This is part two of my adventures with XCOM: Enemy Within. You can see the first part here.
Ok, so Ed’s dead, but otherwise I’m in good shape for mission six, First things first though; I start all the researching I think I’ll need in later missions – alien materials are the first order of business. Without better armour my squad won’t live to level up. …
Given that XCOM is pretty much nothing more than a fantastic story-generator tagged on to a superlative game, I decided not to ‘review’ the title.
Rather I’m going to play the expansion, Enemy Within, using The Reticule writers as cannonfod… I mean as my heroic squaddies. I’ll detail each mission and their heroic (yet probably pointless) deaths. Apart from commonly known features such as mechs and genetics, I’m going into Enemy Within virtually blind. My tales are sure to be hilarious, even if only to witness tales of the team getting wiped out. I’ll be playing in Classic-Ironman mode and once I run out of writers, I’ll consider the game a ‘wipe’. …
It has been a hectic weekend finally actually moving my PC and starting to live in my flat. Not a long intro at all this Week, so let us see what Our Week in Games has been… …
Before the recent explosion in turn-based strategies, people would have laughed at the idea of releasing a game in which people take turns at moving. Asynchronous movement was a dated idea, back from when computers couldn’t cope with large scale AI calculations, having no place in modern gaming.
This is a pleasant surprise. Far more present than ending a turn with no action points left only for a posse of extra-terrestrials to step around the corner with plasma rifles blasting. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen to you.
In a rare event for the medium these days, but which appropriately reminds us of what was common place back in 1994, Firaxis Games has released a demo of XCOM, their upcoming remake X-COM: Enemy Unknown. The demo can be acquired from Steam (5.5GB) while you wait for the full game’s release on 11th October. …
I’ve got a confession. For my turn in the warm yet comfortable leathery goodness of the swivel chair in the Editor’s Blog this week, I was originally going to write a comedic piece about the upcoming Doctor Who game. Then today, 2K Australia announced they were reviving the much loved X-COM franchise with a brand new FPS entitled XCOM. Of course, other than a singular screenshot, the press release didn’t contain an awful amount of explanation, yet cue the screaming of a thousand Angry Internet Men decrying the announcement. …
This sequence of letters was originally mailed to the Duchess of York and returned unopened. It’s also been on my blog. Apologies for the formatting, I’m too lazy and incompetent to fix it.
XCOM: Terror From The Deep is almost certainly my favourite game of all time. Released by Microprose in 1995, the sequel to UFO: Enemy Unknown has captured my heart and mind, taken them back to base, researched them, and discovered my weak-spot for sumptuous turn-based strategy. Terror From The Deep is a pleasure with depth, complexity, surprise, and imagination beyond human game developers’ modern capabilities. The title of this post truly belies the significance of this game – not only a past master but a paradigm of the present.