I’d like to thank Bill Harris for giving me this link.
By now, you’ve heard about the new XCOM: UFO Defense remake called Enemy Unknown. My pal Neko cued me onto it, and then my copy of Game Informer showed up (it was the BIG story of GI). I have the old UFO Defense on my computer at home, because I bought it from Steam. I love that game, and I’m glad someone is remaking it. And it looks FANTASTIC. And it’s being remade by Firaxis (Sid Meier’s company) and 2K Games.
Now, I was reading the BitMob article written by Rob Savillo and while it makes since, I’d like to point out the flaw of his article. The fact that it wasn’t all “unknown” fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants gaming.
I’m a guy who reads the game manual. Back in the day, the game that revealed the need to RTFM to me was Masters of Orion. The original MoO. If you tried to play that game without reading the manual you missed out on A LOT of the stuff that made the game better. Like knowing WTF you are getting into when you play certain races or how to use the charts and tabs or etc.
XCOM: UFO Defense had a 134 page manual.
I know this because I read the manual. So when I played the game, it was only 30% unknown territory to me. I knew how things worked, and what to expect, because I read the fucking manual. I think it is obvious douchebag Rob Savillo didn’t, so to him, it was all fun insanity. But the game was better if you had an idea of how to PLAY the damn game. At least for me, I loved knowing in advance my soldiers would probably die in droves. I also knew ahead of time to build my base near the North Pole, where I could react faster to threats (because the manual hinted at it).
I agree. XCOM: UFO Defense wasn’t broken. But not because of the thrill of not knowing WTF was going on and learning by losing the first ten games.
Because it was harder than fuck to win, even when you knew exactly what was going on and how to use the interface correctly from READING THE MANUAL.
(Yes, I’m saying that Rob Savillo is wrong in a way because he was a lazy ass teenager who didn’t read the manual that came with the game. Or maybe he pirated the game which gave him the thrill of not knowing WTF was going on. Either way, I think the remake will be excellent if not better for having an in-game tutorial, cool cutscenes and some advice because that’s better than reading a fucking 134 page manual)
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