Version:
openxcom 1.0
;
Genre: Turn Based Strategy;
Release
date: 31-Dec-1993 ;
Game progression: finished (2014) ;
Difficulty played: Impossible/Ironman ;
Overview:
You are in control of X-COM: an organization formed by the world's governments to fight the ever-increasing alien menace.
Features:
- Command deadly close-combat battles
Shooting down UFOs is just the beginning: you must then lead a squad of heavily-armed soldiers across different terrains as they investigate the UFO crash site. Tackle the aliens with automatic rifles, rocket launchers, and even tanks in the struggle to retrieve useful technology, weapons or life forms.
- Research and manufacture alien technologies
Successful ground assault missions will allow X-COM scientists to analyze alien items. Each new breakthrough brings you a little closer to understanding the technology and culture of the alien races. Once you have sufficient research data on the UFO's superior weapons and crafts, you'll be able to manufacture weapons of equal capability.
- Develop a strategy to save the Earth
You must make every crucial decision as you combat the powerful alien forces. But you'll also need to watch the world political situation: governments may be forced into secret pacts with the aliens and then begin to reduce X-COM funding.
Story:
"It is the year 1999. Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have started appearing with disturbing regularity in the night skies. Reports of violent human abductions and horrific experimentation have struck terror into the hearts of millions. Mass public hysteria has only served to expose Earth's impotence against a vastly superior technology.
Many countries have attempted to deal independently with the aliens. In August 1998, Japan established an anti-alien combat force, the Kiryu-Kai. Equipped with Japanese made fighter aircraft, the Kiryu-Kai certainly looked like a powerful force, however after 5 months of expensive operations they had yet to intercept their first UFO. The lesson was clear: this was a worldwide problem which could not be dealt with by individual countries.
On December 11th 1998, representatives from the world's most economically powerful countries gathered secretly in Geneva. After much debate, the decision was made to establish a covert, independent body to combat, investigate and defeat the alien threat. This organisation would be equipped with the world's finest pilots, soldiers, scientists and engineers, working together as one multi-national force.
This organisation was named the Extraterrestrial Combat unit."
Also known as UFO Enemy Unknown. The original (1994) was super buggy and nearly unplayable on newer systems, but thanks to these guys (the people working on the openxcom project) the game is now playable and with lots of bug fixes.
The game is pretty unbalanced and exploitable, here are a few tips:
- Don't exit the craft in the first turn as the aliens, that have visual on you, will have full AP and will likely reaction fire.
- Always have the maximum number of soldiers in the landing craft (while this might be obvious, I saw people that don't do this, usually the same kind of people that spend all the APs exploring instead of having some AP for reaction fire or retreat).
- Put the most expandable soldiers closer to the exit of the landing craft because the first ones out are the likeliest to get killed.
- Don't hurry, especially getting your troops out of the landing craft.
- Advance slowly, only extend yourself when you have an alien’s location and you can kill it because you don't want it to have a full turn while you are in sight. Expanding on this, try to kill all the aliens that you see in the same turn that you see them; that's why it's usually best to advance slowly (to have lots of APs) and have lots of soldiers (and implicitly firepower).
- You should use scouts (~rookies) that at the start of the turn will try to advance but also retreat at the end. This way you'll create a buffer and decrease the chance of enemies sneaking close enough to the rest of your (more valuable) soldiers.
- Exploit: After turn 20 the aliens are generally going to come and try to find you, useful for landed/crashed UFOs.
- A very good starting location is in west Lebanon so that you will have cover over Europe and a lot of the downed UFOs could be in North Africa where the desert maps are pretty smooth.
- The beginning (or better said the first half of the game) is going to be pretty brutal, use all the force that you can and don't shy away from explosives and leveling buildings even preemptively in some cases.
Pros: great feeling, nice combination of tactical game, researching stuff and base building while under pressure to survive.
Cons: exploitable, unbalanced, bad spotting/FOV mechanic, you see as much as the aliens only in full light which will lead to a lot of frustration.
Rating: now, we are prodding *them*!
Recommendation: only if you are into this kind of games and you can tolerate/like the graphics.
Article
date: 21-Mar-2015
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