X-COM

I love the original X-com and take it for a spin every few years.<p>By far the greatest thing original X-com had was the sense of mystery and dread of the unknown on your first playthrough. You didn&#x27;t know what lies ahead, you didn&#x27;t know what technologies to research, and how to do what. New aliens were catching you by surprise all the time, and Chrysalids, god, they were so so scary. When I got to flying armor my guys never walked again, just because of these guys.<p>I actually even liked the immediate sequel, because it added difficulty and stuff. If only it wasn&#x27;t this last alien syndrome...<p>The reboot was a letdown for me. Underground base-hive was gorgeous, but I lacked the freedom of roaming the globe and sending patrol aircraft in different directions, locating bases that I knew were somewhere out there... It felt like I&#x27;m railroaded on a fixed path, instead of slowly finding out the clues on my own.<p>The second X-Com 2 was a step better for me, and I liked the feeling of being a scrappy resistance fighter, and all resource and time constraints made a lot more sense in that context. I actually managed to beat X-Com 2 in Ironman mode on Commander difficulty <i>without losing any soldier</i>, and THAT was a major feat, I tell you. Ironman adds a lot to the game, you can&#x27;t savescum from a risky missed shot, and actually start to be really afraid for your guys.

Ha! One of my preferred games. There is a fun anecdote coming from another of my fav games, Diablo 1:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gamasutra.com&#x2F;view&#x2F;news&#x2F;268507&#x2F;20_years_later_David_Brevik_shares_the_story_of_making_Diablo.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gamasutra.com&#x2F;view&#x2F;news&#x2F;268507&#x2F;20_years_later_Da...</a><p>&gt; “We were very excited, so we signed a contract to do Diablo,” remembers Brevik. The studio then had to figure out what, exactly, this turn-based isometric game it had been thinking about for so long would actually look like -- and how it would be angled and rendered on-screen. “This was not easy back then...I kind of took a screengrab of X-Com, and we just took that, and put it right into Diablo,” said Brevik. “So the actual tile-square basis -- the same shape and size -- is exactly the same in X-Com and Diablo.” So in a sense, says Brevik, the look and technology of Diablo is all based directly on a screenshot of X-Com.<p>So, x-com heavily influenced Diablo. In retrospect it makes sense - X-com tile based world, and lightning was pretty unique.

Even greater than UFO Defense, in my opinion, was its expansion - <i>Terror From the Deep</i>.<p>It truly taught me that our oceans are so close, yet much farther than outer space can ever be. Looking at that lone blue globe in space always makes me feel so insignificant, so meaningless. Space is vast, but empty, and sterile. Down the abyss, not even light can shine to bless and purify.<p>The greatest contributor to that is certainly its soundtrack. With its unnerving, relentless low horns; harps hitting on the same two or three notes; there&#x27;s a feeling of utter despair, hopelessness. A sense of doom, as aquanauts armed with teeny darts and harpoons grunt through the deaths of their colleagues, outmatched by opponents so unfairly superior, in the harshest environment on Earth. They couldn&#x27;t have done a better job.<p>I have been working on a new &quot;HD&quot; soundtrack for TFTD that I plan to release as a mod for OpenXCOM (this article is great timing!). I am not finished yet, but you can listen to some of the tracks already (and download them if you wish):<p>• Geoscape 1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;b3wf24qt?token=1171341361084200df1e81a5699dda4c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;b3wf24qt?token=1171341361084200df1e81a5699dd...</a><p>• Geoscape 2: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;4qog1dq1?token=91b0b871435a3beac898f96cec945946" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;4qog1dq1?token=91b0b871435a3beac898f96cec945...</a><p>• Geoscape 3: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;cr2uakoj?token=f1e0cda592185ae0152d47bf70a9dc99" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;cr2uakoj?token=f1e0cda592185ae0152d47bf70a9d...</a><p>• Geoscape 4: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;cf0c5xbx?token=4557e7bd10b693695f04085eeed9b6d0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;cf0c5xbx?token=4557e7bd10b693695f04085eeed9b...</a><p>• Geoscape 6: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;gyspu3ry?token=502115f5d9c7c0f0b5f844aa63ef69a6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clyp.it&#x2F;gyspu3ry?token=502115f5d9c7c0f0b5f844aa63ef6...</a><p>Or follow updates on the mod page: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openxcom.mod.io&#x2F;orchestra-from-the-deep" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openxcom.mod.io&#x2F;orchestra-from-the-deep</a><p>Enjoy, and let me know, shall you try them in OpenXCOM!

Definitely one of my favourite games growing up (along with Colonization).<p>I&#x27;m reminded of one of my best gaming facepalms which occurred playing X-COM. We&#x27;d been playing the game for ages and had found it very difficult to kill all the aliens during the ground missions. We&#x27;d go round the whole map attempting to find the last remaining aliens before having to give up. It was only when one of us accidentally clicked inside the UFO that we realised we could actually go inside the UFO. Our mission success-rate improved somewhat after that &#x27;discovery&#x27;.

A solid article. I&#x27;d disagree with the &quot;single play through&quot; and &quot;pointless starting weapons&quot; comments though. For me it was multiple play throughs learning about what worked and what didn&#x27;t. This for me was actually a thing that kept me coming back. Trying out new tactics, base locations and equipment to see what worked. All the while trying to balance the budget and keep the squad alive long enough to level up. A truly great game. Played the newer versions on Xbox 360 and mobile, and whilst fun, they had removed far too many features to keep me engaged for more than a few hours. OpenXcom is a much better offering, especially on mobile.

I loved this game so much growing up, and this was a great article about it. It captured all the things I loved, and covered a lot of history I never knew.<p>One thing that caught my eye was the author’s complaint about no in-game exposition or tutorials at the start of the game. It seems silly in 2020, but in 1994 it was common for games to come with a reasonably lengthy manual printed on dead trees that explained all those things—or else there were printed strategy guides and magazines that talked about clever tricks. I read a borrowed copy of that book cover to cover before I even had a computer to actually run the game on. I still have a copy in my garage.<p>My first copy was pirated on 3.5” floppy disks from the school computer lab. Eventually I bought a copy to get the manual. Later on I bought a copy to get it on CD. Eventually I bought another copy to get the whole original collection on CD. And last year I played the reboots which got me nostalgic enough to buy the original and apocalypse on steam.<p>Good times. :-)

I loved, loved X-COM. It had an ability to capture imagination in a way that few turn based strategy games do. The randomly generated soldier names still loom large as heroes in my mind. I was affected when they were killed in action.<p>&quot;Bernard Dujardin&quot;, wherever you are, I salute you

Great article, and a very fair review of a wonderful game with very sharp edges.<p>I will say, the best part of the Firaxis reboot of X-Com is that it perfectly captured the fun that I _remembered_ from the original game. It captured this so well that I remember thinking it was literally the same game with new graphics.<p>Then I went back and replayed the original... and remembered how hard and clunky it actually was :)<p>But still one of my all time favorites, along with another Microprose title of the same era, Master of Orion.

One of my favourite things about XCOM was the destructible scenery. The isometric building design (on the procedurally generated maps) was superb, and you could blast holes in it to make your own routes through the map. Likewise the design of the larger UFOs themselves was so exciting - not to mention the variety of scenery a UFO might land in.<p>It was so far ahead of its time in that regard.

One of my favourite games growing up.<p>I tried replaying it about 10 years ago but it’s got serious quality of life problems with the mission aspect of the game.<p>Particularly, it had no way to remember or save gear assignments between missions. So you would spend like 5 minutes at the start of every mission giving your guys the correct stuff for their stats. Every. Damn. Time.<p>The other thing that bugged me on missions was no keyboard shortcuts, particularly for moving the view up and down levels. You had to use the mouse to click a UI icon which was quite tedious.<p>Still fond memories, but a pity those aspects made it too tedious to replay for me.<p>The newer XCOM game fixed those aspects and allowed you to jump right into the action.

My favorite game of all time is another one in the turn based tactical genre, Jagged Alliance 2. A game still under active fan development some 20+ years later with the excellent 1.13 mod.

A few years back I had the problem of how to apply the x-com model to, of all things, the Left Behind franchise. Turns out that the strategy&#x2F;tactical layer separation works pretty well with large scale PNPRPGs, too!<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;f3.to&#x2F;pmwiki&#x2F;pmwiki.php?n=LeftBeyond.QuestRules" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;f3.to&#x2F;pmwiki&#x2F;pmwiki.php?n=LeftBeyond.QuestRules</a> <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;f3.to&#x2F;pmwiki&#x2F;pmwiki.php?n=LeftBeyond.Quest2Rules" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;f3.to&#x2F;pmwiki&#x2F;pmwiki.php?n=LeftBeyond.Quest2Rules</a> The gist of it is, it makes sense to decide a strategy interval (it was 1 year for the first quest, which had to span a century, and 1 month for the second, which had to span 8 years), and then &quot;zoom in&quot; on tactical actions at the end of the interval, with each being its own little dungeon instance. The tactical stuff would autoresolve if only nameless mooks were on scene, but would be roleplayed out if one or more of the heroes were there.<p>One of the tasks that could be given to said mooks and heroes is &quot;stand by&quot; and react to another faction attacking out of turn; if nobody was on standby, defense ability was reduced.<p>It was a pretty weird pair of games given that the enemy is supposed to be literally God, but the story came out well, and the players had fun.

Loved this:<p>“ X-COM provides the merest glimpse of what it must feel like to be an actual commander in war: the overwhelming stress of having the lives of others hanging on your decisions, the guilty second-guessing that inevitably goes on when you lose someone. It has something that games all too often lack: a sense of consequences for your actions.”<p>All a consequence of getting to name your soldiers. Humans have so much affection for something they can name...

I don&#x27;t know if the author reads HN comments, but the story I heard about &quot;Terror from the Deep&quot; being so hard was because people <i>were</i> complaining that X-Com was too easy, due to an unfixed bug: Any time you loaded a save, the game reset to the easiest difficulty level.<p>Not only would people often not play in one sitting, but many strategy gamers aren&#x27;t above save-scumming either. Result, a large fraction of game hours on X-Com were on the easiest difficulty level.

You can also play it online in browser: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;epicport.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;xcom" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;epicport.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;xcom</a>

Train Grisha Yakubik so his skills would overflow one-byte counter; he&#x27;d step very slowly, but hit alien two screens ahead in the eye before their first move.

I love this game. Growing up, it was along with Civilization the most played in my house. On one of our first successful play throughs we got this soldier called Maria Smith. She started out talented but by the end of the game was a certified badass. She was a sniper but with high morale and tons of action points. She was our favorite that decades later I still name one of my soldiers with the same moniker in her honor. The pure joy we got out of her ability to make seemingly impossible shots stayed with me. I should give this game another go as it’s been a few years. There is actually a fairly decent iOS clone that I played, but for the full effect you need a mechanical keyboard and a beige CRT, I think.

Fans of XCOM should give Xenonauts a try. It&#x27;s pretty close to the original, but the new penetration and building destruction mechanics make it really enjoyable in combat.<p>If you are a big fan of the XCOM OST, I think you might enjoy the XCOM 2 Tactical Legacy Pack OST, which is a reimagining of the original&#x27;s soundtrack. I played through XCOM 2: WotC with this and it was fantastic.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLydXsA6zXiitzsl9JBCFsHGYPLeu_Bz8g" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLydXsA6zXiitzsl9JBCFs...</a><p>One of my favorites is: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fZv1brsTE_A" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fZv1brsTE_A</a>

I still remember playing night time missions up late in a darkened room, hearing the soft padding of those alien footsteps, somewhere out beyond the limits of vision in the darkened fields...

Open source re-implementation with bugfixes: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openxcom.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openxcom.org&#x2F;</a>

I grew up here :P<p>This was such a passtime for me that 20 years later I remember the randomly-generated names of some individual soldiers who came through for me and turned a battle around when there seemed to be no hope.<p>Siegfried Krause, I applaud your sniper abilities to this day.

If you liked X-COM, I can recommend Frozen Synapse, which is similar in many ways and very different in others.<p>The biggest difference is probably that after all players have planned their turns, they are executed simultaneously.

Excellent article!<p>Never played the original X-COM and plan to do so soon.<p>I played the third one, Apocalypse, obsessively and beat it in a couple of weeks one summer. It seems that I end up loving most any game that has a rotating Earth in the interface (the latest being Microsoft Flight Simulator).<p>Strongest memories is the panic when seeing a headhugger appear close by, getting attached to the individual commandos, and enjoying the destructability of the multi-floor building environments using the various weapons.

Great write-up. X-COM really grabs you just the way the article says. The characters are pets and it hurts when they die. I will never forget when my college roommate threw his keyboard across the room after his elite squad got wiped out in Terror from the Deep (which was really, really hard to win). The fact that nobody can die in Chimera Squad is why Chimera Squad is not a real X-COM game.

One of the top 5 games that I&#x27;ve ever played. I&#x27;m not a greatly skilled gamer, and this game is difficult but was somehow able to make it enjoyable.<p>Enough discoveries and surprises to keep you pressing on, it did a lot of things well, from load outs to inventory managements, to keeping countries happy. I can&#x27;t wait to have some free time to play it again.

One of the best strategies ever for me together with Sim City (2000) and Transport Tycoon, was much less of fan of Dune 2 or C&amp;C or Commando, so this was pretty much only strategy with actual fight and not just construction, which could capture my interest supported with popular TV show X-Files at times.

If you liked the original xcom you might also enjoy xenonauts which is a more faithful recreation than xcom enemy unknown.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;223830&#x2F;Xenonauts&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;223830&#x2F;Xenonauts&#x2F;</a>

So many great memories of that game!<p>One thing they miss, in the intro about &quot;plug into the success formula&quot;, is that there was a single-level demo on a floppy that came with one of the gaming magazines.<p>The wacky thing about the demo was that you were given raw recruits with minimal weapons, and then put up against the most difficult aliens in the game! It was brutally difficult, even by X-COM standards.<p>The other cool thing about the original X-COM was the crazy stories that just came out of gameplay... a friend got the Blaster Bomb, and on his first use of it, had his entire squad get way back out of the way before he targeted the door of an alien ship. Turns out the squad wasn&#x27;t far <i>enough</i> back, and it killed them all! Hurray for save games :-)

&gt; It had no video demo playing in the front window of Babbages,<p>This specific reference baffles me. Anyone cares to elaborate&#x2F;clarify?<p>(I guess when you grow up somewhere other than the US, there&#x27;s a chance these things happen).

12 year old me saw the box art at babbages and begged my mother to buy me the game. I didn&#x27;t have a machine it could run on well. All I had at the time was a 486DX 66mhz IBM PC and I didn&#x27;t care, lag and all, it was one of the most complex and satisfying gaming experiences. It&#x27;s up there for me with Doom 1 (Ultimate Doom by the time I could afford to buy it). Quake. Ultima Online. Descent. SW: Tie Fighter. X-COM.

This and Master of Magic were many _many_ hours of my childhood. Also some of the first programs&#x2F;files I opened up in a hex editor.

XCom: UFO Defense -- 10% accuracy ... Critical Hit<p>XCom Sequels -- 99% accuracy.... Miss

Was I the only one to ever hit that bug where on some missions you randomly found so much Elerium-115 so that you no longer had to worry about depleting it as a resource? That made the game suddenly lot easier to finish.<p>Also, disagree that the &quot;Terror from the Deep&quot; was poor. It was more of the good stuff and much much harder.

I can&#x27;t edit my post anymore. So here&#x27;s a random recommendation to watch the greatest XCOM Let&#x27;s Player of all time: Yeti<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLhu1IU-H0hU22eTOcbWfVvmERsV8tz5DN" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLhu1IU-H0hU22eTOcbWfV...</a>

I laughed at the part about how on the first playthrough the game was inscrutable with a crazy steep learning curve.<p>Many games were like that back then. Which is why there was also such a big market for guide books. I think I still have my dogeared copy of the Prima Guide to X-Com somewhere.

I loved this series all the way back to Rebelstar Raiders.<p>Must have spent endless hours playing all Laser Squad versions on the Speccy and it was only natural to jump into X-COM.<p>Although the ones that moved away from the Rebelstar Raiders&#x2F;Laser Squad initial concept are not worthy to me.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;emlia.org&#x2F;pmwiki&#x2F;pub&#x2F;web&#x2F;XcomAcademy.XcomAcademy.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;emlia.org&#x2F;pmwiki&#x2F;pub&#x2F;web&#x2F;XcomAcademy.XcomAcademy.htm...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.feartheboot.com&#x2F;ftb&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;archives&#x2F;category&#x2F;blog-entries&#x2F;the-xcom-saga" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.feartheboot.com&#x2F;ftb&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;archives&#x2F;category&#x2F;...</a><p>Here&#x27;s some collaborative xcom fanfic.

I loved the original X-Com, but I couldn&#x27;t get into the new ones. My biggest issue with the original game is that as soon as one alien sees you, all aliens sees you starting to mindcontrol your entire team which easily spirals out of control. Luckily, modern reimplementations such as OpenXcom allow you to disable it and require line of sight checks before MC attempts.

It is somewhat off-topic, people have already covered anything I could add about this gem.<p>Something similar (as far as turned based game) which I enjoyed was Silent Storm. It didn&#x27;t have the base building side but it had physics.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Silent_Storm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Silent_Storm</a>

The thing that blows me away about X-Com is that it shipped with difficulty settings that initially didn&#x27;t work. People didn&#x27;t notice at first! The game has such a self correcting feedback loop that it seems hard if you are doing well and it eases off if you are doing badly.. naturally. It is an amazing and very complex game design.

Don&#x27;t know if this is still thoroughly updated, but this has been the best source on the franchise&#x27;s news and mechanics.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ufopaedia.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Main_Page" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ufopaedia.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Main_Page</a>

Didn&#x27;t have the computer to run this at the time (not enough RAM!) but I was SO EXCITED that I opened the files with a text editor and read the bits of text that were sprinkled in the binary, and even that was so immersive and exciting (for 7 years old me).

With the exception of the lateest one, I&#x27;ve loved all the x-com games dearly.<p>So many hours spent recruiting newbies, training them up, building equipment, researching tech then hunting down and killing alien scum!

The History of XCOM - YouTube || <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=PxUVoWt2K78" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=PxUVoWt2K78</a>

Playing this game late at night with headphones added to the mood.

The original XCOM had poor graphics for its era. But my god, the gameplay is still the most tense I’ve ever experienced.

Played it first time on iOS and is awesome

How do I run this smoothly on Linux?

Best game ever made.