XCOM is rebooted all over the place. Google for UFO Aftermath or UFO AI or UFO2000 or UFO... well, just about any noun phrase will probably land you somewhere.

That Bard's Tale was mostly a jab in the ribs to fantasy gaming tropes. Light-hearted, cynical, brash, and sophomoric in its humor. It did include on of the original BT games, Thief of Fate, I think, as a side-game. Just to show that the game had roots of some kind or other.

I liked the simple gameplay mechanics -- as a bard, you couldn't fight very well yourself, so you had to summon allies to help you. Different allies brought different strengths to the field, so it was a dynamic sort of rock-paper-scissors event but with many more options. Fun enough, I thought. And the story was fair enough.

If you like single player fantasy RPG, you might look into Jade Empire.

Bioware created the world themselves, so they took it in some fun directions. A bit arcady in the combat, but fun and intriguing, especially since they get away from the overwrought D&D-inspired worlds and into something fresh to these westerner's eyes.

There are about a hojillion XCOM reboots out there: some open sourced, some commercial. A common phrase is "spiritual successor." Honestly, you can't swing a dead cat on a google search without finding one.

UFO Aftermath was the start of a great series with both the strategic and tactical options, all set in a post-apocalyptic world. UFO Extraterrestrials is another. Then there's UFO2000, UFO:AI ... different games focus on different aspects of the game type.

XCOM is next in my line of reviews, so I've been gathering a ton of this information together lately. :)

Star Control II was remade into Ur Quan Masters... not a reboot with new graphics, but there is updated music and options to make it playable on any current system. I'd love a new sequel though. Go to Toys for Bob's sourceforge page and sign their petition for commercial development if you're moved to do so.

Keep an eye on http://game-central.org/ and their podcasts. Nothing set in stone as far as I know, but they're working on arranging an interview with Jason on exactly this topic.

To my delight, I recently discovered that the iLiad series of e-book readers will run Gargoyle, which plays many popular IF formats. So you can finally play your interactive fiction on your ebook reader, and the circle is complete.

Little synchronicities like that are making are harder for me to resist laying out the cash for one of those things. Even if they are cripplingly expensive.

About one triganic pu. But most markets refuse to deal with fiddling small change.

Sadly for you, the "I can't code" excuse was originally licensed under BSD. The rest of us really appreciate it, though.

The long tail for games is doing just fine, thanks. Digital distribution has cracked open the vaults, and tons of awesome games are available cheaply for your nostalgic pleasure.

Check out GOG.com, for example. Many great games at lot prices with no DRM foolishness. (Yup. I'm an affiliate.) It's a great time to game on the long tail.

Certainly not for free.

They may, however, be willing to charge us for it.

I wish I had some mod points -- you make a great argument.

The Heroes of Might and Magic franschise are basically hex map games. There's no real benefit to going pure 3D, having revolving viewpoints and such. In 3D, units can obscure each other, making it hard to see their real positions and put them in the right spot. Turning the map around in mid-play is disorienting. (The enemy gate is DOWN!)

The 2D map view is superior when you're playing the general, moving your men around on a map. Relationships are easier to see than in 3D, in which everything is pretty while completely obscuring the tactical realities.

In DOSBox you can bump up the resolution to 640*480 and it still looks awesome. :) They're doing great things to classic with scalers these days. Ur-Quan Masters has a nice array of scaling options too, for you Star Control II fans.

"Nobody plays Silent Hill for super-innovative gameplay."

Ain't *that* the truth.

I'd love to have a survival horror game that -does- innovate gameplay and not rely on zippy OMG ITS SO DRIPPY AND JAWFUL graphics.

I had great hopes for Call of Cthulhu, especially given the major trope of Lovecraft's monsters: you never really get to see them. I'd hoped for something more psychological and uncanny. Instead, it still came down to "look how many polygons we can render on a Great Old One -- and you can count them because he's right there in plain sight." Bah.

Apparently my kind of thinking just bounces off the shiny, radiosity-enhanced, antialiased, ansiotropic armor of game development houses these days.

Half-Life 2 hit a great balance in this regard. The visual design of the levels was so tight and distinct and appealing, yet it wasn't over the top with shine, reflectivity, particles, or any of the buzzwords.

The craftsmanship really shows in Valve's designs. It's more often a question of what they do with what they have rather than turning the knobs on the DirectX Shader/Pixel/Polygon/Whatever controls up to 11.

That was X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, I believe. And now that LucasArts is re-releasing their games catalog through Steam, there's a chance we'll see it again. I hope they update the networking code though; it was a shaky connection at best. That was over dialup, though. Nobody had cable modems or DSL back then. :)