X-COM: UFO Defense
I'm slowly reviewing all my steam games and I've gotten up to X-COM: UFO Defense.
I first played this game way back in high school then it was set a bit into the future.. Back then it wasn't cutting edge, but it was one of the better tactical games out there. Turn based, it let arm chair generals like myself take all the time they wanted to do each move. (I was enough of a min/maxer I would save the game at the start of each mission and if something went wrong on the mission restart it.) It was a great deal of fun and a very memerable game.
Fond memories like mine are why the new XCOM game being a first person shooter set in the 50's is not getting the warm welcome those who bought the name thought.
Being an early 90's game it didn't have a lot of different visual elements. Your team of alien hunters all look very similar, compounded by having two of the three different types of armour when worn all the same. About eight different types of aliens exist and you can see what type of gun each one is holding. But you cannot tell by looking if the alien is dead or just knocked out.
It's also a very hard game. Without cheating, it isn't possible to stop all the alien attacks. This was done for plot reasons (spoiler as you have to raid an alien base on earth to proceed at one point and the base only gets set up if a human nation joins with the aliens out of fear.) In fact you will not be able to do a mission (especially in the beginning) without taking losses. To a lot of fans this difficultly was part of the attractiveness.
Even back in the 90's there was a cheat available for it, a save game editer that allows you to adjust the stats on your team up to superhuman and unlimited cash and resources. As I point out above doing this will actually harm you, as the story will head end. I've been playing it as an adult without cheating and I am impressed at how the younger me did it.
I've got 7 hours on the record for this current playthrough and I've still got at least 30 hours to go to finish the game. This game is the best of the x-com series and at less then 2$ was worth it.
I first played this game way back in high school then it was set a bit into the future.. Back then it wasn't cutting edge, but it was one of the better tactical games out there. Turn based, it let arm chair generals like myself take all the time they wanted to do each move. (I was enough of a min/maxer I would save the game at the start of each mission and if something went wrong on the mission restart it.) It was a great deal of fun and a very memerable game.
Fond memories like mine are why the new XCOM game being a first person shooter set in the 50's is not getting the warm welcome those who bought the name thought.
Being an early 90's game it didn't have a lot of different visual elements. Your team of alien hunters all look very similar, compounded by having two of the three different types of armour when worn all the same. About eight different types of aliens exist and you can see what type of gun each one is holding. But you cannot tell by looking if the alien is dead or just knocked out.
It's also a very hard game. Without cheating, it isn't possible to stop all the alien attacks. This was done for plot reasons (spoiler as you have to raid an alien base on earth to proceed at one point and the base only gets set up if a human nation joins with the aliens out of fear.) In fact you will not be able to do a mission (especially in the beginning) without taking losses. To a lot of fans this difficultly was part of the attractiveness.
Even back in the 90's there was a cheat available for it, a save game editer that allows you to adjust the stats on your team up to superhuman and unlimited cash and resources. As I point out above doing this will actually harm you, as the story will head end. I've been playing it as an adult without cheating and I am impressed at how the younger me did it.
I've got 7 hours on the record for this current playthrough and I've still got at least 30 hours to go to finish the game. This game is the best of the x-com series and at less then 2$ was worth it.