X-COM Enemy Unknown FFG boardgame.

Eh, with the current state of the market, the app will only need to be around for a year or three at most before everyone forgets about it, unless it turns into a surprise huge hit like Arkham Horror.

Just think of how much fun we'll have in ten years when we're in the midst of the Ameritrash Re-re-re-reclamation Project Mk V: We Don't Need No Steenking Cubes. Someone will mention this game as one of the underrated gems of its time, we'll spend a bunch of effort hunting it down, then coming up with homebrew ways of getting the app or printing out cards and reference sheets to take its place. It'll be awesome!

Until today, I was never able to completely pin down my idea of Personal Boardgaming Hell, but now I know: busy, cluttered FFG Pandemic ripoff with x arbitrary video game license and mandatory smartphone app probably comes pretty close.

Balls to this.

Like Barnes says, the best part is missing, and whatayaknow, we've got a great little game called Space Hulk that covers that territory perfectly.

I wouldn't be surprised to see alternative versions of the app published by the digit-heads that own this game (presuming it's good), so I don't think the ability to play it is going to disappear anytime soon. Seriously, basic apps are pretty easy to put together as long as you aren't concerned about having a Dancing Jesus on the bottom on it.

I think it's a neat idea, and long overdue. The game could change and be used in an ongoing narrative, or be static and leave the bookkeeping and shuffling to the device. It still has to be good of course, but conceptually I think it's something that should have happened a long time ago.

S.

Space Hulk is a long way from filling the Tactical XCom niche

Bull Nakano wrote: (which I don't know how long is)

1-2 hours according to publisher.

In order for me to buy another cooperative game, it had better do something nothing else in my collection does. Pandemic does 'trouble spots on a map' better than anything else. Gears of War is my shooty miniatures game. Flash Point: Fire Rescue has lots of extras to customize the fire scenario you want to battle. The Dungeons & Dragons adventure games (Ravenloft, Ashardalon, Drizzt) are my dungeon crawlers. There's no shortage of real-time cooperatives if that's your thing.

Maybe XCOM is some mix of the above, a real-time map-based miniatures… thing. I dunno, might be good, might just be okay. I don't think it will suck, FFG is usually pretty good when it comes to license games.

lj1983 wrote: Space Hulk is a long way from filling the Tactical XCom niche

You can't be serious with this statement.

Space Hulk or any of its ilk (Earth Reborn, Incursion, etc) is as close to the X-Com tactical combat as you'll ever get in a board game (not counting minis games). ER probably come closest.

Space Ghost wrote: Galaxy defendrs isn't really the paragon on boardgame design

I dunno, I think GD is pretty damn awesome.

I think it sounds very innovative. But that doesn't mean it will be good. It looks kind of like shit.

I will admit it has that "come for the huge portions!" sort of look to it.

There's a website too so that would be even easier to keep up to date, so I'm not too concerned about access or availability disappearing anytime soon.

The rub for me is that an app or just about any electronic assistance isn't a selling point for me, the opposite in fact.

What usually impresses me the most is when a designer is able to take a fairly complex environment or interaction and manages to abstract it in a way that makes it playable and also accessible. Here, making the computer do all the work, feels like a cop out...And I'd argue lazy design.

Josh Look wrote:

lj1983 wrote: Space Hulk is a long way from filling the Tactical XCom niche

You can't be serious with this statement.

Space Hulk or any of its ilk (Earth Reborn, Incursion, etc) is as close to the X-Com tactical combat as you'll ever get in a board game (not counting minis games). ER probably come closest.

I am. Space Hulk and its miles of corridors has very little to do with the generally open maps and freedom of movement that's a huge part of XCOM. ER i can buy. its much closer with all the options, even if genestealers feel like a better analogue to some of the alien types.

Hm. I'm kind of mixed. I've never played the video game but I don't mind the idea of an app providing some input. Yes, it's a way around innovative cardboard AI design, but if it makes the game work in a cool way, why not? Apps are in everything these days and the suggestion that "you can't be sure if whatever the app is on can maintain a charge through the whole game" is about as Luddite a suggestion as I've ever heard here. Seriously? Are you honestly trying to say that the geek set that buys and plays these games somehow won't have a smartphone or twelve nearby when trying to play it? Who brings games like XCOM to play with the family on the month-long camping trip to Banff? And, yes, the board looks busy. Welcome to Ameritrash, everybody! You've all seen Arkham Horror's board.

What doesn't really sell me is a) theme, which is kind of old and tired; and b) the cooperative nature, which I just can't get into anymore. Maybe the app provides enough bells, whistles, and consequent tension to make it worthwhile, but I've left co-ops way behind and can't see myself going back to them at this point. I want to compete against other humans, not the game.

It's going to be some silly thing that basically replaces a card deck...probably some badly acted voice-overs telling you to put alien counters in Brazil and raise the panic level. Maybe a klaxon and flashing lights.

I would have been much more excited about an "app-enhanced" game three or four years ago when I was talking about things like that as a possible future for innovation. But that was three or four years ago when that seemed like it could be something fresh and new. At this point, I don't really care about it, and the potential novelty of it is gone. I can play a full game of Pandemic on the tablet, or use the tablet as a deck of cards for this game. That costs 10 times what the Pandemic app costs.

And frankly, the whack-a-mole co-op design is actually getting to be quite old fashioned. The description for the gameplay sounds very 2009 to me.

Honestly, it's kind of sad to see FFG's first-party/non-reprint/non-serial designs floundering. I can't remember the last time they put out a completely new in-house design that was worth looking at. They're still doing some great reprints, expansions and iterations of older designs (like Diskwars and X-Wing), but I think their glory days as a design house are fading into the past. After just three major releases Gale Force 9 is blowing them out of the water in terms of licensed games like this.