Xenonauts

This would be a fantastic game and return to form for original Xcom lovers. But for a smooth brain and action orintated guy like myself, it's too hard and and complicated. I can see this game becoming someone else's favorite.

Picture this: What if X-COM: UFO Defense was remade, but now it's necessary for some soldiers to carry an utterly impossible shield in one hand (with either a pistol or nothing in the other). This one foolish design decision rather ruins the game if you can't let it slide. I played and enjoyed it for a while, but ultimately . . . You carry a slab of boilerplate that weighs more than you do and wouldn't stop a rifle round, and it will absorb several shots from super-powerful alien ray guns? (Rather than spraying molten steel over you and your buddies the first time it's hit?) And even if you can get past that, you have to surrender the tactical flexibility of loading your soldiers with various actually effective weapons in order to "arm" several of them with these magical (IDK, maybe they levitate or something, but then why doesn't any of the other gear...) shield-slabs? Naw, hard pass. bud. They tried to revitalize the old-style X-COM game. They came so close. So. Close. Like I said, it's a good game if you can get past the stupidity and tactical inflexibility of the shield-love. Maybe you can. After a while I couldn't. Happy gaming, whatever you play.

+ Cold war setting + Difficulty + Adult game + Lenght + Program runs very well + Nice mods who runs well - Cold war setting kind of wasted IMO - I think that Goldhawk could come up with original aliens and narrative

Great remake of X-COM! Sadly, it's in 32-bit format, and therefore it will not work unless its developers bother upgrading it to 64-bit version. Please do so, for maximum stars rating.

Having only played the reboot of XCOM, I was happy to have a chance to experience the old XCOM's feel without its dated interface. At first I had a lot of fun with it. Then the game became more and more of a chore sadly. I don't think I'll finish the campaign TBH. I'll start with the good parts: I could figure out the interface much faster than the old XCOM game, the 2d graphics are nice and the art style, while odd, has grown on me. The air-war of the game is fun, way better than in the reboot. In my first week-and-a-half, it did give me that one-more-turn feel. And the different weapon types (pistol, shotgun, rifle, sniper, machine gun) are nicely balanced and all have their uses. My problem is that the game takes too long and changes too little. The ground-assault missions are fun at first, but you have to do so many of them during the campaign that they get pretty repetitive. Weirdly, the 1-minute airbattles that you can just autoresolve DO change as the game progresses, with research unlocking new planes that have only missiles or only guns. But the 30+ minute ground battles stay mostly the same. The devs seemed so pleased with the balance of the weapon types, they didn't want to mess with it: You can get laser-, then plasma-, then railgun weapons, but only the damage changes. Otherwise, the laser-pistol functions just like the regular plstol. Your soldiers level up, but they don't learn new tricks either, they just get better stats, making them better at what they were already doing. Oh, and for XCOM veterans, two points on psionic powers. 1: Humans never get them, so forget about that spicing up the combat. 2: Aliens get them, and it sucks. Psions don't need line of sight and mindcontroled soldiers can act before you can. It's up to the RNG if a psionic alien mindcontrols your machinegunner from across the map and makes him immediately one-hit-kill one of the soldiers you spend hours leveling. No counter, no defense, no fun.