Notes on X-Com

Mark Nau couldn't believe that I hadn't played X-Com.  He started wandering around the office asking people, "Can you believe Jamie hasn't played X-Com?"  They couldn't.

I remember giving it a try when it first came out;  it did seem like the sort of thing I would like.  I don't remember why I gave it up so quickly.  I do remember other people in the office - these were my days at MindCraft - totally absorbed in it.  Why didn't it get its hooks into me back then?  I have some theories:

* I wasn't interested in the resource management half of the game.

* It was too hard:  most of your squad tends to get wiped out quickly in the early missions when you don't know what you're doing, even on the beginner levels.

* I didn't bother reading the manual:  my philosophy usually is that if you have to read the manual the game is flawed.  And the X-Com manual has a tutorial that's fairly necessary to get up and running.

* Bad luck?  Maybe I got randomly screwed by the early random missions.

Well, whatever the reason, I've been hearing enough about X-Com (the whole Mark Nau thing, the comment in my blog a couple weeks ago, Tom Henderson reminiscing about the wonderful balance between the macro game and the micro) that I finally took the effort to figure out how to make it work on a modern machine.  I'd tried before and failed.  Googling X-Com finally led me to the information I needed to make it happen:  http://www.xcomufo.com/

Well, it has probably been some of the best gaming pleasure I've had all year. And I mean 2004.  That's right, the best game for me in 2004 was originally published in 1993.  The curmudgeons are right, games aren't actually getting any better.

One of the things that interests me the most about is the random content.  Since I just finished a game that had a lot of semi-random content, it's interesting to me to consider why the random content worked for X-Com but didn't work for Spider-Man 2.  There are a couple factors, I think:

* The macro game carries the micro game.  Rumor (http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/launchreview.asp?reviewid=155318) is that Julian Gollup is really only into the tactical portion of X-Com, that the macro game was MicroProse's intervention, and that explains why Laser Squad Alpha is just the tactical game.  But it seems like Julian Gollup might be missing the boat here:  without the resource management portion, where you're building your bases and squads and moving down the tech tree, the micro game would become boring sooner.  Despite the fact that resource management doesn't sound fun, it is fun.  It gets to the point where missions are a distraction taking you away from building up your dream team.

* Intermittent schedule of reinforcement.  The reinforcing stimuli, in this case, is a new mission.  It doesn't take much for a mission to feel 'new' : some terrain you haven't seen before, an opponent you haven't seen before.  I played probably around a hundred missions before I won.  Most of them felt like repeats.  But I kept going because every now and then there was a mission that was entirely new:  my base being invaded, for example.

* Light at the end of the tunnel.  After a point, I would have stopped playing except I knew that there was going to be one final mission to win the game.

I scanned through GameRankings looking for games with random content in the top two hundred.  They're incredibly rare.  In fact, I'm not sure there are any.  The Diablos aren't in the top.  There's an immediate problem with random content:  some of your players are going to get randomly screwed - a mediocre experience will be randomly generated for them.  If a reviewer is one of those players it'll pull down your rating.  The main advantage of random content is you can create a longer game with a smaller team.  If you're making a game that isn't meant to be disposable -- play for ten-twenty hours and put away -- it's a very tempting option.  X-Com might have been more lucrative if it was sold on a subscription model.  There are some hardcore fans who might have kept it alive to this day.

Comments

[Factory]

"I scanned through GameRankings looking for games with random content in the top two hundred. They're incredibly rare."
I would say that is because games with random content are rare, not that they are not very good.

If you haven't already played it, I would also suggest playing Silent Storm, it's an Xcom-like game that is more focused on the tactical element of the game. IMHO it is the best game of this genre to come out for many years. (I'd have said that this genre only has three worthy series, Xcom, Jagged Alliance, and Silent Storm)

"The curmudgeons are right, games aren't actually getting any better."
Say that after playing SS.. :)

[Bryan McNett]

Coincidentally, I also rediscovered X-Com in 2004, after having given up on it ten years ago, for the same reasons as Jamie.

As I recall, X-Com was one of the last PC blockbusters without network play. Once Doom and Command & Conquer and Warcraft II showed up, single play to me felt antisocial and backward.

At the time, the limitations of network gaming were technical, since nobody was on the net. Once we all were, it seemed to me, there would be all these cool new games, and I'd never need single player again.

Now that we all have broadband, the limits of network gaming are primarily human factors and are quite visible. For me at least, even older single player games now seem worth a go.

[Isaac Karth]

"I scanned through GameRankings looking for games with random content in the top two hundred. They're incredibly rare."
It depends on what you define as random content, I suppose. The Age of Empires searies has random maps as a major selling point, for example. Plus, random content tends to be rare outside of strategy games, nowadays.

"There's an immediate problem with random content: some of your players are going to get randomly screwed - a mediocre experience will be randomly generated for them."
You could try to bias the generation toward interesting or appropriate results. How well this would work is open to question, since I'm not aware of anyone who has tried this.

"The curmudgeons are right, games aren't actually getting any better."
I'd say at the very least there is still a lot to be learned from older games.

[Duane]

"You could try to bias the generation toward interesting or appropriate results. How well this would work is open to question, since I'm not aware of anyone who has tried this."

Well, there is the "auto-scum for good levels" option in the 'bands. It works, but is fairly limited in effect. Basically, each dungeon has a score based on how "out-of-depth" (i.e. unusually powerful) the randomly generated monsters and items on it are. If that score is too low the game throws away the level and generates a new one. And of course, screwing players is not something that 'band authors tend to worry too much about ;)

[TylerChuit]

My first experience with X-Com was a bad one. In a '95 issue of PC Gamer I recieved a demo for Terror From the Deep. Running it dumped me straight into the weapon loadout screen for a mission. I had no clue what I was doing and my squad got wiped out in less than 3 minutes. I tried a few more times. I finally figured out the time units, but I still kept getting slaughtered. The aliens had laser weapons and my soldiers had "DART GUNS"!?!? Not to mention that they start you out with the most poorly trained soldiers ever. As far as demos go, it was a pretty lousy offering. Plus the dayglo color scheme made my eyes start tearing up after a while.

It wasn't untill about a year later that a friend gave me a proper introduction to the game and I became a lifer. X-Com for me is like a game equivelent of that really great book you pull out and reread every few years.

I particularly love the fact that you can rename the soldiers whatever you like. It gives the game a much more personal feel.

As to the comments on the merits of single-player vs. multi-player, my vote is for the clean conscience of being able to put a game on pause for ten minutes to take a restroom or snack break. :)

[Kedak]

xcom is one of the greatest games ever made its a classic