Fans of clicking on little men (and aliens) will be pleased to hear that Xenonauts 2 is releasing via Steam early access on July 18th, packing a mildly modernised dose of old school XCOM from back when turn-based action was more gritty and hyphenated. You'll futz about with fighter planes, build listening posts around the globe, and send hapless soldiers to get their faces torn off. Merry Xenonauts!
]]>Maybe my perception of time is getting a bit wonky in my old age, but didn't we just finish Spring Sale season a week or two ago? No matter - cheap games are always in style. GOG's summer sale opens with a giveaway of Goldhawk Interactive's solid X-Com tribute Xenonauts. GOG also asked us to pick a few favourites from the sale, so check out our list on GOG.
]]>When X-COM cast off its hyphen and complexity to become XCOM, Xenonauts was handily here with old-school alien-busting. Now you can see how its sequel is shaping up, as developers Goldhawk Interactive are releasing development builds of Xenonauts 2 [official site] for free. You can play one single mission right now, then Goldhawk plan to expand this pre-alpha demo fortnightly. They'll start charging money once the game's in good enough shape but paying with feedback is peachy-dory for now.
]]>XCOM 2 is out this week and I'm pretty flipping excited. But what of people whose hearts yearn for X-COM, the bedashed original series Firaxis rebooted and dedashed? Good news: Xenonauts 2 [official site] is definitely happening. Bad news: it'll arrive in 2017 at the earliest.
Goldhawk Interactive's Xenonauts, which came out in 2014 after years in early access, is essentially a tweaked unofficial remake of UFO: Enemy Unknown (or 'X-COM: UFO Defense', whatever). It's pretty great! The sequel will be a bit more adventurous, taking more liberties with the X-COM formula as it also switches from sprites to proper 3D.
]]>XCOM 2 [official site] is a hugely exciting prospect (so much so that I'm genuinely grumpy about the delay), but XCOM and X-COM are so very different things by now that it's unlikely to slake anyone's thirst for a true-blue, Gollopy experience. Fortunately, sounds like we might also be in for a sequel to unofficial X-COM spiritual sequel Xenonauts [official site], 2014's Cold War-set alien invasion strategy title.
]]>Xenonauts is a spiritual successor to UFO: Enemy Unknown, which means that it’s also a spiritual successor to many of the most tense and glorious hours of my teenage years. Following a successful Kickstarter and a period in Early Access, the game has been available for almost a month now. With its loyal approach to the original design, Xenonauts doesn’t step on XCOM’s toes, but I wondered if it could succesfully muscle in on the original game's territory. Several days of playing later, I have the answer. And some anecdotes about intra-squad romance.
]]>I am glad. Against all odds, Firaxis' XCOM revival was actually a great turn-based strategy that captured the spirit of the original Gollop games. It wasn't entirely bereft of blindspots, though. The art style wasn't super menacing and didn't allow imagination to fill in the gaps, the game sort of got easier as time went on, tension dissipated over time, etc. Sometimes, you just need a straight-up remake in order to account for everything. In the case of classic X-Com, that game is Xenonauts. Alec has both written and blathered as much before, and really, is there any greater endorsement? Alec hates everything, even rainbows and my youthful naivete. Someday I'll earn his approval. Maybe if I become turn-based and prominently feature permadeath, he'll finally love me too.
]]>Obviously we don't do video on RPS, because we are Old MenTM.
Only now I've done a video, for some reason. It's in the vein of those Let's Play things that are all over YouTube, tt's my first one ever, and I'm well aware it's pretty shonky on both a content and technical level. I wanted to give this a shot regardless of outcome, to see what it's like and to see what I can learn. In it, I play one mission from the current build of Goldhawk Interactive's indie X-COM homage Xenonauts, which is out now on Steam Early Access. I also talk pretty much non-stop for about 17 minutes, which I don't believe is something I've ever done before in my life. My mum'd kill to have a conversation that long with me.
]]>Well, Steam Early Access, anyway. Seeing as X-Com has been abducted and replaced by the magnificent (but still quite different) XCOM: Enemy Unknown and snazzy 1960s hat dress-up simulator The Bureau: XCOM, Xenonauts is sort of the original's closest living relative. So now's your chance to return to the present's past while clad in the graphics and interface from a past-inspired portion of the future. In other words, Xenonauts has potential to be one of the very best things. But you - and perhaps only you, but probably not - can push it past alpha and into top humanity exterminating form. Details after the break.
]]>This makes sense as a thing to do. With so many gaming Kickstarters running, for games we're genuinely interested to play, let's have a look to see where they all are this weekend. The headline news is that Grim Dawn has finished its run, with just shy of double its target reached. Below you can catch up on Moebius, Xenonauts, Tex Murphy, and many more. And you can also note that almost all of them aren't pledging to Kick It Forward, which completely sucks, so you should get in touch with them all and yell at them.
]]>I know exactly what I'm doing. Including when I screw up. When I screw up in X-COM, I invariably know that I've screwed up long before the results of said screwing-up actually come to pass. My soldier is out of action points and left standing in the open while an alien silently eyeballs him, or a yet-to-explode grenade lands casually at the feet of an innocent civilian. Next turn, I will pay for these mistakes. Pay in blood.
I make exactly the same mistakes, and knew exactly why they had come to pass and what punishment would follow them, in Goldhawk Interactive's indie remake/reiminaging Xenonauts, which after three years of preorder-funded development today climbs about the wheezing Kickstarter bandwagon for its final furlong.
]]>As promised yesterday, here's another chat with XCOM: Enemy Unknown lead dev Jake Solomon. Here it is - and it brings with it particularly glad tidings if, like me, you weren't 100% convinced the slo-motion 'glamcam' killshots and 80s action movie soldier vocals were for you. Turns out we will indeed be able to turn them off in favour of quieter, interruption-free strategising. I'll probably try it both ways (missus) to work out which I prefer in practice but I'm super-chuffed that we're getting the option.
Also discussed - what he thinks about indie X-COM remake Xenonauts, chat about how to capture live aliens, how alien interrogation and research works, more on the game's lethality, and to what extent the game will shape your advancement up the tech tree.
]]>It's probably horribly sensationalist to suggest there's a cold war on between Firaxis' XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Goldhawk Interactive's more mechanically purist X-COMlike Xenonauts, but then again it is the battle to end all battles, one shall stand and one shall fall and the Earth itself will be left in smoking ruins by the time this apocalyptic conflict is over.
Xenonauts has been smartening itself up since the announcement of Firaxis' official reimaginging, as lead dev Chris England chatted to me about a few weeks ago. More detailed environments, and the 'evil alien sheds' have now been replaced with suitably dramatic crashed UFOs. Images of its newly endetailed look are now available for all to clap eyes upon. Which is only so much preamble, innit? Here you are...
]]>Up until January 5, 2012, the mega-ambitious Xenonauts, Goldhawk Interactive's Cold War-set tale of alien invasion, was our number one hope for a modernised X-COM. Then, on January 5, 2012, 2K and Firaxis announced they were making an official modernised X-COM. We've already chatted to Firaxis about XCOM: Enemy Unknown at length, but what did that shock news mean to Goldhawk lead Chris England? Here, I chat to Chris about his initial reaction, why it doesn't spell horror for his project, where he's at with Xenonauts at the moment, what's planned for the future, how he believes Xenonauts will be better than X-COM and whether spending his life savings on making the game has paid off.
Also, IKEA UFOs and drinking eight pints.
]]>Night will always follow day, controversy will always follow a highly-anticipated game scoring less than 9/10 on a mainstream videogaming website, and X-COM will always see remakes. Xenonauts is the one to watch at present, of course, but Xenowar caught my attention because it's going for a hyper-stripped down, simplistic, scrappy mini-take on the oft-aped formula.
]]>Poor old Xenonauts, Goldhawk Interactive's Cold War-set XCOMalike, was the most recent victim of Paypal's callous punishing of indies who fund development by selling early builds of their games as part of pre-orders - and as a result it hasn't been available for sale for quite some time.
]]>Oh, not again. Paypal is increasingly the scourge of indie games - it's opted to cruelly and unnecessarily freeze funds for Minecraft and Project Zomboid in the past, and the latest victim of its administrative idiocy is enticing X-COM reimagining Xenonauts. "Currently our Paypal account has been locked down and closed, so we don't have access to any of the new money coming in or any access to the funds currently in the account," say devs Goldhawk Interactive. "As a result of this, we've temporarily disabled the pre-order page."
]]>OK, I admit it: I am as cynical as you when it comes to half-suspecting that enormously ambitious, fanbase-courting independent projects announced before work on them has even begun carry the dread stench of vapourware. I've been very interested in Xenonauts for some time, if faintly horrified that lead designer Chris England claims he made the final decision to pour his life savings into funding an X-COM remake based on an offhand oh-if-only comment I made on RPS, but I confess wasn't entirely convinced it would see the light of day. Partly this was due to the many tales of infamy concerning amateur game devs who started working together remotely without ever actually meeting - online tensions can run so high - and partly because I've been waiting a long time for an X-COM remake that actually feels anything like X-COM. It is not in my nature to believe that dreams can come true.
A playable build of Xenonauts was on show in the RPS-sponsored Indie Arcade at the Eurogamer expo last week, and pretty much everyone I spoke to about it said the same thing: "well, it's X-COM," they offered with a wide grin. They didn't say what worked or what didn't or what they'd change or anything like that - they just said "it's like X-COM."
I can't think of a greater compliment for any game.
]]>It's been a bit all-quiet for the Cold War-set X-COM reimagining Xenonauts for the last few months, but creators Goldhawk have finally broken cover to show how the major element - the ground combat - looks in action. The answer, you may not be terribly surprised to hear is "quite a bit like X-COM", but clearly that's exactly what we want. Higher res and detail is a fine thing, but it's especially pleasing to see that destructible scenery, something so bafflingly absent from many of the commercial X-COM remakes, is present and correct.
]]>Amidst the web-wide frenzy resulting from the announcement of 2K Marin's shooter-sequel to X-COM, those who were unwaveringly disappointed/infuriated that the series' strategy roots had been abandoned had at least one source of turn-based solace. That was Goldhawk Interactive's Xenonauts, one of more X-COM remake projects than any sane man could count - but this time determined to retain the original game's key systems and concepts rather than slavishly recreate every feature, aesthetic and plot-point. Cold War-set and going for military grit rather than early 90s comicbook scifi, it promises to be familiar yet different.
However, a great many X-COM tributes have been, gone or simply stalled midway through development - indeed RPS gets advised of a new one at least every couple of months. So how/will this one be different? Best leave that one to the developer, really - read on for project lead Chris England's thoughts on why do this, 2K's FPS, bastard Chrysalids, and what's going to be better than the original.
]]>The enduring question around 2K Australia's upcoming XCOM FPS has been "why not just come up with a new IP?" Well, that three posts about X-COM each clocked up triple-figures of comments on Wednesday is the answer to that. A secondary question is "why is everyone so upset that it's using the X-COM IP?" The IP is not what's important about X-COM. In terms of fiction, X-COM has only ever been about killing aliens. The important thing is having a game that plays as X-COM did, with its sublime multi-genre cleverness. While it's unlikely a major publisher would tackle it, the door is not closed to someone else doing that. As has been mentioned by various people, someone like Stardock would be insane to not pick up this baton - there's a vast and willing audience out there.
First out the gate, though, is indie title Xenonauts, which is militant in its desire to do X-COM properly. It also has a cute genesis - its lead designer Chris England (who is indeed from England) says he was inspired to create an X-COM remake after we wished for one on our podcast. Aw!
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