Fishfins

I usually have one Heavy per squad. Mine tend to get fairly abysmal hit chances, but Halo Targeting is a godsend if I run into a sectopod, berserker or aliens cowering behind cover. Rockets are handy for clearing away pesky drones or softening up cryssies. Had a lot of fun giving one of my Heavies a heavy plasma, ghost armor and Bullet Swarm. Cloak him up, send him sprinting right next to an alien, then when the turn ends he has this unfair double-whammy that can cripple a sectopod.

The 'percent to hit' system sometimes makes me groan; get up to hugging distance with a cryssalid, 94% chance of hit, miss, sniper with 70% chance of hit misses too, spout verbal abuse at computer. It used to bug me. But it does work both ways; had lucky moments where mutons across the map were blasted with alloy cannons, had another awesome moment today where my best sniper was saved from two cryssalids by newbie supports both scoring hits that only had a 20% chance. When I crunched the numbers, I couldn't believe it. Hooray for random numbers!

Quiet, you clowns! This is VERY serious stuff! It's essential we keep our plant fertilisers under lockdown, lest some budding young terrorist steal some as a cost-effective alternative to using money.

That's what I really like about the X-Com games. You get random, unique soldiers with different names (admittedly, quite a lot of siblings end up serving together) and watch them get more experienced, receive promotions, play hero and survive close calls. I really do feel regret when one of my veterans dies. RIP Captain Mikhailov Mobile Infantry Squad 3 Killed by a Sectoid sniper, December 2000, North Africa

Z-Com

I just got a great Floater Alien Base mission. One Floater tried to kill me with a Blaster Launcher, but he ended up hitting a nearby Reaper, blowing a cluster of Floaters in the process. Another one took a shot, hitting a wall and cutting an easy way to the Command center. I only lost one guy, who was stunned (lucky shot) and accidently blown up with an Auto Cannon.

Kermit the Frog

I only ever use Flying to enter 'Suspected Centers of Alien acTivity' (or SCAT, for short). While kneeling helps, there's less cover in the air. Fortunately, Floaters are even worse at this. Spot one floating around, and it's Black Hawk Down all over again. Just spot one, and BLAM! A single rifle bullet from across the map into the air will send the leatherface dropping like a sack. -- They're annoying snipers though. Once a mere recovery of a Small Scout ended up being an accurate reinactment of Full Metal Jacket. Lost two rookies to a single Floater sniper, spotted his barn, fired dozens of shots at the barn, lost another rookie that tried to get close and ended up sending a soldier through a hole I made in the side and shot him in the back.

Coffee Cup

Another fine example of amateurs putting the big professional developers to shame. Better graphics than Doom 3 in my opinion. I hope a publisher gives them a chance (I'm a sucker for eye candy).

Rocks

Curses! You've beaten me! I'm still trying to import new textures for the floors... unless it's perfectly ok for a Battleship to look like it's rusted over and covered in mud.

Can't figure out how to get a gravity chamber on, and I'm worried that teleporters will encourage frag-camping. Looks like water chambers will have to do. The battleship would make a good deathmatch map.

I'd like to try crafting a Battleship map for Quake 2... I just don't know how to deal with the hoverlifts. I was thinking of a giant water collumn or a series of teleport pads... anyone have any ideas?

I've hardly used power armor in my game - elerium is just too expensive too expensive considering I've seen some of my guys die in one hit while wearing them. Personal armor only became compulsory for every soldier several months in the game. My usual method to counteract unusually high death rates is to have each soldier complete 10 missions, then give them an easy posting - training the PSI troops in regular combat, guarding Interceptor Bases and eventually a Cydonia trip if they're Psionic enough. I've got a couple of those crowded Medium Scout scenarios. Assaulting them with grenades is effective, but there will always be X-Com deaths. Grenades should be compulsory, m'yes. Terror Missions are horrible! I researched Laser Pistols as early as possible (since I could never get Laser Rifles in time), barely won the first Terror Mission then made dang sure to shoot down every Terror Ship. Base defense is fun if you can arrange the map in a linear fashion, although it does have a bug that prevents rooms branching off from having a door. Mutons and Floaters get slaughtered, though I'll happily do anything to stop Sectoids or Ethereals from landing.

Adventure games make less money. True. By why, oh whyever why would anyone in their right mind cancel a hyped-up game like Sam and Max 2 just as it neared completion? Metaphor time! I run a bakery. I put together a batch of cream pies. All I need to do is put them in the oven. However, apple pies sell much better. So I'll throw out the almost-done cream pies and make more Star Wars games... I mean apple pies. http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=90

The thing was, virtually every PC games magazine was raving about Sam and Max 2 and Full Throttle 2. And just when those games were almost finished, they canned them for good. Later on, an independent games developer offered to buy Sam and Max 2 and finish developing it, but LucasArts refused. Obviously they'd make more money if they made and sold Star Wars games than if they sold Adventure Games, but whatever happened to customer satisfaction? After causing two widely mourned game cancellations, they bring us horrible dirge like Republic Commando and Revenge of the Sith. It doesn't look like they'll be making a Tie Fighter remake anytime soon either, mediocre action games and movie tie-ins rake in more greenleaves. You'd think they'd at least finish off one of those canned projects as the last adventure game they'll ever make, but no.

I sure am glad LucasArts decided to cancel all their promising adventure games, which looked set to reinvigorate the adventure games industry after years of horrible FMV games and the illogical Myst series. Yup, I'm glad they canned those sequels every adventure-gamer was dying for so they could make more Star Wars games for the more abundant nerd population.

I still have problems with the Geoscape buttons being over-sensitive, and pressing any of the movement buttons would spin the earth around like a geography-class globe. Then I discovered you could right-click.

Once you figure out the best research order, the game becomes much easier (which in my opinion involves getting the laser rifle, plasma cannon and hyperwave decoder to shoot down terrorship UFOs before they land). I've still found the game very fun if I don't abuse the Psi ability.

Until last week, the last time I played TFTD was a few years ago. I recently had the mis/fortune of finding a Collector's Edition copy to work on my computer. 1 - Lobstermen. In my latest game, I had to clear a shipping lane attack... full of lobstermen. It was tedious, expensive but a relief when I won. A game week later, I get another one. Not aquatoids, not gillmen, but freakin' lobstermen. 2 - Unforgiving to new players. I'm almost done on an EU game, Superhuman mode and none of that 'load-the-game-if-a-soldier-dies' cheating. In TFTD, even on the easiest mode I find it ridiculously tough. Someone like me might give the game a chance, but an unsuspecting newbie playing the game will throw the box out of the window in frustration after meeting their first two-stage mission. 3 - Two-stage missions. In theory, two-stage missions equal more than double the casualties. After getting through the tough surface battle, a tedious, long closet-inspection commences, where my aquanauts will be cut to pieces like the Massachusetts Infantry. And that's basically what I do in the second stages - inspect closets for aliens. 4 - Recycled. Almost everything in TFTD has an EU equivalent it was based on. Take Tentaculats for instance - cryssalids with flying abilities. Gauss - Laser. Torpedo Defense - Missile Defense. Sonar - Radar. To make it appear different, they put the research tree in a washing machine, then set it to the highest mode using industrial bleach.

I lost the USA to the aliens a year back. I shot down every scout craft that came into either a great lake of Canada or the sea, then captured the battleships that landed. Still lost USA. Ah well, at least Russia's always on my side.

I'd buy a copy off Cafepress if it were available. It took me longer to read that than all the Harry Potter books combined.

*throws rock at Azrael* Personally, I don't like Apocalypse. - The UFOs look stupid. What happened to the silver menaces from the originals? Apocalypse UFOs look like flying mud. - The aliens are even worse. They looked like children made them with play-doh. - Combat was boring. For the first missions, I was shooting little worms, headless aliens that sneezed when they got in range and fat crab-like creatures. - Steep learning curve. It's so steep, people have to organize expeditions to scale it.

What? You haven't played the original X-Com yet? Hurry, go visit the bargain bin, before it's too late! While bug-riddled and around 10 years old, the original X-Com has provided me years of entertainment. It's better than most of the dirge that comes out these days.