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.
Chris England’s spiritual successor to X-com, Xenonauts is nearing completion and has the funding from pre-orders to get released on Steam and Desura. However, in order to maximise the potential of the game Chris has launched a Kickstarter with a goal of raising $50,000 by June 10th. In his own words, Chris says “We’re hoping that the Kickstarter will raise enough money that we can pull together a small full-time team in London, and will give us the financial breathing space to be able to make something really special”. …
When 2K’s Christoph Hartmann said that “strategy games are just not contemporary”, what he actually meant was “we can’t market and sell a strategy game on a console”. That was in defence of the abominable idea of turning X-Com into an FPS. Gentlemen, gentleladies, I am afraid that we may never see another strategy game in the X-Com series. One would think there were lessons to learn from Enforcer and Interceptor, but you would apparently be wrong.
I’m feeling a bit tired, I don’t know whether it is the expo, or that I have just come back from a few drinks down Leicester Square, but I am still looking forward to the last day of the Eurogamer Expo. Read on after the jump for a roundup of Days 2 and 3 of the expo. …