I will always remember X-Com as a horror franchise first and foremost. It was a very visceral urban combat environment, blessed with a board game’s sense of squad morale. Your mates "D6"’d into berserk enough to cause spectacle with side splitting regularity.
One of my favorite strategies was to accept the absolute worst rejects from the academy and strip them of all equipment for fleet of footness reasons (except for 6 flares). I'd send 4 of these condemned bastards out into the 3am blackness of a Delhi "Terror Mission", covered by multi-mission veterans with guided missile launchers camped near the landing vehicle.
These bedraggled knuckleheads would throw their flares, and if they lived long enough with the alien in its POV, the long range guys just walked their missiles in on the sectoid bastard. This "recon" squad had a high casualty rate.
Some of these unfortunates, because their stats sucked, would fumble their flares and drop them at their feet. Great lighting for whatever alien predator caused the rookie to freak out in the first place. It quickly jumps and plunges its insectoid fang down their throat, eats their brain, and sends my homie forth as a mindless zombie.
It’s weird but there were more “jump” moments for me in this turn based game than most dedicated real-time spook games. Memorable nugs surround kicking down bathroom doors in 2 story unpowered apartment complexes. Sometimes there's nothing behind this door except crossing off the 14th 1 bedroom bachelor shit-hole I’ve cleared tonight. Sometimes it's the last snivelling sectoid geek who blows away my star quarterback doing something you knew you should have tasked to a "recon" dreg.
I think a title that pushed the splatter angle, kept the contemporary setting, and made a real-time Starship Troopers/Robocop visual quality come alive, could be huge, whatever the genre. I want to play that experience in this gen.
