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Julian Gollop, the Bulgaria-based designed best known for creating the original XCOM game, has just launched a Kickstarter for a new "wizard tactics" game called Chaos Reborn.Read more...

Julian Gollop, the creator of the 1994 PC and Amiga strategy game X-COM: UFO Defense, launched a Kickstarter campaign this week for his next trek in the turn-based genre, Chaos Reborn. An update to one of his other classics, Chaos: The Battle of Wizards, Chaos Reborn will have players customizing and leveling-up wizards before entering a battle arena with up to five others. Gollop is seeking $180,000 by April 17 to fund the game's production, and is expecting to launch it on PC, Mac and Linux by spring 2015.

The game was first announced in November 2012 and was later detailed in January. Joystiq went hands-on with a prototype version of Chaos Reborn earlier this month, discussing the game with Gollop in a special Twitch livestream. Those that pledge at least $20 to the crowdfunding campaign will receive a digital copy of the strategy game, and backers will receive the multiplayer prototype version within two to three months of the campaign's conclusion. [Image: Julian Gollop]

Attention XCOM Fans: Check out this very cool PC Gamer breakdown of Zemalf's incredible impossible-difficulty Ironman run in XCOM: Enemy Within. The guy made it through the entire game on its highest difficulty with no saves and zero casualties of any sort. Zero.Read more...

Today, apparently, is Opposite Day. OK. XCOM is celebrating by giving you cover art featuring those bastard-ass traitors EXALT from XCOM: Enemy Within. Don't download it here.Read more...

This should come as little surprise to consistent Steam users, but the digital distribution platform is holding a sale on some video games over the weekend. Italics.

A smattering of tempting deals are lined up right now, starting with The Bureau: XCOM Declassified for under $12.50 (and also now available for Mac). Episodic crime adventure series The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief is also part of this weekend's deals and on sale for $6.24. A digital deluxe version, including the game's soundtrack and other digital goodies, is on sale for $7.50. Coffee Stain Studios' tower-defense shooter hybrid Sanctum 2 is free to play this weekend and only $2.24 if you want to buy.

Free to play game Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign is holding a sale on three booster packs, each unlocking various characters in the puzzle offshoot. Early Access dungeon crawler The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is down to $13.39. These deals will last for varying lengths - some games you've only got 48 hours to grab, while others are cheap until January 27 - so if you're interested, boot up your Steam client and give 'em a gander.

Julian Gollop, the original creator of 1994 PC and Amiga strategy game X-COM: UFO Defense, will launch a Kickstarter project for the resurgence of another strategic game early this year. Titled Chaos Reborn, the game is described as an update to one of Gollop's other classic games, Chaos: The Battle of Wizards.

First announced in November 2012, Chaos Reborn will fit into the turn-based strategy genre, which tended to have plenty of success on Kickstarter last year. The game will include "strong RPG elements" as well as "extensive multiplayer and single player options," according to the description on its Prefundia page. The single-player mode has players customizing their wizards and leveling them up through trials in the "Realms of Chaos," acquiring new equipment and treasures along the way before partaking in arena-style battles for up to six players. The 3D arenas will be procedurally-generated, and the leaderboard and tournament-speckled battles will be both live and asynchronous. Gollop also promised a guild and item trading system, in addition to cooperative multiplayer modes.

Gollop said the 1985 ZX Spectrum game "stands out as a game with unrealized potential" of all the projects he's credited on in his 30-year development history. "I have spent the last year working on Chaos Reborn, writing the game design, creating a playable prototype and building my team," Gollop added, assuring prospective backers that he intends to complete the project "within a year."

Chaos Reborn's development is targeted at PC, Mac and Linux. The development team currently has a functional prototype of the game's multiplayer working, though it uses placeholder art, so backers can expect it to look much different in the coming months. Gollop's Prefundia page noted a target window for the Kickstarter project next month, though it's unclear just when it will launch.

Steam's Thin Wallets 2013 Campaign holiday sale continues today with a fresh batch of discounted games you surely have time to play. For the next 24 hours, the Darksiders series, season pass and all, is available for $9.99. Sleeping Dogs is down to $4.99, season passes for Telltale's The Wolf Among Us are $16.74, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 is $4.99. The current batch of Flash sales will expire at 9 pm EST, but until then you can snatch up The Binding of Isaac for $1.24, XCOM: Enemy Unkown for $9.99, or Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut for $4.99.

If you're looking to play on consoles, Square-Enix's online store is offering 50 percent off select games with an ongoing holiday sale. 360 and PS3 copies of Sleeping Dogs are $14.99. If you're okay with passing up on features included in the more recent Director's Cut, 360 and PS3 copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution Augmented Edition are also $14.99. You can also get ready for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII with 360 or PS3 copies of Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIII-2 for $10 apiece.

Lastly, Target's recent credit card data breach has resulted in many of their in-store items being marked 10 percent off this weekend. Combined with their weeklong sale on 3DS XLs, that means you can pick up a 3DS XL today at Target for $135. If you don't have a 3DS yet, you might want to consider 2013's contributions to its lineup.

Update: This article has been updated to reflect a change in pricing for season passes of The Wolf Among Us, which are now offered for $16.74.

XCOM: Enemy Within hits digital shelves tomorrow, but you can take 33% off its price using code GMG25-C5729-7SY25 over at GreenManGaming. [GreenManGaming]Read more...

I did an exceptionally silly thing. I bought one of Microsoft’s terribly expensive laptop/tablet hybrids, the Surface Pro 2. Upon realising how silly this was, because it’s hardly got much gameability and I can’t ever upgrade it, I returned it. That wasn’t the exceptionally silly thing, though. That happened when I realised how much I missed the Surface, so two days later I went out and bought another one. From a different shop, of course – I couldn’t have faced the look on the salesperson’s face otherwise.

I am pleased, if slightly guilt-wracked, to report that I am now sticking with my purchasing decision. Which also means I’m in a situation to tell you whether this attempt to crossbreed faithful old Mr PC with flighty young Ms Tablet has been successful, from the point of view of someone who primarily uses their computer for the pursuit of entertainment.(more…)

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified developer 2K Marin has been hit with layoffs. The game launched in August, with downloadable content having arrived just a few weeks ago.

A 2K representative told Game Informer, "We can confirm staff reductions at 2K Marin. While these were difficult decisions, we regularly evaluate our development efforts and have decided to reallocate creative resources. Our goal to create world-class video game titles remains unchanged."

We've reached out to 2K for more information.

Dan and Steve break down the latest intel on the upcoming expansion to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, including the traitorous Exalt and a potential attack on the XCOM base itself!

If we can't see Council Man himself rolling up his sleeves and throwing the hell down, then Central Officer Bradford pistol whipping some bastard-ass traitor in XCOM: Enemy Within will have to do. Read more...

XCOM: Enemy Within escalates the alien invasion, introducing body modification, sky-squids and Mechtoids. After seeing the initial reveal at Gamescom, I was eager to try the expansion before release, but when I had the chance last week, I hadn’t expected to see humanity turning on itself. XCOM have encountered a new threat and this one originates much closer to home.

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The Bureau: XCOM Declassified regroups on the Xbox 360 with its first new downloadable missions, which will be exclusive to that platform. In it, players will explore events before the extraterrestrial attack on Groom Range that kicked off the main game's story.Read more...

The first DLC for The Bureau: XCOM Declassified will be uncovered next week, available exclusively on Xbox 360 as detailed previously. 2K Games will make The 'Hangar 6 R&D' DLC available to the public on Tuesday, October 8, priced $5 on the Xbox Games Store.

The DLC stars Agent Nico DaSilva as the protagonist rather than Agent Carter, taking place shortly before the events of the main game. DaSilva volunteered to be a part of a psychic experiment program at 'Hangar 6' - sometimes you just need the money.

As DLC lead designer Harley White-Wiedow notes, Hangar 6 R&D raises the difficulty level, but aims to balance this with abilities based on the 'Signal and Beyond' level in the game. Also introduced is the delicious-sounding Microwave Gun, along with a new AK-47.

The 30 new achievements for XCOM: Enemy Within—the expansion for last year's XCOM: Enemy Unknown—slipped out to Steam a couple of weeks ago, but only now have I noticed what they describe. From the list, we can assume that a Base Defense mission is returning to the series.Read more...

It figures that right after I write my hands-on preview of XCOM: Enemy Within, Firaxis would then release the video of its PAX closed-doors demonstration. (Video during my playthrough was forbidden.) Well, it's worth the double-dip, because you can see some things I forgot to mention.Read more...

You'd think being given not one, but two hulking mecha-soldiers, for whom cover is a moot point because they can't use it, would at least reduce the relentless battlefield tension that distinguishes XCOM. It doesn't.Read more...

I’m fairly sure that this is the most shooty-bangy XCOM trailer that I’ve ever seen. It’s far more energetic and noisy than the videos for the never-born FPS ever managed to be, and if I didn’t know anything about Enemy Unknown, I’d assume this was an advert for some kind of third-person alien-punching game. There’s even a bit at the end that has two mechanical monstrosities punching each other, as if this were Revenge Of The Rise Of The Robots, the sequel that nobody wanted. Has a trailer for a turn-based game of tactics and base-building ever before featured such blatant pandering to the robot fight fan demographic? Not to my knowledge. I’m very much looking forward to playing the expansion, mind.

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At the beginning of the latest video for XCOM: Enemy Within you can see some hideous tentacled thing that turns invisible and sneaks up on a lone soldier to strangle him, facehugger-style. That's a Seeker, and its original concept looked even more dreadful.Read more...

I’ve been watching the skies, waiting for news about XCOM: Expansion Unknown ever since the first teaser trailer landed. Turns out I would have been wiser watching my inbox instead because that’s where I found an invitation to speak to Firaxis about the Enemy Within expansion at Gamescom. I spent half an hour with senior games designer Anand Gupta. As well as details on the contents of the expansion, we talked about the theme of the game, Lovecraftian possibilities and moral choices. Oh, and base invasions. Then Gupta casually mentioned that it’s possible to rip out a soldier’s heart.

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In an early mission of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, a deer clattered across the pavement of a wrecked college town's main drag as I took my orders. It paused and looked at me, and I at it. Even before this invasion, that deer's world was under constant threat from death-dealing technology beyond its comprehension. What might it be thinking? I wondered. Am I really any different from these aliens?Read more...

Agent William Carter peeks around a backyard wall, surrounded by the buoyant remains of a scattered birthday party. Straight-faced in an evacuated 1960s suburbia, he is the man who shouts against the alien invasion on America's porch. "Draw their fire!" he tells his two colleagues in arms. "Put a mine there!" And finally, with a bold pose and a deep cache of air in his lungs, he screams the scream that won the war: "DEPLOYING BLOB!"

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is a game about shooting aliens, coordinating offense under duress and, in some cases, deploying blobs in a tactical fashion. As a dapper CIA agent and pragmatic not-on-MY-watch type, William Carter rejects the lexicon of XCOM, a secret organization that now finds its Cold War paranoia rerouted to deflect "The Outsiders," slender grey men from outer space. Carter's blob is actually a "silacoid," a mercurial pet formed from magnetically bound lumps of inky material. The scientists back at HQ delight in describing its fascinating properties and how they repurposed it from our would-be conquerers, but to Carter it's just a roving tool meant to distract enemies in battle. (The alternative sound bite on this order is "Blob out!" which sounds like an instruction to lie in bed and inhale a gallon of Ben and Jerry's.)

Carter's role in the action itself is to anchor your strategies, and that's what makes The Bureau a more arresting third-person shooter. There's the usual knee-high detritus that serves as cover in firefights, the pop-and-shoot gunplay, the evasive roll - and you've gotta have a melee attack, so Carter gets a huge electric bracelet that looks like it stuck after he punched through a desktop computer.

Survive. Adapt. Win. And look suitably smart when you do. The Bureau: XCOM Declassified suits up on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC this week; check back soon for our thoughts on 2K Marin's mixture of XCOM strategy, first-person shooting, and 1960s style.

I propose a new rule: no releasing "launch" trailers until the game has actually launched. Now I have to watch this over and over again until The Bureau: XCOM Declassified actually launches, which is tomorrow. Hmph. Read more...

What is the XCOM agent chasing?

Who is the XCOM agent talking to?

The bottle or the gun?

Video game permadeath is not a concept unique to XCOM but it has, perhaps, its most visceral application in that series. Like its predecessors, if one of your men die in The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, that is it. He is gone for good. This can be a tragedy. Or, in the case of this video, a comedy.Read more...

The latest trailer for The Bureau: XCOM Declassified takes a lighthearted approach to the clandestine organization's permadeath philosophy. See, other secret organizations, like MI6, believe "you only live twice." XCOM is all about the YOLO.