Dear Sweet Reader,
As Day[9] would say: I love you. And when you're in love and things go poorly you know how to face up to and work through it.
And so I come to you with a sad, somewhat shameful truth: X-Com has gotten old.
I had to manually edit DosBox (the emulator steam uses to let you run x-com, an excellent tool for those older windows games) just to increase the speed and stability of my copy of X-Com to something playable. After that I was subjected to a motley of errors as well as the unflinchingly difficult mission which I had set for myself.
X-Com just wants to play you know, but it can be a temperamental playmate. Let me air out a couple grievances that me and X have had over the course of my all too short trip down memory lane:
No X, I Don't Want to. . .
. . . play "Where's the Floater". Again. Stop asking, that's disgusting.
. . . guess which rookie left an armed proximity grenade by the Skyranger ramp. It's not funny.
. . . call you on camping my Skyranger's ramp one more time. I'm not even going to get into the way you 'memorize' my soldier's location oh so conveniently. *cough* *jerk* *cough*
. . . listen to that noise you make when I'm shuffling equipment around the base, because you can't even manage the simplest tasks without me to beep things around for you. Geez, just. . . load the damn thing yourself.
. . . turn the difficulty down behind my back! I didn't ask for that! I didn't want that! I can take care of myself dammit! WHY CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?
So here we are. . . I found myself muddling through the painful strategic layer and obtuse time unit/energy system of the tactical combat I found myself struggling to recapture that feeling of enormity that originally drew me into X-Com. So after one too many little "line-o'-sight" slips (if those really were accidents X) where I was shot descending the ramp of my Skyranger THROUGH THE RAMP I was feeling really down. I was even doing quite well in the game, it had simply become a chore to play.
That's when the aliens struck their most devastating blow: FTL (Faster-Than-Light). A game which, according to inside sources, quote: "Everyone and their Mom is playing." [By the way, if anyone's Mom is actually playing this please feel free to post and I'll name a character of after you in my coming X-Com: Enemy Unkown playthrough (2012)].
FTL drew me up off the poorly pixelated Earth and sent me hurtling at breakneck speeds to countless deaths among the stars. I felt alive again. I relished the challenge, I craved new ships and new encounters. I wondered at the subtle balances between the weapons and defenses, the agonizing decisions about when to upgrade and when to hoard resources. In effect the aliens had won. I gladly left the human race to the garish eggplant colored invaders and their mechanical velocicrocoraptors and was stolen by this beauty of a game.
I won't elaborate too much on the gameplay of FTL itself. Suffice it to say that it is superbly balanced and quite challenging. It claims to be a roguelike (a difficult and graphically sparse game of great complexity, named after the original game of its kind Rogue). It is.
I've spent hours and hours knee-deep in the dead with DoomRL (Doom: The Roguelike) and ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery), two excellent roguelikes, each punishing and complex, rewarding and cruel in turns. I can say for certain that in spirit, if not exactly mechanics (a real-time roguelike?) FTL is more than worthy of the genre.
The Confession: I've abandoned Earth. I've given up on my quest to purge 1999 of old-school aliens. It wasn't the difficulty of the game, it was the difficulty of the interface that brought weakness to my heart. Don't blame FTL for my weakness, it is a fine and worthy game, just a symptom of the problem, not the cause. I needed something less grating to hold me over until the shiny new X-Com hits Steam on October 9th and FTL slipped right through my orbital defenses and abducted all my free time.
I regret not following through on my mission dear readers, but there's a reason people are excited about Firaxis' X-Com remake.
X-Com needed a remake very badly.
That said you should also check out a game called Xenonauts. A much more true to the original remake which, as far as my limited alpha testing has revealed,will smooth over all of my complaints about the original while maintaining almost exactly the plethora of choices and options that made the original one of the best games of all time.
So let me leave you with this tantalizing foreshadowing: On October 9th I will be live-streaming my playthrough of Firaxis' X-Com: Enemy Unknown. Expect me to put all my gaming prowess and knowledge to the test against the merciless onslaught of the xeno hoards.
It will be Classic.
It WILL be Hardcore.
And I won't panic like a rookie when the Chrysallids come a calling. . . much.
14.9.12
Game Journal II - X-Com: Enemy Unknown (1994)
Collection item #38973:
Personal journal of Gregory Hamlet, X-Com Chief Intelligence Officer
Jan 1, 1999 - Open for Business
Massive was declared fully operational today by the suits. What a joke. Just because the base's main lift finally works and the last damn egghead waddled into the lab they say we're operational. Macbeth sat down with me this morning and said I was in charge of purchasing AND intel. What a hardass. He didn't wait for a response, just went straight into the game plan: Bigger radar, more storage space (though what he plans to put there I can't imagine, this place is packed to the gills with firepower already), living quarters within the month (A MONTH!?), a couple more warm bodies and a carton full of more eggheads. Macbeth is serious, I've read the reports myself but I'm more scared of him than a couple missing persons and a little grey space baby. Hopefully some small part of the world's pocket change can be siphoned off to pay for a logistics officer.
Until then these defective heavy cannons are gone, and I'm to order a "wide-area suppression" vehicle. The Chinese have some sort of riot tank we can load with rockets if we just rip out the 50 calibers, that'll have to do.
Jan 4th, 1999 - Shoot on Site
Radar contact today. Macbeth sent out the MiG but the thing was small, fast, and didn't want to shake hands. HE was PISSED. When he called me in I just nodded, kept silent, and sent out a request for more explosives. Next time we'd be sending the F-15 with Avalanches under each wing. Our proximity mines never showed, I'll have to order a couple crates. Also I'm firing Uta, she almost gutted Macduff yesterday.
Jan 7th, 1999 - Ambush
What the f*ck. I'm the f*ckin' Chief Intelligence AND LOGISTICS officer of this whole crap-shoot and they send me out on first contact? When Macbeth got the news he saddled everyone up, launched the F-15 for overwatch and sent the Skyranger up its skirts. And he packed me along with these jarheads. I didn't want it, Macduff didn't want it, but Big Brass wouldn't listen. They just packed me into a flak jacket like the rest of these goons and tossed me a rifle. I did well enough in basic, but a serious marksman I am not. At least the others are armed to the gills and I'm to stay well back. Rockets, auto-cannons, grenades, rifles. The tank. I feel a lot better with that thing out front; I might just dig up its receipt and mount it if I live through this.
Alright, we've landed. Take a quick look out the windows, just farmhouses and darkness.
Can't wait.
....
Shit, shit, shit. That was a f*cking suicide mission. Seven of them, three of us dead. The kevlar melted like butter. We either saw them and killed them or they found us and we died. The tank rolled out, we followed. We blew a barn to rubble just to take out the first little grey man we saw. 'Overkill' I remember thinking. We should've nuked the bastards.
Antony died under the wheels of the skyranger, he was just the closest to the orchard when one of them opened up on him. Macduff opened up when the monster peeked out a second time, but couldn't hit him before he blew Brutus away. A volley of grenades over the hedge wall ended that. There was some sort of run in at the horse stables (horse stables for gods sake, what do these things want from us?). Macduff lit one of them up with Incendiary rounds but the thing just skittered back around the barn. ON FIRE. Grenades again. Actually took out two of them there. Four of guys went into the ship to end it. They told me to wait outside, cover the rear. Thank god. Three more aliens inside. One of them blew a hole straight through Harvey Dent's chest in what must have been the cockpit.
We radioed in mission success to African Command, got the go ahead, and left. All the talk about medals and shit was just hot air. Macbeth was waiting for us in the hangar back at Massive. No medals or congratulations were forthcoming. An intact ship and a load of their damn plasma weapons and not even a thank you. What a hardass. The spaceship was taken apart and back at the base before we were. The funerals are tomorrow.
Jan 26th, 1999 - A Prayer for Russians
I was out of base at an operations report when they attacked the Russians. We picked up the ship on the way in, it was massive. They started replacing the MiG's cannon with a Stingray and sent the dual Avalanche loaded F-15 out to intercept with the Skyranger following. Then it just dumped a load of floating science experiments and miniature T-Rexes on the Reds and took off. We had to bring the 'ranger back and re-equip. Just before dark the team landed, I'd secured another of the tanks for them so they were really jammed in their this time. The new laser weapons the eggheads had been hatching worked like a charm, a half dozen rifles and a handful of pistols kept our boys safe and sound. Five civilians were killed and six survived. There wasn't much left of the town when Russian Command finally moved in, but there weren't any of those bastards left either. Next I think the boys in white are cooking up something a little better than the flak jackets.
Feb 1st, 1999 - Good News
Our first progress report. 3 dead soldiers, 5 civilians killed, and more than twenty enemy dead. A wide array of captured technology and a faint hope of understanding what drives these creatures. The council was pleased, Russia was especially generous. We're also a large profit on the unused alien materials, it seems that novelty, even in the midst of fear, has a high selling price.
Feb 24th, 1999 - Happy Birthday
Nothing at all this month. Brazil is pissed, they'll probably cut funding over something but we can't really figure out why. There wasn't even a peep. Happy birthday me. At least the new armor looks good and we've got some sort of motion tracker up and running. The boys used the prototype to lead me to the surprise party. I almost pissed myself when Macduff walked out of the shadows in the warehouse. Damn scanner is too hard to read if you ask me. The cake had "Shakespear" written on it. There wasn't room on the cake for the 'e' but hey
March 3rd, 1999 - Crash and Burn
A small craft again, like the first one in February. Macbeth was with the Bigger Brass and Macduff sent out the MiG instead of the F-15. He'll catch hell for that one. But it worked out, this one was more interested in blowing us away but our boys in the sky took it down hard. When we went to salvage the site the men tried to test the motion scanner. So far the aliens haven't shown anything that could take out the Skyranger on the ground and they just holed up for a bit, getting their bearings, arming the explosives, waiting to see if something moved. The only surviving floater (as we've come to call them) must have been circling the drain already because he wandered right in front of the tank (which hadn't even moved) and left bits of purple goo all over the inside of the Skyranger.
Mission successful, nobody even stepped off the 'ranger.
March 5th, 1999 - South American Blues
I was in the middle of planning the new laboratory we're going to add on when the alert came. Chile is in trouble, they're scattered reports and some horrific video going out on the web of people being blown to pieces in the streets. No positive on the specific critters yet. The team will go out and I'll try and make sure we've can replace whoever doesn't make it back. A couple rookies goin' this time, I hope things go as well as the last mission.
Personal journal of Gregory Hamlet, X-Com Chief Intelligence Officer
Jan 1, 1999 - Open for Business
Massive was declared fully operational today by the suits. What a joke. Just because the base's main lift finally works and the last damn egghead waddled into the lab they say we're operational. Macbeth sat down with me this morning and said I was in charge of purchasing AND intel. What a hardass. He didn't wait for a response, just went straight into the game plan: Bigger radar, more storage space (though what he plans to put there I can't imagine, this place is packed to the gills with firepower already), living quarters within the month (A MONTH!?), a couple more warm bodies and a carton full of more eggheads. Macbeth is serious, I've read the reports myself but I'm more scared of him than a couple missing persons and a little grey space baby. Hopefully some small part of the world's pocket change can be siphoned off to pay for a logistics officer.
Until then these defective heavy cannons are gone, and I'm to order a "wide-area suppression" vehicle. The Chinese have some sort of riot tank we can load with rockets if we just rip out the 50 calibers, that'll have to do.
Jan 4th, 1999 - Shoot on Site
Radar contact today. Macbeth sent out the MiG but the thing was small, fast, and didn't want to shake hands. HE was PISSED. When he called me in I just nodded, kept silent, and sent out a request for more explosives. Next time we'd be sending the F-15 with Avalanches under each wing. Our proximity mines never showed, I'll have to order a couple crates. Also I'm firing Uta, she almost gutted Macduff yesterday.
Jan 7th, 1999 - Ambush
What the f*ck. I'm the f*ckin' Chief Intelligence AND LOGISTICS officer of this whole crap-shoot and they send me out on first contact? When Macbeth got the news he saddled everyone up, launched the F-15 for overwatch and sent the Skyranger up its skirts. And he packed me along with these jarheads. I didn't want it, Macduff didn't want it, but Big Brass wouldn't listen. They just packed me into a flak jacket like the rest of these goons and tossed me a rifle. I did well enough in basic, but a serious marksman I am not. At least the others are armed to the gills and I'm to stay well back. Rockets, auto-cannons, grenades, rifles. The tank. I feel a lot better with that thing out front; I might just dig up its receipt and mount it if I live through this.
Alright, we've landed. Take a quick look out the windows, just farmhouses and darkness.
Can't wait.
....
Shit, shit, shit. That was a f*cking suicide mission. Seven of them, three of us dead. The kevlar melted like butter. We either saw them and killed them or they found us and we died. The tank rolled out, we followed. We blew a barn to rubble just to take out the first little grey man we saw. 'Overkill' I remember thinking. We should've nuked the bastards.
Antony died under the wheels of the skyranger, he was just the closest to the orchard when one of them opened up on him. Macduff opened up when the monster peeked out a second time, but couldn't hit him before he blew Brutus away. A volley of grenades over the hedge wall ended that. There was some sort of run in at the horse stables (horse stables for gods sake, what do these things want from us?). Macduff lit one of them up with Incendiary rounds but the thing just skittered back around the barn. ON FIRE. Grenades again. Actually took out two of them there. Four of guys went into the ship to end it. They told me to wait outside, cover the rear. Thank god. Three more aliens inside. One of them blew a hole straight through Harvey Dent's chest in what must have been the cockpit.
We radioed in mission success to African Command, got the go ahead, and left. All the talk about medals and shit was just hot air. Macbeth was waiting for us in the hangar back at Massive. No medals or congratulations were forthcoming. An intact ship and a load of their damn plasma weapons and not even a thank you. What a hardass. The spaceship was taken apart and back at the base before we were. The funerals are tomorrow.
Jan 26th, 1999 - A Prayer for Russians
I was out of base at an operations report when they attacked the Russians. We picked up the ship on the way in, it was massive. They started replacing the MiG's cannon with a Stingray and sent the dual Avalanche loaded F-15 out to intercept with the Skyranger following. Then it just dumped a load of floating science experiments and miniature T-Rexes on the Reds and took off. We had to bring the 'ranger back and re-equip. Just before dark the team landed, I'd secured another of the tanks for them so they were really jammed in their this time. The new laser weapons the eggheads had been hatching worked like a charm, a half dozen rifles and a handful of pistols kept our boys safe and sound. Five civilians were killed and six survived. There wasn't much left of the town when Russian Command finally moved in, but there weren't any of those bastards left either. Next I think the boys in white are cooking up something a little better than the flak jackets.
Feb 1st, 1999 - Good News
Our first progress report. 3 dead soldiers, 5 civilians killed, and more than twenty enemy dead. A wide array of captured technology and a faint hope of understanding what drives these creatures. The council was pleased, Russia was especially generous. We're also a large profit on the unused alien materials, it seems that novelty, even in the midst of fear, has a high selling price.
Feb 24th, 1999 - Happy Birthday
Nothing at all this month. Brazil is pissed, they'll probably cut funding over something but we can't really figure out why. There wasn't even a peep. Happy birthday me. At least the new armor looks good and we've got some sort of motion tracker up and running. The boys used the prototype to lead me to the surprise party. I almost pissed myself when Macduff walked out of the shadows in the warehouse. Damn scanner is too hard to read if you ask me. The cake had "Shakespear" written on it. There wasn't room on the cake for the 'e' but hey
March 3rd, 1999 - Crash and Burn
A small craft again, like the first one in February. Macbeth was with the Bigger Brass and Macduff sent out the MiG instead of the F-15. He'll catch hell for that one. But it worked out, this one was more interested in blowing us away but our boys in the sky took it down hard. When we went to salvage the site the men tried to test the motion scanner. So far the aliens haven't shown anything that could take out the Skyranger on the ground and they just holed up for a bit, getting their bearings, arming the explosives, waiting to see if something moved. The only surviving floater (as we've come to call them) must have been circling the drain already because he wandered right in front of the tank (which hadn't even moved) and left bits of purple goo all over the inside of the Skyranger.
Mission successful, nobody even stepped off the 'ranger.
March 5th, 1999 - South American Blues
I was in the middle of planning the new laboratory we're going to add on when the alert came. Chile is in trouble, they're scattered reports and some horrific video going out on the web of people being blown to pieces in the streets. No positive on the specific critters yet. The team will go out and I'll try and make sure we've can replace whoever doesn't make it back. A couple rookies goin' this time, I hope things go as well as the last mission.
Game Journal I - X-Com Enemy Unknown (1994)
MY FAVORITE GAME OF ALL TIME: X-Com Enemy Unknown.
Due to the not eminent enough release of the Firaxis remake (of the same name) I'm finally going to beat the original game on the highest difficulty: Superhuman. And I'm going to do it without save scumming (though there's no way to actually prove this, you'll have to take my word), that is, I will only load saved games as a means to continue where I left off, not to undo some devastating loss.
If you've never played let me throw out a short list of what made this game revolutionary in 1994 and, quite possibly, the best game of all time:
1. Randomly generated sandbox world.
Every map is different, every progression is flexible, the world is dynamic, and you never know what might be waiting for you.
2. High challenge but fair environment.
It may not feel fair, in fact I admit that it might not actually be fair in the moment, but this game lets you do whatever you want to win. If you want to ambush alien raiding parties as they perform their missions you'll loot tons of valuable technology over their dead bodies or you could blow that same ship from the sky and deal with only the deadly creatures that survived the crash, you lost a bunch of the goodies in the wreckage but you may live to appreciate it.
3. Interaction is player goal-oriented.
The current generation of games is well known for hand-holding a player through the entire experience. Waypoints, HUD indicators, scripted events, impassable terrain, and invisible walls are basically the hallmark of today's average game. X-Com, whether due to a lack of time or a design choice, doesn't bother. You're told to defend the world, aliens are bad, and here's the .000000001% of the world's GDP that the greatest nations in the world found in their sofa cracks to do it with.
Good luck.
If you want more money those nations expect performance, if you want better weapons you'll need to research and build them yourself, if you want to find more enemy craft before they do whatever nefarious things they care to then you'll need extra bases and fighter jets. Oh, and those jets, scientists, engineers, and soldiers? On loan, on salary. You better be able to pay the bills at the end of the month too. There's plenty to prioritize, place the damn waypoint yourself.
The beginning of the end:
So let me end the intro here. This game is unforgiving on any difficulty. I fully expect to loose soldiers, tanks, aircraft, probably even a base or two on a playthrough that goes perfectly on NORMAL difficulty. Superhuman difficulty makes things so, so much worse.
Thus I'm naming all my best soldiers after characters in famous tragedies.
Hello cruel world, I'll do my best to defend you from threats unknown.
Due to the not eminent enough release of the Firaxis remake (of the same name) I'm finally going to beat the original game on the highest difficulty: Superhuman. And I'm going to do it without save scumming (though there's no way to actually prove this, you'll have to take my word), that is, I will only load saved games as a means to continue where I left off, not to undo some devastating loss.
If you've never played let me throw out a short list of what made this game revolutionary in 1994 and, quite possibly, the best game of all time:
1. Randomly generated sandbox world.
Every map is different, every progression is flexible, the world is dynamic, and you never know what might be waiting for you.
2. High challenge but fair environment.
It may not feel fair, in fact I admit that it might not actually be fair in the moment, but this game lets you do whatever you want to win. If you want to ambush alien raiding parties as they perform their missions you'll loot tons of valuable technology over their dead bodies or you could blow that same ship from the sky and deal with only the deadly creatures that survived the crash, you lost a bunch of the goodies in the wreckage but you may live to appreciate it.
3. Interaction is player goal-oriented.
The current generation of games is well known for hand-holding a player through the entire experience. Waypoints, HUD indicators, scripted events, impassable terrain, and invisible walls are basically the hallmark of today's average game. X-Com, whether due to a lack of time or a design choice, doesn't bother. You're told to defend the world, aliens are bad, and here's the .000000001% of the world's GDP that the greatest nations in the world found in their sofa cracks to do it with.
Good luck.
If you want more money those nations expect performance, if you want better weapons you'll need to research and build them yourself, if you want to find more enemy craft before they do whatever nefarious things they care to then you'll need extra bases and fighter jets. Oh, and those jets, scientists, engineers, and soldiers? On loan, on salary. You better be able to pay the bills at the end of the month too. There's plenty to prioritize, place the damn waypoint yourself.
The beginning of the end:
So let me end the intro here. This game is unforgiving on any difficulty. I fully expect to loose soldiers, tanks, aircraft, probably even a base or two on a playthrough that goes perfectly on NORMAL difficulty. Superhuman difficulty makes things so, so much worse.
Thus I'm naming all my best soldiers after characters in famous tragedies.
Hello cruel world, I'll do my best to defend you from threats unknown.
13.9.12
Apology I
So I've been gone for a month.
I'm sorry. Rae's sorry. Dragon is sry also. There was a death in the family.
WAIT. It's ok. My grandmother lived a good life, and drained every last dreg out of her 89 years.
So don't worry about it, as my Dad said, "It's not happy, but it is good."
Now I really wish that I'd managed to produce more, show more, and in general be a knight-in-shining-pixels to anyone who bothered to visit my blog in the last month. To all three of you: I WAS WEAK.
Alice Weber wouldn't have left her blog to sit around, unloved. Alice would've put pen to paper without hesitation despite hardship and loss. That was just who she was.
So without further ado I apologize and let's get on with the show. . .
I'm sorry. Rae's sorry. Dragon is sry also. There was a death in the family.
WAIT. It's ok. My grandmother lived a good life, and drained every last dreg out of her 89 years.
So don't worry about it, as my Dad said, "It's not happy, but it is good."
Now I really wish that I'd managed to produce more, show more, and in general be a knight-in-shining-pixels to anyone who bothered to visit my blog in the last month. To all three of you: I WAS WEAK.
Alice Weber wouldn't have left her blog to sit around, unloved. Alice would've put pen to paper without hesitation despite hardship and loss. That was just who she was.
So without further ado I apologize and let's get on with the show. . .
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