Nerd Mentality

XCOM Preview

Posted July 8th 2011 by Frankie Aguilar.

The world of video games is over saturated with remakes and yearly installments, which is understandable considering that outside the realm of indie gaming, free-to-play games, or apps, gaming is really becoming like a country club where only the games with pedigree get any run. Recently however, the industry has sought to revive cult franchises, Fallout 3 and Bioshock being prime examples, and re-purpose them for a new generation . 2K, which brought us the stellar Bioshock series, is taking on another cult series with XCOM, but where Bioshock was a spiritual successor to the System Shock series, XCOM is the culmination of the ideas and gameplay aspects of the four previous installments in the X-COM universe.

To understand where XCOM is going, you need to understand where it came from. X-COM is first and foremost about kicking alien ass. The X-COM universe started out with a game called UFO: Enemy Unknown, a strategy game similar in look and feel to modern RTSs. In it, you take control over a fictional internationally funded paramilitary force known as the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit (X-COM). Throughout the game you combat invading alien forces all over the Earth, protecting civilians while collecting and reverse engineering alien technology to help turn the tide of invasion. With its unique combination of micromanagement style strategy and a mixture of turn based and real time combat, Enemy Unknown is widely considered by many hardcore and old school gamers to be amongst the best games of all time and not without good reason. Released in 1994, the same year as a little game called Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, UFO:EU with its immersive story, air of paranoia and multiple game play styles set a high standard for what could be achieved in an strategy game.

The next two sequels, X-COM:Terror from the Deep and X-COM: Apocalypse were basically new stories running on the same engine with the same look and feel of the, luckily stellar, first game. Not straying too far from the original template didn't allow for much in the way of new experiences but the games were still well received. Terror from the Deep's story centered around a new alien threat rising from the Earth's ocean from the meteor that supposedly killed the dinosaurs, and Apocalypse dealt with surviving on what was left of the Earth after the events of Terror from the Deep. While Apocalypse did get a new coat of paint and more real time battle elements to the alien combat, it still seemed like the X-COM formula was too perfect for the developers to stray very far from.

Then came the low point in the series: X-COM: Interceptor. Taking X-COM from its baseline RTS roots, and trying to force feed their fans a campy space simulator was about the worst thing that could happen to the X-COM brand. Garnering a lot of animosity from its usually rabid fan base, Interceptor faded into obscurity, taking the brand down into the depths of development hell. Up until this point, the X-COM series had been developed by Mythos Games and Micropose, but in 1998, due to financial difficulties, they were forced to sell the X-COM IP. It ended up in the hands of Hasbro games and after seven years of exchanging companies it landed with Take Two Interactive. Three years later, 2K (a Take Two subsidiary) went on to re-release all four of the original (Mythos/Micropose) X-COM games on through the Steam platform, and of course, this had series fans wondering if the company that had just a year prior brought us Bioshock would take a crack at reviving X-COM. E3 2010 rolls around and, not surprisingly, everyone is gushing over the big name games. The Portal 2's and Fallout: New Vegas's of the world get all the attention, while a little unfamiliar title, XCOM, is shocking the X-COM faithful out of their Interceptor-induced comas.

The biggest and most notable difference with XCOM is that for the first time in the series, X-COM is played through the first person perspective. You take the role of Special Agent William Carter, a field operations agent of the newly minted XCOM unit formed to repel alien attacks in the 1960s-era USA. Most of the motifs and gameplay elements that one has come to expect from the X-COM series are present in XCOM but in new and interesting ways. The capture and reverse engineering of extra terrestrial technology is still present and having direct and total control over the weapons you can create from said technology will be immensely gratifying to series vets, but the similarities don't stop there.

Although the game will be played primarily from the first person perspective, calling XCOM a first person shooter would be doing the developers a disservice. In an effort not only to placate the ravenous fans, but also in hopes of creating a great individual game, XCOM retains a lot of the micro management techniques that endeared so many gamers from UFO:EU on. The XCOM base will be your central hub and will remind UFO:EU fans of the bases you built in the original games. In this hub you'll be able to research technology, choose squad mates to accompany you out into to the field, allocate funds towards the fabrication of increasingly kickass weapons, and even upgrade yourself and others via an experience point system based on mission success and your scientific investigative prowess.

Don't let the micromanagement side of XCOM frighten you away, though.  Instead think of it as a means to and end for the fast paced and strategic fire fights that take place out in the field. The most recent trailer from E3 2011 showed frantic firefights taking place on the streets of Anytown, USA. The alien forces are heavily armed, fast as hell, and employ technologies of mass destruction unlike anything seen on this Earth. The use of and coordination with your squadmates appears all too critical as opposed to just AI bots sent out solely to draw attention away from you. The use of cover based firing and flanking seem to be key in taking down the alien forces you battle, and the re-purposing of the extraterrestrial WMDs is paramount to turning the tides against the alien invaders.

While the entirety of the storyline is still under wraps, you can expect the same kind of immersive feeling and storytelling found in the Bioshock series. 2K has cemented themselves as a developer that put the onus on both style and substance in their games, and XCOM is shaping up to be the next big critical hit. You certainly get the feel of the original series; the aura of distrust and uncertainty is present in the trailers, and having a far more active role in the destruction of the alien invaders seem gratifying. They've got a lot of work to do if they're going to wrangle in all the things that made the X-COM series great and present it to a whole new audience, but from what I've seen so far is promising. Look for XCOM to drop March 6th, 2012.

Posted in: News, Gaming, Features, Entertainment

Comments (1) | Permalink | Digg | Reddit