A solid article. I'd disagree with the "single play through" and "pointless starting weapons" comments though. For me it was multiple play throughs learning about what worked and what didn't. This for me was actually a thing that kept me coming back. Trying out new tactics, base locations and equipment to see what worked. All the while trying to balance the budget and keep the squad alive long enough to level up. A truly great game. Played the newer versions on Xbox 360 and mobile, and whilst fun, they had removed far too many features to keep me engaged for more than a few hours. OpenXcom is a much better offering, especially on mobile.
If you want to play the classic X-COM today, make sure to grab the latest community patches.
I really liked the old X-COM games and had anticipated that I would not like the reboot very much.
However, while I wouldn't want to miss the originals for the reboot, the reboots are done very solidly and in most instances I even find myself agreeing with the streamlining the new authors chose.
If you want a tactical squad-level game that goes beyond what the original X-COM did, I suggest having a look at Frozen Synapse. Frozen Synapse has much fewer elements than X-COM, but its major innovation is that each turn both you and your opponent plan your turns concurrently at your leisure and then the turn plays out over 5 seconds in continuous time.
In contrast, I always felt the serialising that X-COM enforced to be an artificial limitation.
> However, while I wouldn't want to miss the originals for the reboot, the reboots are done very solidly
Much like you, I'm a diehard X-COM fan and anticipated the XCOM reboot wouldn't please me, and again like you I was pleasantly surprised.
I think the biggest improvement is the streamlining of TUs from the original (which was always a bit messy) into the actions of the reboot.
> In contrast, I always felt the serialising that X-COM enforced to be an artificial limitation.
I disagree about this. I like turn-based games; they feel more cerebral and less twitchy than RTS'es. I can play XCOM while eating a sandwich or drinking coffee, while I can't play an RTS that way.
> I can play XCOM while eating a sandwich or drinking coffee, while I can't play an RTS that way.
To be clear, Frozen Synapse is also a turn-based strategy game. You can enjoy your sandwich or coffee while playing. The difference it's you and your opponent plan your turn simultaneously. But you are still fundamentally planning a turn.
The aspect I enjoy about the mechanic is it leaves a lot more uncertainty in the air when planning in the turn. I still have to take into account the uncertainty about the opponent's actions while planning my turn.
Yes, Frozen Synapse pays explicit Homage to Laser Squad Nemesis. I think it's quite a bit more polished though, because it's deliberately more streamlined.
If I remember right, LSN still had tiles (and thus probably discrete units of time)?
Frozen Synapse, for better or worse, goes for a much more continuous approach. Making for a very different feeling game.
> I always felt the serialising that X-COM enforced to be an artificial limitation.
I was about to argue that it might have been a technical limitation too, but Dune II, the first real-time strategy game, came out two years before X-COM so technically that can't be quite right.
On the other hand, it also requires a certain set of programmer skills and specialized knowledge of how to simulate such systems, and opens up a combinatorial explosion of scenarios that can be much harder to design around if you also want to include lots of complex possibilities. Serialized turn-based design is much easier by comparison.
Yes, I think it's not so much a programming limitation per se, but a game design limitation. It's a much tougher nut to crack how to present the choices available to the player in a sensible and understandable way.
Notice how Frozen Synapse is otherwise a much simpler game with fewer elements than even just in the tactical mode of the original X-Com.
It's fair to say that, going further back in computer game history, something being possible didn't mean it was possible for you.
Programming expertise and information was a lot less accessible and evenly distributed.
You couldn't just "hire a graphics person", because no one knew what the hell that was. You hired a smart computer person / artist, and hoped they could learn everything. One reason the history of early games companies has so much "and then we hired this person named X, who had no training, but turned into one of the world's best Y's."
What I am saying is that just implementing a very crude version would have been doable in the early 90s.
What was much harder was to come up with a way to present the information and make the planning intuitive and fun. Including the programming aspects of that.
Really enjoyed both X-COM and also highly recommend Frozen Synapse. Great take on turn-based tactics... really liked how I didn't really know what would happen after setting up my moves!
There was also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Squad_Nemesis which was also simultaneous turn based. I don't like the puzzle aspect of FS since it's deterministic. It is all hard edges, hit or miss. Maybe if I spent more time with it it might me different.
At the core, Frozen Synapse is a sophisticated version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Yes, once both players made their choices the game plays out deterministically, but basic game theory tells you that randomising your strategy is the way to win.
Since you don't know exactly what your opponents are planning, you can't solve your turn like a deterministic puzzle.
I do admit there are some puzzle like aspects. Eg I often picked two or three plans that I thought my opponents are likely to choose, and tried to work out a plan of my own that would counter all three of them.
I'd disagree with the "single play through" and
"pointless starting weapons" comments though. For
me it was multiple play throughs learning about
what worked and what didn't. This for me was actually
a thing that kept me coming back.
Absolutely! Without cheating and looking at FAQs, it's essentially impossible to win your first playthrough... or your second, or third. It's not fair. But it makes you keep coming back. And when you finally learn to beat those bastards it's just exhilarating! In retrospect, I'm not sure how it manages to hook us. But it does. For me, perhaps it was the (intentionally) pulpy 90s-style, X-Files-style, paranoiac alien invasion/infiltration plot.
In many ways we could say X-COM broke so many rules of game design. By any conventional standards it's way too hard at the beginning and you'll generally be way too overpowered at the end, if you've got the flying armor suits and such. But that is part of its unique charm, intentional or not.
Played the newer versions on Xbox 360 and mobile,
and whilst fun, they had removed far too many features
to keep me engaged for more than a few hours.
I thought the 2012 reboot was just good. Like you said, I think it removed a little too much of what made X-COM.... X-COM, though there was certainly much I loved.
For me, though? XCOM2, and particularly the "War of the Chosen" expansion, actually do surpass the originals.
OpenXcom is a much better offering, especially on mobile.
I've been putting it off for years. I need to dive into that.
> Without cheating and looking at FAQs, it's essentially impossible to win your first playthrough
Personally I don't recall any big problems on my first playthrough. The biggest obstacle was understanding that we need to capture a live enemy commander to progress further. Other than that, things were pretty ok, considering that difficulty glitch.
Funny thing was that I've figured out that the game has TANKS only on 3rd game. Before that, what did those "HWP" mean was rather unclear.
At a minimum... there's no way to know that the alien base invasions are a thing, and unless you've laid out your bases in order to facilitate their defense -- setting up chokepoints and such -- they are easy pickings for the aliens. That's something you could get right by luck the first time... but there's no reason to lay your base out in such a way unless you know about it.
It's also difficult to know things like which weapons you can manufacture for strong financial returns. The midgame is tough unless you stumble upon this.
Also, just in general, winning strategies to beat the aliens aren't that easy to come by. Takes a fair amount of experimentation and heavy soldier losses. It's really tough to progress if you lose a lot of soldiers and/or drop ships.
And on your first play through it's also not clear what timetable you're working with and how fast the alien threats ramp up. Some of that is tied to your progression and some isn't IIRC.
Aside from the base layout thing, savescumming can definitely help obviously. =)
Of course, I know there were revisions made between the Euro, US, and Playstation versions. I think there were some difficulty tweaks. Not sure. So perhaps we had different experiences in that regard.
There's a massive modding community built around the new ones, which only really has any worth because people love replaying it, which the author must know of.
I think he's slightly guilty of simply listing his own preference there, rather than reporting reality.
To be honest, I can't even remember why the aliens invaded. I can remember the research progression, and the excitement of starting the game from scratch again and going up against the aliens with automatic weapons instead of late game plasma blasters.
So the author and I had very different experiences.
Totally agree! I played it endless times when I was young, and I was able to complete it (by destroying the mars base) only recently playing on dosbox!
The recent reboot is just a tactical console game. It was fun for a while but I get bored quickly.
Also X-Com Apocalypse is not on par with the original, but still quite enjoyable with the realtime combat mode.
Apocalypse was the biggest disappointment in my (gaming) life :(
Horrible graphics, different (but not good) gameplay, and worst of all it didn't "feel" like it was the same world of XCOM. All of this is subjective, of course.
This is the precise moment that pulled me out of the article and I left lol. The optimal starting strategy is to put avalanche missles on your fighters and the cannon is useless? That is objectively untrue!
The optimal starting strategy is TWO cannons. Avalanche missles are objectively wrong. They destroy small craft leaving you with no easy early ground missions. The cannons are more than capable of taking down a tiny or small craft and make sure it’s not destroyed in the process.
It's interesting to me that what you're describing has basically been codified into the game design of "rouge lites" like Enter the Gungeon, Binding of Isaac, and now Hades...bunch more, Mana Quest, Spelunky...it's a whole game mechanic now
