X-COM Series now on Steam

@Eezy_Bordone: There have been several. Most recently Squad Command for the DS / PSP, which was good, if a bit short.

And of course chiming in because I had to buy this instantly when I saw the price. Hooray - one of my desert island games is now in my Steam collection! I would have paid 10.00 just for the first one.

Rat Boy wrote:

I wonder if that's tied to it. 2K has the rights to the series and releasing the old games to Steam would have to have been done through them.

Exactly. This is a PR move to start getting people talking about XCOM again.

Sanjuro wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

I wonder if that's tied to it. 2K has the rights to the series and releasing the old games to Steam would have to have been done through them.

Exactly. This is a PR move to start getting people talking about XCOM again.

Well, then again, I thought that when Gametap got XCOM and Steam got Terror from the Deep, so who knows.

Eezy_Bordone wrote:

There was a WH40K turn based tactical combat game, it's name escapes me at the moment but I'm sure someone will chime in between now and the time I get home from work.

Space Hulk. Talk about your unforgiving games.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Prederick wrote:

...can someone explain to me how noone has managed to make a competent successor to either of these?

These days, turn-based combat is considered by the big dev studios to be the third rail of game design. They insist there's no market. Only the smaller houses and indie devs are willing to do it and these guys generally don't have the resources or talent to do such a game justice.

At least, that's how I see it.

I'm not sure that SquareEnix, Nippon Ichi, Level 5 and Intelligent Design count as small indie devs. Fire Emblem, FFT, FFTA/A2, Disgaea, Advance Wars and Jeanne d'Arc are all brilliant turn based tactics games. A lot of them are on handhelds (GBA/DS/PSP), but Disgaea and Fire Emblem are on consoles as well. Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3 is kind of turn-based strategy as well, I believe.

The XCom devs released a Rebelstar game on the GBA as well that used the same combat system as XCom, although it vanished without trace I think.

KingMob wrote:

@Eezy_Bordone: There have been several. Most recently Squad Command for the DS / PSP, which was good, if a bit short.

And of course chiming in because I had to buy this instantly when I saw the price. Hooray - one of my desert island games is now in my Steam collection! I would have paid 10.00 just for the first one.

That's funny, I got asked that once and gave the same answer. What game would you take with you on a deserted island? X-Com was my answer.

Zelos wrote:

The XCom devs released a Rebelstar game on the GBA as well that used the same combat system as XCom, although it vanished without trace I think.

I think the same thing happened to Laser Squad Nemesis.

LSN is still around, the pricing scheme though seems complicated.

Essentially, it 17$ for the single player but as you go up in the duration of online subs it gets a more expensive (capping out at 50$).

Basically, the demo is free. Buy the cheapest version of the game if you likey and then decide on how much you'll use the online play with the one month you get on the 17$ tier.

Zelos wrote:

I'm not sure that SquareEnix, Nippon Ichi, Level 5 and Intelligent Design count as small indie devs. Fire Emblem, FFT, FFTA/A2, Disgaea, Advance Wars and Jeanne d'Arc are all brilliant turn based tactics games. A lot of them are on handhelds (GBA/DS/PSP), but Disgaea and Fire Emblem are on consoles as well. Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3 is kind of turn-based strategy as well, I believe.

The XCom devs released a Rebelstar game on the GBA as well that used the same combat system as XCom, although it vanished without trace I think.

Fair enough. I don't play JRPGs, so I don't honestly know how well those games match up to the type of combat of X-COM or JA2. Certainly we can see that the Western studios/publishers shy away from turn-based squad combat.

Burton wrote:

I know, its unforgiving. Whats worse is any time I thought someone might be close I bought it. Now I'm a sad banana.

Did you get Abomination? It was... well... you get the point. They tried though.
Thankfully I got that game AND the orginal X-COM for free, legitamately. Abomination through a software rep while working retail, and X-COM from a PC Gamer CD of old games. Now, if I could just get Alone in the Dark to run again...

BTW, I always hated Terror From the Deep b/c it just felt like a re-skinned artificially lengthened rehash of the original and I didn't like the water settings.

Apocalypse was good once I acquired alien tech. It's definietely different though. I like a lot of what it did, including the implementation of real time missions, but it doesn't have the magic of the original.

Oh yeah, Interceptor baby! LOVED that game, even though everyone else hated it.

Rat Boy wrote:
Sanjuro wrote:

Now 2K should unveil their Ken Levine-produced XCOM remake once and for all.

I wonder if that's tied to it. 2K has the rights to the series and releasing the old games to Steam would have to have been done through them.

You know I thought the same thing when I saw it.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

BTW, I always hated Terror From the Deep b/c it just felt like a re-skinned artificially lengthened rehash of the original and I didn't like the water settings.

Apocalypse was good once I acquired alien tech. It's definietely different though. I like a lot of what it did, including the implementation of real time missions, but it doesn't have the magic of the original.

I didn't like TFTD either. You are correct and the difficulty being ramped up was more of a pain in the ass than anything. Hunting through all those floors of the ships for one lone guy thats left to kill. Such a tedious game. Bummer really.

Can someone explain to me what I have to do to get the game to run. I click on the shortcut that steam put on desktop, a dosbox window comes up but then i get an error msg and it shuts down. The msg is up only a short time, I can't make out what it says. I was hoping that steam would take care of all the details of making the game run, cuz i b ignoant about that dosbox stuff.

Aetius wrote:
Eezy_Bordone wrote:

There was a WH40K turn based tactical combat game, it's name escapes me at the moment but I'm sure someone will chime in between now and the time I get home from work.

Space Hulk. Talk about your unforgiving games. :)

Actually I suspect he's talking about Chaos Gate, which was X-Com with a 40k theme essentially. Not a bad game, but it didn't live up to X-Com, and it was pretty unforgiving.

Okay, Im interested in these, but I don't have any sort of nostalgia for them, as I've never played any of them, and Im not so good a this genre in general. Is there something here for someone new?

kid_0k wrote:

Okay, Im interested in these, but I don't have any sort of nostalgia for them, as I've never played any of them, and Im not so good a this genre in general. Is there something here for someone new?

Yes. If you can look past the dated graphics, it's one of the best games ever.

kid_0k wrote:

Okay, Im interested in these, but I don't have any sort of nostalgia for them, as I've never played any of them, and Im not so good a this genre in general. Is there something here for someone new?

I can vouch for it. Until today I had only played the game for ten minutes or so a few years ago. I bought it this morning and spent most of the day playing it. The hours really slipped by! The graphics and UI are dated, and it's easy to get lost in (I imagine this is a game you were really meant to read the manual before playing because it really drops you into it with no idea what to do), but there aren't many games like this being made today.

The first 3 XComs were very fun. I liked the more challenge in TFTD but yes I don't miss the seriously long scenarios where half my squad gets taken over.

My favorite was definitely Apocalypse. Much nicer to protect a little city than the entire world. If corporations give you crap then send your advanced ships over there and blow up their building! Very fun!