Listing Life Dangerously – Five Welcome Changes In The XCOM Remake

Without resorting to humiliating hyperbole, UFO: Enemy Unknown is the greatest video game ever made. Firaxis’ recent XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the second greatest video game ever made.

Here are five changes that almost made the remake out-shine the original.

5. High-definition evisceration (Highvisceration)

Back in 1994, UFO: Enemy Unknown was violent, sick filth. There were red/green/purple pixels bloodily splashing all over the place. Soldiers and aliens alike let loose guttural death shrieks as burning plasma seared their tender flesh. Also, when a Chrysalid burst forth from the defiled body of one of your former rookies, its little shoulder spikes flapped free in a cute way. Then it would scamper off and impregnate another rookie. Less cute.

For the remake, Firaxis took that ethos and ran with it. They made full use of modern graphics, physics and animation techniques, and delivered a world that somehow felt even more dangerous than that in the original, if admittedly less cute. They also delivered pints and pints of blood and gore.

4. Everything is exploding all of the time

The original had destructible environments. If you had enough ordnance, you could level the entire map, including the UFO you were supposed to be salvaging. However, because it was presumably designed and coded on a calculator, or toaster, or whatever the hell developers used to make games in 1994, stuff didn’t really explode with much relish. Something would be there, then you’d fire a rocket at it, and then the thing wouldn’t be there anymore. Also, one of your rookies would probably be dead.

In the remake, glorious fiery explosions happen every turn. Forklift truck in your way? Firaxis prescribe a glorious fiery explosion. Orphanage impeding your progress? Glorious fiery explosion. Rookie blocking your line of sight? Go for a fiery explosion featuring moderate glory.

3. Movement is simpler

Back in 1994, it was all about the time units. Moving around, shooting, throwing grenades, picking up mauled rookie corpses and putting them in your backpack – it all cost time units.

In 2012 though, Firaxis realised that people can’t cope with simple addition and subtraction because they’ve been on Twitter when they should have been at school, so did away with that system. Instead, you (with a few exceptions) get a maximum of two actions per unit per turn. You can shoot, move a bit and shoot, move a long way and not shoot, or just hide like a small child during the Mumm-Ra bit of the ThunderCats intro. It’s a bit simpler than the system in the original, and has probably opened up the game to a wider market, like giving away Twiglets with porn.

2. Shooting around cover

Both the original and the remake have the concept of high and low cover. The remake lets soldiers peek around their high cover and fire at alien beasties, which simply makes more sense.

In the original, if your soldier was behind a wall, all they could see was the wall. The wall became all that was important in their life. They’d have to move their entire body out of cover to fire at an alien just around the corner.

1. That guy from Lost plays a grumpy engineer

You can follow Simon (@MrCuddleswick) on Twitter here and also slowly by car if you want.

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