Goofyz » Reviews » X-COM: UFO Defense
View Store Page
View Community Hub
Find More Like This
19 people found this review helpful
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 2.2 hrs on record (2.0 hrs at review time)
Posted: 3 Jul, 2014 @ 12:35am

This is the original X-COM. This is for the classic lovers.

This game has no in-game tutorial, no in-game help. The control is difficult to use, with many on-screen controls but no keyboard shortcut (luckily OpenXCOM come to help). But it is a 20 years-old games, what did I expected? I get used to the control, I accept the graphics, I like the styles of the game.

However, the game play is difficult, too difficult. You entire squads can be killed by one enemy without you find out where he was. Every time the squads come out of the plane, at least one was killed. When one or two aliens were killed, a missile/bomb came and the whole squads were killed.

If you have played it 20 years ago (first published in 1994), play it now to get a sense of technology advancement in these 20 years or just play it to remind you the good old days.

But if you have played the new "Enemy Unknown" and did not played this old game before, I do not recommend you to start playing this.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
5 Comments
< >
The Fifth Horseman 7 Mar, 2015 @ 1:44pm 
The game does not coddle the weak; it will brutalize you until you improve your strategy. One basic piece of advice is that the default gear you have loaded on the Skyranger at the start is sub-optimal (as in, not an effective loadout, not because it's beginning tier weaponry). You need to load your skyrangers (and later other craft) to full troop capacity, have from 1/3 to 1/2 heavy weapons in the mix and be extremely careful - which includes keeping part of your troops in reaction fire mode and spreading them out sufficiently to not get TPK'd by a single alien with explosives, while keeping your formation sufficently close to concentrate fire on individual targets.
Yes, some of your soldiers WILL die. That's expected, live with it.
Group Zero 8 Dec, 2014 @ 11:59pm 
There is a manual for the game on the store page.

I can sympathize with your complaints. I remember I played a demo of it before it came out, and there was no manual, and it sucked. It was only after some friends of mine told me to ignore the demo, read the manual, and play the game that I discovered just how good it was.

The difficulty was extreme, but that was also part of its charm. There was a feeling of terror because you didn't know when an alien you couldn't see would mind-control one of your guys into dropping a grenade into the middle of you squad. And what was worse, there was a bug that actually made all the difficulty the same, no matter what level you chose. To my knowledge, I don't think they ever fixed that issue.

Honestly, read the manual, and give it another chance, or at least check out one of the Sourceforge variants. There's a reason why a good many developers spent the next 20 years trying to make the next X-Com with varying results.
MaroBaro 26 Nov, 2014 @ 11:17am 
yep, technology advanced and everyone is a noob that needs their hands holded.
Space Coward 19 Nov, 2014 @ 10:41pm 
That's XCom!

(I'm sorry...)
dadnaya 6 Nov, 2014 @ 7:38am 
You know, all the old games don't have any help or tutorial.