When the Pentagon announced this week that the U.S. military will allow women to fight on the front lines within a few years, …
xcom
Why XCOM’s Random Results Sometimes Aren’t (and You Should Play on Ironman)
I started out playing Firaxis’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown on “Classic” difficulty with “Ironman” disabled. I had this idea going in that I was going to inch rather than sprint through the game, reloading if I lost soldiers, like …
How XCOM: Enemy Unknown Is Like Bowling
Since the XCOM: Enemy Unknown demo arrived, I’ve noticed an interesting line of criticism develop (or as a longtime PC strategy gaming wonk, I should say reappear) in response to the way Firaxis’s turn-based tactics puzzler …
XCOM: Enemy Unknown — Definitely Not Halo Reach 2
You’d be forgiven for mistaking the new XCOM: Enemy Unknown launch trailer for a Halo Reach 2 teaser. It’s a slick, one minute, 38 second guns-and-aliens action brief — a festival of body armor, jetpacks, green plasma and …
5 New XCOM: Enemy Unknown Screens Explained
I recently spoke with XCOM: Enemy Unknown developer Firaxis about their upcoming hybrid turn-based, real-time strategy game’s tactical options, how to thwart at least one new alien bad guy and the ramifications of ticking off …
Sid Meier Talks XCOM: Enemy Unknown Remake’s Action, RPG Angles
The last time I saw Firaxis co-founder Sid Meier, he was doing a promotional spot for Zenph, specifically a digitally engineered re-release of the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations. Speaking as a pianist and …
E310: Simply the Best, or What Thrilled Us at E3
With another E3 in the books, Peter and I took some time to compile a list of what surprised us the most at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. This year’s show boasted over 100 exhibitors and many more hundreds of titles to see and play, all split between the South and West halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center. After …
E3 2010: 2K Games Shows Glimpse of 1950s Sci-Fi Paranoia in XCOM
Announced a few months ago, 2K’s reimagining of the classic PC strategy game changes genres to become a first-person shooter. But the 2K Marin dev studio insists there’ll still be strategy involved. The game takes its title from an organization gathering disparate pieces of info regarding a secret alien invasion. The demo we saw …
2K’s XCOM Reboot Made Official
Just after midnight, 2K announced that the folks behind BioShock 2, 2K Marin, are currently developing a “re-imagining” of the storied XCOM franchise. For those that don’t remember, the XCOM franchise was a hit in the mid to late 90s and 2K acquired the rights from Atari in 2005. When it was announced that Ken Levine and the crew …