When i got my first X-COM game, it was TFTD, my first USO crash site was frigin scary.

I spread out my aquanauts all over the map and started searching for aliens=First Turn

Boom, death scream, one of my aquanauts :dead: = Alien Moving Phase

Started looking for aliens, no foundings, reaction shot, death scream of my second aquanaut :dead: , (My eye is twitching) throwed a grenade(Primed, 1)= Second Turn

My grenade explodes, nothin hapens , sonic auto barage at my aquanaut , missed(my leg is numb)
reaction shot(My Aquanaut), alien dies :dead: = Alien Moving Phase.

End of Mission, i won.
-------
Affter that i left the game, and i didnt played it for days.
Tell me your first scary moments on TFTD

My first scary moment was when I set up the music.
That one sound in the theme that plays on normal missions still scares me. A friend of mine is freaked out by Tassoths dying.

I first acquired a copy of tftd when I was about 12 (I bought a copy later, guys!) At that age most things of a fishy nature unnerved me, dark night-time missions, artifact sites, etc. But Calcinites really put it up me, until I found out they were rubbish... That said though, I never managed to complete the game before I was playing legally, because for all that time I was too terrified to go to colony sites! One look at the scary tentaculats in the towers outside was enough to send me back to base, drenched with sweat and shivering in terror.

Of course now I tend to go with sonic cannon and disruptor pulse launchers, much less intimidating when all that spongy brain matter is splashed across the wall...

Gimli: A similar experience with the music, only this was a little later on once I knew how to play the game a bit better.

Night terror mission. Aquatoids. The music was almost in sync with the action. It was a very simple encounter of an aquatoid in a dark corner. The timing was just right so that as soon as the aquatoid was spotted, the music blasts of a sudden chord after a relatively quite part in the sequence. The suddeness and timing left my heart pounding and I was awash with the after effects of fear.

Today, this sort of thing is nothing. I mean, it was just a run in close quarters in the dark with an aquatoid with a sonic pistol. Small fry in comparison to the other terrors from the deep. But at the time, the mixture of everything was just right. Few games, even ones like Resident Evil left me in that sort of state over something trivial. I suppose in that way the makers of the game succeed.

Heck, even a night mission with chryssalids in UFO never left me like that. Bizzare.

- NKF

I do not play TFTD excessively but I find all missions scary. Of course Terror Missions and Alien Bases I found scary under UFO though. I am assuming this is the result of contrast and shading, but maybe it is the absolute silence I am receiving when I play?

the first scary thing that happened me.. nearly made me fill my shorts

but anyway.. it was in the summer.. and night ( around midnight) and some bad weather coming in. was on a terror mission...
the strange was... no gunfight or anything in the first 5 turns.. or something like that..
my troops randomly placed out ( no skilled tactician yet ) suddenly.. Flash.. BAAAAAAAAAM.

now you think someone tossed a grenade...
n o..(well yes )
the weather outside had turned from light rain to storm.. the explosion was a lightningbolt hitting a tree 150m from the house...

made me save and turn of the computer.. next day.. I saw that half the terror site was blown to smithers... can that much happen under one fricking turn?

First truely scary moment? Why, it'd be my very first mission in TFTD, recovering a landed V.small USO.

First turn: Caelocanth/torpedo rolls out, gets creamed by reaction fire in the same turn.

In response, I say 'bloody hell!' and toss a dye grenade outside, expecting it to work as well as smokers did in the original game.

Next turn: I open the door, expecting to have a covered deployment zone from my dye grenade. Nope. I've got two measly squares. What's more, another of my troops dies from reaction fire. So, I say 'screw this' and deploy six of my men, leaving me with only three in reserve.

End turn: Ominous silence. No alien is trying to kill me.

So I deploy my troops in teams of three, searching for that bastard who punked my tank.

End turn: More Ominous silence.

Ah-ha! There he is! I hit him with HE rounds from my aquajet and kill him. Hmmph, he looked like a retextured sectoid! I dub this species the 'swimming sectoids.' His gun looks like the latest word in female self-pleasure though. Nothing like the manly curves and bullpup style clip of my beloved heavy plasma.

End turn, expecting the mission to end. (After all, v. small UFOs in the original only had one alien!)

No such luck. I make my way towards the USO, always trying to end the turn in cover so they have a harder time of it. It works and I'm able to approach the USO unmolested.

End turn: I notice something that sounds distinctly like the sound of a grenade flying through the air...

Jeebus! That grenade packs a punch. One of my teams is KIA. The other was near the outskirts of the blast and all sustained heavy wounds. Mind you, this is before I've got medikits.

So now, I rush my troops into the USO, as I heard the door going just before the grenade, so I deduced my little alien friend ran back in after tossing his grenade. Smart little bugger.

And what do I find waiting for me? Three Xenos! And they certainly didn't look happy to see me. Fortunately, I still had enough TUs left to fire off an autoshot from one of my guys' harpoon guns and kill an alien, before retreating back outside the ship.

End turn: I expected the aliens to follow me out, but they didn't.

So, I went back in, expecting them to be waiting for me... and they were. Reaction fire took down two of my guys, but the last one was able to kill them both with a most serendipitous autoshot, one of the harpoons veering off course slightly to kill the alien right next to my target.

End turn: Mission completed! Rating: Poor.

My first scariest moment? Heh, Hallucinoids

When I was young and sitting next to my brother watching him play Terror From The Deep, he initiated an alien artifact level 2 mission I think. A Hallucinoid came out from a dark corner and spat out a tentacle that killed an Aquanaut who screamed. The combination of that movement that they make, the unsettling appearance of the Hallucinoid, the overall atmosphere and the scream of the Aquanaut made me run out of the room and I had not been settled to play TFTD for litterally years because of that.

Funny when I look back on it now. Chryssilids and such in UFO never terrified me as much as Terror From The Deep.

That TFTD battlescape music always gives me the creeps.

I started playing UFO when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Not really playing so much as watching my dad play it, but I made a few attempts of my own and failed miserably. I don't remember any specifically scary moments from back then, but the combination of night missions, sectoids, and discovery channel specials on aliens must have done something to me, because for years I was scared to go anywhere dark alone.

Even today, night missions are really scary, but my real life fear of the dark is pretty much gone.

TFTD never had as much of an effect on me. I never actually played it a whole lot though, I've stuck with UFO throughout the years.

I played TFTD before EU and I must admit that EU is far more spacey and scary that TFTD.

I used to play the original X-Com as a kid for sooo long, it scared the crap out of me but I loved it. Still do, in fact---after many years I've returned to the series! Steam had X-Com: Terror From The Deep for $2.45, so I couldn't resist. First scary moment wasn't too far away:

Somehow, when I had 2 units about to go into a UFO, I used up the movement of the first by putt her beside the door. I get the other guy to move, and then I get him to look behind him. Aquatoid. Right there, two spaces behind him. Both units out of TU. Jumped when I saw it just standing there XD

hey i'm new to the x-com forums and it's great to see the series is still well liked by alot of people. Anyway my first Scary moment was on tftd when i was about 6 or 7 but i rember the lobster men used to scare me and i just wouldn't bother with the mission because of the fact you couldn't kill those damn things with out sonic weapons and the bio-drones that used to hang around them were something i didn't like either.

My first scary moment was when i saw a Lobsterman for the first time.
He was showing me his back and i shot him with a missile.
He turned around and looked.....annoyed.

The first encounter with the lobsterman is often a memorable one. I recall throwing everything I had at the very first Lobsterman I saw and it just wouldn't go down.

Then again, now that I'm wiser, I shouldn't complain. Gauss pistols and harpoons are useless against even beginner level soldier class lobstermen. But in a later mission, having one survive multiple DPL torpedoes really sapped my morale.

There are still gas cannons with HE rounds and the thermal tazer that you can rely on if you bump into them early. The Gas Cannon however will need lots of HE rounds, although each shot is comparible to a sonic pistol round. Lobstermen fall from 5 - 6 sonic pistol hits on average, so you can see why you'd need lots of GC-HE shells to mimic this.

The biodrones however are terrifying. They have 100+% accurate snapshot - and use this for their reaction shots. You really have to spot them before they can spot you - or hope that they're exhausted at the start of your turn. They can be stunned with tazers or killed with the gauss rifles and gas cannons if you're truly desparate. I'd still avoid them until I can get some form of sonic weapon or drill.

- NKF

My first "scary" mission was, you guessed: Lobstermen

It was around March I believe, I had just got gauss pistols and had my whole squad packing them except for one guy who had a gas cannon. 14 men went in, 4 went running back to the Triton carrying 2 live aliens. They woke up before I could dust off and started using melee. I was left with 2 heavily wounded survivors in the end...

what were those big dinosaur things that used to hang around the tasoths during terror missions cause i rember first encountrng them was unsettling cause i only had gauss pistols rifles and magna blasts.

Triscene. The things that look like Gon with a pair of X-Com craft PWT launchers strapped to their sides.

They're pretty nasty in the snapshot department too, but they suffer from having weak under-sides and are large units. I know GC-HE shells can do a real number on them, so your magna blast might have been useful against them.

- NKF

would have been good to know tat 10 years ago but atleast i know next time.

I think my scariest time, believe it or not, was the first time I ran across a Deep One. I'd never played TFTD before this point, so I didn't know what they were to begin with.

I was on a night terror mission in TFTD. Pitch black outside the ship, full of green recruits (triton deployed from a base I never used.) I step outside the ship, and my guy sees something in the dark, but I can't actually "see" it. So I start pop-shotting at it, and never hit anything. Second, third guy step out and do the same. I end the turn with about 6 guys outside the ship. Suddenly, I hear that deep rock-rolling sound deep ones make when they attack...lost two squaddies in one turn from this thing. Still can't see it.

At this point, I'm freaking out. I send all of my guys out, and for some reason on turn two, I can't find him. (it turns out he was hiding behind a box in one of those 'storage' areas surrounded by fences.) Kill a couple gill men in the process. Alien turn two, I lose 3 squaddies to apparently two deep ones. Out of my original 8 guys, I have 3 left, and STILL don't know what's attacking me! Turn three I start heading back to the ship to abort the mission. Alien turn three, one more squaddie dead. Gill man reaction-shot. Two guys left, one makes it to the ship, the other ends the turn with 0 TUs right outside the door. Alien turn, guy outside the ship gets shot at but lives. I leave the site, and am thoroughly freaked because I had no idea what this elite monster was. I stopped playing for the night after that >.>

Next day, I get another terror mission, but daytime. I disembark the ship with my experienced crew in spiffy new Gauss Rifles, and standing right there is a freakin' deep one. That first sighting sent chills down my spine...it was like "oh, are you back for more?" So I get ready for a muton type monster (take a couple hits to take out)....I shoot it once, it goes down with a creepy scream. A wave of relief washes over me...These things aren't that bad! Finished the mission with zero deaths. Good times.

Next up, first lobsterman sighting on a night mission... ><