Okay, look. When I was... I think it was eight? Six?
Really young, anyway.
When I was really young I remember, vividly, watching television and seeing a commercial for some Consumer Reports type thing, I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually Consumer Reports, but something that lists products by quality. And I remember a tagline, "We sort products by the most reliable something something whatever... by brand name."
It didn't actually say something something whatever. It used coherent language. But "...by brand name" was the tagline.
I remember this vividly because I remember hearing that, and even at six, or eight, or whatever, thinking "That's bullshit. There's no way sorting by brand name is going to make for a sufficiently accurate quality metric. Different companies excel in different areas. You're selling me something." I didn't use those words exactly, but that's what I thought.
My parents were hippies. They taught me at a young age that anyone trying to sell me something is my enemy.
(Growing up a bit more I've come to realize that's not the best way to look at the world in all contexts, but it's still my default filter.)
2K is making an X-Com FPS. I am supposed to be excited by this because X-Com was great, so X-Com as an FPS should be great. But there's no reason why that should hold true! Just because X-Com was a great isometric base-building-and-squad-tactics game at some point in the past doesn't mean it'll make a great FPS now. 2K marketing guys, whichever one of you wrote the press release you have to know that you're insulting my intelligence by presenting such a facile argument. And, I mean, I know, you're a press release writer. You have to write something. Drawing on the power of established brands to pitch your new product is a tried-and-tested marketing technique and it works. I get it.
None of that matters. You're selling me something. In particular you're selling me bullshit and absent logic. I'm not buying it.
I will give this FPS a fair shake. I'm sure the people who actually are making it want to make a good product. I won't hold the stupid, insulting press release against the game. But it is a stupid and insulting press release and it's not exactly making me better-disposed towards the products.
At least put a picture of a Chrissalid in there.
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That's bullshit. There's no way sorting by brand name is going to make for a sufficiently accurate quality metric.
You know this. I know this. But this is one of those nasty little issues where some people simply prefer to forget the facts, because reality is less fun than fantasy.
Put another way, people care about superficial appearances. This is why people put giant chromed mufflers and VTEC stickers on Chrysler Neons: John Q. Chav doesn't really believe a giant TYPE-R stencil across the windshield of his Focus will make it go any faster, but he thinks it will make it look faster, and that's what he cares about.
(This makes sense, from an evolutionary perspective. For most of our history, encountering a thing that looked like a stalking tiger probably meant it was an actual stalking tiger. The optimal response would be to treat it like a tiger, and run like Hell. Those who paused to contemplate whether it held the actual, and not merely apparent, characteristics of a tiger tended to leave fewer descendants.)
I'm particularly puzzled about why anybody would think the X-COM brand would apply to first-person shooters. The X-COM series is noted for producing a really excellent tactical combat game, a slightly less excellent tactical combat game, and then a series of disappointing meanderings through other genres, none of them particularly excellent. "An X-COM FPS" sounds about as promising to me as "a car manufactured at McDonald's."
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