Jason
chasing a bee
<strong>[ Editorial ]</strong>
<p><a href="http://kotaku.com/5517548/whats-the-big-deal-about-a-new-xcom" target="_blank">Kotaku</a> </p><blockquote>Look, if that's you, it's OK to feel a little disappointed. As a life-long X-Com fan (hence this piece!), I can't help but feel a <em>slight</em> twinge of it myself. But consider the following before getting too down:
- Turn-based strategy games are a complex genre. They are, Civilization's gentle, strategic beauty aside, for the hardcore! In case you've been asleep the past 2-3 years, games of this scale (big publisher, big developers) <a href="http://kotaku.com/5517302/game-changers-sequels-that-scared-the-true-fans?skyline=true&s=i" target="_blank">can't afford to appeal just to the hardcore anymore</a>. See games like Metroid, Fallout 3 and even the latest Splinter Cell for examples.</blockquote><p><a href="http://pc.ign.com/articles/108/1083925p1.html" target="_blank">IGN</a> </p><blockquote><p>One thing I think the new X-COM can do that previous efforts couldn't is offer up some really destructible environments. When you think about the destructible nature of the world in games like Crysis, and then throw in the cover system of games like Gears of War or even the upcoming Mafia 2, it makes the notion of an X-COM FPS even sweeter. The original game allowed you to use grenades to blow the walls out of farmhouses, and even light up entire gas stations with a single rocket shot, so the idea of seeing all that in real time for a first-person perspective is enough to make me wet my pants a little bit.
</p></blockquote><p><a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/14/why-x-com-matters-to-me/" target="_blank">Rock Paper Shotgun</a> </p><blockquote><p>Oof, <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/14/enemy-known-xcoms-baaaaaaaaaack/" target="_blank">tough day</a>. I totally get why people are upset, but once again it’s worth waiting for a few more details before you decide the new XCOM is the end of all that is sacred. Maybe it will be, maybe it won’t, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a little honest hope. Today does, however, spell the end of a decade-long dream that someone would throw really serious money at resurrecting the fantastic hybrid genre 1994’s X-COM created. There is a great sadness there – so many ideas left to die, never bettered in the long gap between then and now. So let’s be hopeful, cautiously or otherwise, about XCOM, but let’s also raise a glass to X-COM. We owe it so much, and we may never see its like again. <em>Sniff</em>. </p></blockquote><p><a href="http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=265" target="_blank">Rampant Coyote</a> </p><blockquote><p>However, I do remember playing Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear back in the day and recognizing the same ol’ thrill I’d had in the X-Com days. That whole next-step-could-be-your-last feeling as you approached a corner. Those were thinking-men’s shooters, slower-paced, tactical, and very fun. Combine that with the flavor and thrill of X-Com? Plus strategic results from victory and moving along a storyline so that the tactical maps weren’t just … random maps, but part of a bigger whole that was your responsibility and – to a degree – your own doing?
THAT would be cool.
I don’t think we’ll get that, either. But I can hope, can’t I?</p></blockquote><p><a href="http://thereticule.com/2010/04/the-kids-are-alright/" target="_blank">The Reticule</a> </p><blockquote><p>Within a medium that allows for so much scope and creativity, why are we so afraid of change and willing to nip the slightest sign of the possibility to create whole new fond memories of what could be exceptional games? Is it wrong to have the slightest hint of optimism early in a games development? Yes, it may turn out to be rubbish before release, as more information gets released and the press and indeed others actually get the chance to play with it. But there’s a massive difference between punishing a game for being bad, and punishing a game because it’s not something it never tried to be. Let’s at least get to know a game before we cast it aside, after all – to use an admittedly flimsy analogy – if you named your child William after the playwright Shakespeare, would you punish him if he became an Astronaut?
</p></blockquote><p><a href="http://www.crypticcomet.com/blog/?p=451" target="_blank">Vic Davis</a> </p><blockquote><p>No.
</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://kotaku.com/5517548/whats-the-big-deal-about-a-new-xcom" target="_blank">Kotaku</a> </p><blockquote>Look, if that's you, it's OK to feel a little disappointed. As a life-long X-Com fan (hence this piece!), I can't help but feel a <em>slight</em> twinge of it myself. But consider the following before getting too down:
- Turn-based strategy games are a complex genre. They are, Civilization's gentle, strategic beauty aside, for the hardcore! In case you've been asleep the past 2-3 years, games of this scale (big publisher, big developers) <a href="http://kotaku.com/5517302/game-changers-sequels-that-scared-the-true-fans?skyline=true&s=i" target="_blank">can't afford to appeal just to the hardcore anymore</a>. See games like Metroid, Fallout 3 and even the latest Splinter Cell for examples.</blockquote><p><a href="http://pc.ign.com/articles/108/1083925p1.html" target="_blank">IGN</a> </p><blockquote><p>One thing I think the new X-COM can do that previous efforts couldn't is offer up some really destructible environments. When you think about the destructible nature of the world in games like Crysis, and then throw in the cover system of games like Gears of War or even the upcoming Mafia 2, it makes the notion of an X-COM FPS even sweeter. The original game allowed you to use grenades to blow the walls out of farmhouses, and even light up entire gas stations with a single rocket shot, so the idea of seeing all that in real time for a first-person perspective is enough to make me wet my pants a little bit.
</p></blockquote><p><a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/14/why-x-com-matters-to-me/" target="_blank">Rock Paper Shotgun</a> </p><blockquote><p>Oof, <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/14/enemy-known-xcoms-baaaaaaaaaack/" target="_blank">tough day</a>. I totally get why people are upset, but once again it’s worth waiting for a few more details before you decide the new XCOM is the end of all that is sacred. Maybe it will be, maybe it won’t, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a little honest hope. Today does, however, spell the end of a decade-long dream that someone would throw really serious money at resurrecting the fantastic hybrid genre 1994’s X-COM created. There is a great sadness there – so many ideas left to die, never bettered in the long gap between then and now. So let’s be hopeful, cautiously or otherwise, about XCOM, but let’s also raise a glass to X-COM. We owe it so much, and we may never see its like again. <em>Sniff</em>. </p></blockquote><p><a href="http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=265" target="_blank">Rampant Coyote</a> </p><blockquote><p>However, I do remember playing Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear back in the day and recognizing the same ol’ thrill I’d had in the X-Com days. That whole next-step-could-be-your-last feeling as you approached a corner. Those were thinking-men’s shooters, slower-paced, tactical, and very fun. Combine that with the flavor and thrill of X-Com? Plus strategic results from victory and moving along a storyline so that the tactical maps weren’t just … random maps, but part of a bigger whole that was your responsibility and – to a degree – your own doing?
THAT would be cool.
I don’t think we’ll get that, either. But I can hope, can’t I?</p></blockquote><p><a href="http://thereticule.com/2010/04/the-kids-are-alright/" target="_blank">The Reticule</a> </p><blockquote><p>Within a medium that allows for so much scope and creativity, why are we so afraid of change and willing to nip the slightest sign of the possibility to create whole new fond memories of what could be exceptional games? Is it wrong to have the slightest hint of optimism early in a games development? Yes, it may turn out to be rubbish before release, as more information gets released and the press and indeed others actually get the chance to play with it. But there’s a massive difference between punishing a game for being bad, and punishing a game because it’s not something it never tried to be. Let’s at least get to know a game before we cast it aside, after all – to use an admittedly flimsy analogy – if you named your child William after the playwright Shakespeare, would you punish him if he became an Astronaut?
</p></blockquote><p><a href="http://www.crypticcomet.com/blog/?p=451" target="_blank">Vic Davis</a> </p><blockquote><p>No.
</p></blockquote>