I've never really written a proper game review on this blog before. I'm not really sure why? Perhaps it's because I've tried to keep a single theme - making things with computers - but it seems rather restrictive these days. I hope to eventually create a game that I sell for real money - games have been a big part of my life, so I thought I'd put in a few reviews here and there. After the last blog post on AI, I fancy something a little more positive. Not only that, but something retro! That seems like a very Benjamin way to ease into a new topic!
I recently completed the game UFO:Enemy Unknown. Released in 1994, this tactical battle game pits you - the commander of the international team X-COM against an unknown alien menace! There have been several games in the X-Com canon, but this was the first. k UFO was written by Julian Gollop, the creator of other fantastic games like Chaos. His earlier game - Laser Squad - was perhaps the first example of turn-based, squad combat. He'd go on to improve the formula for UFO, which turned out to be a big hit!
The YouTuber Ahoy has an Excellent video on the entirity of the franchise. I've embedded it below. It's well worth a watch I'd say.
The Box Art (in this case, the European release) is quite something. It doesn't describe the game in any way, except that aliens are involved. However, it reminds me very strongly of science-fiction book covers from the 1960s or thereabouts. It was painted by Danny Flynn and I think it may be close to the last time we'll see this sort of hand-painted box art. I've no idea how much detail on the game was provided to the artist but regardless, it's a very memorable cover. Personally, I quite like these sorts of covers. Although we don't have physical boxes any more, we do tend to see such promotional art-work on steam store pages. Sadly, very little has this painterly, imaginative style anymore.
So why go back to such an old game? Since the original, there have been several games in the X-COM/UFO canon, including a 2012 remake of this game. I decided I'd go back to the original as I'd briefly played the demo as a kid, but never the full game. I'm at the age where I feel the need to go back and play the games I missed out on. Besides, the original X-COM is considered to be one of the greatest games ever made.
I'm also of the opinion, having read around a little bit, that the original game has yet to be bettered - all the major components are here. From the tactical, turn-based, squad combat - to the base building and light strategy. All the modern games seem to offer are some quality of life improvements and better graphics. The gameplay and - perhaps more importantly - the tone were mastered here.
Many old games don't always run particularly well on modern hardware. Thankfully, the Open X-Com Project has you covered. Modern resolutions are now supported, many of the bugs have been fixed, and several new options have been added. You need an original copy of the game - Good Old Games has you covered (note that X-Com UFO Defense is the same game but marketed in the USA). With Open X-Com setup, the game plays quite well on modern systems.
X-Com is split into two games really. The first part takes place on the geoscape - a 3D representation of the world. Here, you will manage your finances, build bases and launch interceptions of UFOs with your interceptor aircraft. Should you engage a UFO, there's a chance you'll destroy it, down it, or be destroyed in turn. Needless to say, the UFOs are all faster than your aircraft, often better armed and capable of taking a lot of damage. Nevertheless, the smaller ones can be taken out early on. If they crash-land, a crash site will appear on your map, and you'll be able to investigate with your ground team.
This is where the meat of the game is - the laser squad section Julian Gollop is famous for. Your team of international soldiers all have their own unique statistics and can be outfitted with a variety of weapons. At first, Earth's best weapons are not up to much and the fights can be quite tough. X-Com is famously brutal, with soldiers dying after a single hit. Bear in mind that a soldier gains experience after every mission; after several UFO raids your top soldier might be quite capable, but a single shot can still take them out. It can be quite gutting to lose your colonel after they've been with your for several missions. However, the stakes being high is a good thing; it adds to the excellent tone the game has (more on this later).
The first job is to get your troops out of the transport safely. The aliens will have a bead on you as soon as you land. I find the cautious approach with smoke grenades tends to work best. If you manage to get out unharmed, you've done well. Flushing out the aliens from their various hiding places forms the bulk of any mission. The terrain will change, depending on where you land; deserts will look different to cities, the Arctic different to the temperate forests of Europe. Terrain is rather important in X-COM. Trees give you cover, sand is hard to walk on and buildings can be destroyed. Indeed, this latter point can be to your advantage. If you find a barn full of Mutons, best bring the whole barn down on top of them. X-COM features some limited terrain destruction options which can help and hinder you, depending on how well you play.
At some point in the ground mission, you'll find the UFO - intact or damaged, depending on how well your interception went. This is often the trickiest part of the game. Aliens will be concentrated here, hiding around corners and ready to ambush you. Opening the doors can unleash a calvacade of hot-plasma in your direction, reducing any solider to ash. Generally, I try to move a number of troops in at one time, guns blazing. But as the game progresses, you can make your own 'doors' using blaster bombs, assaulting the UFOs from above.
If you are successful, you might capture some alien technology, some alien corpses, or - if you have played particularly well - a live alien. On your return, you can choose to research these alien technologies (and aliens!) and begin to turn the tide in your favour. Of course, the game never really lets up. As soon as you begin to get a little confidence, the game begins to through extra challenges at you. New UFO and Alien types will challenge your aircraft and soldiers, terror missions will require you to save civilians and Alien bases may pop up on Earth.
Oh yes, the Aliens aren't just random targets for you to shoot down. Part of the game's appeal is the aliens appear to be up to something. Not only will they build hidden bases on Earth (which you'll need to deal with - arguably the hardest missions in the game), but they'll also send infiltration missions to certain countries. These are always successful and will result in that country pulling support from the X-Com project, starving you of cash. Finally, if you've angered the aliens enough, they'll assault your bases directly. These missions are all or nothing and can be some of the tensest fights in the game! These aliens really know how to hit you where it hurts!
Hopefully though, you can research your way to better weapons and aircraft, build enough bases to cover the earth with advanced radars and train your soldiers up to decent levels. At some point you'll find out where the aliens are based - you'll take the fight to them directly. This last mission marks the end of the game, and if you fail it's game over. You can fail the game in a number of ways - if you lose your last base to the aliens, if you fail the last mission, or - perhaps the most ignominious defeat - run a budget deficit for two months! Sometimes, your worst enemy isn't the aliens, it's everyone's perennial problem - politicians.
If you are keen to play UFO, it helps to have some strategy and tactics going in. The game is quite hard and unforgiving, but it can be beaten. There's a considerable wiki that details all the weapons, aliens, ships and such if you want to really want to get into the weeds. However, I found the following pieces of advice very useful:
On the Geoscape, I tend to have a couple of large bases - one in Europe and one in the USA. They'll house everything in the early game. Later on, I'll create a number of interception bases that contain a hangar, hyper-wave radar and a small guard. The two large bases will then focus on something specific - either science, manufacturing or advanced troop training. The Firestorm is the best interceptor for the cost. It is limited in its range however, and it will cost you Elerium every-time you fly it. For the smallest UFOs the Earth Interceptor is still useful. Indeed, Earth's interceptors and Skyrangers are the best bets for finding Alien bases. They can loiter in areas for longer, the fuel costs very little and their range is superior to all but the Avenger. I barely used the Avenger in my play-through and never bothered with the lightning.
Psychic abilities are a real pain in the mid-game, but are worth having in the end game, even if all you use them for is tying up an alien's next turn. Ethereals and some Sectoids will use psychic attacks against you, and unless your soldier has a high enough psi-strength, they'll likely start shooting their team-mates. There's very little you can do, other than prepare for this. Aliens will typically target the weakest soldier and work their way up the ladder. If you have decent armour at this point, equip your team with laser pistols. Your armour will mitigate most of the damage, but you'll still be able to take out sectoids and ethereals reasonably effectively. Or, you can just leave your weakest soldiers unarmed and in the back of the transport. HWPs are very useful here as they cannot be mind-controlled. It's only later in the game when you can perform psychic training on your soldiers that you can find out their psychic potential.
I'd like to talk about something I'm going to call tone. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines tone as: "the general mood or main qualities of something" or "a quality in the voice that expresses the speaker's feelings or thoughts, often towards the person being spoken to." When I wonder about computer games - or art generally - I often wonder "what is it the artist is trying to say and how did they manage it?".
I've begun to care a lot more about tone in games as I've become older. I think of it a bit like mood - what sort of atmosphere were the artists and programmers trying to set? Some folks might say vibes I guess? UFO is an example of a game with excellent tone - as the Ahoy video makes clear, it's all about battling the unknown, the fear of the unknown. What are the aliens up to? How can we find out more? Why are we always on the back foot? Throughout the game, I felt like a character in the TV show Dark Skies or the X-Files; everything is at stake, and we have no clue about our enemy. I've been wondering how UFO creates this feeling, and I've come up with a few thoughts.
Firstly, the music plays a big part. The menu music is dark and mysterious, dripping with menace. Indeed, all the music tends towards moody. There are some action and success pieces in there, but the overall tone is one of mystery and dread.
Secondly, the Aliens don't feel static - they have an agenda. Of course, this is all smoke and mirrors, but the designers did an excellent job of making the aliens appear to be up to something. The information you learn about alien abductions, alien entertainment and alien food are just flavour - they don't impact the gameplay - but they help sell the sense that the Aliens have a plan. The infiltration missions are a nice touch - you have to keep an eye on how pleased the funding countries are with you. You never get to thwart these missions on the ground (you can and must blow up the UFO with an interceptor), but their inclusion adds to the intrigue.
The game states at one point "We can't win this war on Earth - we are outmatched and outnumbered", as you research the alien's origins. The constant shortage of Elerium hampers your plans at every turn. You have to make tough choices, with serious consequences. The stakes are high and so is the tension.
The choice to go with a manga-style presentation doesn't necessarily lean into this darker tone, but it does fit the 90s zeitgeist. Silly haircuts aside, I think the soldiers and weapons look pretty good. The aliens are perhaps a little too goofy to sell the darker mood but nevertheless, the game all seems to come together.
UFO: Enemy Unknown is absolutely worth of inclusion in all the various greatest games ever lists. It put down the formula of tactical, turn-based squad shooter with a big theme. The tone is well crafted, the pacing pretty good. Only at the end of the game did I start to get bored with the interceptions and small UFO missions - indeed that complacency cost me when China, of all the countries, was infiltrated and pulled out of the X-COM program.
By the end of the game, the tone slips a little - you are more than capable of dealing with the aliens. Their incursions turn into shopping runs as you scrabble to get as much Elerium as you can. The final mission on Mars wasn't as tricky as I'd expected - I think some of the terror and base assault missions were harder. The game introduces new aliens and UFOs slowly - it does a good job of keeping you interested over what would otherwise be the same sort of gameplay over and over.
I managed to get to the end with a decent score. I admit, I'd looked at a few wiki pages and such like, to get a bit of a leg-up on the science tracks I should pursue. It's certainly not a game that holds your hand as you play. You are expected to know an awful lot going in: reaction fire, the effects of terrain, reloading, base defence stats, unknown research paths, how medikits work, stun and explosion mechanics - there's a lot to get into here. The game offers a wide array of tactics - I never got around to using proximity mines, but I'm told they are very useful.
I don't think this game has been beaten in its genre. I've heard good things about Xenonauts, the new X-COM2 has some good reviews. One of the jokes around the new X-COM games is that you can still miss a shot when the alien is literally touching the barrel of your gun. I never really had this problem in the original UFO. The sense of immersion never really broke for me. Given how little the developers had to work with in the 90s, as compared with today, I have a lot of respect for this first game. So far, I've yet to see much variation on this winning formula.
Some of the game options I never really got around to trying. I used auto-shot pretty much exclusively - I never had much call for any of the other shot modes - occasionally snap-shot would get me out of a jam. Some of the more esoteric weapons I never had any use for; the plasma ball launchers use up too much Elerium and the Psychic abilities only became available on the last few missions. Once you've researched Heavy Plasma, these guns are the only ones you need. I feel like a play-through on hard would be a fun challenge in the future.
Sometimes, the game can feel unfair. I'm certainly not above save-scumming when I've made an honest mistake. This usually happens when I get a little slack after playing for a bit too long. This game will punish you for not taking the fate of mankind seriously, and rightly so! But perhaps unfair isn't really the right word to use. You are up against a superior enemy, and the game certainly makes you feel that.
I really enjoyed my time with this old game. I think it still stands up today. Thanks to the folks supporting the game through Open-X-COM, it's definitely worth your time, if you have that sort of brain for turn-based tactics.
