Ufo: Enemy unknown

I remember a friend had this game on floppys. I didn´t know much about it, nor was I much into strategy-games, but gawd! When I saw that intro, heared that music and saw that globe I was hooked. Nostalgia aside, this is an ageless game in a sense, and it manages to pull off things modern X-com games have struggled witch, such as fully destructible environments and UFOs. It´s unforgiving to the lazy player, but rewarding as hell if you get engaged in it. So install that GTX 1080, watch the gameplay run superfast, turn off that turbo-button, and kill some aliens.

A must own! This game has it all; budgeting, resource management, event prioritization, a highly interesting tech tree, nerve-wracking combat, permadeath, a great midi soundtrack, fantastic sfx, varying mission types, a good assortment of badies and weaponry, all wrapped in the best theme gaming can provide... the gradual degredation of earth as result of a mostly secretive alien invasion. The sense of urgency isnt as large as its modern sequels, but the restrictions the new games have around squad size (Max 16), the linear layouts of the battle maps (The aliens are everywhere, not just in front of you), and the number + type of actions per turn ultimately go away. I still prefer this game to the modern XCOM equivalents. Advice to new players though - CHECK YOUR CORNERS! And pray there isnt an alien with a grenade at your ships front door.

Also known as UFO Enemy Unknown. The original (1994) was super buggy and nearly unplayable on newer systems, but thanks to the guys behind the openxcom project (a mod that repairs the original game and gives you the option to add many new things), the game is now playable and with lots of bug fixes. The game is pretty unbalanced and exploitable, here are a few tips: Don't exit the craft in the first turn as the aliens, that have visual on you, will have full AP and will likely reaction fire. Always have the maximum number of soldiers in the landing craft (while this might be obvious, I saw people that don't do this, usually the same kind of people that spend all the APs exploring instead of having some AP for reaction fire or retreat). Put the most expandable soldiers closer to the exit of the landing craft because the first ones out are the likeliest to get killed. Don't hurry, especially getting your troops out of the landing craft. Advance slowly, only extend yourself when you have an alien’s location and you can kill it because you don't want it to have a full turn while you are in sight. Expanding on this, try to kill all the aliens that you see in the same turn that you see them; that's why it's usually best to advance slowly (to have lots of APs) and have lots of soldiers (and implicitly firepower). You should use scouts (~rookies) that at the start of the turn will try to advance but also retreat at the end. This way you'll create a buffer and decrease the chance of enemies sneaking close enough to the rest of your (more valuable) soldiers. Exploit: After turn 20 the aliens are generally going to come and try to find you, useful for landed/crashed UFOs. A very good starting location is in west Lebanon so that you will have cover over Europe and a lot of the downed UFOs could be in North Africa where the desert maps are pretty smooth. The beginning (or better said the first half of the game) is going to be pretty brutal, use all the force that you can and don't shy away from explosives and leveling buildings even preemptively in some cases. Pros: great feeling, nice combination of tactical game, researching stuff and base building while under pressure to survive. Cons: exploitable, unbalanced, bad spotting/FOV mechanic, you see as much as the aliens only in full light which will lead to a lot of frustration. Rating: now, we are prodding *them*! Recommendation: only if you are into this kind of games and you can tolerate/like the graphics.

If you wanna play this game nowdays do it with OpenXCom Extended. It has a very simple installer that will discover your TFtD installation. You can play vanilla (original game) or with ton of mods improving graphics, music, giving you new weapons, maps etc.

One of the best strategy game I ever played. Still difficult and keeps you in suspense.