[Update: RockPaperShotgun has come to the defense of the game and addressed some of the bad impressions left by the demo.]
X-COM: Enemy Unknown is my most anticipated game this year, not because I think it will be even a fraction as innovative or important as the original (for that you’d need to enlist the original creator, Julian Gollop,) but because it has the potential to scratch some of the itches I’ve been having ever since I discovered the 1994 PC game last year. Also, it has the potential to spawn a new love for powerful tactics game rooted in high-level strategic control. I downloaded the demo off of Steam, finished it in a few minutes because it’s very short, and here’s why it makes me deeply uncomfortable.
I’m sad, because it doesn’t feel like X-COM. Even though I know this is the result of careful, loving, and completely logical decisions, the game polishes all of the original’s rough edges (in terms of user-friendliness) to the point where it’s almost unrecognizable…
First, the bad stuff. I don’t enjoy the user interface. The original one had a beastly, half-screen filling mess — which I’m glad they got rid of — but they’ve replaced it with something obviously designed for consoles, not PC. It asks you to use the “A” and “D” to move left and right between options, “Tab” to alternate between enemies, and the space bar to execute things. You can click, that’s true, but it’s not designed around clicking. This might end up being faster once you adjust to it, but it’s not intuitive when one of my hands is controlling a mouse. I also didn’t like the completely underwhelming “OK” button to confirm my decisions. I’m about to blow an alien’s head off with a shotgun and you give me an “OK” button? What am I, closing an error message in Windows 95? If you’re going to be all streamlined and make my clicks feel useless, at least let me have the satisfaction of a “CONFIRM” or “EXECUTE” or even a simple “GO” button!
Other obvious problems for PC gamers: there’s no mouse sensitivity settings! In fact, all of the options are extremely limited. Another clear sign we’re dealing with a console port, a la Skyrim.
Base management seems shitty (although it probably isn’t) for one very basic reason, which has been pointed out by RockPaperShotgun before: you can’t interact with 97% of the screen. Instead of clicking on different sections of your base (Barracks, Research, etc.) you’re forced to click on little boring buttons at the top of the screen — which, by the way, are not listed intuitively. The Barracks is situated on the right side of the screen, but the button for it is on the left side of the bar. Again, this is obviously designed around consoles, which use trigger buttons and simple lists of options, instead of point-and-click. What a shame! Is it so hard to let us click on the base and screw around? It’s little stuff like this that really helps relieve tension in a game with this much weight. Playing around with our GI Joe base, zooming in and out, dabbling with things; it’s the intuitive choice for PC users, so give it to us. It’s like having a hot girl on your lap who’ll only let you touch her if you do it exactly the way her ex-boyfriend used to. We both know I’m better than your ex-boyfriend, so how about letting me do things my way? (In this metaphor, the ex-boyfriend is the Xbox 360, which is ironic because the PC is the original platform.)
The gameplay itself was nothing more than a tutorial, so what can I say? I clicked on the arrows where it told me to, because it literally didn’t allow me to do anything else. There was no discovery process, which felt completely insulting to those who appreciated the devilish learning curve of the original. Part of me wants to forgive it, because most people haven’t played the original game and this is just a demo, but I believe that learning curve wasn’t a mistake: it was an important part of X-COM’s frozen dark soul, and the sense of mystery and fear it immediately created in your heart was crucial. Speaking of Dark Souls (pun!) haven’t we proven games don’t need to be patronizing even in this world gone soft? I seem to remember the lead designer for this reboot took encouragement from the success of that game. Oh well, I suppose the 360 explains paternal hand-holding too. Those damn idiots have ruined game design forever by lowering the bar to neanderthal levels of IQ.
I especially hated hearing some jerkoff talk in my ear about taking cover. I know I have to take cover, motherfucker. I’m the Commander. Who the hell are you? Do you have any idea what kind of insane shit I’ve managed to accomplish, without any instructions at all? I burned a house down with my own teammates inside, in order to suffocate a stray alien with the smoke that flooded the building. I revived my teammate using a puzzle-like medic box that I had the good sense to purchase and equip beforehand, and I took home the unconscious body of the alien so I could slice the fucker open for science. I’ve used innocent civilians as cover in order to protect my last surviving operative, when all hope was lost. Nobody tells me what to do, because I’ve been forged in the fires of Tactics Hell.
Freedom is a powerful drug. Once you’ve had it, you want more. And I want more freedom, not less. I don’t want every important situation to be streamlined down to a right and a wrong way. I want a massive ambiguous gray area, where I’m free to do stupid things, because there may come a time in some miraculous situation where those stupid things become genius. I don’t want to be told what the ideal solution is, because I’m the kind of asshole who refuses to do things ideally in the first place. Shove your wiki pages and your walkthroughs up your ass, I’ll figure something out. And while you’re getting your perfect scores thanks to the effort of somebody smarter than you, I’ll be proud of my own accomplishments, because I did it on my own.
Deep down, I know I have to accept this new game. Not only that, I have to embrace it. This is the closest we’re ever going to get to reviving the franchise properly. They’re doing good things. The fact that people are excited for a console tactics game in 2012 is reason to celebrate in itself. Firaxis deserves our applause, and for all of my complaining, I can’t even pretend that I was one of the original hardcore fans of the series. I picked it up last year on Steam! But it did something profound to me, and I can’t get over it. This is very good, but it’s not The X-COM Experience™. You can play the original right now, for five dollars, and see for yourself. You can download the new game’s demo right here, and judge for yourself how they compare.
Hell, I know I’m being too hard on it. I know it will get much better once I’m out of the training section of the game, and it will be easily worth the money. On its own, or compared against any other game than the original X-COM, it will be a magnificent product that I can be proud to own and support. And most importantly, it’s trying its hardest to do the right thing, in an impossible situation. Let’s help it succeed, and let’s give them the feedback they need to keep this franchise alive for a long time to come.
(Let’s also pre-order the game off of Steam so we can unlock the final tier of bonus content, which is a free copy of Civilization V!)