X-COM: UFO Defense

Description

The UFOs are invading our skies! Reports of human and bovine abductions are increasing daily! Cities are terrorized! Something must be done!

XCOM, or eXtraterrestrial COMbat unit, was founded as an international force to combat the alien menace. Start with one base, two fighters, one transport, and a few soldiers, you must stop the alien threat... once and for all.

X-COM: UFO Defense is a strategy game separate but interlinked elements. On the strategic side, called GeoScape, you get a rotating view of the globe, where you see all visible UFOs (those that are within your detection range) as well as major cities and your base(s). You order movements from here, such as sending out fighters to intercept UFOs, transports with soldiers to assault/recover UFOs, and perhaps assaults on alien bases (if you find any). You also control your research, as you must invent better weapons (the Terran weapons are just no match against the alien weapons) quickly, not to mention all the other cool tech you can recover from the aliens. You also need to control your budget, as you can't afford to overextend your reach. Researchers need to be paid, engineers (who build the new toys) need to be paid, base(s) need to be be built/expanded, planes been to be bought/maintained, supplies need to be replenished...

You can earn money by selling unneeded stuff, and you receive funding from the nations of the world; however, a nation can decrease its funding if it decides you aren't operating effectively enough within its region. It's even possible that a nation gets so fed up with you that it signs a pact with the aliens and ceases funding altogether.

Once you join a ground battle, the game switches to Battlescape, which is an isometric view of the battlefield with realistic line-of-sight calculations and turn-based combat. Your mission is usually extermination of all aliens on the battlefield, though if you can capture a few it would surely help your research efforts. If you win, you also recover any alien artifacts left on the field, which can then be researched.

In combat, each of your soldiers has a specific number of Time Units. Doing anything (moving, shooting, turning around, rearranging objects in the inventory etc.) costs a number of TUs. Once a soldier is out of TUs, he cannot act any further this turn (he gets all his TUs back on the next turn, though).

The game aims to mix strategic considerations, resource management, and tactical combat considerations, along with plenty of authentic UFO lore.

Alternate Titles

• "X-COM 未知なる侵略者" -- Japanese spelling
• "X-Com: UFO Defense Collector's Edition" -- 1998 Windows title
• "X-COM: Terran Defense Force" -- Working title
• "X-COM: Michi Naru Shinryakusha" -- Japanese title
• "X-COM: Enemy Unknown" -- European PlayStation title
• "UFO: Enemy Unknown" -- European title
• "UFO" -- Informal European title

Part of the Following Groups

• Games made into books
• Games on Mars
• Video games turned in to board/card games
• X-COM series

Merchant Title       X-COM: UFO Defense     X-COM: UFO Defense     Please select your country: United States Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Japan Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Malaysia Malta Mexico The Netherlands New Zealand Norway Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Serbia Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom Uruguay Other Worldwide Not an American user?

User Reviews

Best PC Game Ever	DOS	Tim Scott (7)
The definitive classic of multi-genre gaming. Master chef Gollop mixes all the ingredients perfectly, and simply.	DOS	J. P. Gray (58)
X-COM is what every game wants to be when it grows up.	DOS	Zovni (9114)
The BEST game of all time.	DOS	The Captain (4)
An exercise in squad tactics.	DOS	Narf! (131)
The game that makes hardcore gamers cry.	Windows	Darryl Park (2)
One of the best games ever? Yes	DOS	Dertalai (16)
Still fun all these years later!	DOS	Gene Davison (745)
Exemplary game and my first turn-based strategy game...	DOS	James P. Wong (2345)
Kiss you life goodbye. You're with X-COM now.	DOS	Lord FlatHead (15)

The Press Says

HonestGamers	Windows	Mar 15, 2005	10 out of 10	100
HonestGamers	PlayStation	Feb 19, 2009	10 out of 10	100
Just Games Retro	DOS	Jun 09, 2004	93 out of 100	93
PC Zone	DOS	Jun, 1994	93 out of 100	93
Netjak	Windows	Sep 19, 2005	9.2 out of 10	92
Netjak	DOS	Sep 19, 2005	9.2 out of 10	92
GameSpot	DOS	Aug 15, 1996	9 out of 10	90
PC Zone	Windows	Aug 13, 2001	9 out of 10	90
High Score	DOS	Jun, 1994	4 out of 5	80
PC Player (Germany)	DOS	May, 1994	74 out of 100	74

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Trivia

The game is actually Geoscape, the rotating globe and resource management, generating the battlefield conditions for BattleScape, where you conduct tactical combat against the aliens. If you press Ctrl-C (as suggested by the hint "level skip") while in Battlescape, you interrupt the Battlescape program, preventing it from writing the "results" file. Thus you will get the same result as your previous battle. This is a result of the developement history (see the other trivia entries), whereas MicroProse decided that the tactical combat is not enough to be a game in itself, and asked Mythos to write a strategy game around it.