Now for something completely different

I want to take a break from all these heavy numbers and statistics to talk about video games for a second.  What I'm talking about may be yesterday's news, but... shut up.  There's enough news here to justify talking about it.

X-COM: Enemy Unknown

In X-COM: Enemy Unknown, you are placed in command of an elite agency of soldiers and scientists tasked with protecting the world from an invasion by an unknown alien menace.  This game was announced about 8 months ago, and caused the internet collectively shit it's pants.   The original X-COM (tagline: "UFO Defense" or "Enemy Unknown", depending on where in the world you were when it came out) was released originally by Microprose in 1994,  almost two decades ago.  Since then, it has been widely hailed as one of the best games of all time, and I strongly agree.  As has happened with so many of our favorite IPs In the last 10 years, X-COM has been "reimagined" by a new developer: Firaxis.

Important note: this is not the other rebooted X-COM game under development at 2K Marin.

The game is due out on 9.Oct in the NAm (12. Oct elsewhere), and Firaxis just released a playable demo today on Steam.

After playing the demo, any doubts that this game could be anything less be amazing died faster than a panicking rookie armed with a 9mm pistol.  

Like the original, the game is comprised of a tactical and strategic portion.  During the games tactical engagements, you are responsible for using your squad of soldier to eliminate the alien threat in an urban or natural environment.  In the strategic portion, you make decisions about funding allocation, research, soldier load-out and promotion, etc.

The demo consists of 2 tactical missions, and the chance to make some meaningless research decisions and promote a unit back at the base.  We get to see some basic interfaces and systems that are critical to playing the game.  Just enough to whet our appetites, and make us froth at the mouth like rabid badgers for two weeks while we wait for damn thing to be released for reallies.  

Even though it's just a tutorial, the first mission perfectly encapsulates the "X-COM Experience": Brutality.  I won't give away what that actually means; it would be unfair of me to ruin it for the uninitiated, but veterans of the original can guess what happens.  The effect is blunted a little bit because, like so many other tutorials, it tells you/forces your troop movements, including a move no veteran would ever make.  But younger players will happily march right in with out thinking.

The second mission gives you complete control except for the first few moves.  It introduces some of the aliens you'll be fighting as you try to defend the earth in the full game.  I lost my assault trooper in one round, even though I was being careful, and tossed a smoke grenade, but my other guys made it out w/o a scratch. I can only hope the rest of my troops will be able to be so lucky.

Anyway, make no mistake, I think this will be the gotta-have-it game of the year.


Faster-Than-Light

Faster-Than-Light, or FTL, is an crowd-funded indy game I picked up late last week via a sale somewhere (can't remember) that was released earlier this month.  The game is considered to be "Rogue-like" in that it is a top-down view of several rooms.  While they are very clean and refined, the graphics look like they would be at home on a 486 DX2 and a 800 x 600 monitor, but don't let that fool you; This game is a perfect example of why game budgets should concentrate on design, not graphics.

You are given command of a crew and starship and are tasked with delivering the plans for a super-weapon to your commanders 8 sectors away.  The primary interface is a top down view of the ship (This supposedly makes it "rogue-like"), which is divided into rooms/compartments, which your crew-members occupy.  Most compartments contain vital ship systems (weapons, helm, shields, engines, etc). Crew members occupying these compartments interact with these systems to give them small boosts, repair them, or receive bonuses from them.  You have direct control over the ship's navigation, energy distribution, modification, and attack strategy, in addition to control over where your crew members are stationed.  

The game play is really very simple and quick, but the real meat of the game is tactical and strategic decisions that lie just below the surface.  The different play styles that are possible given variety of available ship modifications are extremely diverse.  You are able to attack enemy ships with weapons, employ a variety of drones, teleport your crew onto enemy ships to sabotage systems or their kill crew, or FTL jump away from combat if you find yourself at a disadvantage.  At the same time you will have to protect your ship from enemy weapons fire, fend off enemy boarding actions, repair hull breaches, and avoid asteroids and solar flares.  

The game's difficulty has been well-tuned to be very difficult, but not impossible, even on the "easy" setting.  You don't know what you're getting into with each encounter until you're deep in it.  There's also no "reload last save" option; when you die (all your crew are dead, or the ship explodes), you failed, and have to start over from the beginning.  Game over.  This means a lot of play-throughs end well before the ship reaches it's destination.  But given the wide variety of play options available, restarting isn't all that bad.  You can take what you use what you learned in the previous attempt to make it a little further.

If you are able to survive all of your encounters, you will be "rewarded" with a boss to defeat in the final sector.  I almost shit a brick when I discovered I would have to fight the boss not once, but three times.  Each time it had a new configuration that required an entirely different approach to be successful.  Out of 20-30 play-throughs on easy, I have beat the game once.  And about a 1/2 second after I scored the final blow on the boss, my ship took a fatal blow.  But when I saw I had won after all, I was stoked!

This game is not going be for everyone, given that it really is pretty damned hard, you can play through great and lose on random encounters or make it to the end only to discover you don't have a chance in hell at beating the boss.  All this on top of no "reload from last save" option.  But, if you're able to strap your big-boy space pants, and learn to take your losses with your wins, there is a ton of fun to be had in this game.  

As an aside, FTL bears a striking resemblance to a board game known as Space Alert.  SA is one of my gaming group's all time favorites.  The game consists of 2-5 players cooperatively moving around a starship and activating consoles (shields, weapons, etc) to deal with threats trying to destroy the ship inside and out.  The game is also pretty brutal when you move beyond the easiest levels.  If you like this game, check out Space Alert if you can find a copy.  And if you like Space Alert, you're already 90% of the way to enjoying FTL.


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