Editor’s Choice

In response to “X-Com: the Truth is Out There” from The Escapist Forum: Do you know why its hard to do a different kind of XCOM? IMHO, it was because XCOM was one of the early hybrid games, genre spanning … interestingly enough, it seems like other games either already or destined to be classic are very hard to class as being just one genre of game.

These days in games we are constantly seeming to get our peanut butter in with our chocolate – that RPG has a bit of RTS, that RTS has a bit of RPG, that FPS has a bit of RPG, and they all borrowed heavily from the dearly departed Adventure games or the casual platformer. Because of that, you could do XCOM again these days, just be sure to let us blow up the walls, build those secret bases where we want, play up those squad character building, and research a the booty we steal to use in interesting “human” ways.

Since one of my biggest problems with XCOM these days is just getting it to work at a reasonable speed, kinda hard to intercept a UFO when they only appear on the screen in the blink of an eye, since I haven’t found any of those programs that supposedly slow your computer down to actually work, if someone would take the original and just make it work at the right pace for today’s computers, I would play it again.

UFO: Extraterrestrials – I thought this version doesn’t let you blow up structures, build bases around the world and research or maybe I have that mixed up with a XCOM mod and missed out.

– CanadianWolverine

As the designer of Terror from the Deep, and producer of Apocalypse, I feel the article skims the franchise in the most superficial way and fails to represent the many people (aside from Nick and Julian) involved in X-COM over the years.

– Stephen Goss, Designer, X-Com: Terror from the Deep

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In response to “Walk Don’t Run” from The Escapist Forum: I was asked a few years ago what my favourite game was. A question most long-time gamers will struggle heavily to answer. Having played hundreds of games over the years, it took me a long time to actually decide upon my answer. Grim Fandango. I’ll always encourage people to give it a try. The game has such style, such wit. It simply hasn’t been matched, and given the shocking state of games today.. I’ll be amazed if it ever is.

I still have my copy within arms reach.

– Lord Rick

In response to “Fighting Monsters” from The Escapist Forum: “In this respect, Jade’s photography is the purest form of reporting. There is no slant or deviousness behind her photos. They are not altered in any way. They are a truthful and accurate representation of the facts without any personal comment.”

This sentiment is appreciable, but while photography can approach something akin to an objective point of view free of commentary, there’s still a person behind the lens making decisions. Every facet of photography has a human hand in it, and that photographer still has to make decisions in the arrangement of the shot. Those choices will influence the message of the photograph in one way or another, so there is always some discrepancy between a photograph and the subject itself, meaning there is always some level of commentary.

– Incandescence

Yet another reason why objectivity in journalism is a myth and it’s irresponsible to attempt to achieve it.

– Joe, Content Editor, The Escapist

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In response to “For the Love of the Game” from The Escapist Forum: I’ve often wanted to see a set of little regional scenes spring up, kind of like what happened on the American indie scene in the 1980’s (Minutemen, Meat Puppets etc.) where the costs of all the infrastructure surrounding the creating is shared to enable the creators to create, and there’s mutual appreciation and involvement between the different groups and what they’re doing.

Being an old man I remember the scene around the Spectrum and Commodore 64 (although I was a little young to participate meaningfully) and the invention that was managed within the technical limitations of the hardware. I have to say that other than Bioshock (where’s there been such care and attention to detail in the look and feel of the game) I’ve had no inclination to pick up and purchase any other first person shooter over the past 3 years. As far as I can tell from the media, the industry keeps churning out prettier versions of the same games.

– usernamed