Ah well, not a full sequel then. But a hefty expansion, nonetheless – Firaxis style. (Actually, it’ll be a standalone game on consoles, but not PC, oddly.) Rather obviously XCOM: Enemy Within will have new maps (40 of them), and new soldier class (stompy mech) and multiplayer stuff (cuddles), but also introduces a rather significant new mechanic, changing how you approach the game.
Last night a mysterious entry appeared on the South Korean ratings board website – something called XCOM: Enemy Within. And that was all that was known. Technically, that is still all that is known, except that now we know it’s for real. Publishers 2K have confirmed to Eurogamer that it, whatever it might be, will be revealed at Gamescom later this month.
Klei has put marks on ninjas and avoided starvation (for now), and it’s all been pretty great. But now that all of that’s out in the open, what’s next? How do you follow gloriously precise stealth and maddeningly demented survival? Why, with turn-based tactical espionage, of course. Otherwise, there just wouldn’t be enough adjectives. I sat down with Klei co-founder Jamie Cheng for a brief chat about Icognita, which he’s billing as a more information-centric cousin to modern XCOM. Somewhat fittingly (though also frustratingly), he kept many details hidden away beneath his figurative trench coat, but we were able to discuss the broader strokes: espionage, the game’s upcoming paid alpha (ala Don’t Starve), procedural generation, and PC as the primary platform. Give the chat a quick read after the break.>
Obviously we don’t do video on RPS, because we are Old MenTM.
Only now I’ve done a video, for some reason. It’s in the vein of those Let’s Play things that are all over YouTube, tt’s my first one ever, and I’m well aware it’s pretty shonky on both a content and technical level. I wanted to give this a shot regardless of outcome, to see what it’s like and to see what I can learn. In it, I play one mission from the current build of Goldhawk Interactive’s indie X-COM homage Xenonauts, which is out now on Steam Early Access. I also talk pretty much non-stop for about 17 minutes, which I don’t believe is something I’ve ever done before in my life. My mum’d kill to have a conversation that long with me. (more…)
Wowee, this is something I need to magic up a fortnight for. Since 2009, the OpenXcom project has been unhurriedly continuing in its quest to make the original X-COM more contemporaneous, – a standalone version that doesn’t require DOSBox, that makes the interface a little more modern, that offers more rule-tweaking for those that want it, that finally kills some of the bugs which have dogged the original for the past two decades, and even one that scales up to mega-resolutions impressively convincingly. As of the new version 0.9, it’s basically got everything working, and you basically get an in theory improved, but faithful, X-COM to play right now. (more…)
“Slow news day, eh?” Only in your underpants, loser>. For all four of the Mac gamers who read RPS, this is a very, very, very, very, very fast news day. Because one of last year’s best games, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, has arrived on their shiny, overpriced, hard to upgrade PCs-with-different-software. (more…)
I need to set aside a couple of hours to have a thorough read of Julian Gollop’s ongoing design plans for his Chaos remake – he’s sharing a remarkable amount on his Gollop Games blog. Today though, I take the easy route – monkey see previously unrevealed concept art for the original X-COM/UFO, monkey must post about it. Because said concept art features, as well as some very different looks for X-COM’s familiar rogues gallery (e.g. what I think might be an Ethereal design has big thighs) there are some never-before-seen additions. Including what appears to be a giant mutant rabbity thing. (more…)
Whatever happened to the other XCOM, the 2K Marin-made shooter which was revealed long before last year’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown made everyone, except you, happy? It’s a question we’ve already asked several times here. We ask it because we don’t know the answer, and unless anyone involved feels like getting their Talpidae on and sneaking us some info, we won’t know until 2K reveal all. Which appears to be something that will happen rather soon. There’s a viral campaign of sorts, there’s a mysterious package being sent to games sites which aren’t us, and, well, there’s a blog post. That kind of undermines the air of mystery, I guess.
I say ‘vs’, but the reality of this meeting between the 20th and 21st century masters of X-COM is that they repeatedly seem on the verge of embracing each other, rather than trading blows in a bitter row about time units and action cameras. Rev3Games arranged for original X-COM co-creator Julian Gollop to meet Jake Solomon, the lead dev on Firaxis’ XCOM remake, the result being this rather delightful recording of their seventeen-minute exchange. (more…)
In this concluding part (the first one is here), we discuss boardgame influences, commercial success, what XCOM might mean for the future of strategy, the need for realism within science-fiction, and why XCOM wound up rather buggy.> (more…)