I think the original X-Com is one of the all time classics of PC gaming. I recently purchased it on Steam, and aside from the dated interface, I think the game play still holds up. I just learned that 2k games is making a new X-Com game and it is going to be an FPS, apparently played from the perspective of a single character in a story driven game. As a fan of the original game, this has me kind of annoyed. Why even bother calling it X-Com? http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/63294 If they made it an FPS but kept the base building, squad management, and RPG elements, I could have lived with that, and it might have been very cool. But from the article it sounds like something completely different. Maybe next they can re-imagine Civilization and Master of Orion as FPS games.
I was also going WTF?!? when i read that... But apparently the guys behind Bioshock will be working on it, so it might turn out ok or even good... And it won't be the first first person X-Com either... X-COM: Interceptor was also first person...
Metroid Prime is traditional Metroid in a first person perspective, like Mario 64 is a platformer not much different from any typical 2D Mario game. This is more like doing a first person shooter adaptation of a real time strategy game, it's a genre change. We'll have to see the details. If it's just a Killzone/Area 51 rip-off with the X-Com name slapped on it, what's the point?
I would think third person would work better for X-Com if it absolutely had to be a shooter, since that perspective would allow the player to better control the rest of the squad. I know there have been some squad based FPS games like Ghost Recon, but that kind of thing doesn't really seem suited to X-Com simply because of how brutal the game is- you'd never be able to switch between team members in time to do anything.
^ Yeah, you played a Commando... there was also an attempt to make another one recently that got cancelled last year. So well that Nintendo put the Wiimake out of print.
Interceptor was the space sim. Enforcer was the Third person shooter. Alliance, which was canceled, was the the first person shooter.
Before people completly flip out, this stuff has happened before, and sometimes it turns out alright. Halo started out as an RTS, became an FPS and then got an RTS again. Warcraft was an RTS and now is known more for its MMORPG installment. Command and Conquer received a pretty decent FPS. Sometimes the same story can be told from different perspectives.
I'm sure, but like many people have said in various outlets, there's nothing to be gained from dredging up the X-com/Xcom IP. THQ did it with Spec-Ops because they needed a name for their shooter and they happened to own that IP... and maybe they're doing the same here (why make up a name when you already have one?). But X-com doesn't mean anything to people who don't care about the license and means everything to people who do. They could have just named it "Alien Hunters" or something like that and no harm would be done. And anyway, they're going to sell this on Bioshock 2 name anyway, so it's not like it matters.
As much as I played Fallout 3 and as broken as the Bethesda formula has become, at least F3 was still an RPG. And even then, New Vegas is like their way of saying mea culpa to the super NMA nerds who wanted to burn down their offices. Certainly there's a way to make a compelling X-com game based on an FPS. But I have to imagine 2K Marin is going to make a Bioshock game with a different name. Which might not be a *bad* game, but it's not an *X-com* game.
By that logic, Super Mario RPG wasn't really a Mario game, World of Warcraft isnt really a Warcraft game and Halo Wars wasn't really a Halo game. There is no reason why a franchise should hold itself to one genre. If they can expand into new territory while making a good game then I say go forth.