X-Com Alliance

We stayed up 15 hours at a time…

The game we were most excited about going into Microprose 2000 Gameday was X-Com Alliance. We're huge X-Com fans, playing them all from the original UFO Defense, Terror from the Deep, and Apocalypse. Developed by Mythos Games and published in the US by Microprose, the X-Com franchise has always been strong throughout its incarnations, and from what we saw from X-Com Alliance, this will still hold true as they enter the over-populated First-Person Shooter market.

Pull down screens show what your squadmates see

FPS!?!

The first time we heard they were making an FPS game with the X-Com franchise, we were a bit skeptical. All the hardcore fans out there know that there is a lot of depth to the turn-based games; choosing each individual item each of your troops would carry, to managing your base and resources, to shooting down enemy craft. So how could they port that to the generally shallow FPS market? They did the most logical thing they could do: They left most of it in. Christopher Clark, the producer of X-Com Alliance, explained to us that they took the elements the fans liked the most, and made sure that they would be in Alliance. You'll see the alien races that kept you up at night. You'll experience the frustration as you pick up an alien weapon without being able to use it since you haven't researched it yet. And you'll definitely feel the camaraderie for your squad as you try to keep everyone alive. The few things they left out, due to the genre they are working in, include a non-linear story, vehicles, and base management since they would add very little to the game.

Creepy stuff

Fear factor

Microprose is also emphasizing the chill on your spine you felt from the original X-Com. Gamers were always on edge, wondering if there was an alien hiding behind the next corner. They're doing this in a number of ways; the most obvious is your POV as well as those of your teammates. Microprose has also put in over 250 different motion-captured animations for the player models to show in detail their actions. So if your teammate is hit on their left shoulder, you'll see their left shoulder knocked backward while the rest of their body twists to absorb the impact. All of the motions are imposable on each other, so while your teammate is twisting from the shot in the shoulder shot in the leg will also be animated during the twisting. To add to the realism, they've added a loss of POV control while things are happening to you. Most people don't just stare straight forward when they are hit in the back of the head like other FPS games. In X-Com alliance your POV will shift according to the head motions of the animation system. You'll also have a viewscreen of each of your teammates helmet mounted cameras in your HUD, so everything they see you'll see as well. So as they are attacked your HUD camera will show you exactly what they see while they are writhing, including the loss of POV.

The amount of effort they put into character animation rivals and possibly exceeds that of Raven's upcoming Soldier of Fortune!