The Xcom 2012 Interactive Campaign Updated

A Series Reboot

If you are a veteran gamer you are no doubt aware that the rapidly approaching release of Xcom is not the release of a new game but rather the reboot release of a new game in an old series whose premise was the hostile extraterrestrial invasion of Earth, during which the player, under the authority of a league of nations, is entrusted with the duty to see to the removal of the alien threat.

That process is facilitated by the capture of aliens in order to undertake scientific and biological research on the aliens and their technology, in order to discover weaknesses that can be exploited and bend their tech to the defense of humanity. In addition to those two monumental tasks, the player must also maintain military installations, engage in ongoing combat against the hostile aliens on the ground, and somehow manage smooth relations with all of the member nations representatives.

The X-COM main series, which has over the spanning decade plus gathered a cult following among gamers, includes the following games:

-- UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994, Mythos Games)

-- X-COM: Terror from the Deep (1995, MicroProse)

-- X-COM: Apocalypse (1997, Mythos Games)

-- X-COM: Interceptor (1998, MicroProse)

And now we can add:

-- Xcom (2012, 2K Marin)

The first game in the series has won an incredible number of awards over the years, including being named to IGN's list of the Top 25 PC Games of All Time twice, first in 2007 and again in 2009. It has scored positions in the Top 10 Best Games of All Time lists in a significant number of publications and sites, and is widely considered to be the best game in the series, but that may change when the new Xcom reboot is released in 2012.

Xcom 2012 at E3 2011

While we saw and experienced an incredible number and variety of games at E3 this year, the presentation that we took in for Xcom certainly stands out as one of the most interesting. A hand's off demo that was presented in a room built to simulate a briefing room in an underground base right out of the game, it offered an intense look at not simply the plot and the characters, but an visceral and compelling view of the aliens and what is at stake for the defenders as they seize and adapt the alien technology to ensure that humanity survives.

The initial news of the new game was released on April 14th, 2010, by 2K Marin, with their announcement that a PC and console re-imagining of X-COM (relabeled as XCOM) was in the works that would take the form of a First-Person Shooter (FPS) format. The new Xcom, they explained, would retain most of the main concepts from the original game, and in particular the fictional energy source called Elerium, but would embrace a new playstyle and setting that would serve to make it more vital and attractive to modern gamers in the modern setting of Microsoft Windows, the Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

During the E3 presentation we saw a game that had changed significantly between our first exposure to it in the previous year and what we saw at the show; it is even fair to say that we saw a matured version of the concept and game. What is more, it carried a new sense of urgency and excitement in game play, and we went away impressed. So impressed in fact that the new Xcom was one of the games we covered from the show as one of the E3 Profile Articles ( E3 Profile: XCOM Reboot Mixes in Loads of New with a Touch of the Old ).