothing to do with XCom. (That is not an exaggeration.) Why? Just... Why?
 

More Fun To Compute

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obisean said:
Why make an intuitive interface for console when everyone will just throw up their hands in frustration after 10 minutes screaming that it has too much of a learning curve? Back in the day when games were simpler the one button approach was not too hard to pull off (click to shoot, and that was about your only option). Why make things complicated when you can make it a first person shooter, sell more than you ever would have as a TBS (I played it and know it was one, but RTS was just easier to relate to for most people).

Consoles have poisoned everything PC gamers hold dear about non-FPS games. If it wasn't for people like Sid Meier (Sim City would have a mention here, but they are focusing on The Sims as of late, which is for the most part console friendly, if only consoles had the processing power necessary and didn't require a small dumb down on some features and graphics) making "complicated" games that really only work on PC, most everything would be an FPS or TPS for the sake of appealing to a wider audience. Which is where X-COM comes in to play.
Console gamers do have the patience to buy turn based, menu driven games.

Laser Squad, the game I was talking about, had a menu driven interface to control the characters. In fact with the joystick and menus you sometimes had more control than in X-COM. For example the automatic fire option let you select a start and end position to strafe and select how many shots you could fire. Decisions about how complicated turn based games are often more due to design philosophy and goals of the developer than limits of the platform or controller.
 

Atmos Duality

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zombie711 said:
no offense but I have never herd of X-COM until this new game came out. I dont see the big deal. going first person worked for fallout
It's a matter of perspective, and in this case, it's the original players seeing 2K Games gutting out the good things in the original to replace with marketable stereotypes.

Fallout 3 did this to an extend, but at least Bethesda kept the original premise of being a wasteland wanderer in a very strange world. While I give Bethesda credit here, I still hated Fallout 3 for being little more than a collection of idiot-proof (read: console-centric) missions with no real sense of danger.

Don't get me wrong; it is totally possible to make X-COM work as a shooter as long as you leave some of the strategy elements in place. But since this game is being marketed at the Xbox 360 crowd, I somehow doubt those elements will remain.

Actually, I take that last bit back...
The game won't require any thought by default since 2K Games is working on it.
Since they can't find enough creativity to make any more than the usual MMO scenarios (as they proved with flying colors in Borderlands). it's guaranteed that this game will have all the depth of a thimble and the strategy will boil down to "Shoot the aliens, get the goodies, repeat in a new area".

You can bet money that I just described the entire game. Now you just have to add in some smug jackass monologue and shiny graphics and you have a likely candidate for the final product.

So why am I and other fans unhappy? Because there was no need to do this to X-COM.
They are literally dangling their bullshit product in front of our eyes saying "Lookie what we got? You want to see us rape it? We will be making millions while we do it."

If you have not played the original games, or simply don't have the patience to try, then this game might be for you. Though I think you might find other, better shooters elsewhere by the time this game hits the shelves.
 

obisean

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More Fun To Compute said:
Console gamers do have the patience to buy turn based, menu driven games.
Really? Even JRPG's, the modern day adopters of turn based combat, are starting to get away from true turn based combat in favor of a closer to real time combat system.

You also keep sticking to the fact that they at one time did exist when gaming was a recreational activity and less of a sport. That alone proves the point that modern day console gamers don't like the slower more strategic games. I know that most console gamers own PC's and do play games on them, and that they do play the slower games on them, but it's the PC they are playing them on, not the console. Games like that won't sell on consoles much anymore, unless you make it some arcade type title at $10-$20 like Catan or something.

Atmos Duality said:
zombie711 said:
no offense but I have never herd of X-COM until this new game came out. I dont see the big deal. going first person worked for fallout
It's a matter of perspective, and in this case, it's the original players seeing 2K Games gutting out the good things in the original to replace with marketable stereotypes.

Fallout 3 did this to an extend, but at least Bethesda kept the original premise of being a wasteland wanderer in a very strange world. While I give Bethesda credit here, I still hated Fallout 3 for being little more than a collection of idiot-proof (read: console-centric) missions with no real sense of danger.

Don't get me wrong; it is totally possible to make X-COM work as a shooter as long as you leave some of the strategy elements in place. But since this game is being marketed at the Xbox 360 crowd, I somehow doubt those elements will remain.

Actually, I take that last bit back...
The game won't require any thought by default since 2K Games is working on it.
Since they can't find enough creativity to make any more than the usual MMO scenarios (as they proved with flying colors in Borderlands). it's guaranteed that this game will have all the depth of a thimble and the strategy will boil down to "Shoot the aliens, get the goodies, repeat in a new area".

You can bet money that I just described the entire game. Now you just have to add in some smug jackass monologue and shiny graphics and you have a likely candidate for the final product.

So why am I and other fans unhappy? Because there was no need to do this to X-COM.
They are literally dangling their bullshit product in front of our eyes saying "Lookie what we got? You want to see us rape it? We will be making millions while we do it."

If you have not played the original games, or simply don't have the patience to try, then this game might be for you. Though I think you might find other, better shooters elsewhere by the time this game hits the shelves.
I like you. This game isn't completely un-doable as an FPS, it's just likely that they didn't take the original and translate it to the sameish game but from a first person view. This game sadly did not do that, and it would have been great if it had. This may as well be a prequel to Area-51, they have about as much in common.
 

More Fun To Compute

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obisean said:
Really? Even JRPG's, the modern day adopters of turn based combat, are starting to get away from true turn based combat in favor of a closer to real time combat system.

You also keep sticking to the fact that they at one time did exist when gaming was a recreational activity and less of a sport. That alone proves the point that modern day console gamers don't like the slower more strategic games. I know that most console gamers own PC's and do play games on them, and that they do play the slower games on them, but it's the PC they are playing them on, not the console. Games like that won't sell on consoles much anymore, unless you make it some arcade type title at $10-$20 like Catan or something.
If you think that console gamers don't care about their RPG combat systems being streamlined and automated then you are wrong. They care and make more a fuss about it than PC gamers ever did.

I don't know what you are talking about with this recreation vs sport thing but it is true that many people play games on console and PC. I can't tell you how fast or slow the games I play are depending on the platform but I think that PC has some of the fastest games out there. Especially some of the strategy games which to almost require a frantic pace of mouse clicking and hot key pressing. Fans of these games would see the slowing down of gameplay as the reason why games don't work on consoles without becoming simplified.
 

Dirty Apple

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obisean said:
That alone proves the point that modern day console gamers don't like the slower more strategic games.
If by "modern day" you mean younger and by "slower" you mean non-ADD then I agree with you.

Recently replaying some of my older FPS's (ie JKII, Deus Ex & Half-Life) there was still a strong emphasis on puzzle solving and strategy. The recent crop of FPS's place the player on a scenic treadmill replete with regenerating health and auto-aim. Having grown-up with helicopter parents, the new kids just don't want a challenge anymore.
 

CD-R

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ZephrC said:
Kandon Arc said:
TsunamiWombat said:
Look, everybody here knows a TBS game wouldn't sell particularly well. Nobody's asking why 2K isn't making a sequels that the fans would actually like. We just want to know why they're making an XCom game at all.

I would personally love to get a new PSN/XBLA sort of game or something else like that. It's just... They must have payed good money for the right to slap the XCom name on their random 50s era alien shooter. Why would they do that? Not one single person on the face of the Earth will buy this because of the XCom name, (I exaggerate of course, but XCom is pretty obscure and this is not popular with its fans. Fans of XCom will not contribute anything meaningful to sales of this game.) and it has absolutely nothing to do with XCom. (That is not an exaggeration.) Why? Just... Why?
That is weird why they would even bother with that. Nobody under the age of 25 is even going to know what X-Com is. Hell the only reason I know about it is because I used to have a subscription to Computer Gaming World and they sent a disk with X-Com and a bunch of other classic titles on it.

If they were going to make this game related to X-Com they should have kept the X-Com parts a secret. Picture this. You beat the game and the last scene of the ending is 40 years later in the Oval Office. The president is looking over a document. Signs it. Camera zooms in on the document. The title. "X-Com Initiative" Make the X-Com part a twist ending and the entire game a setup for a sequel, which is a proper X-Com game. A proper X-Com game with, base management, finance management, international politics, shooting down alien ships,randomly generated destructible environments, and of course FLYING POWER ARMOR!!! But sticking X-Com in the title is just going to piss people off.

I have no problem making the combat sections of the X-Com franchise a first person squad based tactical shooter. Using the FLYING POWER ARMOR in that type of setting would kick all sorts of ass. You could even support coop play with it. But I just don't know if we have the technology to really pull it off at this time.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
gears of halo would have made a better name for it and had as much to do with xcom as this game appears to
 

poiuppx

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On the one hand, this sounds like a fun game with an interesting aesthetic.

On the other hand, this is so not X-COM, it physically hurts. I am actually, in real life, experiencing internal bruising from reading this and trying to mentally pair this with the idea that THIS... THIS is suppossed to be our new X-COM game. I... this would be like if the next Fallout game was revealed to be a go-karting and fast food management simulator with a wise-cracking fairy sidekick. It might sound good, and have awesome jokes and racing, but it would be about as much Fallout as my left thumb is a 747.
 

Chadling

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If 2K was to remake UFO Defense with modern graphics and a bit more tactical complexity, I would be singing their praises.

As it is, I want to take a Blaster Launcher to their offices.