by Don Emery

Created on: April 15, 2009

One of my personal favorite games for the personal computer. X-com UFO Defense was developed in 1993 by developer MicroProse and in my personal opinion is one of the best computer strategy games I have ever played. The story is that it is the year 1998 the number of sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects has become more prevalent. After being perceived as a threat to the Earth the most powerful nations convened on Geneva, Switzerland on December 11, 1998 after that X-COM or the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit was born. The game consists of two phases: a Geoscape phase and a battle phase. The Geoscape phase is where the majority of the game is played it is a three dimensional picture of the Earth that is fully rotational and has a very detailed zoom feature that zooms down to the city level. The battle phase is the standard turn based battle system with each unit having a certain number of moves as decided by the unit's time units. The battle phase features an isometric view of the battlefield that has fog of war based upon the unit's sight ratings and features elevation with destructible cover. You start off with placing your base anywhere on the map from there you can begin researching technologies that will aid you in combating the alien threat, using your engineers to manufacture equipment that is needed for your operatives and to expand your base as needed to give your operation more capabilities. All while doing this you have to keep your sponsors happy by defending their people from the alien invasion and if you do not keep them happy they could withdraw their funding from your operation or even worse become allies to the aliens which makes your job that much harder. Enough with the back story lets get to the review!

Pros:

In-depth Strategy
The depth of this game is so immense that if you let it this game will suck many hours of your life away. You can control everything to how your base is assembled to naming your operatives and telling them how to react in battle.

Challenging Difficulty
This may just be me but, I like my strategy games to be somewhat challenging in terms of enemy intelligence. X-COM fills my requirement with five different difficulties ranging from very easy (beginner) to impossibly hard (superhuman).

Replay ability
With all of it's options X-COM is never the same game twice and you never know what might happen within a game session.

Cons:

Graphics
This may seem a bit unfair and somewhat minor gripe but, the graphics of X-COM have not very well.

No Multiplayer
This game is solely a single player game but I thought it would be interesting if there was some sort of aliens versus X-COM match played by players on a LAN line.

No Expansion Packs
There were sequels but never an expansion pack or official add-ons that I know of.

Overall I rate this game a nine out of ten, anyone who plays strategy games must play this game enough said!

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