Get the guns. (X-COMplaint thread)

[Caydr]

I propose a temporary cease-troll with those who live in gun-prolific countries. We need to put aside our idealogical differences and band together for some righteous murder.

http://www.bhpress.co.uk/link.asp?i=1862&r=8510&r2=6471

Yes, it's real. Really. That's not a fake press release, and these aren't fake tears.

[SwiftSpear]

Ugghhhhhhhh....

This seems like a horrible idea. I wonder how nonlinear they are planning on making the gameplay... Turning Xcom into something reminiscent of Halflife would be pretty much debauchery.

I hate how the game industry pillages the corpses of the grand old titles of the past

[zwzsg]

That's curious. Sure it's not a late april fool? I mean, it makes little sense: When you switch from a turn based tactical game, top down, with squads, and with base development, to a first person shooter, what's left of the original? The story and setting of zomg aliens are invading earth let's fight back is the one most overused in video-games, so I hope they didn't pay for that. Maybe I can see a connection between Terror From the Deep and Bioshock since both feature exotic underwater bases, but they didn't mention that XCom title specifically.

So, the only reason they bought the right of, and named their FPS after X-Com, is that it had a very good reputation, and they hope a good name can sell anything, no matter how remote from the original the product is. Well, then, gamers are to blame for having bough Fallout 3 en masse.

[Gota]

"distills it into a tense and unique first-person shooter experience."
lol

[Das Bruce]

You should ignore the blatant misappropriation of the name and evaluate it on its merits.

[zwzsg]

True to the roots of the franchise

Yeah, that article is funny from the size of its marketing spins.

[Master-Athmos]

WTF? What has this to do with X-Com? It's not even close...





I mean even the European cover was more close than that nonsense:



Apart from that well I'm not going to say that it'll turn out bad but X-Com became famous because it had an awesome gameplay and not just because of the alien invasion idea. So by just taking the name and maybe a little of the original setting this doesn't automatically turn out as a top notch FPS. Actually it shouldn't be much more than a more scary Area 51 clone...

They simply should do a 1:1 remake and nothing like the UFO:Aftermath series which was rather bad. While UFO:Extraterrestrials tried to mimic the original it suffered from the small, unkown team and the lack of the license made lots of the atmosphere go downhill as it played on some strange planet sort of like ours against some new aliens whose design wasn't all that good & scary anymore...

[Caydr]

You should ignore the blatant misappropriation of the name and evaluate it on its merits.

But why even bother with the name? With Fallout, there was the atmosphere, the humor, the rich backstory, and lots more to draw upon. Most of the important parts survived the genre-change because you were still basically doing the same thing - traveling, questing, killing stuff, exploring... they even made the combat largely probability-based so even if you "should" miss, the game figures out what you were aiming for and lets you hit it anyway.

Just what audience were they hoping to appeal to by taking the already-ruined reputation of the X-Com franchise and making it into an FPS of all things? Large parts of it were about base-building, research, and money management! An FPS contains none of these things, and rules out most of the unique combat stuff too.

It's a Starcraft dating sim. It's a just a giant WTF. It's one more damn generic FPS with a name taken from a game noted for being unique!

[knorke]

I wonder how nonlinear they are planning on making the gameplay... Turning Xcom into something reminiscent of Halflife would be pretty much debauchery.

But I think thats what it will probally turn out like

Might be cool if they just made the isometric battlephase into something like a swat/tactic shooter where you land in the shuttle with some other soldiers (ai controlled or coop OLOLOLOMG ) in some alien invaded area and then fight them. Like in the original game you kill them all or you have to retreat if there are too many monsters. Battles would be 10 to 30 minutes of fps action, then you have either won or were killed/forced to retreat. And fighting should not be controlled by triggers/orders like *aliens kills squad leader with scripted attack* radio message: "oh noez the commander is dead get back to the shuttle" - new objective: get back to the shuttle. Because thats gay and ruins call of duty.
If you retreat or try to save more civics/kill more aliens/explore their craft should just be the players decision.
Randomly created battle zones would be nice or a GTA like city and battles take place in different areas.

But it will just be another shooter with tube levels anyway.

[Caydr]

But it will just be another shooter with tube levels anyway.

Boom goes the dynamite.

[KaiserJ]

somehow turning xcom into a real-time teambased effort could be awesome...

remember how diablo worked... join the lobby and play whatever the people in the lobby were working on... level your boi and play through various randomly generated missions... find crap on the missions, trade it with noobs on the lobby, rinse and repeat.

not sure how basebuilding could work with this example though, doesn't seem like it has a place.

and hey. you know what, if this was the first time they tried to re-do xcom, i would say that for sure it will be crap, but since they've already tried many times and failed, doesn't the law of averages eventually entitle us to an amazing sequel?

[Neddie]

It's a Starcraft dating sim.

That would be a tremendous improvement.

[Mav]

Stuff

Actually, I was trying to come up with what a modern X-COM would be like a few days ago and you're damn close to what I thought.

I imagine the same base building, cash-oriented, R&D of the original with the Tactical part of the game being FPS. Why? I love sims, and X-COM's sim mode was (and still is) one of the best I've ever seen. Highly interactive and engaging, it makes the game fun.

While I really enjoyed the Tactical part of the game, I actually found it to be the weakest point. Battles can become long and drawn out and frustrating after the first few.

Turning it into a squad-based FPS would be good. I'm picturing a combat system similar to Mass Effect's. The battles take place in real time, but you can pause the game to give orders, use special abilities, etc. It helps keep the tactical feel of the original while speeding up gameplay.

I don't think randomly generated maps would be that hard to make. The important thing is that the levels need to take place outdoors like the original, to prevent the game from becoming a tube-shooter.

Lastly, I found X-COM to be absolutely frightening at times. My men (and women!) are down on ammo, it's dark outside and I can't see shit, I'm hearing the screams of random humans being shot by aliens, plasma bolts are coming from nowhere, and I walk around a corner with a single soldier and see three greys with plasma rifles staring me down. The game just had an uncanny knack of building suspense and then startling you. If they could somehow work this into the FPS, it would be amazing.

[tombom]

Well, then, gamers are to blame for having bough Fallout 3 en masse.

fallout 3 is pretty fun though

i mean i can understand comparing it unfavourably to 1 and 2 but it certainly didn't shit all over the setting and the gameplay was nice

[Pxtl]

Okay, I could see X-Com as a Ghost Recon style over-the-shoulder squad RTS. But an FPS? What??

Bring back classic X-Com. If that works, THEN do the CODMW2 clone they want to make.

[tombom]

i love this series of images, just because it's amazing what people can see in animals even when it's not there

http://seehere.blogspot.com/2008/11/loy ... -bird.html

especially as it's so obvious what's going on

to me, it makes this photo that much more amusing. dude's probably bellowing at his incredible sexual conquest

[Pxtl]

Yeah, I know the bird photo is really something more like this:

(hotlinked)

[Teutooni]

Actually, I think SWAT4/Rainbow Six style tactical squad combat FPS coupled with X-Com style base management, research etc. might work.

[Pxtl]

Actually, I think SWAT4/Rainbow Six style tactical squad combat FPS coupled with X-Com style base management, research etc. might work.

I disagree - the characters in Rainbow 6 were fare less expendable than your X-com soldiers, and in smaller numbers. Managing a large team where you're going to be losing a lot of guys would be damned hard as an FPS. Plus, inaccuracy was a major gameplay element in X-com (to the point of being kind of ludicrous) and that element would be completely lost in FPS-form.

The only way I'd want to see this as an FPS would be to theme it as commanding like Gorman from Aliens - you can't directly control your troops, you just have head-cams for all of them, and a bank of screens. It would make the game quite a horror.

[SwiftSpear]

That's curious. Sure it's not a late april fool? I mean, it makes little sense: When you switch from a turn based tactical game, top down, with squads, and with base development, to a first person shooter, what's left of the original? The story and setting of zomg aliens are invading earth let's fight back is the one most overused in video-games, so I hope they didn't pay for that. Maybe I can see a connection between Terror From the Deep and Bioshock since both feature exotic underwater bases, but they didn't mention that XCom title specifically.

So, the only reason they bought the right of, and named their FPS after X-Com, is that it had a very good reputation, and they hope a good name can sell anything, no matter how remote from the original the product is. Well, then, gamers are to blame for having bough Fallout 3 en masse.

Well, X-Comm is very different from Halo, or resistance, or Gears, or an invasion based plot line like that. Initially X com aliens are more of a raiding party type, and even into the late game, it's a bit more like fighting alien pirates than alien invaders....

Still, I have absolutely no idea why they think it makes a good FPS premise. Unless the idea is "make a game alot like the original xcom, except you play the tactical battles as the leader of a squad from first person instead of the all seeing eye god". But that doesn't really seem like the BioShock team's kind of game. Maby I'm wrong though, maby they ARE planning a highly non linear strategy based game.

It just seems to me, making procedural maps and that kind of thing is something an FPS developer, especially an FPS developer like the Bio Shock team, would shy away from.