By Alec Meer on September 4th, 2008 at 8:06 pm.
Hooray for olden games! The entire X-COM collection is now on Valve’s digidownloadwebtertainment store. Terror From The Deep’s been there for yonks, but we finally get the first game, Enemy Unknown/UFO Defence. Which is possibly my most beloved game of all time, and I proudly take personal responsibility for getting it into the top 10 of PC Gamer UK’s Top 100 list for the last two years running. If you’re a real retro fetishist, you might also want lesser third game Apocalypse (which I’ve never actually played. Now’s the chance, I guess). If you’re a crazy person, you’ll want rubbish FPS Enforcer and slightly less rubbish action flight sim Interceptor. It’s $5 per game or $15 for the lot.
If you run Vista, you won’t want any of them (I think – am double-checking). No doubt ways and means to get ‘em running do/will exist, but right now it seems there’s no official support. [Sad face].
Update – got word back from Valve – all of ‘em except Interceptor should run fine on Vista, apparently. Woo! I know what I’ll be spending the weekend doing, then.
04/09/2008 at 20:07 MetalCircus says:
Good ol’ valve.
04/09/2008 at 20:08 terry says:
The lack of Rebelstar Raiders distresses me.
04/09/2008 at 20:10 Someone says:
Value is not bundle these with DOSBOX like they did with Doom? I am going to bet the first few dos based games have no problem running on vista (or OSX or Linux) under DOSBOX.
04/09/2008 at 20:18 malkav11 says:
There were Windows versions of all of them (that are a lot less new-computer-friendly than the DOS versions, at least under DOSBox, sigh), so I imagine that’s what Valve put up. It’s what Gametap had, which meant I couldn’t play Ufo Defense even under XP, because it insisted on 640×480 fullscreen. Doesn’t work on my monitor.
04/09/2008 at 20:22 Harlequin says:
Fantastic news :)
Apocalypse actually, in my opinion, wasn’t *that* bad. While it totally loses the X-COM “feel”, the gameplay itself never bothered me. There was more equipment to choose from and some of the vehicles were fun.
Still, I’ll be downloading the first in the series, as that’s where the magic was.
04/09/2008 at 20:34 lobsterjohnson says:
@malkav:
In both nvidea AND ati’s control panels there is an option for “aspect-correct scaling” this will override screen scaling and instead scale with the card and output a native res, perfect for old games and funky monitors, give it a go!
04/09/2008 at 20:43 Nando says:
Too bad, says it’s not avaiable in my region (Brazil).
04/09/2008 at 20:52 KP says:
\o/
Apocalypse was my first and therefore my favorite.
04/09/2008 at 20:53 hoohoo says:
from jason bergmans announcement in the shack forums:
X-COM MENZ:
The whole series is now live on Steam!
I posted this yesterday after a brief false alarm, but they’re live now.
Some details on what versions we put up there:
1) UFO Defense: This is the DOS-based version of 1.4. We use DOSBox
2) Apocalypse: Retail version, also running DOSBox.
3) Interceptor: version 1.2 for Windows
4) Enforcer: 1.0 for Windows
All have been tested and run fine in Vista.
TFD is still the Windows version, but I do intend to update that to use DOSBox at some point so we get Vista compatibility.
$4.99 each, whole series for $15, 10% off for the first week.
http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=17846108#itemanchor_17846108
04/09/2008 at 20:59 beermaster says:
OT
the fact it’s on steam is reason enough not to buy them. i just can’t use a service with such terrible customer support. my account locked out as soon as it was opened. and 3-5 working days for an email response and only on american time. no thanks. where’s those floppy disks hiding?
/OT
04/09/2008 at 21:02 J. Prevost says:
Do they run fine on Vista 64, though? I believe there’s a class of old Windows stuff that runs under “emulation mode” right on Vista 32, but not Vista 64.
Ahh. Missed the above where dosbox was mentioned. Eeeeexcellent
04/09/2008 at 21:02 Saflo says:
I tried playing the first one some time in the past and hadn’t the slightest idea what to do or how to do it. HALP.
04/09/2008 at 21:06 Rocktart says:
I’ve had exactly the same problem with steam support, locked out and no response to multiple contacts using their support pages.
I’ve just given up now, no TF2 anymore for me.
04/09/2008 at 21:08 hydra9 says:
The X-COM series is awesome. Well, the first three games anyway. Interceptor was sadly crap, but Enforcer was actually an extremely fun, frantic Robotron-style blaster.
04/09/2008 at 21:27 Benjamin Barker says:
Really this is a general Dosbox tip, but make sure you try one of those hq or other enhanced video filters in the config file. I think the original X-COM looks fabulous with the smoothed-out pixels. It’s an advantage resulting from “having to” use Dosbox that you can do this.
04/09/2008 at 21:28 sinister agent says:
Apocalypse is lovely, and its flaws don’t even slightly break the game – they just make some parts of it pointless (road vehicles and alliances, for example), but all those parts are things that aren’t at all necessary anyway. It would be great if they had been done properly, but as you can essentially just ignore them, they don’t detract significantly from the experience. It’s a bloody great game.
04/09/2008 at 21:36 Nat says:
I have one character that has been “alive” for more than ten years.
I did have another, but she died. I cried. It was then I realized two things:
1. I was playing too much.
2. Thank goodness for saves.
04/09/2008 at 21:49 ggregg says:
hasn’t it been available on hotu for a long time, anyway?
04/09/2008 at 21:50 catracertangorose says:
Thanks, just logged into steam and bought these.
04/09/2008 at 22:06 Dan Forever says:
Lesser third game? Fo’ shame Alec, fo’ shame. Apocalypse is my most favouritist game ever
04/09/2008 at 22:11 jtotoro says:
@Nando i understand your pain (fellow brazilian)
04/09/2008 at 22:20 JonFitt says:
I liked Apocalypse too. It was my third XCom game, and I agree that it had a different feel, but I liked the new features and real-time control (I always played it one iota at a time with the pause button so it was semi-real-time for me. Plus poppers were a complete sh1tstorm in turn-based).
I didn’t like the fact that you couldn’t ever completely wipe out a faction, and I never completed it (I got to the alien side of the portal and did a few stages, but the thought of slogging through all of them put me off).
Generally a good sequel and the last good XCom game.
04/09/2008 at 22:29 JonFitt says:
Ok, this has been a question in my mind for years, maybe someone here has the inside track and can solve a great mystery:
Enforcer and Interceptor are the biggest WTFs in gaming for me.
Maybe they were trying to “grow the brand”, but why in god’s name did that kill the franchise in the publisher’s eyes?
The mod community shows that people want franchises in other genres, so I guess trying it made some small sense, and they made two crap games that were in the X-Com universe.
But after they flopped, where the hell was the real X-Com 4?
Just because I didn’t want a bad Wing Co knock off, doesn’t mean I didn’t want another real X-Com.
It’s a niche that has ever since been filled with remakes and imitators that is dying for a real sequel.
Does anyone know what happened?
04/09/2008 at 22:53 Pod says:
I bought enforcer for 99p from gamestation. I had a lot of fun, thankyou.
and it’s thirdperson. SO THERE.
ps, how well “ported” is this? Have any new, fun bugs been introdcued like with Jagged Alliance?
04/09/2008 at 23:00 CrashT says:
Apocalypse was actually the first X-Com title I played, and I adored it. But maybe that’s because I didn’t know any better.
Who else things this is a precursor to the final announcement of the new X-Com game everybody pretends to not know is coming?
04/09/2008 at 23:06 JonFitt says:
For the record Cenega’s UFO: Afterblah games are a good if flawed distraction.
They’re a bit like the slightly rough Eastern-European girl who looks conveniently just enough like your ex who abandoned you.
04/09/2008 at 23:10 malkav11 says:
“Aspect-correct scaling” is not an option that I can find anywhere in my nVidia control panel, I’m afraid. But fortunately, they are in fact using DOSBox.
04/09/2008 at 23:20 EyeMessiah says:
Praise be!
I have never played Apoc. Fingers crossed it runs on V64!
I got addicted to playing UFO with one of those hacked exes that fixes a load of bugs and also makes it so you can autosell certain items that you are just producing for profit and a load of other neat tweaks so I don’t think I can go back to vanilla now but who cares I’ll just buy the lot again anyway.
04/09/2008 at 23:37 thesombrerokid says:
i quite liked interceptor :( obv. not as much as the xcom games but they are different games and shouldn’t be compared
04/09/2008 at 23:41 ORYLY says:
To all the Apocalypse lovers: it was my first, and I’ve always loved pausable slow-motion strategy ever since. The only problem is the lack of any games with it. Bioware RPGs kinda had it, but do you guys know any other games with it?
04/09/2008 at 23:45 JonFitt says:
@ORYLY
Cenega’s UFO:Afterblahs are basically UFO sort of remade with Apocalypse’s pausable realtime style.
Also, I play most RTS’s like this. Total War games and Company of Heroes for example I play in tiny 1 second increments.
It’s really hampered my attempts to play online, and now I realise it all stems from Apocalypse :)
05/09/2008 at 00:49 C0nt1nu1ty says:
After playing all three of the “true” x-com games i must say that Apocalypse was the best of the bunch, it was indeed the shiz
I’ve spent years trying to get the damn thing to work on dosbox (its cool with XP but it throws a hissy fit about modern graphics archetetures or something) and now i can fianally play it again, with sound an all (such luxury)
oh yeah and inteceptor was terrible, ufos did a rise of the robots like ubermove by banking upwards forever meaning you just ended up spinning in mid air to catch the bastards
05/09/2008 at 00:49 musasino says:
Terror From the Deep was my first and forever fave.
(Spoilers!) I loved the challenging Lobster Men, with their deadly claws and their hard hitting Sonic weapons… nothing like Laserswords! Plus, the Tentaculate scared the crap outta me, every time it brain sucked one of my precious soldiers. Mmmm, the joy of fighting the Cthulhu mythos in the deep seas of Earth!
05/09/2008 at 00:50 splotki says:
yeah, but where’s my Master of Orion and Ultima 7?
05/09/2008 at 01:05 milieu says:
I’ve never gotten the hatred for Apocalypse. I played the first three games, in order, and I really like it. You could choose real-time or paused, and I found that the real time was fantastic. The only time I used paused was when I was trying to capture one of those horrible exploding dogs for research.
I loved the city scape, I loved the air battles overhead, and I loved the variety of the levels.
Terror from the Deep was the worst of the games. I liked the idea of under water battles, but it really didn’t do anything special. It was XCOM except with a darker blue palette.
05/09/2008 at 01:08 Jochen Scheisse says:
UFO Enemy Unknown was the first retail game I played on my new PC. And it being the best game I have played up to now probably helped to build the undieing love for the PC as a gaming machine.
05/09/2008 at 02:11 Tom says:
Asking that kind of money for those kind of games (good games, but very old) is just utter bullcrap. I mean, they should really be releasing them for free, using them to push their distribution platform, not try and make money with them.
I mean, seriously how many gaming hours will anyone get out of this type of game these days. Sure, theres the good old nostalgia, but that wears off, and after that? If you played it as it was hot, you’ve played it then (and probably payed for it back then also), most other folks don’t (and shouldn’t) care.
Projects like abandonia should be able to make ALL old games available for free, but putting things like this up for cash just spoils the fun. Shame on Valve for this one! ImO
05/09/2008 at 02:38 Dogun says:
I loved Apocalypse in realtime mode. I still remember this awesome character I had, Kenji Sato, who had unbelievable luck. The only unit I ever had that would leap on command, consistently got away with fleeing grenades and dodging bullets.
Wish it were a bit more stable, though. That game crashed like it was going out of style.
05/09/2008 at 03:04 Novack says:
WTF!?
Fuck them! If I use a proxy (like tigerrox.com) I can access the games.
Are they supossed to sue/rape/abduct me or something if I actually buy the games through a proxy to avoid this idiotic non-sense?
05/09/2008 at 03:30 habibi says:
ORYLY, have you tried Silent Storm Sentinels? Great great game. Turn based also.
05/09/2008 at 03:40 P7uen says:
@ Tom
Good heavens, I don’t know how to begin answering that.
05/09/2008 at 04:28 zeh says:
More information from shacknews:
Yes, it uses DOSBox. It’s not Valve who’s doing the packing, it’s 2kgames. They have been tested and work under Vista.
“Terror from the deep” has been there since last year. It’s the windows version and it doesn’t run under Vista. Eventually they plan to replace it with a DOSBox version.
And like Nando said, it’s not available for Brazil. Why 2k Games hates Brazil so much I’ll never understand (they also pulled Brazil from the list of countries you could purchase BioShock from).
Novack: I can’t say for sure. However, I’d say that once you successfully purchase a game, it still remains active on your account whenever you are. I actually bought BioShock on release day (when it was still available for my region). I later emailed Valve support to ask whether my game would cease working, but they said that as long as I purchased it, it would still work even if the game wasn’t available on my region anymore (I wasn’t able to actually test it, because the game was crashing on my machine upon launch, but for now I trust that answer).
I don’t think anything like tigerrox.com would work though. You need a real proxy, not just an http proxy.
05/09/2008 at 05:11 Novack says:
@Zeh. Yes you are right, a proper proxy should be used, and still, I dont know if it would work, but with a web proxy I at least can visualize the offer… :’(
I found this an incredible non sense. What would happend if I just use a remote computer to login with my account, and buy the game? I would lost the support and/or the game if I login from my own country? Good info on your part, as it seems that once purchased it have to work.
However what would happend with the updates?
BTW, im from Argentina, maybe they are leaving out all Latinamerica…?
For the record, I cant neither access Bioshock, which is also from the same publisher 2K Games, so much probably is a publishing deal. The question remains almost the same though, as why Valve/Steam accepts this kind of deals.
——–
Edit: I opened a support ticket, asking for an explanation; I encourage you guys to do so. Lets make at least a bit of noise.
05/09/2008 at 06:05 James says:
Hooray! Purchasing this one as soon as I can, because A) The games are awesome (Well, one and two are) and B) It’d make me feel better about nicking them from the Underdogs when I couldn’t find it anywhere else. Sound reason enough for a cheap buy, I think.
And, to note, it’s one of the few awesome games off of Steam that are available in my region. Still waiting on the GTA games and Stalker, Valve! Pretty please?
05/09/2008 at 07:31 LEEDER KRENON says:
DER DER DER DER.
05/09/2008 at 07:57 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
These’re the DOSBox versions, working in Vista you say?
Sold.
05/09/2008 at 10:03 John P (Katsumoto) says:
“I mean, seriously how many gaming hours will anyone get out of this type of game these days. Sure, theres the good old nostalgia, but that wears off, and after that?”
Some games never age. I still play these to completion very frequently – nothing has actually beaten them when it comes to turn based strategy in my opinion. THat probably has to do with the fact so few games have even tried to imitate them. We need a modern successor! Until that moment however, Enemy Unknown will still be played with great frequency.
05/09/2008 at 10:06 Mike Cann says:
Apoc was definitely the best. Its certainly my favourite game of all time, and is the only game that i consistently go back to to play time and time again.
I played interceptor through once and enjoyed it, but not enough to return to it years later unlike apoc.
I also had a bash at those UFO knock-offs that have been bandered about lately but i cant say i could get into them, they were certainly lacking something i cant put my finger on.
05/09/2008 at 10:46 megaman says:
I just finished the good old XCOM Enemy Unkown like 4 weeks ago. Took me much less time to play through than when I was a kid :D
Still tempted to buy the set at Steam and give TFTD a try, because I miserably failed at it when I was younger. It was horribly difficult, and I was too proud to play it on easy.
05/09/2008 at 10:50 Iain says:
This is the best news I’ve heard all week. Now if we can just persuade the Gollop Brothers to do a DS version of UFO: Enemy Unknown, my life will be complete.
05/09/2008 at 11:31 hydra9 says:
@Iain:
A DS version of UFO would indeed be amazing. In the meantime, Rebelstar: Tactical Command on the GBA was pretty good.
05/09/2008 at 11:34 groovychainsaw says:
XCOM: Apocalypse is pretty good actually, imagine all the features from the first two games, in exactly the same engine, running at a (slightly) higher resolution, with more tech available. Thats all it is, but frankly, it wasn’t broke, so why fix it? :-)
05/09/2008 at 11:36 Tom says:
“I mean, seriously how many gaming hours will anyone get out of this type of game these days…”
I should have said, “anyone who has not played them before”, ie. ‘younger’ people.
I mean, imagine ‘young’ people:
They see these games on steam, think, “Oh I’ve heard of this one, and its ‘only’ 5 bucks” – ‘click’ – then they play it for maybe a few hours, after which they load up a ‘proper’ game like tf2 for which they payed three times as much.
My argument is not pro ‘nicking’ the game off hotu, or other such sites, but I belive that (in a perfect world with flowers and a sweet smells everywhere) old games should after so many years be considered ‘abandonware’, and should be downloadable from our global memorylane for free by anyone who wants to relive those fond old memories.
Games normaly become abandonware once you can no longer purchase them, but thanks to valve’s efforts in this case, I bet some lawyers might beg to differ.
05/09/2008 at 12:08 James says:
@ Tom
Just to answer your question, I can honestly say that as a young person I got an absolute ton of hours out of this. After being pushed by a friend to download UFO Defense off of the Underdogs last December I eventually gave in. I wasn’t expecting anything much out of it, but hey, it was free(ish). So I load it up, balk at the interface and graphics and struggle a bit, but finally I got it and pretty soon after that I began to understand why everyone raves over it so much. I played it for the rest of the holidays, only stopping during a messy computer crash.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I don’t know that it’s particularly fair to claim that anyone coming in clean to a game doesn’t and shouldn’t care because it’s over an arbitrary age. We don’t claim it of novels and films which, admittedly, don’t have to overcome the age-you-quick things intrinsic to gaming like interface and graphics, but beyond that a game can have fabulous, worthwhile mechanics whether it’s 5 years old or 15.
Yes, abandonware games are a wonder, but that doesn’t preclude it from being a wonder sold commercially, even after its time. I’m all too happy to pay the entry fee, even without finely aged nostalgia.
05/09/2008 at 13:23 Tom says:
What I meant was, they shouldn’t care to pay money for these games, no matter how ‘little’ the amount may be.
I’m not THAT old myself, and I can very well understand ‘young’ people enjoying older games, especially excellent ones like these, and I would encourage ‘young and old’ people to play the golden gems of the past, just so that they can get an idea of what ‘gaming’ used to be like, compared to today’s world.
I just think that asking money for games that pass a certain age should be considered a crime, punishable by a kick in the groin.
I’m very sorry if I was so unclear about it!
05/09/2008 at 13:45 andy says:
should people pay money for old movies and old records? old folks home? old rope?
05/09/2008 at 14:23 JonFitt says:
It’s all a bit moot for me. I can just dig out my old disks/CDs and use DosBox.
It’s a good thing for people who have never played XCom and would like to. it makes it very easy.
05/09/2008 at 14:33 Shanucore says:
It’s not *quite* the complete set, since X-COM Email is missing. ;)
Great deal, anyway. And personally I love Apocalypse – I got a much better sense of a world being steadily infiltrated and infested with aliens from it. Also, you could shoot missiles into the Cult of Sirius garages and bring their whole tower crashing down. Teehee!
05/09/2008 at 17:30 Iain says:
@hydra9:
I’ve got Rebelstar: Tactical Command – It’s nice enough, but the anime styling and the angsty storyline grated on me after a while. Plus it’s missing the base management, research and the geoscape. They were just as much an enjoyable part of X-Com as the tactical missions, for me.
A proper DS conversion of Enemy Unknown would be awesome, though. Someone seriously needs to pester the Gollops on an hourly basis until they sit down and do it.
05/09/2008 at 18:42 Kong says:
That is a good thing. Games from yesterday to be enjoyed today.
Why is it not possible to combine the mechanics of yesterday with the eyecandy of today?
Me myself and mine eye would love to have Close Combat with gfx of Company of Heroes for example. The Close Combat series is the best realtime war tactics game ever. #5 Normandy being the greatest of them all.
Not enough freaks in the world.
06/09/2008 at 07:27 Mathias Belger says:
This is bad, real bad… I just couldn’t resist… spent the whole night paramilitarizing… even if it looks a little funny fullscreened on the huge widescreen… Someday I need to make a remake of this – using google earth and really try to capture its exceptional… atmosphere *fg*
06/09/2008 at 07:44 Saflo says:
Okay, this is pretty absorbing. And now all id’s games are half off. This is a very bad time to be unemployed.
06/09/2008 at 08:13 malkav11 says:
For what it’s worth, movies use technology too, and age more or less gracefully depending on how reliant they are on technical wow-factor for their appeal.
As for why charge for old games? Dude. Look at it as a server fee, if you must. Bandwidth isn’t free. And it’s not like $15 for five games is an outrageous price, especially for games of this caliber. (Well, the main X-Com titles, at least.)
06/09/2008 at 12:31 sinister agent says:
Young people aren’t all ADD-riddled oafs, you know. I know a bunch of 6th formers who will quite happily play an old game I’ve recommended, or that they come across on HOTU or wherever. I’m sure some of them would pay a few quid to own them properly.
Besides which, even if ‘young’ people didn’t play them, so what? Are people only allowed to sell things that young people will buy in droves now, or something?
I see your point about it being a little off to charge as much for games so old, though. But the X-COM games are still unusually popular and quite hard to get in a reliable fashion (and to get working). It’s a bit of a git, but I don’t really blame them.
06/09/2008 at 15:05 Arathain says:
Another vote for Apocalypse being awesome. I liked how you had to be careful with your big weapons, but only because when you got tired of doing so you could load up on incendiaries and explosives and go and raid the Cult of Orion. Kaboom!
06/09/2008 at 17:03 Duoae says:
I really loved UFO: Enemy Unknown but never got the chance to play the rest. Bought and downloaded, thank you!
I also have to say that i like Cenega’s UFO series as well… though the first is the best (IMO) in terms of how the game plays the latter two are ‘more true’ in game mechanics to the original UFO series.
07/09/2008 at 05:00 Cheesyquaver says:
Apocalypse FTW! Best xcom game of the lot – now, if they only released it for PSP, the circle would be complete!
07/09/2008 at 09:12 Heliocentric says:
i am a little miffed at the steam drm meaning a can’t dump the game on a usb and taking in into uni with me. Not a deal breaker. But it reminds me that you are treating the customer like a criminal. I’ll wait til gog or impulse gets them.
07/09/2008 at 15:27 Tomlin says:
LOL at people loving the Apocalypse.
It was rather ridiculous, really, especially the real-time mode. I would name it “for the lazy in mind and body”. The whole one “tactic” in real-time mode was making your soldiers into a single line, crouching, and waiting – since in real-time AI was pretty much deactivated and aliens simply ran your way from the start. I wont mention that adding such useless mode also taxed AI in turn-based mode.
UFO: Afterxxx games did away with turn-based altogether, and voila – there are no tactics in there at all, just huddle your units together at all times and go around shooting stuff. Just shows how degraded the industry has become without turn-based gaming, *sigh*
Oh, and those organic aliens are the worst, really. Where are my technocratic plasma-wielding grays of old B-movies ?!
07/09/2008 at 21:38 sinister agent says:
I agree that the fact that they came looking for you even when outnumbered was a shame, and lost the feel of rooting them out rather than assaulting a nest (ideally they should act as they do only when they have an advantage, and otherwise hide and ambush, but it’s a small price to pay for a great game, and there are times when you have to hunt down some dangerous stragglers). But that doesn’t mean there was no AI, man, just that the AI was more aggressive. They flank and use cover and retreat and ambush pretty well, and did you ever try throwing a spare clip at an alien? Half the time they’ll think it’s a grenade and run for cover, giving you a free shot. And the cultists were better at using smoke grenades than I’ve ever been.
And besides, the AI in the first two games wasn’t exactly great, was it? They had one approach:
(1) Sit still in your corner and take potshots at anyone who comes near.
(2) Send the odd scout out.
It’s hardly blinding stuff. The AI in Apoc was arguably more advanced in fact – just that individual aliens were usually less of a threat and they relied more on massed attacks, so their movements came across as less impressive.
I also agree that turn-based games are neglected, but let’s face it, strategy games at large are neglected. And to suggest that the industry’s crapness is due to the lack of turn-based games is frankly laughably simple-minded, as is the suggestion that tactical play is impossible without it.
What was wrong with the organic aliens, then? Or, why should they use the same aliens as in the last two games, when (a) those species have been wiped out and (b) that would be cheap repetition and get them qutie rightly slammed for rehashing.
Sorry, but the ultra-hard multiworm’s death resulting in a swarm of fast, vicious nasties was better in concept and practice than anything in the first game save for the chryssalids. And in what other game have you felt threatened by a puddle?
08/09/2008 at 15:34 ORYLY says:
A lack of tactics will often come from crappy AI, bad level design and and a lack of choices to make rather than turn-based vs. real-time. If the AI charges straight at you, a turn-based game doesn’t become any more strategic. If one location doesn’t differ from another, there’s no decision to make whether you have to wait for your turn or not.
The usualy problem of real-time and lack of strategy is when reflexes play too much of a role when it comes to victory. It’s when doing a ton of good maneuvers often beats a handful of excellent ones. (But there’s nothing wrong with being able to excel in that kind of game.)
Organic aliens are also a B-movie staple, so I don’t know what’s your problem there. And, they fit the theme of an infestation quite well. It’s a pity that they weren’t able to implement the corruption (brainsuckers!) part at all thanks to the omniscient infiltration line graph.
15/09/2008 at 14:32 Tom says:
This is what I was on about, just in case no one cares…
20/09/2008 at 17:34 PJ says:
Did anyone else notice that it shows Xcom UFO Defense having multiplayer including co-op?
I’m sure the original game didn’t and I would bet that the Steam version doesn’t either but it is kinda misleading if you aren’t familiar with the games.
20/09/2008 at 17:34 PJ says:
Did anyone else notice that it shows Xcom UFO Defense having multiplayer including co-op?
I’m sure the original game didn’t and I would bet that the Steam version doesn’t either but it is kinda misleading if you aren’t familiar with the games.
07/10/2008 at 15:23 LST4R says:
Terror from the Deep works with Vista now! Hooray!
27/10/2008 at 04:29 I HATE STEAM says:
I have tried to contact STEAM so many times (easily twenty) since they added the Vista patch to TFTD… the game runs like shite… and in all my attempts to get help, the STEAM folks have been nothing but Douche Nozzles. They couldn’t care less. Keep this in mind if you purchase anything from them.
11/05/2009 at 23:11 TooNu says:
This day was a great day, a triumphant day, a day I shall remember as the day I jumped and bashed my head on the bit of low ceiling at my PC desk. The 5 quid was well worth buying Xcom….such a good game.