-Back in-- what was it?
I guess 2011, I saw a game at E3 called Xcom.
No.
It's not the Xcom that we all know from last year, the real-time turned-base strategy game.
This was the game that took that original Xcom brand and turned it into a first-person shooter.
-Also, this specific game was actually in the works of your first-person shooter.
-Oh, yeah.
-And then they
switched it--
-Right.
And I got to see the game and play a very significant amount of it.
-Wait, so you said, it's not a first-person shooter anymore?
So it is--
-It's a first-person tactical shooter where you're in charge of a team--
-A team.
-All right.
There you have it.
They're doing some really interesting stuff of this game.
And the whole thing with Xcom is that, it's this very, you know, it's a sort of secret agency
that gets test with dealing with these alien invasion during the 1960's.
And it's not like major American cities.
There these, you know, sort of suburban, you know, not really-- it's not Manhattan.
They are in the West or on the Midwest and you control a character who basically has to do man entire team.
And the game play is sort of-- it's like real-time strategy meets third-person shooting where you can pause time and load up this sort of wheel--
-That's kinda like, sort of, like Mass Effect Dragon-aged games and stuff.
-Yeah, exactly.
-Okay, go.
-But the thing is, it's like-- it's all really happening in real-time.
So, you can--
-So when you--
-Pause the game.
-So when you open the wheel, it's-- everything is still going on.
-Right.
But it's slowing down almost to a crawl.
And in that wheel, part of that pie is--
-Is controlling other characters.
-Is your other characters.
So, when you choose, let say target.
You know, you can have one-character shooting at a target and you assign the target.
And the other character, you can, you now, move away on the map.
When you enter
that mode, you sort of hover over the playing map and can sort of just drop him where you want.
-Oh, nice.
-So there's a really interesting element with that.
I spoke to Nico Bihary, who is the senior producer of this game.
And he had some really insightful stuff because, you know, this game there's a big history of Xcom.
And this game is definitely honoring that, you know, conservative sort of style of game play, but at the same time it's bringing it in to a level where I think people will
identify with it most because games like Mass Effect.
Have you played Mass Effect?
You're gonna like this game just because it controls in a similar fashion and you're really gonna be able to be like, "Wow, I have total control over this team", almost more so than Mass Effect because you can literally place them where you want.
In Mass Effect, you could do that--
-So, how does that work?
They're like in helicopter and--
-No, no.
So you have a team on the ground.
-Uh-huh.
-And you--
-Oh, so they just run to that location?
-Right.
But you can sort of-- when you're paused in that, you know, you kind of do this like quarterback move where you're-- they call it combat
quarterback, right?
-Yeah.
-So you sort of pause the action and then you move basically, a cursor to anywhere in the map.
So if you want a guy to flank to the right, flank to the left, you assign these guys to go do that.
So, it's really kinda cool in that regard because they-- it's also responsive and it really makes sense when you're playing it.
It's a little intimidating in the beginning because you're sort of given a lot of responsibility and a lot of options at once.
And I just want people to know that this is not a game where you could
just go and guns blazing.
You're gonna get wrecked.
You're gonna get messed up real nice.
You gotta be tactical and you gotta be strategic and you gotta really plan out your attack, you know, from the beginning.
So, you know, there's an interesting sort of element I really like the era it's taking place in that 60 sort of environment where--
-Everyone's wearing jeans and plan holes.
-Well, it was like, those guys like the suspenders and they're just like-- they just looked like they are the mad men.
-Yeah.
-You know what I mean?
It sorta like mad men meets American harsh story in the sense that it's got that 60 sensibility.
Jack [unk] against this really bizarre, paranormal alien invasion.
So I think there's a lot that people are gonna dig with that.
-And when does this coming out?
-This comes out August 28th.
-August 28th--
-August 28th for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and the PC.
