There are good games. There are bad games and then there are games that 16 years after release still spawn intense discussions within the community. X-COM is one of the latter.

X-COM

• Di, 20. April 2010,
• 1447 Wörter,
• 2 Kommentare,
• Tags:
• 90s,
• Layout,
• MicroProse,
• PC Games,
• Reboot,
• X-COM

A pre­miere today. I’ll try to do more con­tent for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders. Today i’d like to write a piece about the little acro­nym that chan­ged gaming in 1994: X-COM. A couple of days ago and after five years of rumors about a pos­si­ble reboot of the fran­chise, rumors died and an offi­cial press release infor­med us that X-COM now is XCOM and some­thing that no ori­gi­nal fan wan­ted to play. I read tons of arti­cles, lis­tened to hours of pod­casts about this topic and one thing is for sure. Never was a reboot of a gaming fran­chise so right and so wrong at the same time.

X-COM was crea­ted by very few guys back in the early nine­ties¹. They tried to sell a sequel of a game cal­led Laser Squad to a publis­her. Laser Squad is a tac­tical turn- and squad-based stra­tegy game. Legen­dary publis­her Micro­Prose picked up the pro­ject while at the same time deman­ded chan­ges to the con­cept. Instead of a sim­ple sequel they wan­ted to stage the game in an Alien inva­sion set­ting, where the player’s task should be to defend the earth from Alien inva­ders. Instead of pure combat-based stra­tegy, res­source manage­ment, base buil­ding and RPG ele­ments should add even more depth to the game.

The game was released in 1994 as X-COM - UFO Defense in the US and as UFO - Enemy Unknown in the EU mar­ket for the PC. It sold well, was por­ted to other plat­forms and imme­dia­tely spa­w­ned a series of sequels and spin-offs. None of them reached the qua­lity of the ori­gi­nal first release. The fran­chise died by a loss of qua­lity and gaming zeit­geist. The con­cept of turn-based stra­tegy wasn’t so hot any­more with first per­son shoo­ters and real time stra­tegy taking over. Still six­teen years later, ever­yone who played the ori­gi­nal back then, will only praise the game for what a really was: at least ten years ahead of its time. A per­fect genre hybrid that could never be impro­ved or even matched. X-COM sym­bo­li­zes ever­y­thing that’s bad­mou­thed in todays gaming mar­ket. What today is con­side­red a flaw, makes the game so unf­or­gettable. When i played X-COM i was a con­sole player. PC games were con­side­red boring and too com­plex. I stick to X-COM cause the set­ting was so uni­que and well deli­vered.

The entry bar­rier of the game was and is pretty ruth­less, espe­cially for play­ers unex­pe­ri­en­ced with the genre. For me the first two hours of the game were a con­stant stream of kicks and pun­ches. There’s so much try & error here but it will reach a point were the bril­li­ance of the game just clicks. After that X-COM deli­vers maybe the best sin­gle player expe­ri­ence i’ve ever played. Two ele­ments are key for the uni­que impres­sion of the game. There’s a per­fect illu­sion of non-linearity com­bi­ned with con­stant fear of mis­ta­kes. X-COM is so old­school in that mis­ta­kes are per­ma­nent and game chan­ging. I put dozens of hours into the game and not a sin­gle second made me feel really supe­rior wit­hin the game. The RPG ele­ments are flaw­less and maybe the sin­gle most advan­ced ele­ment way ahead of its time. Orde­ring new squad mem­bers and slowly buil­ding them up from use­l­ess roo­kies to one-man armies crea­tes a per­so­nal con­nec­tion to those tiny pixel crea­tures that is still unmatched. Losing a vete­ran mem­ber of the squad is a serious penalty but at the same time an effect cau­sed by an error that always is player made.

While most ele­ments of the game are ran­dom based, i never expe­ri­en­ced an unfair situa­tion. My squad fucked up cause i fucked up as a player. The ran­dom gene­ra­ted com­bat sce­na­rios are the meat of the con­cept. Every fight is explo­ra­tion of an unknown environ­ment. Death really could be ever­y­where and mis­ta­kes will be punis­hed. This con­cept today seems fla­wed with games get­ting easier and posi­tive rein­force­ment is just one but­ton press away. Con­gra­tu­la­ti­ons for pres­sing the power-on but­ton. Here’s your achie­ve­ment! X-COM will kick your butt until you lear­ned it the hard way…but then…oh then X-COM deli­vers some­thing totally uni­que, some­thing unmatched, some­thing per­so­nal, some­thing that really needs to be ear­ned, some­thing per­fect. Its only play wor­thy sequel Ter­ror from the Deep is even har­der. I’ve yet to play against an AI that is so unf­or­givable. Ter­ror reached points of frus­tra­tion for me, that the first part always avo­ided.

The Reboot

The new XCOM lost its hyphen and its roots. After the hor­ri­ble X-COM Enforcer this new game will be ♫drums♫ .…. a first per­son shoo­ter because we just need ano­ther one. I don’t want to judge prior release but this new XCOM isn’t what i want. The first game is still per­fect, it just needs a new sur­face and some design polish. Why dama­ging the fran­chise? Why using the term XCOM when deli­ve­r­ing some­thing fans don’t want? I know that todays gene­ra­tion of gamers can’t not embrace a game like the ori­gi­nal X-COM any­more. They need bells and whist­les and audio-visual orgasms for every sin­gle but­ton press. What made X-COM great is con­side­red to not having enough mass appeal today. I under­stand that. Lea­ving the fran­chise alone would be the right deci­sion than, cause your audi­ence for the XCOM FPS doesn’t even know the fran­chise. Ever­yone who does isn’t loo­king for a FPS reboot.

Let’s spe­cu­late some best case sce­na­rios. I’m sure the reboot will scrap the res­source and manage­ment ele­ments of the ori­gi­nal. Com­bat will be the only focus. Two decent con­cepts come to mind espe­cially con­side­ring a can­ned pro­to­type of Bio­s­hock deve­l­oper and for­mer 2K Bos­ton stu­dio Irra­tio­nal Games. In one of their pod­casts they tal­ked about the hybrid of Rain­bow Six and Left 4 Dead. To me this sounds like a fit­ting base for this XCOM. One thing will be key. A pure single-player XCOM will be dif­fe­rent than a multi-player one. I’m con­vin­ced that turn-based com­bat is out but this was the most import­ant tool to make the ori­gi­nal X-COM work. Turn-based games have one serious advan­tage. The player alone beco­mes the con­duc­tor of the flow of the game. Ten­sion only builds up by the play­ers action, not by a scrip­ted event. This ten­tion can not be repro­du­ced with real-time com­bat. It just can’t. When you press that “Finish turn” but­ton in X-COM your emo­ti­ons will go on a rol­ler coas­ter ride. Hell and hea­ven never been clo­ser toge­ther and i won­der if this is some­thing they con­sider for the reboot.

Wait and See

In the end i like the reboot idea in gene­ral because it brings the name X-COM back to the mar­ket. It makes people talk about a six­teen year old game again that still holds up so damn well. There’s at least a dozens X-COM clo­nes, com­mer­cial and non-commercial ones try­ing to cap­ture the magic of the ori­gi­nal. Every sin­gle one fails. This huge game made by a few people many years ago is a pure stroke of lucky genius. It made an impres­sion to hund­reds of thousands of play­ers that six­teen years later share expe­ri­en­ces online about what made X-COM so spe­cial. For me this maybe is more valu­able than the reboot of the fran­chise i want.

X-COM also illus­tra­tes how much the indus­try really chan­ged and it pretty much boils down to finan­ci­als. The X-COM reboot i want can not be made by three guys during their holi­days and your main tar­get audi­ence isn’t a teen­ager any­more, who can only afford a few games a year. When i played X-COM i was thir­teen years old had lots of time to spare and a new game nee­ded to last many weeks. In 2010 the aver­age game con­su­mer is over thirty and buys many more games. A pure visual X-COM reboot would be a finan­cial risk. This con­cept no lon­ger prints money. MMOs and shoo­ter do. But in 1994 we did not have so many new and dif­fe­rent, chea­per to deve­l­ope for plat­forms like in 2010. A true X-COM reboot for a brow­ser or an hand­held doesn’t seem so far off to me. When this topic came up, i bought the ori­gi­nal X-COM on Steam again and i play one hour an eve­ning since then. It’s just as much fun as when i was thir­teen. Maybe i wish for a X-COM reboot that’s unne­cessary.

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