Trailers: XCOM - Gameplay Trailer

[raankh]

Could be really good -- I still prefer healthpacks to regen though. Seems lots of people do.

So they're saying this is X-COM revisioned as a hybrid between Mass Effect and Pokémon, with an X-COMmy part with the research/rpg bits between. If that's true, and it actually is what they say it is, then it sounds great to me!

 

[Enkidu88]

"When we played the original xcom, we felt sort of, almost overwhelemed with choices in between missions"

Original xcom was felt to be too overwhelming with choices for these devs?

That's the point I stopped watching the trailer.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

A 20 minute trailer isn't contemporary.

This is also not what I'd call a gameplay trailer...

 

[chimeracreator]

"When we played the original xcom, we felt sort of, almost overwhelemed with choices in between missions"

Original xcom was felt to be too overwhelming with choices for these devs?

That's the point I stopped watching the trailer.

Honestly they have a damned good point. You shouldn't have had the entire range of the world to pick from for your first base in X-COM, that's a bad way to start the game. A better design decision would have been to give a number of locations that you could pick from all of which would have had their pros and cons instead of risking a starting player putting their base in the arctic and then wondering why they never saw aliens on their radar.

Likewise some of the weapons were just plain junk, for example pistols. Who uses those? You might as well use laser rifles or heavy plasmas. If you have a weapon in the game, make sure it fills a niche. A good chunk of the weapons in X-COM didn't because there were options that were obviously superior despite becoming available at the same time.

Likewise a combat tutorial would have been useful when starting the game. With important suggestions like, "Remember to have soldiers look left and right when entering a room, because there might be an alien standing right next to the door."

Note: For the record I only beat the game on easy, but I stand by my choice to use laser rifles and heavy plasmas almost exclusively because when you first fight ethereals laser rifles don't pack enough punch to kill your own guys in one shot due to armor, but they do a number on those mind controlling alien bastards.

 

[Vankraken]

Lets say we want to reboot Quake but as a child I had trouble with aiming and always felt like it was too fast pace so we are going to go for a strategic element with you managing battle arenas from a top down perspective. You can add in item spawn points and have NPCs pay admission into your battle arenas and play. You can set up concession stands to sell snacks and research new more exciting power ups to make your battle arenas more fun. You got to hire staff to clean up the battle arenas and do repairs when item spawns and jump pads start to wear down. The weapons you can expect to add to your battle arena are pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, assault rifles, grenades, and a missile launcher. We are going to call it "QUAKE"

Instead of naming it something like "Battle Arena Tycoon" they go use the name Quake when it has basically nothing to do with FPS. That is whats happening with this "XCOM" reboot as it has nothing to do with the lore or gameplay of the original. Its disrespectful to slap the name of a computer game classic like X-Com on a game that really doesn't even try to come close to the original.
In unrelated news I think 2K is planning to revive the Master of Orion series as a racing game where you race space buggies on the planet Orion. They secretly will be inspired by the physics of Mass Effect's Mako driving segments.

Edit: spell check changed my mako into make >:|

Well, they kind of already have done that.

Go look up Quake 4.

You kinda missed the whole point I was trying to make.

The devs keep digging themselves into a deeper hole with every attempt they try to make to justify this "reboot". They need to come clean and say they wanted to make another shooter and the marketing department said it was a good idea to recycle an old IP and the share holders thought X-Com would be a good candidate because its old school and the originals sold well on Steam.

 

[acer840]

Did 2K games win me when after this trailer I bought the Original X-Com UFO Defense: Enemy Unknown from STEAM?

And this really isn't X-Com, and if it is, it's not Cannon, because the original X-Com was assembled in 1999.

 

[Phishfood]

I've spotted another problem here.

The choice is "spend turret now or get better guns later"

a la, if you are getting raped up the ass now from crappy guns you have to spend your only chance to get better guns later. Hrm...

I had a similar beef with the original deus ex a couple weeks ago.

"You did the whole level with non-lethal takedowns? here, have some bonus lethal ammo!"

anyhoo, this is in my "wait for a steam sale" category. It looks ok, but it ain't x-com and it ain't even special.

Can't wait for xenonaughts.

Also, try UFO:AI. Its buggy, but not bad.

 

[Aureliano]

You killed John Holmes! You bastards!

Seriously, that guy in the home movie was PACKING.

Onto the game itself: it looks really fun. The 60s stage setting and crew look really cool (I wanted to see what their 60s ladies looked like in the field, but no joy yet), the aliens and their technology really freaked me out and it seems like they're actually going for story. Love the alien world too.

You know what isn't fun? A gratuitously hard isolinear turn-based RPG with almost no story that took forever and/or save-scumming to get anywhere in. And given that it looks like there will be a tech tree in the remake or reboot or whatever, I'd say we aren't missing anything important.

In the early 80s, it was 2-d keyboard controlled tiled dungeon crawlers. In the early 90s we had a war between early side-scrollers and very basic first person 3-d dungeon crawlers. In the late 90s we had isolinear action/turn based games. You know what we have now? First-person shooters and shooter-RPGs. It's what you get now, the games can still be good. Suck it up.

 

[Lord Draenor]

This looks really interesting. Should have used a different name maybe but that's about the only thing I see wrong here

 

[Vankraken]

You know what isn't fun? A gratuitously hard isolinear turn-based RPG with almost no story that took forever and/or save-scumming to get anywhere in. And given that it looks like there will be a tech tree in the remake or reboot or whatever, I'd say we aren't missing anything important.

In the early 80s, it was 2-d keyboard controlled tiled dungeon crawlers. In the early 90s we had a war between early side-scrollers and very basic first person 3-d dungeon crawlers. In the late 90s we had isolinear action/turn based games. You know what we have now? First-person shooters and shooter-RPGs. It's what you get now, the games can still be good. Suck it up.

Genres are not limited to a time period. Most genres of games existed back in the Atari days and they continue to exist today. Civ 1 was a turn based strategy game and it continues to be a turn based strategy game. Just because modern warfare is popular with the masses doesn't mean Civ needs to change its format to appear to a different market. X-Com is THE tactical strategy game that all others are judged against (in the western market anyways) and as such it is revered by the strategy community as one of the foundations of the genera.

The problem is developed IPs have weight in what kind of experience you are going to receive and it applies just as much to a game like X-Com as it does to Halo, Call of Duty, Civilization, Mario, Fallout, etc. The difference between something like Fallout 3 vs this "XCOM" is that Fallout still involved an alternate timeline 1950's retro nuclear age style post apocalyptic America with vaults, energy weapons, deathclaws, brotherhood of steel, dark humor, and it was still an RPG. XCOM has none of the lore, feel, or gameplay of the original. If you watched the video and they never said or had XCOM in the video then you wouldn't be able to guess its based off X-Com. That is the reason people are so upset is because they took the name and made a game with no actual relation to the original games besides kill aliens.

 

[jmarquiso]

Alright, just gonna put it out there, I hiss at this game. It is not X-Com, because X-Com is a turn-based strategy game with some base management stuff set in a near future, at a world-wide setting with a semi-cartoony aesthetic. This game is not those things.

So was Fallout.

I don't know, since this is supposed to be a prequel of sorts. Having recently replayed the original, I see a lot of the influence the original had on this, and I actually like it so far.

 

[Quesa]

This would look like such a good game... If they weren't trying to tell us it's X-com.

I don't even understand the logic of calling it XCOM. It won't sell more copies to fans, because it differentiates so much from the original games, and it won't sell to people who aren't fans, because they have no prior basis for whether or not it's a good series, if they even know it's supposed to be a continuation of a series.

Well, it would look like Mass Effect in the 50s if they weren't trying to tell us it's XCOM, haha. Oh chest high walls, where would FPS' on the console be without you. How innovative.

 

[MajorMurray]

My god it's like the old arguements of games in the early 00s all rolled up into one. The, "Warhammer 40k Stole Starcraft, or other way around. " or "Fallout 3 doesn't feel like the old fallouts." I like this game, it blends many elements I want to see in a game. Never played original XCOM, but damn does that name sound cool. This is my opinion:

I think these devs are big fans of X-COM, but they don't know how to make a strategy game like X-COM. They make shooters, so they are making a game to keep X-COM alive. Or they are just using a game IP they used to play and love to lift themselves into the spotlight showing what they can do. What is so wrong with linear gaming and scripted events, dammit that is what gaming was founded on, and I've had some pretty awesome scripted moments in a game. Looking at this gameplay trailer, or interview however you want to put it shows me that this game is in capable hands. The fact that they recognize the 60s as such a hard time tells me that they know what they are doing. So please, keep your mind open. If we attacked a game that took pointers from others we would be bitching about how Bioshock stole Fallout's feel.

 

[Boom129]

Alright, just gonna put it out there, I hiss at this game. It is not X-Com, because X-Com is a turn-based strategy game with some base management stuff set in a near future, at a world-wide setting with a semi-cartoony aesthetic. This game is not those things.

It is in fact a shooter involving aliens that is set in a 1960s ish period with a realistic artstyle. Which could be great! But it isn't X-Com.

I think this game would do better as an original IP. Those who have fond memories of X-Com don't want to see it become a shooter, and everyone loves an original IP.

Edit: To clarify, I genuinally think this game has excellent potential. I'm really big on setting and like the person in the trailer says, 1962 is a fascinating year, and the game could really go into the politics of both America and of the Cold War as a whole. But that's a lot to ask and from what I saw in the trailer it seems we have:

Stupid and Cliche one-liners ("Now THATS what I call firepower!")
Coverbased shooter combat (the person says that you can't stand toe to toe with the aliens, it doesn't look that tough, the smg is powerful and your health regenerates fast)
No real strategy (I say this because look at how fast time units regenerate. It's crazy. Also, once you level up a few agents, why ever use anyone else?)

Not convinced people.

I remember one time before when a strategy game was turned into a shooter with a different setting. A lot of people disliked it but it turned out pretty good.
That game was Fallout 3

 

[Frankster]

I think these devs are big fans of X-COM, but they don't know how to make a strategy game like X-COM. They make shooters, so they are making a game to keep X-COM alive. Or they are just using a game IP they used to play and love to lift themselves into the spotlight showing what they can do.

This line demolishes your argument: "When we played the original xcom, we felt sort of, almost overwhelemed with choices in between missions"

They are not big fans of X-COM for no fan would ever say such a heresy.
Only game they might seem to inspire themselves from would be xcom enforcer which is universally agreed to be a blight on the series name, at least interceptor had its fans.

None of what i've seen so far shows any respect or love for Xcom, only contempt and disgust at having to throw in some terms to have to call it an xcom game like that guy steve in marketing told them to.

I remember one time before when a strategy game was turned into a shooter with a different setting. A lot of people disliked it but it turned out pretty good.
That game was Fallout 3

Why people keep citing fallout 3 is beyond me, it's not a good parallel to this situation at all and betrays their own lack of understanding of what is causing the rage.

Fallout 3 was a fallout game, it had lore and setting elements that clearly established it as such. The rage came from either the purists seeking a similar game design to the first 2 and so raged at the perspective shift and those loremasters who found all sorts of continuity errors which flew over the heads of 90% of ppl anyways.

 

[Andrew_C]

As many have said, as a Bioware-style cover based shooter/rpg it looks interesting, and I really like "the bright new world" thing going on in the level design, but as a prequel to X-Com, it's inevitably disappointing.

I know it's too much to expect a new turn based, or even real time strategy game from a big name studio in this day, but I'm still disappointed.

And apart from anything else running all over the base to organise inventory, agents and research would soon get on my nerves. I got far too much of that sort of thing in Mass Effect, (and the Myth games). Not that there looks to be much research to be done.

Edit: spelling grammer

 

[ASnogarD]

I see a few guys pop in and spout off that fans of XCOM shouldnt complain, and instead judge the game on its own merits...

Thats rubbish, consider how Halo fan would react if they turned Halo into a Farmvile type because the casual market makes more money ?
Gears of War meets Angry Birds ?
God of War meets Bingo ?

If the game was a original IP... no issue.
Instead we have what was fondly remembered as a tactical and strategic title masterpiece of its day, turned into yet another [ expletetive ] FPS... FFS we have more than enough FPS titles around to satisfy any gun horney nut job out there for life.

I am not naive, I know a true XCOM style game wont make much money and a AAA studio would NEVER make one as such... but to announce a X-COM game, and then make a game that is so far removed in genre types is basically a slap to the face.

The Fallout comparison doesnt hold water, this XCOM doesnt even pretend to have any similiarities... Fallout 3 at least kept a lot of the lore, the RPG elements, the VATS system at least allows a none twitch reflex player make tactical decisions.

 

[Worr Monger]

It's really a crappy situation...

The game actually looks really cool. Unfortunately, it will never live down the fact that it has the XCOM name, and is an FPS. Some people simply cannot look past that. And I don't blame them. X-Com was an awesome game, and I get just as annoyed when my favorite games of old get turned into bastardized versions of themselves.

If they simply named this game something else, I think it would get a lot more respect... and I also think it would sell just fine, without the XCOM name behind it... there are plenty of people out there that never played the original X-Com anyway.

It reminds me of something my brother does... He's an old school Nintendo fan, loves the Castlevania games, especially the recent: Lords of Shadow. I told him he should try God of War if he enjoyed that (because why not? It's similar, and easily just as awesome.) But nope, he won't do it.... it's just another "one of those games". If Lords of Shadow didn't have the Castlevania name behind it.. he NEVER would have touched it.

The name alone can make or break a game for some people... and it's quite amazing.

 

[The3rdEye]

My god it's like the old arguements of games in the early 00s all rolled up into one. The, "Warhammer 40k Stole Starcraft, or other way around. "

Different settings, but both isomentric RTS

or "Fallout 3 doesn't feel like the old fallouts."

I remember one time before when a strategy game was turned into a shooter with a different setting. A lot of people disliked it but it turned out pretty good.
That game was Fallout 3

Different play mechanics, same setting, enemies, UI elements, etc. You can actually make an extensive list of things they did keep, spanning all areas of the game. In the end, you could still see Fallout 2 in Fallout 3.

Same enemies? No sectoids, no floaters, etc. ME Husks and geomentric shapes.
Same setting? Nope, it takes place 30 years earlier and exclusively in America.
Same UI? Calling your recharge meter TU's?... no. It's a recharge meter. Period.
Same mechanics? Squad from 1-24 human troops? Well, 1-3. Armored weapons platforms? Nope.
There is nothing left of X-Com IN XCOM that doesn't apply to any other sci-fi action-RPG or FPS game aside from occasional naming conventions.

(I'll make a quick note here since no one seems to have mentioned it and it's something from the originals that I REALLY loved... you brought your own tanks to missions, which were repairable and reusable. Seems having your own tank to blow shit up might have been worth keeping)

I like this game, it blends many elements I want to see in a game. Never played original XCOM, but damn does that name sound cool.

Play Bioshock on your console while playing Mass Effect on your PC, with the word "Xcom" suspended between the two. Same effect.

They've changed the genre, setting, characters, set pieces for those of their own series and lifted elements from other games where they themselves have no experience (squad based combat). Interestingly enough, it's being released on the same day as Mass Effect 3, the game whom they're borrowing so liberally from.Whether that's suicide or an attempt at "Mass Effect was awesome, but it left me wanting even MORE. Hey, this 'Xcom' game looks like it has a similar feel to it"... actually the more you think about it that way the more likely it sounds. Borrow a treasured IP, gut it and stuff it with you old graphical assets while pulling the combat from the(?) #1 squad-based sci-fi action RPG game on the market.

Go play it then (UFO Defense/Enemy Unknown or Terror From The Deep), they're available on Steam for a song and dance. Go find out exactly what they're trying to tell you this game has any connection to.

This is my opinion:

I think these devs are big fans of X-COM, but they don't know how to make a strategy game like X-COM. They make shooters, so they are making a game to keep X-COM alive. Or they are just using a game IP they used to play and love to lift themselves into the spotlight showing what they can do.

That much I can follow you on, emphasis mine. However, the original series was limited by the technology of it's time. The content available to the player should be GROWING, not decreasing. (Feel free to point me to the following) No resource management, I've yet to see their research tree, no airborne interception missions... Besides, they've already shown what they can do with Bioshock 1 and 2 which brings me to...

What is so wrong with linear gaming and scripted events, dammit that is what gaming was founded on, and I've had some pretty awesome scripted moments in a game. Looking at this gameplay trailer, or interview however you want to put it shows me that this game is in capable hands. The fact that they recognize the 60s as such a hard time tells me that they know what they are doing.

2K Marin only has 2 other titles under their belt, both of which are based in the 1960's, so if there's any suggestion that this "Xcom" taking place in the 60's has some kind of deep hidden meaning, they are patently full of shit. They're not innovating, they're playing safe by recycling and have a renowned license to back everything up. Someone more malicious than I might imply that they are recycling talents AND assets in the process.

So please, keep your mind open. If we attacked a game that took pointers from others we would be bitching about how Bioshock stole Fallout's feel.

They didn't call Bioshock "Fallout", or a reboot/reimagnining of Fallout, not to mention Fallout 3 coming out AFTER Bioshock.

Again, I have no problem with someone giving me a delicious orange for me to savor, but I will punch them square in the face if they start making videos and presentations in an attempt to convince me that the orange is an apple.

 

[Vankraken]

The grand issue is about respect and brand integrity of the X-Com name. This XCOM seems like a decent game and could be fun (a bit too scripted for my taste) but they threw the X-Com IP into the situation and it is making everybody who holds value in the name X-Com into anger mode (myself included) because it does not reflect the values, lore, and feel of the original games. They are using NOTHING from the original games besides the name (which is misspelled) and the closest thing i see from the original was taking time units and turning it into a form of mana.

If they made this game and named it Section 42 or whatever and nobody would be upset and would judge the game based on it being an original IP and probably be fairly excited based on what they have seen. Instead had to start up a shit storm by using the X-Com IP and not use any of the original material.

So was Fallout.

I don't know, since this is supposed to be a prequel of sorts. Having recently replayed the original, I see a lot of the influence the original had on this, and I actually like it so far.

What could you possibly see that is in any way related to the original besides guys with guns shooting aliens? If that is the case then Resistance and Halo fit the qualifications for spiritual successors of X-Com.