Developer – Culture Brain
Genre – Tactical Simulation
Platform – PC
Publisher – Microprose
Release Date – 12/31/1993
What is X-COM UFO Defense?
X-COM UFO Defense is really two games in one. There is a world map, which is a neat little globe that you can rotate. It contains all your secret government facilities where you track UFO activity and reverse engineer captured alien artifacts. This the main game screen. However, every time you send soldiers to a UFO site, you play a turn-based combat with your soldiers vs. the aliens at the landing site. The combat view is isometretic (a top down view that is tilted about 20 degrees) similar to Diablo or Simcity 2000. This game is single player only.
What does this game do well?
X-COM UFO Defense is just SO much fun. It came out during the whole alien conspiracy, X-Files era, so the release of the game was well timed. If the game consisted of just the main screen where you manage your bases and shoot down UFOs, the game would be mediocre, but the fact that you get to land a dropship and engage the aliens is such a great idea. The type of terrain you fight in matches where the ship lands, so you can fight in a variety of different areas ranging from arctic to desert to farmhouses. There are also special combats ranging from alien attacks on major cities to base defense, where the aliens send a ship to attack one of your government facilities. Combat maps are randomly generated with the exception of base defense. In base defense missions, you actually fight in the base that you have built, so placing your facilities with a defensive mindset makes it easier for you to save your radar systems and other key areas. As you research the enemy technology salvaged from crash sites, you can use their own weapons against them and eventually build ships using alien technology.
X-COM UFO Defense does a great job of balancing the combat so that it is both fun and semi-realistic. In fact, the balance has not been matched since, even in modern games. There are a few instances where you will land your ship directly in front of an enemy and it will kill the first 3 soldiers onboard, or when your soldier will exit your craft and immediately get shot, but these are relatively rare. If you are careful enough with your squad, you can take your original 8 soldiers through the whole game without dying.
This is the kind of game where you just have to keep playing to see where the next UFO is going to come from. Even after you tell yourself, “After this combat I’m saving it and quitting” you will finish combat and find yourself still playing the game. Chalk it up to poor willpower if you want, but this game is addictive.
What could this game have done better?
There are 5 difficulty settings in X-COM UFO Defense ranging from Beginner to Superhuman. The harder difficulty levels mean that there are more aliens in each ship up to 100% more on superhuman. Since changing the difficulty doesn’t improve the AI, this actually makes the game easier because you get to salvage more weapons at the end of combat.
The alien AI is not spectacular, but in a way that is a good thing because it allows you to keep your soldiers from dying all the time. There are a lot of wide open areas, and if you were playing against another player it would be really tough to breach one of the alien ships. For a change of pace, try X-COM 2: Terror From the Deep. It’s the same game, but ridiculously harder.
One other weird thing about the game is that the game speed is not set to match the refresh rate of the monitor so it runs way too fast on a modern machine. I have not been able to find a program that slows it down, so if anyone has played this game and knows where to get one, please let me know.
Should I buy this game?
You won’t play this game all day every day, but even if you finish it, in a couple months you will come back to it. In addition to just beating the game, if you set some lofty goals for yourself you can breathe new life into it. For instance, I have beaten the game having never lost a soldier. I have beaten the game using only the weapons that you start the game with and never using laser or plasma weapons. I have beaten the game with only 1 soldier. (That was hard!) I still play this game from time to time, 9 years after it was released.
If older graphics and sound does not bother you, this game is absolutely worth playing. Since it is so old, it only costs about $5 to buy it, so you can’t go wrong. A trip to the movies will cost more than $5, and you will get at most 2 or 3 hours of entertainment. This game will entertain you for months, or in my case years. If this game had multiplayer, I would probably still be playing it.
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