So, there is a large amount of news about the X-COM re-boot and I thought I’d throw my two cents into the ring. As a bit of a forward, I have played the X-COM games including Interceptor and Enforcer. My opinions of the games are that they are some of the best strategy games out there with the exception of Interceptor (which was interesting, but not great) and Enforcer (which I will review at a later point). I was very interested when I heard of a new X-COM game because, while the old ones are classics, they are also incredibly old and could use a touch up. However, when I saw the trailer for the first time, one thought penetrated my mind:
This is not X-COM.
What do I mean by this? Well, from what I’ve played there are a few key elements that makes X-COM unique. A set of tropes and codes that all of the games follow with minor exception. They are:
1. X-COM is hard.:
If you have never played the games, let me summarize the experience. You die. A lot. On a good day. The aliens will cheat, and not because of programing. They cheat because they brought a gun that shoots laser beams and psychic mind bullets to a playground and you’re the kid getting bullied by them. If you want to get even close to winning, you better read up on strategies cause if you don’t you will get your ass killed. You would enter a lot of battles that you simply couldn’t win, and instead would escape with a little bit of tech, or a single hostage from the invaders. Then your knowledge would build up and up until you were powerful enough to win, if only by the skin of your teeth. This was a game about loosing the battle, but wining the war which was not only cool but refreshing at the time. Even better, the rush from actually snatching victory from the looming jaws of defeat was much more potent than if you always won. Call it the “Dwarf Fortress Effect” if you will, but it made for a game that was hard even when a glitch set the game on “Beginner” mode for quite a few years.
2. X-COM is smart.
Even ruling out the detail put into the UFO-pedia, this is not a game for someone who does not like math and planing. Every agent needs to be equipped for each mission individually. You need to counter-balance their skills with their equipment and make sure the team you send in compliments each other. You need to co-ordinate the munitions to work, you need to control the interceptors to be able to hunt down UFOs, you need to design your base in a way that its not incredibly vulnerable, and the list goes on. This game demands a level of thinking that is above and beyond what is normally called for outside of battle just as much as inside a battle.
3. X-COM is impersonal.
Yes, I know you have to pick out each weapon and armor and everything else about your agents. I know they have names, nationalities, and personalities that are unique to each of them. I am aware of the time someone may take in preparing their agents for combat, but when you boil it down, you aren’t the father/mother-to-his-men/woman, front-line commander leader. You’re distant, impartial, tasked with making horrible decisions that need to be made. You’re agents put their lives in your hands not for you to protect them but for you to protect humanity. This is important, because the horror of losing a mission is not the shock and guilt that comes from being the only survivor of a mission gone wrong. Nay, the shock is that because you ordered a retreat, thousands of men, woman, and children are now being used for food, or slave labor, or worse. All because you decided that Sgt. Marty Strung was a higher priority. Its dehumanizing, but its also necessary. This is a game about sacrifice and duty, not personal feelings and companionship.
I could go on, but I’m going to focus on these bits here. See, the thing about the new X-COM is that almost all of these details are going to be gutted by switching from a grand strategy/tactical strategy game to a first person shooter/real time strategy game. How? Lets look at each point to see how.
First off is the difficulty. See, a FPS will never be as hard as a strategy game, especially when there is only the AI you have to battle with. This is not a slight against FPSs, its just a hard truth. FPSs require a large amount of personal skill and accuracy to be good at, and there is not as much of a time investment needed. I’ve played FPSs where it takes me a second to pick up the controller and I’ve become a god of war and blood, where as most strategy games (even the bad ones) challenge me right from the start. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem except that this is X-COM, the game where winning a match is paramount to winning the lottery. How would you carry that difficulty over into a FPS without screwing it up royally? From what I’ve seen its not really trying in this regard. I don’t blame them, its not easy. Unfortunately, it is also necessary that the missions are unfairly hard because, if not, a large amount of the dream from the game is lost. Why are we fearing aliens that we can easily best with regular old guns? Why should we be afraid of these things when its just so easy to fight them off? The original X-COM got this right, but I don’t think the new one will be able to pull it off.
Next is the smart aspect. From what we’ve heard so far, the agents are leveled up very similarly to Mass Effect in the hybrid RPG/FPS system. Also, guns you pick up from the aliens can be converted into research or used as is. Mission selection is only in the USA and it is not controlled by the player as much as pre-generated by the game depending on your situation. This simplification of the system makes the pre-planing essentially like stopping at a upgrade store between missions. The meticulous planing is instead replaced with classes and generalized weapons instead of the intricate details of the original. Even the base building is completely gone, removed to make way for the combat which we already covered.
Finally, the impersonal aspect, arguably the easiest aspect, is completely thrown out. Even if you are just a dispatcher (as i hope you are, otherwise I have to question why the leader of a secret government organization would risk his own life as well as the security of the agency when sending out someone else would have worked) you are still viewing the action as a member of the team. You have to be personally invested, how else could you react to the situation? You’re there! You’re one of them! Making the all important sacrifice is impossible to do when the men you’re ordering on a suicide run are literally right there. The shock of the game is no longer on the citizens dying, its the men who are supposed to be dying dying and I can’t impress on you how big of a change this is. It’s completely against the morals and terror of the original X-COM and arguably completely misses the point of it.
In light of this as well as several smaller details like naming conventions, lack of re-occurring themes, and a complete genre shift, I cannot in good conciseness call this a X-COM remake or relaunch or whatever. It would be like taking the old Star Wars movies and saying that Speed Racer is in its continuity because Speed Racer had a vaguely futuristic setting and racing and Star Wars was futuristic and had racing. However, I do not think it will be a bad game. From what I’ve seen it looks like a interesting if generic FPS with a eldric horror theme going with the alien design. If they changed the name of the game, just the name, I would be much happier with it. And that’s all I have to say on that.
Authorized by:
Dr. Churchil, Internet Nobody
June 24th, 2011 | Video Games | No comments