FA+
Shop
A new X-Com / UFO: Enemy Unknown game?
15 years ago
You know, when I heard that they were going to remake X-Com (or UFO: Enemy Unknown as I knew it in my part of the world) I was genuinely excited. I was hopeful that this was going to be one of those remakes where they just slap better graphics on an existing game and call it a day. That would have been lazy, but great. A full-3D sexed-up version of the game would have been effing bueno.
To hear that this is yet another Intellectual Property sacrificed updon the FPS alter, well, that's just plain disappointing. As has been said, for this and many other bastardised classics, why did they feel the need to hijack an existing IP? Did they think that all of us disabused turn-based strategy base-building types would THANK them for turning one of our beloved games into another shooter for the slack-jawed and impatient? Did they think the attention-span-less instant gratification types would actually give a s**t about the X-Com IP? I think they have their markets mixed up.
Ah well, I still pick up UFO every couple of years. I'm not going to bother buying this though. I got bored of FPS with the original Half-Life.
I did play Fallout 3 and I did enjoy it (it had just enough stat and inventory fiddling to keep me entertained) though not as much as the first two, but this is quite simply a different case. Fallout could be adapted because the story and gameplay did focus on a single character (and friends.) X-Com cannot because it was never about the characters. Not your anonymous base commander, not the red-shirt plasma-fodder troops (just TRY getting emotionally attached to them) and certainly not the dozens of faceless Scientists and Engineers you employed.
The current games industry needs to get its head around the fact that some of us couldn't give two craps about characters or dialogue a lot of the time. Some of us just want to build bases and control interceptors and toy soldiers. The less we hear of voice actors the better.
Additionally, I did play UFO: Aftermath. I did enjoy that, the realtime tactical "stopwatch" combat was actually pretty well done, but unfortunately I felt the game stripped out too much of the base-building and UFO-interception gameplay. It oversimplified the UFO/X-Com concept to the point where the world-map was little better than a mission select screen. In Enemy Unknown, for me, the core of the gameplay was building and managing my bases and interceptors, whilst the inevitable ground missions were at times just a periodic annoyance.
It just bugs me that the games industry at the moment seems to shun 'impersonal' games, trying to give us all "compelling and engaging cinematic experiences" or rather; Showing off their latest motion capture bollocks and torturing our ears and minds with irritating voice actors and poorly conceived characters acting out terribly written stories.
Some of us couldn't care less about these mewling morons. Some of us are more interested in the big picture. A picture hopefully big enough that you get a good overview and can't make out any faces or voices.
To hear that this is yet another Intellectual Property sacrificed updon the FPS alter, well, that's just plain disappointing. As has been said, for this and many other bastardised classics, why did they feel the need to hijack an existing IP? Did they think that all of us disabused turn-based strategy base-building types would THANK them for turning one of our beloved games into another shooter for the slack-jawed and impatient? Did they think the attention-span-less instant gratification types would actually give a s**t about the X-Com IP? I think they have their markets mixed up.
Ah well, I still pick up UFO every couple of years. I'm not going to bother buying this though. I got bored of FPS with the original Half-Life.
I did play Fallout 3 and I did enjoy it (it had just enough stat and inventory fiddling to keep me entertained) though not as much as the first two, but this is quite simply a different case. Fallout could be adapted because the story and gameplay did focus on a single character (and friends.) X-Com cannot because it was never about the characters. Not your anonymous base commander, not the red-shirt plasma-fodder troops (just TRY getting emotionally attached to them) and certainly not the dozens of faceless Scientists and Engineers you employed.
The current games industry needs to get its head around the fact that some of us couldn't give two craps about characters or dialogue a lot of the time. Some of us just want to build bases and control interceptors and toy soldiers. The less we hear of voice actors the better.
Additionally, I did play UFO: Aftermath. I did enjoy that, the realtime tactical "stopwatch" combat was actually pretty well done, but unfortunately I felt the game stripped out too much of the base-building and UFO-interception gameplay. It oversimplified the UFO/X-Com concept to the point where the world-map was little better than a mission select screen. In Enemy Unknown, for me, the core of the gameplay was building and managing my bases and interceptors, whilst the inevitable ground missions were at times just a periodic annoyance.
It just bugs me that the games industry at the moment seems to shun 'impersonal' games, trying to give us all "compelling and engaging cinematic experiences" or rather; Showing off their latest motion capture bollocks and torturing our ears and minds with irritating voice actors and poorly conceived characters acting out terribly written stories.
Some of us couldn't care less about these mewling morons. Some of us are more interested in the big picture. A picture hopefully big enough that you get a good overview and can't make out any faces or voices.
This is one of those times.
Seriously, though? How is it X-Com if they remove all the X-Com elements from it?