Forum Overview :: Cable Brothers Video Articles
 
Re: I tried last year by Ice Cream Jonsey 01/12/2012, 10:12am PST
fabio wrote:

The early 90s interface eventually got to be too much to deal with.

I'm amazed that every sequel and remake manage to keep fucking it up. How hard is it just to remake the exact same game with better graphics and cleaned up interface?


Thinking about this, maybe we can begin to categorize the fuck-ups:

1) Eastern Europeans. No offense, but they don't do anything right.

2) Indie Teams In Over Their Head. I'd like to imagine that a website guy, a designer and a .MIDI composer got together because they were going to remake X-COM, and then the programmer they found demanded he use the Quake engine, which does not allow for destructible terrain. In my mind, this is how the endless stream of shitty attempts come about.

3) Special Snowflake Syndrome. If I ever got involved in an X-COM port, this is how I would press to have it ruined. Personally, I'd like to see the mercs fuck, which immediately disqualifies my opinions. All these games blur together, but the ones I am thinking of here do shit like not allow soldiers to permanently die, or they remove the game's ability to save during missions. They then opena forum (the only part of the project they finish) and the lead programmer yells at the potential customers.

4) License Nonsense. This we can discount, because an X-COM FPS game isn't hurting anything or stopping anyone.

The successful games operating in this space include Silent Storm and Jagged Alliance, which got almost everything right but were made by people who had to respect intellectual property. (I don't remember when Breach 2 came out, but it was also successful.)

My gut wants to believe that if the source to X-COM were released, we'd see a proper port with a modern UI. This means everyone begins these projects with their dicks in their hands. As much as Carmack is a terrible game designer & hires terrible game designers, you can't give him enough credit for regularly releasing the source code to his games. We can blame Sid Meier here. (I'm sure Sid hasn't been within 500 miles of the source code to X-COM for 15 years, but whatever. There really needs to be a group of neckbeards that go crazy trying to get 90s PC source code released.)

There are at least a dozen awful attempts at making this game, but it proves just how popular X-COM is. I have to roll my eyes when game magazines put Ocarina of Time at #1 or whatever. Nobody is spending their twenties trying to remake Ocarina of Time. X-COM should have reached Citizen Kane, Jerry Rice or Stairway to Heaven status where we all just agree it's defined as #1.

This is how far in front X-COM is: Wasteland is just as awful to play in 2012. You have to read passages from a paper manual outside the game itself to understand what is going on. It is in desperate, obvious need of a remake, but there's been two groups who have tried to do it and failed, compared to five or six times that number with X-COM. And Wasteland is probably one of the 50 most popular games ever.


the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!
PREVIOUS NEXT REPLY QUOTE
 
X-COM? by Ice Cream Jonsey 01/10/2012, 10:54am PST NEW
    No so most likely we wouldn't play it to review it. by Clableys 01/10/2012, 2:00pm PST NEW
        That's fair. NT by Ice Cream Jonsey 01/10/2012, 4:22pm PST NEW
    6 out of 13, does not stand the test of time at all NT by sdroa jists 01/12/2012, 8:41am PST NEW
        I can't imagine a game that fails the test of time worse than XCOM. NT by Clableys 01/16/2012, 6:17am PST NEW
    I tried last year by fabio 01/12/2012, 8:51am PST NEW
        Re: I tried last year by Ice Cream Jonsey 01/12/2012, 10:12am PST NEW
            You are aware there's an official remake/reboot in the works, right? by Arbit 01/12/2012, 10:27am PST NEW
                Aren't they using a WEGO interface, like the Jagged Alliance 2 remake? NT by Mischief IP Necromancer 01/16/2012, 6:48am PST NEW
    angry joe reveals the new turn based xcom game by sdroa jists 01/12/2012, 10:23am PST NEW
        Snooped by 4 minutes! Fuck you! NT by Arbit 01/12/2012, 10:28am PST NEW
            genetically superior hrnffn NT by sdroa jists 01/17/2012, 12:03am PST NEW
 
powered by pointy