Bioshock producer Ken Levine working on a new X-Com?

[Seboss]

Take 2 bought the rights to the XCom franchise last year in the general indifference.
Now that Bioshock 2 development is taken care of by 2K Marin, Ken Levine found nothing better to do than start working on a new X-Com game. Or so it seems:

http://kotaku.com/386976/ken-levine-and ... x+com-game
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/45797

Now the question is, yay or meh?

 

[Fez]

It's been a while since that classic has been officially raped, I suppose.

 

[fastpunk]

I thought Levine was heading the Bioshock 2 team. At least that's what 2K have been saying.

 

[Micmu]

100 bucks the combat will be FPS

 

[pkt-zer0]

Well, Irrational/2K Boston made Freedom Force, which is at the very least not an FPS. Tiny glimmer of hope?

 

[Jasede]

You can't make a better squad-based game than X-Com 1/2. Really; you can't. At best you could upgrade the graphics, balance out the tech-tree a little and do some general balancing, and that's all you can do. Change anything and it'll be a change for the worse.

Don't know about you but I'd buy X-Com 1++ which has nothing but some more aliens, a little change in the main research line, and upgraded graphics. That's because I don't know of any change at all that'd be beneficial to this game; it's nigh-perfect.

 

[Kingston]

Doesn't really hurt. Its been raped enough, what's one more cock in the ass?

 

[Fez]

You can't make a better squad-based game than X-Com 1/2. Really; you can't. At best you could upgrade the graphics, balance out the tech-tree a little and do some general balancing, and that's all you can do. Change anything and it'll be a change for the worse.

Don't know about you but I'd buy X-Com 1++ which has nothing but some more aliens, a little change in the main research line, and upgraded graphics. That's because I don't know of any change at all that'd be beneficial to this game; it's nigh-perfect.

What about Jagged Alliance 2?

 

[Seboss]

Don't know about you but I'd buy X-Com 1++ which has nothing but some more aliens, a little change in the main research line, and upgraded graphics. That's because I don't know of any change at all that'd be beneficial to this game; it's nigh-perfect.

This game is more or less what you're referring to: http://ufo-extraterrestrials.com/
and God it sucks.

 

[Section8]

Old news. I thought this became common knowledge when the lawyers who represent the Artist Formerly Known as Irrational published papers saying they owned (or licensed?) the property. It's good to see the mainstream media is keeping up. But hey it was only 14 months ago. I expected this to be confirmation, but I guess Ken Levine can keep his "rumour" going a while longer if he wants.

 

[Jasede]

Don't know about you but I'd buy X-Com 1++ which has nothing but some more aliens, a little change in the main research line, and upgraded graphics. That's because I don't know of any change at all that'd be beneficial to this game; it's nigh-perfect.

This game is more or less what you're referring to: http://ufo-extraterrestrials.com/
and God it sucks.

I don't know. Are the mechanics exactly the same? Is the art-work as nice, with lovingly-drawn sprites? What about the music? X-Com 1 is so great because everything fits seamlessly and becomes more than the sum of its parts.

And Jagged Alliance 2 was amazing; wonderful indeed, my bad for forgetting about it. Though I still prefer X-Com, it takes less time to play. (Missions in JA 2 always take really long for me).

 

[Seboss]

Well, it's supposed to be a faitful remake and the developers really tried hard to do so.
But they failed miserably in my opinion. The interface is even more cumbersome than the original, the music is corny, the graphics more than a little goofy etc. The devs are not native English speakers and it shows. Not that it has any importance but the intro movie is just amazingly bad too.

Besides, there are some really weird discrepencies from the original XCom design
Soldiers can't die for instance. They are only lost for good if you leave them behind on the battlefield.
The tech tree is different for the most part too.

In short, it plays (mostly) like XCom, it tries to look and sound like XCom, but it just falls short in every ways.
The game does not improve anything over XCom (except for the 3D engine, screen resolution and such), and it fails to bring the unique atmosphere of XCom.

There a tons of mod available for the game but I did not bother to try any of them. I'd rather play XCom in DosBox with some antialiasing filter anytime.

 

[Oarfish]

So, whats the odds on a story heavy linear RTS with tedious in engine cut scenes, no procedural generation and lots of handholding?

Your first missions in xcom are scary; real darkness, randomised environment and opponents, powerful alien weaponry scything down your squaddies with a single shot. There's just no way in hell a mainstream developer is going to consider that kind of gameplay in 2008, certainly not Levine.

 

[NiM82]

Don't know about you but I'd buy X-Com 1++ which has nothing but some more aliens, a little change in the main research line, and upgraded graphics. That's because I don't know of any change at all that'd be beneficial to this game; it's nigh-perfect.

This game is more or less what you're referring to: http://ufo-extraterrestrials.com/
and God it sucks.

It's not too bad if you mess with fan mods/patches, but it is pretty dull and lacks the character of the originals.

 

[VonVentrue]

Don't know about you but I'd buy X-Com 1++ which has nothing but some more aliens, a little change in the main research line, and upgraded graphics. That's because I don't know of any change at all that'd be beneficial to this game; it's nigh-perfect.

I couldn't agree more, really. Frankly, it's one of a few games that would benefit from transition to 3D.

100 bucks the combat will be FPS

"Hi, I'm Ken Levine, the creative director at 2K Boston... And we're here today to show you a little bit of X-COM:Alliance... It's pretty ambitious - what we're trying to do is to redefine what it means to be a "tactical first-person strategy shooter". Our goal is to put a stake in the heart of all those clichés you've been playing for years in strategies. Top-down perspective, turn-based combat and a cookie-cutter AI..."

 

[Keldorn]

I hope you can rename soldiers, have destructible terrain and shoot the laser, making it go ...


http://www.wyomingwebdesign.com/files/s ... /laser.wav

 

[Raapys]

Wasn't there another recently released( or perhaps still not released? ) X-Com clone? One that actually had alot more promise than that UFO Extraterrestrials game.

 

[Andrej]

It's great! I hope they make a console game out of X-Com in realtime. Also, i hope that there's no inventory and you're forced to use all medkits you find scattered around the map immediately.

 

[Shoelip]

Wasn't there another recently released( or perhaps still not released? ) X-Com clone? One that actually had alot more promise than that UFO Extraterrestrials game.

There's this, which seems like you could be talking about it.

There's also this which I doubt you're talking about.

 

[vazquez595654]

Another game like X-Com would have to be an original title in order for another classic to be born. Anything less will just come across as a poor imitation.

 

[Desmodus Rotundus]

well there's also this http://www.xforce-online.de/ which he could be talking about

 

[BigWeather]

I would kill for X-Com ported directly as-is (ok, maybe slightly higher resolution -- but don't mess with anything else) to XBLA.

(And add: Seven Cities of Gold, Archon, M.U.L.E., Ultima IV - VI, and several others to that list. Oh, and my very odd fascination for Roadwar 2000.)

One can dream, I suppose. =(