XCOM: Enemy Unknown was my favourite game of 2012. You had to play carefully, it had the Civilizations style hooks with technology, buildings, and economy management, it had all the tactical RPG fun of leveling up and buying stuff, and best of all - it was hard. Possibly the only knock against the game was that there wasn't quite enough of it.
So what is the next logical step for the franchise? Turning it into a shooter, of course! I really don't know when this trend started, where everything had to be turned into a shooter. Blizzard tried this with the thankfully canned StarCraft: Ghost, and from The Bureaue: XCOM Declassified trailer, I'm pretty disappointed with the direction it has taken.
It does seem to promise the RPG goodies you'd expect, and I can see the argument that turning it into a shooter will reduce the randomness of it, but I enjoyed the random chances. I missed out on the previous games in the franchise, but the dice rolling and maximizing your chances while minimizing your enemy's chances were a big and enjoyable part of Enemy Unknown. Not to mention I prefer an isometric perspective in strategy games so that I can get the full sense of what's going on.
I have to admit, the part where they place a turret and then lift it with telekinesis to shoot enemies in cover looked pretty cool. But to me it's as if they made another sequel to the Silence of the Lambs and turned it into an action movie. I'm all for shooters, but I don't understand why this had to be an XCOM game. I guess I'll have to wait and see how the more faithful Xenonauts turns out.
No comments:
Post a Comment