Congrats to the team...I think my appetite for this has been whetted a little by the modern 2K Games remake...which, I know, is kind of heresy, but it really is a great example of how streamlining and simplifying an already decently-thought-out game (i.e. restricting soldiers to one special weapon and grenade, and base management to one base) can still be satisfying.
That said, in the remake, the AI is inexplicably "boxed" up. That is, the AI doesn't move until you stumble upon them...and so if you're patient and methodical, it's not terribly hard to win most fights, scratch-free. That ruined the tension that the original game had...The About page for Open-XCOM says the AI is improved...I'd love to see a writeup on what was changed.
I picked up the original XCOM on Steam again, last having played it on an old 486 box--I remembered my lessons, and the first mission I'd intercepted a little scout craft (2 crewman, one of whom died on impact).
So, naturally, I deploy 12 squaddies, leapfrog and encircle the crashed craft on a farm in broad daylight (never, ever, at night, ever), and proceed to fill it full of detpacks. Perfect, flawless run. I'm feeling cocky.
Next mission, terror mission, and within three turns I've lost like half my team to friendly fire (unfortunate incident with an incendiary rocket), a quarter to enemy fire, and the last few guys are either panicking or getting crushed in a pincer between alien tank units (cyberdiscs) and heavy infantry.
And that's when I realized that pretty much no modern games are as hard and unforgiving as that old DOS wonder. You start the game with a bunch of folks in T-shirts and M16s, and by the end you are literally space marines whose mere presence sends elite enemy units scurrying in terror--and more importantly, the game made you earn it, every step of the way.
Actually, it's hard to deny that X-Com did have a serious gameplay fault in its difficulty curve, as much as we loved the nostalgia.
At the easy difficulty modes (most new players) the curve is completely backwards. It stars out brutally difficult and becomes easier as you gain access to heavy plasma weapons.
If a total wipe of your early team was a forgiving event compared to late-game losses, that could be excused as setting tone, but it's not like that - players just save-scummed until the mission worked. That's not good gameplay.
I mean, the game's merits easily overshadowed its flaws, but the reverse-difficulty is a serious flaw.
So, the trick with the early game was to accept losses, right?
Once you realized "Hey, we're totally outgunned...we just need to flood the aliens until we get better gear", things changed. Missions became more about resource management: what is the bare minimum I can field to wipe these guys, what can I build and manufacture that has the highest profit margin, etc.?
Terror missions, for example, early on devolved into "Set fire to everything, because we need the light, and shoot the civilians, because they could be used to feed the Chrysalids and make more Chrysalids."
The enemies in the game stayed largely the same difficulty, but your equipment got better and better and tactics switched as you were able to field more expensive units--and unless you ran a really tight resource game, you treated those expensive units much differently.
The thing that made the game feel unique was exactly that: the reverse-difficulty. If you started kicking ass, and then things got harder, it'd be annoying--instead, you had some early success, discovered just how outclassed you were, and after a few restarts learned how to fight a technologically-superior enemy until you had achieved force parity.
I remember it having a nice subtle balance - you couldn't afford to just let terror missions go unmolested because you would quickly lose funding. On the other hand, you couldn't just grind soldiers out because you needed them to progress with skills, etc. for the endgame... although there was a sort of plateu around when you got armor and psi-ops where things got boring between, say the 70% and 95% where you were just waiting to capture that one thing you missed in the earlier missions... from what I remember, that was the worst thing; There were like 2 or 3 things you needed for your tech tree that only appeared in early missions and they were really difficult to get after that.
> And that's when I realized that pretty much no modern games are as hard and unforgiving as that old DOS wonder.
I'd say FTL and Super Hexagon are good examples of punishing modern games. I think this sort of difficulty curve is coming back into fashion with gamers.
I personally don't think the punishing difficulty curve was ever not in fashion with the gamers we're talking about. What happened was it fell out of fashion with the publishers, because they realized if they made the game easier, it appealed to a larger market.
What changed all this was kickstarter. All the games that developers still wanted to make, but couldn't find funding for because they weren't "modern" suddenly had a new method for publishing. FTL is a great example of that- it was an early kickstarter success and I doubt it would have been as good if it were published by, say, Ubisoft. What will be interesting is if we see a resurgence of hard games, just like the resurgence of point-and-click adventure games after Doublefine showed that people will still pay money for them.
> if you're patient and methodical, it's not terribly hard to win most fights, scratch-free
I was pretty satisfied with how they addressed that issue in Enemy Within. There are optional objectives that give you bonus resources if you reach them before they expire after a number of turns.
But yes, in Enemy Unknown, I gave up on my Classic runthrough after I realized that I could win easily if I just advanced slowly enough.
I agree that it is slightly weird that the aliens wait for you to discover them. However, when playing on impossible difficulty (and maybe also classic?), the aliens don't "hang out" most of the time. They will actively seek you out and it can be quite a challenge when they all show up to the party at the same time.
I'm so pumped for this, tried it about a year ago and decided to wait. The games I come back to in my life are Mega Man 2 (okay and a few other NES games), Final Fantasy III/VI, and XCOM. Others I dip into and remind myself of every once in a while, but these I actually regularly play through semi-regularly because they're just such a joy. Can't wait to dig in, maybe with a mod or two, and fret over my squad for a few hours. Thanks to the team.
Nice but... the iPad game completely took care of all my XCom cravings for quite some time. It was one of the most solid iPad games I've encountered. It's more a remake than an adaptation, and they really put in a lot of effort to bring the first XCom game into the 21st century, and it shows.
It cost £10 or so, and I never regretted a single penny of it. If you loved this game, I really recommend getting XCom on the iPad.
PS: This is not meant to take away from what these guys are doing... but watching that ancient creaky interface after being treated to the modern touch interface in the iPad game was somewhat painful. Here's a video:
Just FYI, your link to the video seems to be cut off.
And I seconded the praise of the ipad games. I've played quite a lot of TBS games over the years, and the XCOM remake has to be the best experience I've ever got. Both in term of game play, controlling and the overall experience (a good balance between challenge and immersion - it isn't too hard that it would frustrate you, nor too easy that it feels like a grind).
Which version? I'm only seeing Enemy Unknown and something called "Aliens versus Humans" which looks like a direct clone, but which the reviews say is sort of a shallow imitation of the original. Is there another I should be looking for? (XCOM is one of my top 5 of all time, would love a direct copy of the original with a graphical update)
I am confused as to what the original could be if not "X-COM: Enemy Unknown" (AKA "UFO: Enemy Unknown"/"X-COM: UFO Defense" released in 1994 on Amiga/CD32/DOS/PSx/Windows by MicroProse)?
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is not a straight remake of UFO: Enemy Unknown / X-COM: UFO Defense, it's a "reimagination". RPS's XCOM review also serves as a comparison/diff to X-COM: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/08/xcom-review/
Ah, the original was called UFO Defense in North America, the recent remake by Firaxis/2k was called Enemy Unknown here. The version in the app store is called Enemy Unknown and appears to be a port of the new version.
The iPad version was fantastic - looked great, ran great, and was completely absorbing. I'd read some criticism of the touch controls, but I only had a small amount of awkwardness with pinching and change-height gestures. And because it's turn-based most of the issues I found could be undone before they caused me to make a mistake.
Not everyone plays games on iPads. Please be a little considerate. The gaming market is much bigger (in terms of hours played) outside of the mobile devices.
Hm, this needs the original game assets, which I just bought on Steam. Trouble is, I can't download them on Linux because it's listed as a 'windows' game. <facepalm>
I've done that a few times, but I don't want to clutter my current system with the wine + winetricks packages again for the upteenths time. I was hoping to find an accessible way now that Linux is first class citizen for Steam.
You can create a disposable chroot debootstrap and use "xhost +" on the host to let Steam run. This is what I do every time I need something that require Java on my desktop.
Note that the original X-Com always played on Beginner difficulty. The developers never found out about this bug, and so may the sequel extremely more difficult, thus making it not at all fun for all but the most hardcore strategy gamers.
That can't be right. I fondly remember playing it on impossible, and almost all of the aliens started with heavy plasmas, and aside from that even the smaller ufos had twice the number of regular units.
I really like OpenXcom, but like the original Xcom i can't play it because of its rather stupid hit calculations. Range to the target isn't used for calculating the chance to hit a target. Because the troops can't hit something when it stands in front of them. Resulting in funny battles.
There is an build-in mod to reduce the chance to hit a target based on range. Since this doesn't solve the issue, the melee aliens become even more dangerous. And from all games around, Xcom do have the nastiest melee alien ever.
Is this true? I've definitely unloaded a few full auto shots into aliens nearby and the hit rate seemed drastically higher than if I were to do that at range.
That said, in the remake, the AI is inexplicably "boxed" up. That is, the AI doesn't move until you stumble upon them...and so if you're patient and methodical, it's not terribly hard to win most fights, scratch-free. That ruined the tension that the original game had...The About page for Open-XCOM says the AI is improved...I'd love to see a writeup on what was changed.