One of the more interesting talks I saw at GDC was X-COM creator Julian Gollop’s postmortem of his strategy masterpiece, twenty years after the fact. Far from sounding a triumphant note, Gollop described a nightmarish development cycle that differed only in scale from modern AAA projects, and then a series of disastrous attempts by himself and different publishers to recapture the magic of the original X-COM. Toward the end, he credited Firaxis with “saving the day” for the troubled franchise and setting Gollop free from his own struggling efforts to recreate the the 1994 classic.
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The next expansion for Civilization 5 comes in peace, or it mostly comes in peace. Brave New World is Firaxis’ attempt to completely reinvent the endgame of the turn-based civ-sim. Firaxis want to make Civ’s end-game as dynamic and as engaging as the earlier stages of play.
They’re all too aware of how their game gradually becomes static, turning from exploration into economics, replacing the adventure with administration. They hope that this expansion will change all that, and so they’re giving us art and archaeologists, culture and camels.
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Civ 5’s second expansion sees the addition of new leaders, wonders and scenarios to the game, as well as a complete overhaul of its most divisive victory conditions: culture and diplomacy. It’s to be called Brave New World, because unbelievably that’s apparently a name Firaxis have never used before.
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An entry for the next Civ expansion has been uncovered in the Steam Apps Database.Read and Comment
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Some time in the next few hours your copy of Steam is likely to begin busying itself with this modest update. Sixteen new options give you the chance to add a great deal of randomization to the game and, if you're a masochist, ramp up the difficulty. Some of those options are available straight away and others are unlocked as you complete the game on different settings. Four of them only become available when (if!) you complete XCOM on the Impossible difficulty level.
I performed an autopsy on the update earlier this morning. Click through for my findings.
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XCOM is about living with your mistakes.
Not many games encourage you to do that, to look at the bloody aftermath of a colossal cock-up and simply get on with the mission. Even without Iron Man mode enabled, in which XCOM manages saves so that everything is permanent, trying to cheat your way out of XCOM’s consequences feels like cheating yourself.
My elite assault trooper was really ambushed by deadly Chryssalids, and he really did use his final action to throw a grenade at the pack rather than try and run and save himself. He really was eviscerated, and a moment later my top sniper really did have to take aim at the shambling, zombified corpse of his former comrade, the last surviving member of their original squad of four, and shoot him in the head. All of that really happened, and somehow, reloading would just be a lie.
The shot stabs out. The zombie tumbles to the ground. We carry on.
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This is just the loveliest news. About a month ago I hoped out loud that Julian Gollop might be able to enjoy the new XCOM, being as it is exactly the sort of game he might make. And he does!
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The past few months have been littered with fantastic releases - Hotline Miami, Dishonored, The Walking Dead - we've been spoilt for choice as gamers. The real victims are our wallets. The poor things have been pulled open and gutted by every games publisher worth their salt. Well, our retail partner Green Man Gaming have given us the heads up on a deal that should salve your wallet's wounds.
Firaxis' fantastic XCOM remake Enemy Unknown and Gearbox's bombastic shooter Borderlands 2 are both are third off with the below code. There's more too but I'm not going to spill it all before the break, now, am I?Read and Comment
Sid Meier continues his mission to create an entire sentient world of disparate nations within your computer by releasing a giant balance patch. Really, it's seriously big and from someone whose flatmate eats six eggs for breakfast every day, I know big. Check it out below.Read and Comment
I don’t know how easy XCOM’s easy mode is. All I know is that’s I’m responsible for the deaths of tens of men and women, having jumped straight into Classic Ironman like a dummy. But reportedly it wasn’t all that easy, and consequently Firaxis have sanded down some of its spikes. They’ve also fixed some biggish bugs; find out which after the jump.Read and Comment
XCOM’s first round of DLC was announced last night and lo, it was a surprisingly straightforward set of three missions and a new soldier with a personality. But there’s another thing, out already. The Elite Soldier Pack originally came taped to a pre-ordered or launch copy of the game, but is now on sale for either £3.69 or 4.99 of your US dollars.Read and Comment
Firaxis have released the first details of its upcoming XCOM DLC 'Slingshot'. Adding a three mission story arc and a named, immutable character to the game, Firaxis seem to be going against the randomly generated freedom offered by the base game.
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Members of the Nexus community have been rootling about in the XCOM: Enemy Unknown directory and have stumbled across some scrapped content that was originally meant to unlock after completing a playthrough of the campaign. The 'Second Wave' added a good deal more randomised stats and deadliness to XCOM. The details of how to install it are below.Read and Comment
I know we can all be a little defensive about XCOM adaptations of any kind, and with good reason - but rest assured that this latest medium-shift will do nothing to reduce your post-Firaxis glow. It’s turn-based, terrain is destructible and - from what I can work out - movement is still conducted via grids. All of this despite its format’s considerable limitations. So, with no more ado (and nothing better to do), here’s XCOM IRL. You’re going to want to watch this one.Read and Comment
The UK All Formats sales chart has materialised, as it does this time every week. FIFA has settled in at the front, and Pokemon dominates the top ten. And although PCGamesN favourite Dishonored skulks proudly in second place, XCOM: Enemy Unknown sweats behind cover at #7.
An altogether disappointing result for developers Firaxis. But not so on Steam, where XCOM pins down the competition from its vantage point at the very peak of the Top Sellers list.Read and Comment
Fans of James Joyce's Ulysses will be familiar with the trouble of deep pockets, potatoes can go missing and packets of soap, well, they can turn up anywhere. A bug in XCOM that seemed to emulate these Joycean dilemmas has now been patched out of the game.
This and other literary themed patches below.Read and Comment
Finally, I've evidence suggesting that I'm not the only one who gets hungry when watching The Thing. This special edition of YouTube series Epic Meal Time answers that ancient question: what does a floater taste like?
If you two have ever wanted to chow down on a floater then click below.Read and Comment
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is out tomorrow in the US and on Friday in the UK. A few of us have been playing it and, in between dodging Muton grenades and exploding Cyberdiscs, we've managed to form an opinion or two. Now that all our Skyrangers have returned to the PCGamesN compound, we're ready to talk about what we did and saw, and what we think of it. Tim Edwards is chairing the discussion as Joe Robinson and myself share the secrets of battling the extraterrestrial menace.Read and Comment
We've had the demo, we've had the previews, we've even had the choose your own adventure treatment, now the final pillar of the marketing fortress has toppled - the launch trailer - now we just need the tasty release date to coax XCOM out from its development cage.
Check out the trailer below.
Warning: Trailer contains mild peril.Read and Comment
Despite being announced before Firaxis' spiritual successor to the X-COM games, 2K Marin's FPS re-imagining is a long way from release. There's no launch date for our calenders and no demo code for our reviewers. In fact, it's been quiet on the title's front for months now. This could largely be the result of a major development shift: leaked screenshots suggest the game has moved to a third person perspective.
More on this below.Read and Comment
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