LOS ANGELES – Some uberfans were miffed when they heard that X-Com, the reboot of the popular PC series of the same name, would be a first-person shooter rather than a traditional strategy game.
After a live demonstration of X-Com by 2K Marin's Martin Slater at E3 Tuesday, I'm glad to report that the upcoming title for Xbox 360 and PC allows gamers to play strategically – just not as they did in 1993. Players will run and gun, but choices they make during firefights (and between them) make a difference. The game lets players make meaningful decisions between bursts of filling aliens full of lead.
X-Com takes place in the '50s – a supposed golden age, when life was simpler. You're part of a government agency tasked with tracking weird goings-on related to a strange alien artifact and potential invasion.
Your home base is a shiny secret headquarters bustling with clean-cut guys and gals working hard to collect data related to potential alien activity. All that incoming buzz culminates on a map in the situation room. You decide which of these fires to put out. By making these decisions, you sacrifice the ability to tackle other problems.
One mission might earn you resources to research new weapons; another might make you a hero, building your agency's reputation with the average Joe. We're not talking Sid Meier levels of strategy here, but the mission map and the consequences you must face when tackling each assignment feel like a nice nod to the fans who installed the MicroProse games back in the day.
The rest of the game is much as you might expect – a first-person shooter set in sparkling-clean Los Angeles.
X-Com at E3
In the sequence I watched at E3, agents investigate a suspicious 911 call. They hit a suburban neighborhood to find the place eerily deserted. Splatters of black goo make a good trail to follow.
The investigators eventually turn up corpses. First they stumble upon a dog, then an ill-fated man. Players can take pictures of crime scenes and weird events, then send the research back to their cronies in hopes that the knowledge betters the understanding of the alien threat.
There's plenty of subtle buildup to the mission's first major confrontation, when agents face killer alien blobs. The black, vibrating masses of goo jitter like J-horror ghosts and bristle with blue electrical energy. But, as with most shooters, lead is always the answer.
The player pumps shotgun rounds into the blobs, which eventually break down with each buckshot impact into small, steaming seeds that sputter and break apart, harmless. The once-immaculate '50s homestead is left a disaster of black alien goo, smoldering furniture and unmistakable death.
The demo ended with a deadly encounter – a sighting of a giant rectangular UFO that transformed into a circular, levitating weapon. Beams of energy blasted the neighborhood street, disintegrating cars, a wayward agent and, eventually, the player.
X-Com is being developed by 2K Marin for the Xbox 360 and PC. Publisher 2K Games has not announced a release date.
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