| abstract
| - By either name, X-COM puts the player in command of an eXtraterrestrial COMbat unit charged with protecting Earth from an alien threat, managing resources and researching captured technology in the process. The hybrid of Real Time Strategy (improving X-COM's overall condition and catching UFOs as they land - or crashing them yourself) and Turn Based Tactics (exploring crash sites, stopping terror attacks, and defending and assaulting bases) quickly won the hearts of the gaming public. More than 15 years after its initial release, UFO Defense still attracts players and tops lists of the Best PC Games of All Time. A 2007 assessment by IGN has it edging out fellow Prodigal Son of Microprose Sid Meier's Civilization IV for the Number 1 slot. Not to say the X-COM legacy is a solo act, however. While Gollop's team set to work on X-COM: Apocalypse, an in-house crew at Microprose beat him to the punch with X-COM: Terror From The Deep in 1995, a Mission Pack Sequel created to satiate player demand for more alien-assaulting action. Apocalypse hit the shelves in 1997, to mixed reviews due to its Art Shift into pseudo-3D futuristic graphics and the clunkiness of a newly-introduced real-time option for playing missions. The last days of Microprose (and its acquisition by Hasbro Interactive) saw X-COM trying to get back on its feet with two Genre Shifted offerings: X-COM: Interceptor (1998) kept the base management elements while swapping out the strategy missions for space-bound Flight Simulator action, while X-COM: Enforcer (2001) ditched the strategy part outright to make a First Person Shooter running parallel to the timeline of UFO Defense. Sadly, neither had the mystique of their ancestors, and are often shunted away from canon due to the Unexpected Gameplay Change (and in the case of Enforcer, being awful). While the possibility of a future X-COM game continues an infinitely long march towards zero due to the license being passed through a variety of incapable hands throughout the 2000s, the earlier games attract a variety of player-made mods and remake attempts in numerous stages of completion. Various Spiritual Successors also exist, such as UFO: Aftermath and its sequels Aftershock and Afterlight (unrelated to the game UFO listed above), the Game Boy Advance sleeper Rebelstar: Tactical Command, Laser Squad: Nemesis (in and of itself a sequel to X-COM's own predecessor Laser Squad) and UFO: Extraterrestrials which is almost an exact remake of the original game. All have attracted moderate attention from X-COM fans, largely for either the similarity in gameplay (the UFO Afterblank series) or the connections to Gollop and other former X-COM staff (Rebelstar and Laser Squad). Fans have also made their own remakes, most notably UFO Alien Invasion and Xenonauts. Due to the entire series being re-released on Steam X-COM has experienced a resurgence among retro gamers, especially those eager to chronicle their campaigns. An FPS reboot of the series has been announced, being developed by 2k Marin, the team behind Bio Shock 2. So far, the fanbase has reacted in a manner predictable to everyone except, apparently, 2K Games, even going so far as to dub it things like "XenoShock" and "XINO" ("X-Com In Name Only"). This seems to be due to a combination of the bitter taste left behind by Enforcer and an understandable lack of enthusiasm for the direction the developers seem to be taking the game (with changes such as the possible wholesale dumping of the previous games' canon, X-COM being a division of the DoD as opposed to a Multinational Team, the focus era being shifted to a "Pleasantville" version of the sixties and the move from cerebral turn-based strategy to the Cover Shooter gameplay seen in the trailer). That being said, the fandom's response to the reboot was heavy enough that Firaxis Games (a subsidiary of 2K) has announced X-COM: Enemy Unknown, a new strategy entry in the series developed by Firaxis Games(Devs of Civ 5). And the Fandom Rejoiced, or at least Angry Joe did. It is due for release on October 9th of this year in North America and 3 days later overseas. After much speculation on the degree of canonical interconnection between the FPS and the strategy game, the case has been finally laid to rest by associate producer Pete Murray: "They're in their universe; we're in our universe," he says. "We do talk with [2K Marin], but thematically, they're separate."
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)