XCOM’s single-save “Iron Man” mode announced

This one goes out to all those cynical, 30-something gamers who can’t have a conversation about gaming without reminding everybody else how much better games used to be when “hardcore” meant “GAME OVER, LOL”.

According to the game’s lead designer, Jake Solomon, Firaxis’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown remake will include an authentically hardcore “Iron Man” mode, featuring only a single save slot and no quicksaves. That’s so butch.

“A lot of players, we like to play Iron Man and so it’s something we want to actually systemically enable where if you say I want to play this game in Iron Man then you’ve only got one save slot and all auto saves and all your saves go to that slot – and the only thing you can do is save and exit,” he told Rock Paper Shotgun.

“Of course, you get to some point where if you lose too much, I’ll give you the option, I’ll say ‘do you want to turn off Iron Man’, you know, ‘Are you done? Do you want to turn off Iron Man and continue to play normally?'”

He also confirmed that, while it’s unlikely the player can end up in a no-win situation, it can get close. Very close, and even close enough that there’s no real difference.

“I think that the player can recover at any point, but it would require significant amounts of skill,” Solomon explained.

“It’s definitely a game you can lose, I mean that’s certainly important. X-COM is a game that you can lose on the strategic level – I mean, when you lose on the tactical level you’re not going to lose the game just because you lost a combat mission but that’s going to have repercussions of course, countries around the world are not going to be thrilled and the player has to deal with that.

“And certainly on the strategic level, the player is always teetering on the edge of that global war and there is absolutely ways the player can lose the global war. We don’t want a long death cycle but it is the sort of thing where a player can make choices and it can be challenging to the point where, yes, you can absolutely lose the game on the strategic level.”

Game’s out sometime later this year. In the meantime, there’s always BioShock: Infinite’s 1999 mode to keep you at a competitive edge.