X-Com: Apocalypse

Deep, complex, innovative, details perfected to the extreme, beautiful graphical art and music, no lousy design decisions to force you to extend gameplay time, limitless strategies and tactics. You can choose to play each mission in turn-based or real time modes, you can either sneak your way into the geoscape with stealth precision strikes or rather annihilate the entire enemy armada with your full blown air superiority war ships), you can get money whichever way you prefer, everything breaks the way it's meant to, UFO crash sites destruction is actually realistic depending on the sustained damage (like it was in the original games and unlike it is now), there is a proper serious XCOMpaedia written and designed with care)... Everything is and works the way a PC gamer would think it would. Remember those times? They are almost gone now, and the "almost" part it's only because of the new games that TRY to replicate the Good Old Games days experience, whether indie (usually decent but lacking somewhere) or console-ized/mobile-ized (like certain so called games with the XCOM title in them, streamlined and dumbed down to braindead levels so they could be played half sleep in a couch with an almost dropped gamepad). This game, XCOM Apocalypse, it's the last game of those days, the last innovative enough game to stand its ground as a new game and not a-copy-of-a-copy. The last game designed with few but intelligent PC gamers in mind, and not millions of wallet-legged console/mobile clients.

I see a lot of people saying 'it is an undesevedly forgotten jewel' in the classic UFO series. Well, the jewel has actually been forgotten for a number of strong reasons. The first and the most important: the game has a degenerate economy model. That means, that your welfare is based upon quantity, not quality of your actions (the ensuing gameplay is widely known as 'farming'). Instaead of fighting the alien infestation, you rai the local gangs once every 15 minutes (game time scale is days—weeks—months) to ransack them and sell their belongings to the market. The idea with a lot of different acting forces (organizations) gives an impression of 'there is a lot of cool stuff we wanted to implement, and implemented none of it'. Being at war with most organizations is the same as being in peace with them (with a handful of exclusions). Raiding a vehicle factory won't give you fuel of vehicles, only the equipment of their fallen defenders (why be hostile then?). Forging alliances gives you nothing at all (so why forge them?). You can just use artillery to decimate enemy's belongings, but they will rebuild (regardless of their financial status, they may owe 10000% their annual turnover and still rebuild, and you'll get penalized for decimating them. There are some air combat options, but they seem irrelevant (but still affect the level of destruction, as it is normal for your airforce to hit everything they should not with their arsenal). So, the strategic improvements are really an empty shell, witha lot of undeveloped thoughts underneath. Bestiary and lore are well-made, rather oppressive, interesting to get. There are creatures you will fear, you will hate. Totally in line with the original series, maybe a bit better. Tactical combat is a definite step up, with a lot of new features, mostly positive. All in all this is a lacking experience. Tactical combat and bestiary are rather good, but the most promising strategic part falls 95% short of my expectations.

A cross section view of the future world, post alien invasion. The map is ONE city. I guess the idea was to be able to see and directly interfere with the actions you only heared about in the previous games. Every time the aliens attack, you will be able to see them all, shoot them down or at least see which building they invaded. Genius really. Every building in the city is destructible and is owned by someone, so watch that fire or relations will turn sour (such as your favourite grenades manufacturer). You can raid any building, either helping an organization with their alien infestation, or just shaking down the mall security for their shiny new toys and sell them. X-com or Kingpin, you decide. And this time you can go real-time!

This is imho the best game of the X-Com Series, but it differs strongly from all others. You build your base in one grand city and go on missions for extermination and later research between ufo killings in this one city. Every building belongs to a company and you have to keep em happy if you want them to cooperate with you. Why is that important? Welp, your Machine Guns are fabricated by this one company, your armor by another and your vehicles from just another. Wanna buy something from a company you're unfriendly with? F* u!. Besides that you can put your squads perfectly together from equipment to training to the vehicles which should be used for a mission. Research is the best part in this game, sadly some content wasn't ready or cut from release but MicroProse got a place in my heart for the thoughts put in there. There is also an opensource variant for modern PCs in development, go search for openapoc. Before i forget to mention: you get raided if you are not careful with other companies. but you can raid em in return. ;-) And for alle struggling because of difficulty: you don't have to wait for an alarm to inspect a building. especially after an ufo infects it...

TLDR: if you like X-Com or X-Com like game. Give this one a chance. If you want to compare all X-Com and/or X-Com like game until today. IMHP most of them dont even leave the shadow of X-Com Apocalyse. And here is why. City instead Globe? - The Map has reduse from a Globe to 1 City only. Oh dont let that fool you. There is lots more to it. - All Building are destroyable! If you destroy them you have pay, right? - The City is a live. You will see all sourse of traffic (Police, Gang, Religious, etc. vehicle drive around the city) going on in the City. - You can Raid the Building! Faction, not just Alien: - Lots of Faction (Goverment, Posive, Hightech Company, Religious, Aliens, etc.) - You can buy Equipment from Hightech company, or Raid their Building - Relationship with all Faction, some might hate you forever! Soldiers, Vehicle & Pew pew pew: - Your Soldiers can equip lots of gear without restriction, even un-researched Alienstech - Lots of different Land and Air Vehicle to fit your desire - Vehicle can be equipped with a number of different Weapon & Module - Each Vehicle can carry a fix number of Soldiers - Weapon Tech (Ballistic, Laser, Plasma, Bio) - Weapon Type (Meele, Handgun, Rifle, Autocannon, Sniper Rifle, SMG, Rocket Launcher, Grenade, etc...) - Equipment (Body Amor, Shield, PSI, Medic-Kit, Stealth, etc...) Tactical vs. Real Time: - Clasic Tactical game play mode is the most common and known to X-Com Player. You can plan Movement & Shooting with your Action Point. - Real Time game play mode is played like a RTS. - You Can have up to 6 Squad and each Squad can have upto 6 Soldiers Just list few of the feature so you will get the idea. Have fun playing.