Do you know that one friend you have who you invite to play Call of Duty and then he spends every mission screaming "Where the f' am I? Where are the enemies?" until he inevitably gets shot in the back by an 8 year old gamer playing on his dad's PlayStation? That's me.
I have horrible spacial awareness. When I go to buy furniture, I literally can't picture it in my room. I have to cut out cardboard in the exact size to see if it will fit. This also means I'm terrible at directions. Before GPS, there was never a guarantee I'd make it the 1 mile from the grocery store back to my apartment. Thank god my wife knows where the hell she is going or I'd have driven off the earth long ago. Although, she's terrible with "right" and "left" and is great with "north" and "south", we'd make quite the team on The Amazing Race (and we would 100% get divorced after it). But I digress. This is a video game post.
Because I am so bad at first person shooters, I need to scratch my battle itch with Turn Based Tactics games. If you aren't aware, Wikipedia ( you know the thing people used before AI) defines them as "They are turn-based simulations of operational warfare and military tactics in generally small-scale confrontations as opposed to more strategic considerations of turn-based strategy (TBS) games. Turn-based tactical game play is characterized by the expectation of players to complete their tasks using only the combat forces provided to them in a generally realistic (or at least believable) manner. " But I define them as games where I agonize for an hour over a single move my sniper will take only to find out that the 95% chance of him hitting was all a lie and he's going to miss the alien and maybe even fall off the building and impale himself on a fence for good measure. I freaking love the strategy and tactics of these games. I have probably spent about 8760 clock hours playing various TBT games in my live (that's a a year worth of time for you math geeks).
Without a doubt, the absolute best TBT game of all time is 2016's X-Com 2 and it's expansions. I have played this game through a full 6 times since I bought it (my wife is such a lucky woman to be married to an X-Com champ like me).
That is why when my son texted me this morning I nearly crapped myself with joy (a weird way to express joy, I know). No he had not discovered that college is really free and I could again resume eating something other than canned tuna and mashed potatoes. He informed that later this week at the Star Wars Celebration in Japan, game studio Bit Reactor is going to officially announce that they will be releasing a Turn Based Tactics game set in the Star Wars universe. The only thing I love more than Turn Based games is Star Wars... oh and my wife... and my kids. Not only will this game have a Star Wars theme, the studio was started by veterans of awesome games like Civilization, Elder Scrolls, Gears of War... and XCOM!!!! So you know it is going to be very well made.
I wish I knew more about the game... but maybe getting this information doled out in small amounts over time will prevent me from entering "excited puppy mode", getting the zoomies and running into the street. What I do know is that more information will be available at The Star Wars Celebration in Japan on Saturday April 19th, rumors are swirling the game will be released in 2026 or 2027... and I am planning to quit my job in 2026 or 2027 to dedicate the appropriate amount of time to this game: all of my time.
Please don't expect any interaction from me after the game is released.
Now for the interactive part. Are there any Turn Based Tactic fans out there? What is your favorite Turn Based Tactics game?
I've actually found that as I get older I can't play FPS games like I used to. I reinstalled the updated version of HalfLife 2 the other day on my PC and I found myself getting motion sick playing it. I've only ever played two Star Wars games the first was Jedi Outcast and that was a really good game. The second was something like Galactic Battlegrounds or something like that. They basically just put a Star Wars skin on Age of Empires 2. It was an awesome game though. You could actually herd Nerfs! I'm a huge fan of the Civilization series of games. CIV III I could play over and over and never get tired of it.
Oh I remember Galactic Battlegrounds. I liked it a lot but LOVED Star Wars:Empire at War. That game was way ahead of its time.
I don't think I recall that one. There was another one that was kind of a strategy game, but I remember the controls were clunky and it wasn't very intuitive, so I gave up on it fairly quickly.
I remember attempting X-COM a bazillion years ago and failing very miserably. Decided I wasn’t smart enough for that kind of game and went back to RTS 😅
PS hope the game lives up 🙃
Thanks! I really hope it doesn't suck.