A Re-Boot to the Head

I’m not sure where I stand on game “reboots”.

On the one hand, I would LOVE to see an update of, say, SMAC, with an engine and graphics akin to Civ IV with all the stuff that made the original game great kept intact.

On the other hand, when we get a new X-Com that is more like Mass Effect with the X-Com name pasted on it, I’m not sure what to think. Sure, the game looks interesting and might even be pretty good, but I have a difficult time believing it’s really X-Com without all the turn-based-tactics-want-to-smash-your-head-into-the-wall-it’s-so-hard action.

"Hidden Movement" is arguably the most terrifying phrase in video gaming.

But then I wonder if I’m just either being a crotchety old gamer telling the kids about how games were HARD back in my day, or simply refusing to take off the nostalgia goggles. Or both. Can it be that my knee-jerk “do not want” reactions aren’t justified, and are purely emotional?

Well, sure. But as a wise individual in a classic film once said, “Whoever said the human race was logical?” We are emotional creatures who get emotionally attached to things we care about– and if you’re like me, you care about your games. We care about our memories of them, and we want others’ first experiences with our favorite games to be like our own.

So yeah, I want an X-Com reboot to be just as maddeningly difficult and involve just as much tactics as the first. I want everyone who hasn’t played the game to experience it like this. I want to see the keys flying off of your keyboard when you smash your face into it in frustration. I want you to lean forward when the “HIDDEN MOVEMENT” screen comes up because you actually have to listen to the game sounds as a part of the experience and I want you to jump in your chair when you do hear something. I want you to see how terribly genius this game was and why it managed to enthrall me some fifteen years after it was first released. That’s what I want from an X-Com reboot. That’s why I’m not so sure about this new one.

…oh, and yes, I am a crotchety old gamer wearing nostalgia goggles. I have no shame.

12 thoughts on “A Re-Boot to the Head”

  1. I am in full agreement. ‘XCOM’ might be a good game, but it’s not an X-Com, and there’s absolutely no reason to take the name except to kick people who like the old series in the knackers.

    1. And to possibly bilk money from said people who like the old series and didn’t research the new game enough.

      This is part of why, for example, I don’t join the masses who wail for a Phantasy Star V. I don’t think that any modern game studio could make something as masterful as Phantasy Star IV was, nor a character as awesome as Alys Brangwin.

  2. I agree Pike. When I first heard of the new XCOM game I read that they were going to try and stay true to what had made the old games so great. Months later I read that it was going to be a FPS, and I said “what?!?”

    An FPS is not X-Com.

    X-Com is one (or two, as I also love TFTD) of those games that just hit the magic spot of perfection, and noone has seemed to be willing and/or able to replicate it. Although maybe the Jagged Alliance games came close in a way (but still not quite).

    How can one game be so darn intense? Sweating at your palms at a door, hoping, *praying* that the soldier you’re going to use to open the door doesn’t get plasma to the face. Doing a sweep of a room and then noticing a chrysalid/hallucinotiod staring you in the face in a nook and wondering “should I try to fire or should I run?” Or the immense sigh of relief you get when you click the end turn button and that night terror mission ends and you only lost 4 men.

    How hard is it to slap a new set of graphics on that, fix a few bugs and rename it “X-Com: Redux” or something?

    I swear, if I had a shit ton of cash I’d buy the rights to this series and do just that.

    But I don’t so I’ll rant on it here :)

    1. How hard is it to slap a new set of graphics on that, fix a few bugs and rename it “X-Com: Redux” or something?

      Take all of my money!

  3. If they gave us a real X-Com and then this spin off, I wouldn’t mind. The concept interests me on its own, though certainly not as much as an X-Com remake would. “If Only It Weren’t Named X-Com” or whatever one of the commenters on the other article said.

    Reboots in general don’t bother me, but this isn’t a reboot, this is a… mutation. A potentially fatal one.

    1. “If Only It Weren’t Named X-Com” – yes, I liked that comment as well. And I also like yours. Nothing wrong with experimenting with spinoffs, but this seems more like a replacement, and I’m not so sure about that.

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