This is my first entry for the @archdruid Gaming Contest: THE PRESENT hosted by @veryspider and @elfranz.
The Legend
In the 1994 (see my earlier entry, the legendary Gollop Brothers partnered with the equally legendary publisher Microprose to give us one of the most genre defining games of a generation... well, multiple generations.. actually, for all eternity!
The idea of mixing a tactical turn-based land game with a strategic layer... this was a concept that was cloned and copied with little success. Even the various sequels of the original X-COM failed to capture the magic... with settings beneath the ocean and then trying to incorporate a real-time element... all of these attempts missed the point of the original, the struggle and the slow growth to victory... an emergent story-line built from your own personal failures and small hard fought victories.
The concept of a hardcore game with the definite and all pervasive danger of "losing" was a concept that was lost in the intervening generations of console kiddies, with macho power trip fantasies being all the rage. The idea that you would take losses, heavy losses and possibly be defeated with no mercy and no concern... the idea that having over 75% casualties and escaping with a single soldier and sacrificing the rest of survivors to a Crysallid fate worse than death was considered a tactical and strategic "win".... it was a type of game design that wasn't appealing to those who wanted to be a invincible superman in an era where there were no losers, and everyone was a winner!
XCOM
Finally, Firaxis took up the mantle of the XCOM name (that is XCOM without the hyphen!)... a heavy task dripping with the hopes of hardcore nerd gamers from the '90s. A studio that was best known for it's Civilisation series... there was a sense of hope tinged with much apprehension about how they would create this reboot of a sacred memory. They even had the gall to completely copy the name of the X-COM: Enemy Unknown, with the remake being known as XCOM: Enemy Unknown!
Featuring a streamlined tactical setting (a move-shoot two step mechanic and a smaller tighter squad size), XCOM blew away all expectations... matched with the modern PC graphical and CPU horsepower, the game was both beautiful and stunningly superb in it it's tactical simplicity. The smaller squad sizes made each soldier a little less dispensable, but there was always a quick turnover in personnel, especially in the early game... when soldiers were little more than cannon fodder for the superior alien forces.
The addition of a class system gave each soldier a greater range of customisation (and allowing for interesting squad tactics...) whilst also increasing the attachment to each individual soldier. Name and cosmetic customisation further enhanced the personal attachment to soldiers, increasing the trauma and drama of losses and heroic victories.
A welcome return was the return of proper game difficulties. There was an easy setting for the console kiddies, but Normal meant it was challenging... and anything higher was masochistic! However, the sense of crawling to a global victory through countless setbacks made for a real sense of accomplishment...
It was a stunning remake, that immediately shut up all critics... this was a worthy successor to the revered X-COM mantle. The XCOM franchise had reached the modern age with graphical and gameplay enhancements. Revisiting the original reveals a game that hasn't aged well, with many UI difficulties and annoyances that had not been remembered through the rose tinted glasses.
The Long War Mod
... but the game was NOT perfect! There were many criticisms of the limited tech tree, small squad sizes and some matching of alien difficulty to the played time.
So, step in the modding community, which produced the complete overhaul mod of LONG WAR. The XCOM game was long, but the LONG WAR mod just stretched it out beyond belief! A longer and more involved tech tree, larger squad size limit, an even larger RPG class system and a more viscous alien game... all things that appealed to the hardest of hardcore. This was XCOM modded to an inch of it's life... it showed, as there was the occasional instability in the game... but the payoff was more than worth it for the ultimate nerd!
This was a game that was designed to be played over the course of months... slowly getting the upper hand over the alien invaders after the initial shock and awe.
Even the developers at Firaxis admitted that the Long War mod was something incredible... stating:
We're basically a 20 hour tutorial for Long War... and that's okay!
Jake Solomon, XCOM Designer
XCOM 2
Well... when you have the almost perfect game in XCOM (Long War Mod)... what can you do? The developers played and learnt from the mod, and came back with an even better version of the game in XCOM2 in 2016. The strategic layer was the main change due to some narrative constraints... in XCOM, the canonical story has the aliens defeating XCOM the organisation... or in other words, you failed and lost. Humanity was enslaved and submitted to the aliens, with the player commander avatar been also enslaved to the alien forces.
The start of the game sees the Human Resistance forces freeing the Commander and basically taking about the mantle of a Resistance (Terrorist) force that is aiming to free humanity form the shackles of the invader aliens. This necessitates the lack of permanent ground base... but the Resistance have access to a captured alien Battleship as a mobile homebase. In the intervening years between XCOM and XCOM2, major characters have disappeared and their whereabouts are a mystery. There are some ties to the past, but for the most part, we have the shadow of a great past organisation...defeated and struggling to survive.
New mechanics in this game involve the recapturing of planet sectors from the aliens... and the introduction of the infiltration mechanic. The infiltration mechanic is drawn from the fact that XCOM is now striking from the shadows as a small freedom fighter unit... this is a initial tactical advantage that offsets the superior alien numbers and technology. It also introduced a much derided timer mechanic that made sense from the narrative point of view (incoming reinforcements...) but changed the tactical game to a sprint rather than a slow thoughtful affair.
Despite these criticisms, the game was a great step up from the original XCOM... even improving, learning and incorporating elements from the community Long War mod.
The Long War Mod 2
... but the Long War modding team was still alive and well! One of the biggest criticisms of the vanilla XCOM2 game was the boring nature and un-involved nature of the strategic layer. There wasn't much to it other than choosing a path for attack and choosing the missions. The Long War 2 mod added a real resistance army layer to the game... with a greater strategic interaction and options with the local resistance forces.
Of course, this came with the expected extension of the game via difficulty, improved tech trees and class improvements/expansion. This transformed an already great game into one that was pretty much the ONLY game that a turn-based nerd would EVER need on their computer!
War of the Chosen
DLC is an often hated "feature" of modern games... with most players seeing it as a cheap cash grab or a way of hobbling the vanilla game with mechanics and narrative cut out from the launch version. However, with this War of the Chosen DLC... Firaxis completely overhauled the main game (and even overhauled the previous DLC for the game!), adopting the improvements from the community mod on the strategic layer... and adding several resistance factions and enemy Heroes, plus an unknown faction hostile to both Aliens and XCOM! This made an already challenging game unbelievably unforgiving to play... as the enemy Heroes would easily cut through an experienced squad before jumping out... and they could appear at any point in the tactical layer, suddenly rendering a winning condition to a tooth and nail fight for survival.
The game also rectified one long standing problem with the XCOM series... in that you tended to have an A-team and then cannon fodder. The introduction of a bonding mechanic and another fatigue mechanic meant that you couldn't always field the same team for every mission, as their efficiency would be degraded severely by multiple deployments... and the preference for certain pairings meant that optimisation of teams would be a worthy goal. Plus, the fear mechanic of being severely injured by a certain enemy meant that a soldier was susceptible to panicking at a very inopportune time... All of these things made for a more realistic personnel roster and led to a more balanced deployment of teams... leading you to need to develop all your soldiers rather than a select few...
XCOM 3 or Phoenix Point?
... so, here we stand at the end of 2019 with the conclusion of the War of the Chosen. How will the series continue in XCOM3? In the War of the Chosen, it is hinted by the alien Heroes that the experimentation on Humanity was the solution to fighting an even greater enemy! This could be the narrative hook that leads us to the evolving story of the XCOM franchise... or a complete red herring! At this moment, it is hard to see how the game could be better than it is... but after such a run of great releases, you would have to trust Firaxis with this revered franchise.... as long as they don't try to adopt any trends and stick true to what makes a turn-based tactical game great!
However, on the horizon is the game Phoenix Point (stupidly made to be an Epic Store exclusive... stupid stupid stupid...)... a re-imagining of the XCOM genre by none other than the Gollop brothers (the original creators of X-COM). I have to say, it looks pretty damn awesome... with the tactical game taking a greater level of granularity... including some mechanics (like the targeting of specific parts of the aliens...) borrowed from the other turn based great of the 90s, Jagged Alliance!
Between these two releases... the future is bright for turn-based gaming nerds! Console Kiddies can go back to their hormonal power trips and cry in their beds...
Steem-Monsters (aka the best blockchain game out there!)
Humble Bundle
Have you heard of Humble Bundle? It's a place to get some really great deals on Games, e-books and comic bundles. However, if you sign up for a Humble Bundle Subscription (12 USD per month) you get some really nice bonuses!
- A 100+ USD bundle of games delivered direct to you each month, redeemable on Steam, Uplay or direct download (depending on the game). This includes recent Triple A games!
- Access to the Humble Bundle "Trove", a list of 60 games (and growing...) which are free to play as long as you remain a subscriber!
- Additional Discounts on the Humble Bundle store, with the choice of supporting charities, Humble Bundle or developers in whatever percentage that you wish!
Humble Bundle Subscriptions, it's a no brainer for the dedicated gamer!
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