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[Apple Master]

http://www.xcom.com/
Enjoy.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Actually, the phrasing seems to kinda support the SWAT-Com idea.

XCOM is the re-imagining of the classic tale of humanity’s struggle against an unknown enemy that puts players directly into the shoes of an FBI agent tasked with identifying and eliminating the growing threat. True to the roots of the franchise, players will be placed in charge of overcoming high-stake odds through risky strategic gambits coupled with heart-stopping combat experiences that pit human ingenuity – and frailty – against a foe beyond comprehension. By setting the game in a first-person perspective, players will be able to feel the tension and fear that comes with combating a faceless enemy that is violently probing and plotting its way into our world.

Emphasis and double emphasis mine. It seems there will, after all, be some sort of strategic mode, at least one in which you can make decisions that will influence the upcoming battles. I'm not sure how much of the "true to the roots" is actually true, but if they have ANY RESPECT FOR THE PLAYERBASE AT ALL, which has a tiny chance of being true as long as it's not overseen by EA, then the game might even be a worthy addition to the X-Com canon. Also, the "screenshot" in the middle is hideous.

[GlyphGryph]

The only problem I have with this is the X-com games were wonders mechanically, and historically mechanics has been this studios weak point (see, bioshock games).

So not terribly hopeful. I'm sure it will be very atmospheric though.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

And the underwater scenes should be particularly shiny.

[Cthulhu]

Are you talking about the ring thing vaporizing stuff?  I think it's pretty cool.  Whatever the alien is is obviously a placeholder, and that kind of destruction is what I'd expect in an X-Com game with good graphics.  It gives it that "Super-powerful aliens are invading what can you possibly do?" feel that X-com found by slaughtering your first few squads.  Now that it's got good graphics, they can really have some crazy weapon effects to show off the alien technology.

[Kagus]

Funny, that's exactly what I'd refer to as not being good graphics.  They're "high" graphics, but not particularly good.

It looks like they're putting far too much emphasis on the new-era technology with heat shimmers, visible shockwave "bubbles", blurs, and other high-tech (and high-processing) effects, without spending the time and effort to actually make things look good.

That's the distinction I make between "high graphics" and "good graphics".  "High" just means shiny, shimmery, and technologically impressive.  "Good" means that the graphics just seem to "fit", and are genuinely nice to look at.

Sacrifice, with its -by now- exceptionally low graphics, was gorgeous.  I still think it's just as pretty to look at now as it ever was.  That's not particularly because of any technology they had, but because they actually had lots of inspired individuals who put the effort in to make everything look good.


On the other hand, there are several high-graphics games that I think look like utter junk.  Everything is just so bland and lifeless, once the shock of "OOH SHINY!" has worn off (mind you, there's nothing saying that that can't be a pretty awesome shock), you just don't want to look at any of it.

This isn't to say that high-graphics games look bad, quite the contrary.  Indeed, the level of technology and the level of aesthetic quality are almost completely separate from one another.  There are plenty of low-tech games that look really bad, and plenty of high-tech games that look really good.


I'm really hoping that the screenshot they've provided is either taken from a bad angle, has been "tweaked", or is just from a very early version and that they're going to make quite a few changes in the overall graphic style before it comes out.


I don't have high hopes for this, but I won't just excommunicate it without good reason.  There's always a chance...

[Cthulhu]

They just announced the game a few days ago.  I would be amazed if they don't change the graphical style at least a bit.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Let's remake DF as a falling-block casual puzzle game with Plinko elements!

Let's remake Half-Life as an Interactive Fiction government spending sim!

Let's remake Tetris as a badly-translated (Russian to Japanese to English) anime dating sim!

Let's make an FPS about WW2, guys! It'll be great! We have such awesome ideas!

[Ampersand]

Sean Mirrsen's quotation from the site really does help put me a bit more at ease about the nature of the finished game. If the interpretation is the intention of the text, then I can see the game being... Well, at least as good as SWAT was. The question is why not just make a SWAT game if you're going to make a SWAT game?

[Kagus]

Let's remake Tetris as a badly-translated (Russian to Japanese to English) anime dating sim!

I think I actually saw that somewhere...

[Sean Mirrsen]

The name "Sextris" comes to mind, but I don't think it bothered to be a dating sim...

And the screenshot is hideous. Yes, I meant the blurs and distortions. Maybe it's one of those things that look better in dynamics, since the guy in question seems to be disintegrating or melting, but really, it's not the best promotional shot. A dropship against the backdrop of a suburban sprawl at dusk, with mysterious shapes looming in windows of the nearest house, now that would make a nice shot.

[Mephansteras]

I was talking with some friends about this last night, and we came up with a situation where this FPS restart would both make sense and be cool. Note that I do not think this is actually what they're going to do but...

What if this was X-Com: First Contact? Your FBI guy leads his team around following shadowy clues, dealing with small initial teams of aliens and alien agents. Maybe you don't even directly fight any actual aliens for a while. The game details your character finding more and more about the threat, and culminates in some major action that results in the formation of the actual X-Com force. Maybe an invasion of a major US city (think the opening scene of the original X-Com) which your character is present at. You don't fight off the invasion, of course, but maybe you manage to save some important Senator or something from the Mutons.

It could be an awesome lead-up to a full on Strategic/Tactical X-Com remake. Bring people back into the franchise and use the one part of X-Com where a single story-line based game really makes sense, the backstory. After all, it doesn't matter if the lead-up to the invasion is set in stone as long as the invasion itself is that broad flexible strategy level game.



Sounds like they're not doing anything like that, of course...

[Ampersand]

What it sounds like they're doing is making a mod of SWAT 4, where they replace the Terrorists with Aliens.

[sluissa]

I don't have much hope for the game. I'll keep watching, but I don't think they're going to succeed with the same feeling the original gave me, and still gives me to this day.

I don't think there's much I can say that hasn't already been said here, but seriously, FBI? Did they just completely ignore the original X-Com and decide that X-Files was a better thing to try to "reimagine" but couldn't get the rights to it?

I personally would have loved to see X-Com Alliance be continued. I wouldn't defaultly hate an X-Com game with FPS elements, such as some people have suggested with the SWAT/Rainbow Six suggestions, but it still needs to have randomized strategic gameplay. If I play the game a second time, I don't want to simply be running through the same dozen or so missions with practically the same path again.

To be honest, I hated bioshock 1. It just felt bad. Good idea, but everything about it seemed clunky and, while very shiny, not fun at all. I never tried bioshock 2, so I can't comment there, but I didn't really like the premise of that game, as interesting of an idea it was.

[Ampersand]

Bioshock was ruined mostly by it's ending. It should have come immediately after

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

you kill Andrew Ryan

. The Voodoo Shark ending seriously took away from the impact that the aforementioned spoiler.

But aside from the story aspects, the game play was very poorly executed and plumbing the turrets was probably the stupidest thing ever.