It's the year 1999, and the worst has happened - Yup, the aliens have
made contact, by way of invading. Time to lock up the wife and children
and hide out in the old basement, eh? No such luck, you've just been
put in command of the main extraterrestrial combat unit (X-Com for
short), meaning you're point man in sending the other worlders packing.
With
nothing but a few million dollars, a top secret underground base, a
couple of fighter craft and a bunch of heavily armed soldiers under
your command, things look pretty good from the outset. Unfortunately,
you soon discover that everything has been purchased from the lowest
bidder, and the aliens have got plasma guns. Most of your funding gets
dumped directly into upgrading what you've already got and there's
quite a list of things to organise - Extra facilities for your base,
tanks to accompany your ground forces, research into new weapons, and
so on and so forth.
After a healthy session of squandering tax
payers money, it's time to do some real work and hunt down the aliens.
This is done via the geoscape, which is a military dictators dream come
true - A display of the entire world, and it's all "your territory".
Catch is you can only see activity as far as your radar goes so saving
up for extra bases is another entry on your to-do list. Once you spot
your first alien invader, the jets are scrambled and it's a race to
shoot it down.
Aerial combat is displayed by way of a radar view. You can see your
craft at the bottom of the window, and a blip above indicates the
relative location of the UFO. Each craft procedes to unload it's
weapons into the other, while the display informs you as to who's
taking the most hits. A variety of orders can be triggered by buttons
to the side - You can attempt to stay out of range of the UFO (which
works well if your weapons can fire further), or go full throttle and
attack from point blank range (making it more difficult for the ETs to
escape). Or, you can back of and just trail the enemy around the globe
- Shooting it down while over water doesn't leave much for you to
recover.
Once your flyboys have done the business it's time to
send the ground forces in. A special dropship known as the SkyRanger is
reserved for transportation, which is pretty much all it's good for -
It has no weapon hardpoints and is a lot slower the your Interceptor
fighter craft. Nevertheless, it can carry an impressive amount of gear
quite a distance, and soon enough your team of armed killers will be
ready for action.
Ground combat takes place in turn based mode.
Each unit in play has a set amount of "time units" (TUs for short) to
use, and each action chews these up in varying amounts. Moving around
is a simple point and click affair, and units are bright enough to stop
if they see an enemy. There are quite a few ways of dispatching your
opponents, and you'll have to use strategy to make sure you take fewer
hits then they do. Especially because they've got plasma guns - Much
more dangerous then those rifles that you thought were so cool back
when you were safe in your oversized basement.
When you've made your moves, your turn ends and the aliens get to
have a go. You can observe their units (assuming your soldiers have a
clear line of sight), and if you've left enough time units over, your
men will even fire at the enemy should one jump out around a corner or
something equally silly. Placing your units behind cover with a good
supply of TUs is essential if you don't want them to be sitting ducks.
Each
isometric battlescape you arrive at is randomly generated out of
smaller, prebuilt maps. The terrain is deformable in that you can
damage or destroy it, though it does have a layered feel: If you blow
up the lower story of a building, the explosion won't harm the upper
floor. It'll even remain floating in the air unsupported if you do
enough damage. Nevertheless, the ability to shoot through an irritating
wall to get at a hiden target is most gratifying, as is setting fire to
farmer Joe's crops with incendiary rounds.
Speaking of
munitions, dispite the aliens initial supremacy in the tech department,
there's still quite an array of kit on the market you can shell out
for. Grenades come in the explosive, smoking, or proximity varities,
while some weapons (such as the rocket launcher) accept multiple types
of ammunition. Heavy guns slow your units down, but explosions are a
good way of compensating for those units who can't fire straight.
Flares can be thrown to increase visibility and you can even use a sort
of elongated tazer to stun aliens and take them home alive.
As you advance throughout the game, you'll encounter different
types of missions. They can all be solved by eliminating all alien
opposition on the map, but they do have their differences: You have to
be careful to protect civilians if they're around (well, at least not
blow too many of them up), or make sure you don't damage the engine of
a UFO while inside the craft. Capturing live aliens also becomes
important, and so you have to find ways of accomplishing that other
then walking right up to them with the zap-o-stick.
To that end
(and others), you'll be spending a healthy amount of time managing your
legions of scientists and engineers. As you capture stuff from the
aliens, you need to work out what it is so you can start using it
against them, and perhaps even earn a little extra money on the side
manufactoring the stuff for sale. Once you've learned enough about a
certain type of technology, you can start designing entirely new
projects - Such as faster fighter jets and flying tanks. Extra body
armor for your soliders is high on the list of wants, and so you have
to make sure you capture materials off the aliens to make it with
(unless you want to invest money in building those, too).
Progression also leads to changes in the alien strike force. To
start out with, you'll be fighting the stereotypical Sectoid race
(little grey men), sometimes supported by the miniture flying saucers
known as Cyberdiscs (which are prone to exploding when destroyed). Soon
the Floater race joins in, and then the tougher Snakemen and Mutons.
Snakemen are sometimes accompanied by the Chrysallid race - These
creatures have characteriscs not unfamiliar to fans of the Aliens
movie series. Ultra fast, and able to convert humans (for eg your
soldiers) into zombies, out of which later burst more Chrysallids for
you to take down. When a town gets infested with these creatures,
especially at night time, you'll find that turn based combat has a
surprising edge of suspense.
The aliens are of course trying to
further their own project of world domination, and just flying their
saucers around the sky isn't going to accomplish that. Along with the
occasional abduction or terrorism incident, they'll be trying to set up
shop with their own underground bases. Hence your craft have more uses
then combat and transport - They're also essential in patroling the
globe in an attempt to spot these alien strongholds from the air. If
you find one, you can then send in your soldiers to raid, destroy, or
even capture the entire facility.
This sort of thing annoys the
visiters of course, and if the aliens own patrols reveal the presence
of your own bases you'll find them returning the favour. If you're very
successful in fighting against the incursion the alien leaders
themselves will come to try and squash you. Apart from their fire power
and support units, these creatures have mastered the art of psionics -
Meaning they can turn your dependable rocket launcher toting backup
into a serious threat to you, especially after he's wiped out half the
squad he was supposed to be covering. This makes IQ tests an important
part of your screening process for fresh recruits.
Fighting the aliens cost money, and lots of it. Although they
shouldn't be relied upon to cover more then a small fraction of your
bills, your paymasters (that the goverements of the world in laymans
speak) will help cover some of your running costs - So long as you keep
them happy. Standing by idly while their citizens are getting
slaughtered does not accomplish this, and if you're particulary
negligent of a certain country they'll make a private deal with the
aliens and stop paying you. If you really aren't doing your job you
might even get shut down altogether, and we all know what that means -
The end of the human race. So, time to pull your socks up and work out
where the aliens are coming from, so you can shut them down at their
source.
All up, UFO is a somewhat addicting strategy
and management game that doesn't lose it's shine the second time you
play through. The graphics are nice to look at, if somewhat simplistic,
and the tactical combat is satisfying despite the lack of audio variety
(the tune played during a mission is basically a repeated, low tone
"bom-bom-bom-bom" noise). There are a few glitches present in the game,
but none of them prevent you finishing it (in fact, most of them make
things easier - So I'll leave finding the list to you).
While older versions of the game are near impossible to play on a modern PC, a later release
runs quite happily even on Windows XP. As a benchmark of turn based
gaming, it's well worth the experience. If you want to look into the
game further, browse around this site - There are some mods in our files section, and discussions and tips in our forums. If play against humans is your thing, try out the UFO2000 project.
- Review by Bomb Bloke
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Latest Comments
Posted by Space Voyager 18 Jul 2006 - 9:56am
In fact, the entire map is a 3D space. You can shoot through windows or shoot at the sills.
Body parts are also considered though that only goes so far as to work out which armor class is used in the damage calcs, or which limb to apply fatal wounds to.
Posted by Bomb Bloke 18 Jul 2006 - 7:48am
Now... if it took into account unit size an body parts when applied to a 3d model of each character the aliens wouldn't be half as accurate
Posted by Pete 17 Jul 2006 - 6:07pm
::
It never ceases to amaze me how confoundingly well the aliens' AI performs. Not once, but repeatedly. I'm thinking, a decade-plus hence, quite a few developers should have been taking notes.
*New game. Tactical mission 1*
*Tank/Rocket Launcher gingerly rolls down the Skyranger's ramp.*
*A shot streaks across the netherland parting the darkness*
*Direct hit*
*Tank falls neatly apart*
*Quick tally: $400.000+ worth of equipment to the scrapyard. Eight previously cocky, high-browed XCom operatives respectfully demand sick leave...*
Posted by Thorondor 17 Jul 2006 - 2:05pm
Posted by Space Voyager 17 Jul 2006 - 11:38am