Terror From The Derp

It's been a while since I've posted anything here. Not that I haven't had a few ideas for things to wibble on about, but other stuff has been consuming my time. Firstly of course there was all that business with my xbox profile getting hacked, which required me to replay ALL THE GAMES. And then, I'd no sooner finished reordering my activity history when the earth was invaded by aliens.

"Hey guys, what's happening here?"

Yeah, XCOM happened. It happened SO HARD.

I'd long been a fan of the original XCOM game. I can't honestly say I was fan of the franchise per se, because let's face it, most of them aren't really that great. Terror From The Deep was just a reskinned version of Enemy Unknown with difficulty turned up, I could never get Apocalypse to install properly, and then someone decided that the last thing anyone wanted from a franchise founded on turn based tacical strategy was any of those things and so everyone stopped caring.

Nevertheless, Enemy Unknown was an awesome game. Indeed, it's one that you'll consistently find in top whatever arbitrary number is currently fashionable lists of the greatest games of all time. The great question then is why it's taken so long to get a proper remake. I mean, the original game was released in 1994. I had it on the PS1. That's 2 whole generations of consoles. Nearly 20 years. But at long last someone has actually worked out that maybe making a proper XCOM game might just be a good idea.

So then, the real question is: Was it?

What they've done with the XCOM remake is pretty incredible to be honest. You often hear, when some classic franchise is being revived, how their going to update it for modern times but stay true to the properties roots. And you know that's bullshit pretty much all of the time. Well, somehow, XCOM has done it. It totally FEELS like the classic game, yet simultaneously is very different. They've changed a bunch of stuff, sure. But you can see why. This is a highly refined, very focussed version of XCOM. And it's in the interest of this focus that the changes have been made. Combat isn't any less tense or dramatic for the lack of time units or ammo clips. Instead it's very focussed on the strategy and tactics rather than the bean counting. For example, I always had tremendous trouble with grenades in the original game. Trying to work out the time units to pull the grenade out of your guys belt, set the timer, move in close enough and still have enough left to throw the damn thing invariably ended in humiliating self destruction. In the new version it's simply a question of throwing one if you've got one and a free action. The system works to keep thing moving at a good pace. The same with the limited squad size. Yeah, you've got a maximum of six guys to work with, and the maps are a lot smaller. But that works to keep things focussed on the action. As much as I loved the old game, I'm not sure there's many people who would say that one of the highlights was looking for that last alien hiding in a cupboard somewhere.

This focus based approach also extends to the geoscape portion of the game as well. You only have one base where the main activity takes place, and cover the rest of the globe using satellites and stationing interceptors. I have to be honest, this is pretty much how I used to play the old game anyway. One main base for doing all the interesting stuff, and then station detection posts where needed. What they really add here are the different bonuses you get depending on where you start. For my first playthough I put my base in europe, which gave bonuses to research. I never really appreciated just how quickly this allowed me to develop until I started a new game from a different location and suddenly found myself with a pressing need for extra labs.

This is part of an overarching theme of giving the player difficult decision to be making. From what equipment you give to your soldier or what abilities to take when they increase in rank to what missions to repond to or where to position your satellites. Research and development must be prioritised, global panic levels kept down and your limited supply of resources carefully managed. To say nothing of the sort of choices your having to make in battle. The game is always giving you something to do, and there are few (if any) correct answers to be made. This makes for a ridiculously engaging play experience, and there were many times I'd be saying that I'd just finish this one thing or other, then have to deal with something else but then unlock some new goal or other only to realise that I REALLY should have gone to bed a few hours ago.

If there's one important feature in the game that trumps all others I'd have to say it's the option for Ironman mode.

This simply means that the game autosaves everything to stop you just saving and reloading when things go wrong like a big cheating bastard. Firstly having this on adds so much to the tension and excitement of the game you wouldn't believe. Secondly though it's because the game is very much a Darwinian meat grinder and, put simply, not every soldier deserves to live. They're simply not all cut out for this line of work, and continually reloading every time a squad member dies, causing another one panic and shoot his companion who then panics and shoots another one in a hideous domino effect of blood and pants wetting really isn't worth the frustration.

Trust me. I know.

My first playthrough I turned on Ironman. It was tense and dramatic and exciting. Then I decided I'd try for the opposite and cheat so hard that no one died at all. I'm about 1 month into that game, have probably spent more time waiting for it to reload than actually playing and if I'm honest just hate and resent 90% of my soldiers for being useless at this point.

You're better off just letting them die. It's the kindest thing in the long run.

Also you need to watch out. Because if you do take the approach of save/load cheating there's something you need to know: THE GAME CHEATS BACK.

Let me give you an example. I had 2 guys with shots lined up on an enemy. One sniper with 85% to hit, one rookie with about 50%. Now, now matter how many times I loaded up that save the sniper would always miss, and the rookie would always hit. This wasn't an isolated incident either. Like the time I spent over an hour reloading the same save with a 70% chance to hit that never did. The results are seemingly predetermined and immutable. Well, unless you do something else. Move a guy somewhere else and shoot and maybe the outcome will be different, but simply reloading the same save until your guy hits, or conversely until an enemy misses simply does not work. I'm not sure if this is a bug or some sneaky bit of programming designed to mess with cheaters, but it's certainly interesting.

As I said though, trying to play it that way is probably the least fun way of doing it.

Now, I'm not gonna say XCOM is a perfect game as that seems somewhat churlish. But I'll be damned if I can't really think of many ways to improve on it. You could probably expand on it some, and I certainly hope they do. But in terms of thing the game does wrong? I really don't know that there are any. Sure, not everybody will find all the changes to their taste, but there's not really anything that's objectively bad. Everything is there for a purpose.

Although I admit I did miss the alien autopsy pictures.

Full of delicious SCIENCE!!!

So, where do we go from here? Whilst I would certainly invest in downloading any array of ridiculous hats and anime hair that the they care to offer, I think the answer is fairly obvious: Terror From The Deep DLC.

Think about it. Terror From The Deep was basically just Enemy Unknown, reskinned with a couple of new map options. That's like 80% of existing DLC in this age. Throw in maybe a Cydonia pack for an extra bit of retro goodness and the last couple of classic aliens and it's winning all around.

Well, it's screaming bloody death and terror all around. But that's because it's XCOM.