The apocalypse is here (X-Com - Enemy Unknown (PC))

Member Name: kev7722

Product:	X-Com - Enemy Unknown (PC)
Date:	19/01/02 (213 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap to buy now, Good playability

Disadvantages: May have problems with new geoscape, Game it'self is outdated

Before I start, let me firstly say that if you haven’t played either UFO enemy unknown, or Terror from the deep, then don’t bother playing this. The way you play the game doesn’t make a difference, but the plot is so intricately conceived that it would ruin the experience.

For those who are going to play it anyway without having played the other two: Aliens are trying to take over the Earth and you have to stop them using an elite team of operatives in a group called X-com. It is a government funded organisation and it was X-com who originally ended the alien menace on two other occasions. However, this time its an entirely new race who are after our planet, but guess what… X-com have to kill the aliens all over again.

The general basis of the game is still the same as the other two in the X-com series but the geoscape has been made much more advanced, with individual buildings and roads, instead of just countries. This has the disadvantage of making the geoscape much more difficult to control, but in the main it makes the game much better. For instance, now you can actually see your ships battling away with the alien intruders, and more than one ship can attack the aliens at the same time. It makes all aspects of the game very intense. Also, you can actually see the aliens trying to coerce the innocent humans into helping them. The cult of Sirius see the aliens as our masters and are quite hostile to X-com forces. However, the aliens try to spread their influence all over the city and if you aren’t careful you are left battling your closest human allies.

The actual battle mode for X-com agents has also had changes. You can now play in real time mode, which I think brightens up the game wonderfully. No longer can the `save at end of turn` trick work, because you never know when an alien will appear. The graphics have had a vast improvement from the original series and there is still as much diversity in the a
lien species as you would expect from microprose.

All in all, a fantastic game which can be played over and over again.

Summary: