Today Firaxis—the makers of both XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Civilization V—announced that you can research something called the XCOM Project in your game of Civ V.

What that does is replace what would normally be paratrooper units with actual XCOM soldiers that drop from the Skyranger. Check out what that looks like in the screenshot above.

Here it is in action:

Firaxis' summer is going to be quite busy. They just announced today at their PAX East panel that they'll be bringing the fantastic strategy game from the PC/consoles over to the iOS platform.

They showed off a quick demo of what the game will look like on your palm-friendly device, but we're told that it's basically the entire game carried over to mobile. We'll have impressions for you as soon as we can get our hands on it. No word on pricing yet.

UPDATE: I spoke with Firaxis' Jake Solomon on the show floor today while he showed me XCOM: Enemy Unknown on an iPad. He opened up the familiar map of the XCOM base, and swiping between locations seemed like a natural fit. So did the gameplay, which is predominantly cursor-driven and so perfect for taps and swipes on a touch screen.

But I got a few other interesting tidbits, too, so I'll share them here with some bullet points:

• Development—or the porting process—of the iOS edition started at the tail-end of development on the PC/console versions of XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
• The iOS versions feature the same UI as the game, with a few tweaks for things like swiping, but the iPhone version will differ from the iPad version for obvious reasons like the limitation of screen real estate. Can't squeeze in as much details on a tinier phone.
• Solomon couldn't say what iPad/iPhone editions the game will launch for, but he did say that he's seen the game run on multiple versions of the iPad.
• The total number of maps you can play on are less than what you'd find on the PC/console editions.

We'll share more when we learn more.

Today at Firaxis' panel at PAX East, the developers showed off the first version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown before it was scrapped for what you played last year.

They worked on what you see above for about a year before ditching it.

The folks at Firaxis are responsible for some of the best strategy games ever made, so when they promise a deep, competitive, free-to-play strategy game for iOS in this spring's Haunted Hollow, it's a good time to be an iDevice owner.

In Haunted Hollow, players construct elaborate mansions that spawn all sorts of nasty horror standards — vampires, witches, werewolves and such. Once established, they'll compete against rivals as they take over townhomes, terrorize the populace, fight enemies and generally take over the town, as large bands of monsters have been doing since the invention of the spooky mansion (the spooky condo was just not getting the job done).

Evil overlords will be able to play single-player games by their lonesome, or take down other devilish landlords via pass-and-play or Game Center multiplayer.

Haunted Hollow will be out on iOS this spring. I will be playing it. I'll let you know how that goes.

One of the best things about XCOM: Enemy Unknown is naming your squaddies after your friends. It's a lot of fun to tell people you know about their daring exploits in the battle against the aliens, and equally goofy to inform them of their heroic—or needless—deaths. (Of course, sometimes that second part can get weird.)

Now it's easier than ever for people playing the game on PC to get their friends into the fray, thanks to the XCOM Facebook Exporter app by Nexus user Automator. By way of a not-that-complicated 2-step process, you can export the names of your Facebook friends and load the file up in a converter and copy the names into the game. I haven't used this app yet, but it sounds like despite some gender-bending issues that you'll have to address by digging into the in-game customization, it works well. And of course, if your soldiers do fall in the line of duty, you can also memorialize them on Facebook, too.

Finally! Your favorite support soldier can have the same name as that random guy you were on the swim team with, and your heavy gunner can be that bully you're only Facebook friends with because you're so much cooler than he is now.

XCOM Facebook Exporter [Xcom Nexus via Rowan Kaiser]

The staff of Kotaku nominated nine games for 2012 Game of the Year. One game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, blew the competition away.

The PC and console turn-based strategy game from the masterminds behind Civilization was a dark horse in our staff voting. Last week, as we publicized our nominations, two other games—the dramatic five-part adventure game, The Walking Dead and the moving, quiet multiplayer PlayStation 3 hike Journey—had attracted more attention. Both have won numerous Game of the Year awards from other awards-givers.

Our nominees in 2012 were a diverse bunch. The big budget first-person shooter open-jungle adventure Far Cry 3 turned heads. Smaller, more obscure games like the locked-room interactive-novel Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, the brutal Indiana Jones-esque platformer/roguelike Spelunky, the mesmerizing puzzle "geometric rhythm seizure survival" game Super Hexagon, the complex 400-year dynasty-simulator Crusader Kings II and the autobiographical, wrenching Papo & Yo all drew some votes.

But the winner was XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a game for the strategic-minded among us, a game that updates a classic and once again presents a worldwide battle of humans against alien invaders as a terrific variation of violent chess. The game is deep but intuitive. It rewards planning and focus, it penalizes failure. It requires patience but can still be exciting. It's an easy game to start playing and a tough one to stop. Plus, that music when you're going into battle, always gets us pumped.

We salute XCOM's developers, Firaxis studios. We still recommend that players invest in plasma weapons. And we look forward to a 2013 full of great video games.

April 16, 2015
Location: Sapporo, Japan
Operation: Extraterrestrial Terrorism Response
Codename: Lost Spark
Mission Parameters: Failure will result in the immediate loss of resources and support from Japan. This would deal a devastating blow to the XCOM project.
Project Goal: Save the Earth, and all who call it home.

This mission, which comes from a template of regular assignments, delivered my most profound gaming experience of 2012, one I'll remember for the rest of my days. Games that take hold on your mind well after you power down the console or put the PC to sleep deserve to be called Game of the Year. Kotaku has nominated eight so far. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the ninth and last.

Here's what happened. It was my first terror response, and my ill-considered, but understandable push to save every civilian left my unit spread out and unable to help teammates. We had three veterans, a scared rookie, and an apple-cheeked assault specialist from Washington state, fresh off his promotion to squaddie. I'd named him for a friend, as most players of XCOM do.

Our top sniper, who had just made lieutenant, was charged and wounded by the last chryssalid and failed to stop it at close range. My friend, the squaddie, had a shotgun and the run-and-gun perk, allowing him to fire after two movements. The medikit I'd assigned him was used to save the rookie. I directed him to charge the chryssalid and blast it point blank. He inflicted a critical hit and, having presented himself as an unprotected target, was killed in the next turn. The lieutenant then dispatched the enemy with one shot from her sidearm.

I saved the game, went upstairs, and wrote out a casualty notice to my friend. Then I wrote the orders for a posthumous medal, legitimately choking up as I typed out words like "indomitable courage" and "extraordinary heroism." Then I wrote the remarks the president delivered at his funeral, attended by the heads of state of all the XCOM nations. The prime minister of Japan was there.

That award and that funeral didn't happen in XCOM of course. Still, these perfectly hallucinated scenes—and if you have played the game you have at least one—are a direct result of the game's brilliant design, honoring a tradition going back nearly two decades. Considering what XCOM: Enemy Unknown was up against, this is the best execution, in the face of the highest expectations, of any game development team in 2012. This is XCOM we're talking about, a titan of PC gaming being remade—and on consoles, too.

Remember when XCOM: Enemy Unknown was formally announced? It was a year ago tomorrow. The XCOM reboot that everyone loved to hate, announced in 2010 and showed at E3 in 2011, had been delayed. Conventional wisdom had it that 2K Games hustled Enemy Unknown into service as a stopgap, a tide-me-over, possibly even a downloadable party favor, to appease the diehards and deflect their disappointment from the other XCOM, which departed significantly from the original.

If that's really so, then Firaxis did a hell of a job on a rushed schedule (even if the game's development history dates to 2008.) As the sports writer here, I deal with games built on a one-year lifespan on a daily basis. I can't name the last time a major publisher put out a multiplatform, retail release game this good nine months after it was announced.

It's not that the game's underlying concepts of strategic neglect, inevitable defeat and advancement from it, are novel introductions, either in this game or in the strategy genre overall. It's how perfectly XCOM: Enemy Unknown forces these conditions, and how the tenor of the game changes once you suck it up and push ahead, despite the fiasco of that last UFO crash investigation.

All of that said, even after accepting defeat as a fact of life, XCOM remains a tough, demanding game, even on "Normal" difficulty. Not with a gun to my head would I ever attempt its "Impossible" difficulty, though its inclusion is a shrewd nod to the idea that if we ever face an invasion led by beings with this kind of power, we're unavoidably doomed. Still, there is a chorelike quality not only to XCOM's interstitial missions—which necessarily grind you along toward weapon and technology upgrades—as well as in its liturgy of effective combat. Preventing flanking, moving slowly, covering teammates, all of these chesslike steps must be followed, no matter how skilled your fighters are. If you are new to the series, you will have to learn a lot by trial and error, and sometimes the mistakes you make in your broader strategy of research, engineering and training will send you down a path that makes ultimate success much harder, if not impossible. A lot of XCOM: Enemy Unknown assumes knowledge of the series or the genre, and without it, the game has discouraging jolts.

To XCOM's credit, though, the game is as honest in consistently applying consequences to your long term strategy as it is to your choices in short-term conflicts. Units that are highly trained but poorly equipped will get crushed in the field. A project with unstoppable soldiers will be in serious trouble if it doesn't have enough satellites in the air, or hasn't built advanced aircraft. There's an orthodoxy in the tactics, too, in the way shooting from elevation, flanking (or avoiding it) and using cover and suppression are utterly critical, especially as your largest force will be only six members, perpetually tasked with repelling superior numbers.

XCOM has its own story. It features cutscenes, pivotal missions and events, story-based set pieces and a cinematic finale. Deep down, though, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is what defines the best of video gaming: it's a great game, first and foremost. And still it provides a greater tablet for players to write their own stories; to write a friend at midnight, regretfully informing him of his heroic death in action.

The writers of Kotaku are nominating nine games for 2012 Game of the Year. The nominations will be posted throughout the first week of January. The winner of our staff vote will be announced on the following Monday and that game will be our 2012 GOTY, shifting 2011 GOTY Portal 2 a little further down our imaginary trophy shelf. Read all of our 2012 nominations, as they're posted.

One of the neater (and sadder) aspects of the new XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the fact that your base comes with a built-in memorial wall for your fallen soldiers. It's a great idea, though the execution is only okay: You don't get to post a picture of the soldier, nor any info beyond their name and rank.

2K has added a new layer to things, allowing players to add their fallen comrades to a regularly updated Facebook memorial. It's a start, though it still fails to allow players to add pictures of their soldiers, so there's room for improvement.

Though of course, if you've got a lot of screenshots and a printer, you can always build your own shrine to the fallen in your living room. Not that I did that, or anything.

XCOM Memorial Wall [Facebook]

If the Video Game Awards are actually an awards show, and not just a keynote for promoting upcoming games, then the big news from last night was The Walking Dead: The Game. Eminently quotable analyst Michael Pachter said before the show that if this title, a downloadable self-published game, took home Game of the Year, he'd eat his hat. To his credit, Pachter later tweeted out a request for one, presumably to consume.

But the surprises don't just stop there. The Walking Dead won Game of the Year coming out of the Best Adapted Game category. Except for 2003, the first year of the VGAs, when things were very different from today, only two adapted games have even been nominated for GOTY: Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, and neither won. This is a different time in games development, with publishers looking for games whose characters and stories they fully own.

Some might look to a licensed or adapted work and consider that the game derives its significance, or at least the attention given to it, because it draws on some other franchise in popular entertainment. So it's strange that a licensed, adapted work reminds us that story, and characters, and choices, and the memorable experiences they create, matters most.

Here's another surprise nugget: The Walking Dead: The Game earned its makers five Video Game Awards. The next big winner? Journey, with three (including a nomination for Game of the Year.) Borderlands 2 also took home three awards, the best haul for a traditional boxed console game.

So if you're thinking this might have been a different Video Game Awards, in its 10th year, you're probably right. Had the show given more attention to that purpose—only a handful of these awards were actually presented in the broadcast—we might be pondering it as a landmark year. The VGAs are often accused of being an industry popularity contest, but maybe this year they acquired recognizable critical heft. We'll have to see what happens next year, and the year after.

So here are the 25 winners of the 2012 Video Game Awards, plus the Game of the Decade. Two fan-voted awards gave Character of the Year to Claptrap from Borderlands 2, and Most Anticipated Game to Grand Theft Auto V.

Game of the Year

The Walking Dead: The Game

Telltale Games

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Dishonored, Journey, Mass Effect 3

Studio of the Year

Telltale Games

Also nominated: 343 Industries, Arkane Studios, Gearbox Software

Best Xbox 360 Game

Halo 4

Microsoft Studios/343 Industries

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Borderlands 2, Dishonored

Best PS3 Game

Journey

Sony Computer Entertainment/thatgamecompany

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Borderlands 2, Dishonored

Best Wii/Wii U Game

New Super Mario Bros. U

Nintendo

Also nominated: The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles, ZombiU

Best PC Game

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

2K Games/Firaxis Games

Also nominated: Diablo III, Guild Wars 2, Torchlight II

Best Shooter

Borderlands 2

2K Games/Gearbox Software

Also nominated: Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Halo 4, Max Payne 3

Best Action-Adventure Game

Dishonored

Bethesda Softworks/Arkane Studios

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Darksiders II, Sleeping Dogs

Best Role-Playing Game

Mass Effect 3

Electronic Arts/BioWare

Also nominated: Diablo III, Torchlight II, Xenoblade Chronicles

Best Multiplayer Game

Borderlands 2

2K Games/Gearbox Software

Also nominated: Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Guild Wars 2, Halo 4

Best Individual Sports Game

SSX

Electronic Arts/EA Canada

Also nominated: Hot Shots Golf World Invitational, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, WWE '13

Best Team Sports Game

NBA 2K13

2K Sports/Visual Concepts

Also nominated: FIFA 13, Madden NFL 13, NHL 13

Best Driving Game

Need For Speed: Most Wanted

Electronic Arts/Criterion Games

Also nominated: Dirt: Showdown, F1 2012, Forza Horizon

Best Song in a Game

"Cities" (Beck) for Sound Shapes

Also nominated: "Castle of Glass" (Linkin Park for Medal of Honor: Warfighter); "I Was Born for This" (Austin Wintory for Journey); "Tears" (Health for Max Payne 3)

Best Original Score

Journey

Sony Computer Entertainment/thatgamecompany

Also nominated: Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Halo 4, Max Payne 3.

Best Graphics

Halo 4

Microsoft Studios/343 Industries

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Dishonored, Journey

Best Independent Game

Journey

thatgamecompany

Also nominated: Dust: An Elysian Tail, Fez, Mark of the Ninja

Best Fighting Game

Persona 4 Arena

Atlus/Arc System Works/Atlus

Also nominated: Dead or Alive 5, Street Fighter X Tekken, Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Best Handheld/Mobile Game

Sound Shapes

Sony Computer Entertainment/Queasy Games

Also nominated: Gravity Rush, LittleBigPlanet (PS Vita), New Super Mario Bros 2

Best Performance by a Human Female

Melissa Hutchison for The Walking Dead: The Game

Also nominated: Emma Stone for Sleeping Dogs; Jen Taylor for Halo 4; Jennifer Hale for Mass Effect 3

Best Performance by a Human Male

Dameon Clark for Borderlands 2

Also nominated: Dave Fennoy for The Walking Dead: The Game; James McCaffrey for Max Payne 3; Nolan North for Spec Ops: The Line

Best Adapted Video Game

The Walking Dead: The Game

Telltale Games

Also nominated: Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

Best Downloadable Content

Dawnguard for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Bethesda Softworks/Bethesda Game Studios

Also nominated: Leviathan for Mass Effect 3; Mechromancer Pack for Borderlands 2; Perpetual Testing Initiative for Portal 2

Best Downloadable Game

The Walking Dead: The Game

Telltale Games

Also nominated: Fez, Journey, Sound Shapes

Best Social Game

You Don't Know Jack

Jellyvision Games

Also nominated: Draw Something, Marvel: Avengers Alliance, SimCity Social

Game of the Decade

Half Life 2

Valve Corporation

Also nominated: Batman: Arkham City, BioShock, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Mass Effect 2, Portal, Red Dead Redemption, Shadow of the Colossus, Wii Sports, World of Warcraft

No one was sure that XCOM: Enemy Unknown would please fans of the original X-Com. The remake's lead designer Jake Solomon counts himself amongst the devotees of Microprose's sci-fi strategy game and even he wasn't certain the team at Firaxis could recapture the appeal of the original.

So, Solomon was understandably chuffed when he heard that X-Com creator Julian Gollop offered praise for the new game. Word of this approval comes from a Eurogamer article, where Gollop says:

"I think Firaxis has done a great job… The game is addictive and absorbing, not to mention quite challenging on the classic difficulty setting."

And Solomon's response is pretty much what you'd expect:

"That's good, man. The guy's a legend. It's a weird situation. You know he's still out there, you know he's going to end up playing it - and you just admire the guy so much."

Gollop finds himself in a similar position as he's working on a new version of 1985's Chaos. Remakes will come and go and quality will vary but it's nice to see creators of different eras able to appreciate and build off of what happens in the past and present.