It has been 20 years since Resident Evil 2 was released. The game is considered by many to be one of the best that the franchise has to offer despite its rocky development process. The original version of the game, now colloquially known as Resident Evil 1.5 was scrapped at about 70% complete nearly a…
With the exception of aliens, Julian Gollop’s strategy game, UFO: Enemy Unknown has absolutely no gameplay commonalities with Eugene Jarvis’s arcade side-scrolling magnum opus, Defender. The games both touch on a primal emotion however, defense against the unknown and fear itself. UFO: Enemy Unknown, or as most would eventually know it: X-Com: UFO Defense was the result of an iterative development process for Julian Gollop and his brother Nick, spanning a decade of prior work, and the game kicked off a cherished, though oft-mishandled franchise. Today we are going to journey through the history of the X-Com franchise, beginning with Julian Gollop’s earliest inspirations and works, through the original series, up to the War of the Chosen. Welcome to Arcadology: The History of XCOM.
A lot of games try to take on the ‘theatre of war’ and they never quite seem to nail it. They never have that moment where there’s a long stand-off between opposing forces as troops hunker down behind cover waiting for the inevitable ‘big push’ from the other side. That anxious space of time that…
Why did Resident Evil work? It’s not an unfair question. While many agree that it was Resident Evil 2 that turned the franchise into the powerhouse that it is today it required the success of the first game in order to happen- a game that has been released several different times and remastered. Twice! By…
