New XCOM remake in the works

I discovered a rather exciting new UFO: Enemy Unknown remake project a few days ago called UFO: The Two Sides. What makes UFO:TTS  different from previous remakes is that the team are aiming not just on reimplementing the fantastic gameplay mechanics of the original but extending the possibilities with online multiplayer.

Multiplayer remakes of UFO: Enemy Unknown are not new, I remember playing something called XCOM: Gladiators back in the early 2000s (gosh, yes we can now say the ‘two-thousands’ – I refuse to say naughties .. eek), a project that became known as UFO2000 – a fairly well-known and mature open source game. What separates The Two Sides from UFO2000 is simply grandeur, whilst UFO2000 sought to reimplement the turn based element of the game to allow for player vs player gaming, The Two Sides seeks to reimplement the whole game (both geoscape and battlescape) such that it can be played from either the side of the Humans (as in the original) or the Aliens. I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

The best thing however about this remake is that there are already early downloads available to play with. At the time of writing, version 0.90 was available and, whilst having a few bugs and missing functionality, is still playable and hints at some of the ideas the TTS team have in the pipeline. It has been a while since I have been excited about UFO: Enemy Unknown (or X-COM: UFO Defense as the US chaps call it) but this project has definitely rekindled my interest. I strongly recommend you get over to the UFO: The Two Sides site and check out their progress.

Image credit to the XCOM:TTS site.

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