It's no secret that 2K Games acquired the X-COM license from Atari in June of 2005 and there's been speculation ever since that the publisher was looking for a studio to work on a sequel. After a few more rumors surfaced this week, we decided to do a little more digging of our own to find out if the rumors were true. Our inside source told us, "There's not much to tell, actually, other than that it's real." Now we still don't have official confirmation that the game is being developed by the former Irrational team or to what extent, if any, Ken Levine is connected. There was apparently, at some time, discussion of assigning the project to 2K Marin but since it is hard at work on BioShock 2, that doesn't seem likely.

So what would we like to see from this new sequel? Well, first and foremost, this is we're going to have to say we'd like to see another realistically modeled tactical strategy game. But even if the developers depart from that basic format, there are some key aspects of the design that we fell are necessary to maintain continuity with the franchise. First, the overall atmosphere of an alien invasion as an imminent global threat has to be maintained. While the original game definitely rode a wave of ET paranoia in the 1990s (thanks, Chris Carter), games where aliens invade the earth seem even more popular today than they were 15 years ago.

An inside source tells IGN that a new X-Com game is underway. Rumors of a new game have existed for quite some time due to the fact that 2K acquired the X-COM license from Infogrames back in 2007. (actually, it was acquired by Take 2 in 2005, as per USPTO; Gimli)

Cults of the Wastelands Mini Expansion Pack

A new toggle exists on the options/create game screens that activates or deactivates the new Cults of the Wastelands content

The first five new games started when the Cults of the Wasteland toggle is selected will offer a unique cult that attempts to accomplish a special cult agenda while active on the map.

After the first five games the option to selecte a specific or random cult is presented

The player must eliminate the cult as well as the other AI players to win the game. Eliminating the cult results in a 100 point bonus to the player's score.

If the all the AI players are eliminated and only the Cult remains, then each turn you will receive a base of 14 Action Points plus any modifiers you are currently owed. If you initiate a battle but do not delay the resolution until the end of the turn, the turn will finish and after the battle you will continue on to the next turn with a fresh 14 Action Point base plus modifiers.

X-COM: UFO Defense (aka UFO: Enemy Unknown, or often just "X-Com") is regarded as one of the all-time classic videogames. IGN rated it as the best PC game of all time in their 2007 list of favorite games. Even so, the X-Com franchise as a whole is plagued with mediocre sales, tepid reviews and general apathy from gamers who continue to rave about the original almost 15 years after its release. This strange dynamic underscores one of the great mysteries in the modern gaming world: What is X-Com's secret to success?

* Fix several vanilla crashes, out of bounds accesses, cases of memory corruption and memory leaks.
* Fix many vanilla display glitches.
* Fix vanilla mistranslations in the German and Russian translations and improve the translations.
* Fix a vanilla bug, which caused NPCs not to play their speeches in the Russian version.
* Sounds recorded at 44KHz were played with the wrong sample rate.
* Fix a vanilla bug, which bogusly allowed changing the assignment of vehicles.
* Fix a vanilla bug, which caused mercs to look in the opposite direction while performing actions and possibly ending up in the wrong spot.
* Add support for Maemo by using the menu button as modifier key to perform right clicks.