The sense of mystery and dread that you mentioned touches on the only part of the article I disagreed with - the critique of the "pointless" weapons, of the game giving you a sub-par base and sub-par craft to begin with, and basically no guidance is what made it such an adventure.

X-Com (the organisation) truly feels like a hastily slapped together ragtag bunch in the beginning. Governments have thrown money at a problem with no real plan or strategy and whipped up something ASAP. They want results and it's your job to deliver them. You're the expert, they're more than happy to pull out if you fail. You are probably unprepared, but no one had any idea how unprepared, something you very quickly learn after your first encounter. That elite squad you outfitted with all of mankind's best aircraft, armour and weapons? Just got owned in their first encounter. Medkits? Basically useless when you're being melted by a single plasma rifle charge.

The clutter and disarray really drives home just how vastly outgunned humans are in the beginning and the story driven by player experience would suffer greatly if all the "useless" stuff was pared back and the starting condition pre-optimised.

Otherwise a great article.

Yes, this is it! The special sauce of the original is that there is so much mystery; "Enemy Unknown" is the whole idea. While I love the Firaxis reboot, and think it has better gameplay, I'm not sure it's strictly a better game. It all feels so clean and organized, and it's always clear what needs to be done. There's no sense of bureaucratic panic, wasted time on pointless tech-trees, or over-investment in a singular hail-mary plan that is completely foolhardy only in retrospect.

The discovery portion of XCOM matched with the dreadful mystery of XCOM, overlaid by unknown levels of complexity, is what makes the game feel real/alive. It makes the gamespace feel much more wide-open than it really is. When you first experience your own base under attack, the feeling is "holy shit I didn't even know this could happen and wow I did not plan appropriately for this eventuality!" In the reboot, it mostly just feels like another mission, where the layout is totally decoupled from the actual decisions you've made. And you're much more likely to have trained commandos at homebase rather than a ragtag bunch of rookies with "failed experiments" gear (eg laser tech and maybe some grenades lying around).

That's just one more example to illustrate how the original XCOM was as much about creating tension through the limitless possibilities of the unknown. Each and every decision was less like a chess game and more like a desperate gambit.

Hey, don't offend Laser Rifles! First, they are a valuable source of income (second only to Light Alloys + Personal Armors production, but that requires 2 components and is also messy), and do not require any ammunition, firing endlessly.

My every soldier carried an obligatory Laser Rifle in his backpack, taking it out and firing it every chance he had, achieving 3 objectives at once:

- the more stuff you carry, the faster strength and TUs of a soldier grow

- he always has a backup weapon with infinite ammo and decent damage

- everytime your other units are searching for that last alien, you must choose some barn or cabbage and SHOOT at it at full auto, RAPIDLY rising shooting accuracy.

In addition to laser rifles my commandoes always carry autocannons with HE or Incendiary ammo, creating havoc every time they can and scaring enemy to death. Later you can replace autocannons with Heavy Plasmas and those Blaster Launchers, but before that, it's the best way for heavy loading soldiers.

The only downside to this is somewhat reduced TU count in the beginning, and you also have to set up the gear for every mission, which is a drag. Unfortunately, original XCom doesn't have loadout templates.

    Unfortunately, original XCom doesn't have loadout templates.

I remember downloading a savegame editor just to "cheat" and automate some of the equipment management. I shouldn't have to manually tell my soldiers to load ammo into their damn weapons, lol.

I played this game though probably 100 times and never realized that repeatedly firing weapons is what improves a soldier's accuracy. So thanks for that. I mean, it makes perfect sense when you think about it, as long as you assume there is no other training that these soldiers go through behind the scenes. Which... Yeah.

Heh also firing a stun grenade into your ship at the end of a mission. Promotions for everyone!

I wish this was empathised. The game could start with an optional conventional battle.

Try "Xenonauts", a recent remake of X-com using the original mechanics. It isn't a direct port, they have added a couple mechanics in areas like air combat, but it is 95% x-com with better graphics.

My want: Xenonauts + TFTD. TFTD was the pinnacle of the x-com franchise imho. That opening sequence, and all the sound, was amazing. I still hear TFTD sounds being reused in modern scifi.

There's a Xenonauts 2 that's in the works, though it has no fixed release date yet. I have it on my Steam wishlist.

Well, if they are the "spiritual successor" to the X-com franchise, Xenonauts 2 will have to be horrible. If they called it "Xenonauts: Fear the Depths" then I would be hopeful.

One of the creators of X-com released his own game recently: Phoenix Point https://phoenixpoint.info/

But it's terrible.

X-COM: Apocalypse was also terrible, proving Julian Gollop was simply lucky and at the right time meeting right people.

It was a few months ago, but it looks like they keep patching it. I played it a few days ago and it was much better. Could pull a No Man's Sky.

Agree on all points. There's a total conversion mod for the original X-COM: UFO Defense that is amazing, and being actively worked on. New updates every month or so. Hundreds more hours in the campaign. Set a few hundred years after X-COM loses, and earth is a radiated wasteland when some intrepid mutant gals start to fight back against the "Star Lords". It's called xPiratez. Rated a soft "R" for gratuitous pixellated boobage.

TIL about the existence of OpenXCom, so I guess I know where my next weekend will go...

Yeah, it breathed new life into the basic game in a big way. The mods, on the other hand, get pretty different.

Unfortunately, their website appears to be down, at least for the last couple of hours..

> Ironman adds a lot to the game, you can't savescum from a risky missed shot, and actually start to be really afraid for your guys.

I don't savescum... but I've had a couple of bugs or glitches with the reboots that I'm afraid to start an ironman game and not be able to go back to a previous turn.

You can still backup save files in Ironman on Steam actually, it's just too messy to use all the time for a failed shot. But it is better to save once in a while than lose the entire game, like I had once in UE4, ruining a very promising world conquest.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said, but wish to add that one thing I really didn't care for about the newer X-Com games was that the reverse difficulty carve is significantly more pronounced than it was in the original. Ironman helps a little, but it still feels like the real game is all in the beginning and you're just going through the motions after that.

> I actually managed to beat X-Com 2 in Ironman mode on Commander difficulty without losing any soldier, and THAT was a major feat, I tell you.

Dodging save corruption is itself impressive :)

Actually I did backups every few hours, but so far I never encountered savefile corruption in x-com games. Happened to me a few times in ck2/eu4 though.

For me the best part of X-Com is when you actually learn the mechanics of the game. When you learn the missions that aliens do, recognize how the ships look like. If you see three-four supply ships on the ground you know they're either resupplying or building a colony. Do you attack the colony, or harvest the supply ships that come regularly?

Look at the chart. Seeing extremely high alien activity in some remote country? High odds there's an alien base there.

I would recommend looking into the game Xenonauts. it captures some of that flavour.

Xenonauts is good, but Firaxis' Xcom 2 is better. The original atmosphere is very well reproduced, with more recent graphics and a decent storyline.