Best game of 1996, my best game in 2006 ten years on!
I was so wrong!
X-Com was the best game in 1996 thanks to its excellent graphics (at the time), the atmospheric music that really freaked me out when playing it 10 years ago and the inotive style that was offered not just for combat situations but also the resource management was extremely inotive.
The graphics by today’s standard are extremely poor when compared to games like C&C Generals and Splinter Cell but that is an acceptable tradeoff for the game play which is second to none.
The bulk of the game play, as mentioned before is turn based combat whereby the aim of the game is to either to kill or knock out every alien on the level and recover whatever technology the aliens are using. Each soldier will have a certain amount of time points at the beginning of each turn; for each step taken an amount is deducted from the soldiers time points. The time points are used as well for shooting and throwing grenades so a certain amount of control needs to be learnt so that your Rookie soldier won’t just run out of the plane using up all his time points just to come face to face with a group of aliens who he can’t shoot at because his time units are all used up. The missions you face with Soldiers range from the occasional UFO landing to a full blown invasion of a city by the pesky critters.
The other side of the game play is the resource management. The game will create a base at the beginning which will be fitted with barracks, research labs, radar and hangers to house your Intercept ships.
You can upgrade your base at any time by building various extra rooms, these could be extra barracks for more soldiers you can order, additional hangers for more planes or even missile defenses in case Aliens realize where your base is. You are not restricted to one base however; your base in London won’t detect Alien activity in Australia for instance so creating a new base down under would increase your chances of catching those little .
Once you have successfully completed a combat mission, your soldiers will return to the base with their spoils of war, mainly alien body’s and alien artifacts. Using your base’s team of Scientists you are then able to research the technology and use it to your advantage, finally you get to take the fight back to them. Eventually you will even be able to create your own flying saucers to prevent the Aliens from walking all over the Earth.
This game is hard however, in the first few combat missions I lost at least 7 Soldiers but then that is very realistic, we as humans don’t have the technologies to withstand the Aliens but as time goes on and the player researches and manufactures alien armor and weapons the sides start to level.