Just to save anyone else linking to wiki, here's the part of the article which lollersis is referring to and I must admit the first paragraph seems to back him up. But then you read the rest...
Quote
Reimagine or renovate
In recent years, the terms reimagine (or re-imagine) and, to a lesser extent, renovate have become popular in reference to remakes which do not closely follow the original. The terms are used by creators in the marketing of films and television shows to inform audiences that the new product is not the same as the old one. Reimaginings and renovations often contain tongue in cheek references to the original, with characters of the same name and similar concepts, while remaining significantly different from the original. In Tin Man, a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, for example, the main character is named DG, a reference to Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz, and the land she enters is called the Outer Zone (O.Z.).
The imagining of a franchise often leads to controversy within established fan communities as to which is more legitimate or more popular. There are various examples of remakes which are most associated with the reimagine or renovate terms, and these include Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, Nora Ephron's Bewitched, Marcus Nispel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th, Rob Zombie's Halloween, Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica, David Eick's Bionic Woman, Nelson McCormick's Prom Night, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, and Kenneth Johnson V. Tim Burton has denied that his 2010 film Alice in Wonderland is a renovation of Lewis Carroll's classic novel; however, the plot line of the film bears very little resemblance to the original or derivatives of it, such as the classic 1951 animated film from Walt Disney.
The reimaginging or renovation practice has also occurred within other media, such as video games and comic books. One example in gaming is Bomberman Act: Zero, a more hardcore version of Bomberman, which was not well received. Another is Bionic Commando Rearmed, which changes some elements of the game and story to fit into a sequel, while paying homage to the original. In comics, the new Sgt. Rock, with the Rock character as a member of the U.S. 442nd Infantry regiment, and the unknown "Easy Company", as well as Unknown Soldier, which takes place in Uganda in 2002, both change the character's background or setting in order for the story to be more realistic and interesting for modern readers. The term reimagine has also been applied to music releases, such as Brian Wilson Reimagines Gerswhin (Disney, 2010) and Cirque du Soleil's "Viva Elvis: The Album" (Sony Legacy, 2010).
Look at the comparisons used here and how incredibly deeply linked they are to the originals. Tin Man is a recent remake of Wizard of Oz which is discussed here. Guess what, all the characters are direct re-imaginings of their predecessors (as explained in the text above) The land of OZ is now called the O.Z and the story remains almost identical with an evil witch, flying minions, and of course the wizard... The fact that all of these aspects are altered slightly is what makes it a re-imagining and not a remake. If the characters, story and location were all different but it was called the Oz Wizard, that doesn't make it a re-imagining of the original. It just has a similar name...
Just to cover a few more of the films mentioned; Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes is very similar to it's predecessor, Nora Ephron's Bewitched features all of the same characters with a single new twist added to the old story, all of the horror films listed have identical villains and locations as the originals and so on... All of these films and many more (I'm surprised for example that King Kong wasn't listed in this wiki) share multiple references with the original imaginings and therefore are RE-imaginings. Remember, most of these films began life as books so even the original films were re-imaginings of the text...
Moving onto the ever helpful paragraph 3 I think we can quite easily employ that to put an end to this debate so thankyou for providing it to us... Enter Bomberman : Act Zero... A poorly recieved re-imagining of the old Bomberman series. In this case not too much has remained the same but the name and main character survive, which in a game like bomberman is all there really ever was!
This closes the debate in two ways. Not only does it show that a re-imagining must reuse a great deal more elements of the 'original' game or franchise than you are suggesting. IT also goes to show that these re-imaginings are often set to fail miserably in the video game industry. Because Bomberman used enough of the old bible to still be classed as a Bomberman game it's spent every waking hour being directly compared to it's predecessors and met with massive amounts of Criticism. Thankfully, XCOM is completely dissimilar to the X-Com franchise so I would hope that people can use their brains and look past the name to realise it's a completely new and totally different game, judging it on it's own merits without comparing it to the original franchise.
It's still beyond me why anyone thought that giving this X-Files/Ghostbusters FPS the name of a 20 year old isometric squad based combat game was a good idea... It is however my opinion that it will do them much more harm than good. No X-Com fans will EVER buy it because it has the XCOM name, quite possibly they'll avoid buying it for just this reason... People who aren't familiar with, or are not true fans of, the original franchise really won't be affected either way so what was the point?
Shame on you 2k, you should've known better...