XCOM 2 [official site] looms, but despite its many enticing changes it seems unlikely it’ll take Firaxis’ X-COM reboot much closer to the Golloptastic source material. As such, complicated, hardcore and remarkably extensive mod Long War is, I suspect, going to remain your best bet for a game which furthers the uncompromising, unsympathetic spirit of the original games. It expands so many elements, introduces many more, remixes almost everything, makes an XCOM campaign ten times longer and, if you so wish, repeatedly bloodies your nose in the process. And now, several years and 15 major releases later, it is more-or-less finished. Next, its makers will turn their hands to their own “grand strategy alien invasion game.” … [visit site to read more]

It’s a good day for watching videos of exciting upcoming games that isn’t polluted by jibber-jabber. Getting to appreciate the sound design of No Man’s Sky was a fine thing, and now I can see some of my most-anticipated game this year, XCOM 2 [official site], without interruptions from interviewers and soundbyteers. This ten minutes of alien-bothering appears to offer a meaningful glimpse of how a mission can play out. It looks significantly more XCOMy than some of the talk about big changes – especially in terms of role-reversal – might have suggested but, I think, in a good way. … [visit site to read more]

Another lifeboat for me reach out to in the endless sea of E3 hype is Firaxis’ XCOM 2 [official site]. Clearly it’s hardly a dead cert they’ll get it right, especially given that Civ Beyond Earth eroded some faith that the studio is willing to go outside its comfort zone, but there’s no game in vidyaland that I’m more excited about right now. Even though all we’ve been given so far is context. That’s just changed: here’s footage there’s footage footage now hooray footage

… [visit site to read more]

What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we’ll be offering our picks – based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 5 of the sale.>

… [visit site to read more]

What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we’ll be offering our picks – based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day one of the sale.>

… [visit site to read more]

Here at RPS, we like XCOM: Enemy Unknown so much that we named it the 12th best strategy game of all time. When Firaxis announced the sequel, the entire RPS team smiled, simultaneously for the first time since 1992. That doesn’t mean we’ll be happy with more of the same though and when we asked strategy expert Rob Zacny to contemplate the best possible XCOM 2, he made some bold suggestions. Bring back the fear, he says, and if your game is about insurgency, learn from the best.>

… [visit site to read more]

I should have been there. I should have been there>. But I wasn’t. I was busy toddler-wrangling when XCOM 2 was announced yesterday, so only now can I say my piece about the follow-up to my most-played game of the last decade (at least). I’ve watched the trailer several times over, and I have these things to say about it, in a vaguely shot-by-shot breakdown sort of way. … [visit site to read more]

In all our excitement about the announcement of XCOM 2 [official site] yesterday, we missed the cinematic trailer showing XCOM rebels battling snakecops in a futurecity. Perhaps it was for the best: Adam’s happy little dance might’ve gone on so long he ground his legs to stumps had he seen that too. Me, I’m too achy to dance today, so I can safely post about the trailer.

Are you okay to watch it? I accept no liability for any stumpings that may occur.

… [visit site to read more]

It’s happening. We suspected it would but that hasn’t prevented a swift happy dance before posting of the news could commence.

XCOM 2 [official site] is coming in November of this year. No underwater shenanigans and no race into space. Instead, Firaxis are proposing a grim future in which the alien invasion was eventually successful, leaving humanity as second-class citizens on their own planet. A couple of decades after the war, XCOM re-establishes itself as a hidden force of freedom fighters, striking back against the new world order. Procedural levels, new soldier classes, a mobile base, deeper modding support and more more more. Screenshots and details below.

… [visit site to read more]

Rumblings in the towers of Take-Two have gotten me wondering about the status of the BioShock franchise. GameSpot are reporting the publisher’s CEO and potential movie villain Strauss Zelnick calling the series “really important” to Take-Two at a recent conference. According to Zelnick, it’s so far sold a whopping 25 million units, 11 million of which were BioShock Infinite.

Zelnick has previously referred to this as one of Take-Two’s “permanent” franchises, alongside Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Civilization and Borderlands. But things have so far been quiet. No future full-releases have been publicly confirmed for the series – Zelnick notes he has no announcements to make of BioShock’s whereabouts. Likewise, Irrational Games are but a memory. Ken Levine is working on something about blocks or something.

… [visit site to read more]