X-COM: Terror from the Deep

aka: TFTD, UFO 2, X-COM 2
Moby ID: 543
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

X-COM: Terror from the Deep is the follow-up to the resource management and tactical combat game X-COM: Enemy Unknown.

It has been 40 years since X-COM last defeated the aliens. Now, in the year of 2040, aliens begin to appear on the Earth again. This time the threat to humanity is coming from the depths of oceans.

The game is almost identical to the original X-COM game. The user interface, weapons, and aliens are all the same. The only difference is the adaptation of the aliens and weapons (e.g. new hand-to-hand weapons) to the ocean environment. The game features both undersea and on-land missions, and is significantly harder than its predecessor.

Spellings

  • 幽浮2:深海出擊 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

60 People (54 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 26 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 113 ratings with 11 reviews)

As good as prequel, but... different

The Good
Well. Saying that it's the "exact same game" is not quite right in my opinion. XCOM: TFTD takes a bit different approach, and is much better at it, in many ways.

The game is deeper, darker, more terrifying. And the aliens! While Gill Men and Deep ones feel a bit silly, Tentaculats and other nice creatures of this sequel leave UFO: Enemy Unknown far, far behind.

Everything is more serious and suspense, depths of the ocean are darker, screams of dying Aquatoids run chills down your back and teeth of Tasoth are sharper... After playing TFTD, blasting sectoids on cabbage fields feels a bit silly, and you will come back to TFTD to find that claustrophobic, haunting experience that prequel lacked. In other words, you're not chasing little green men anymore, now it's your aquanauts being chased, in the depths of the oceans...

While most of weapons feel the same, technology feels a bit more realistic and your aquanauts in top notch armor don't look more like what they were supposed to be and not like lost funny astronauts as was in the prequel.

Loads of new (and better!) graphics, darker colors and less repetitive terrains add alot too.

The Bad
As almost all reviews say, missions are way too long and difficult. Especially second level of the alien colony - whoever designed this map - totally overdid it. Maps are quite crazy too, and it feels almost like designer intentionally designed the map so chasing down that last alien would be so difficult. This becomes quite frustrating.

Also, while music is good, and definitely adds more to the atmosphere, all that deep and dark burden wears player off quickly. I personally preferred cyberpunk and somewhat thrilling feel of the original to this... endless terror and agony that TFTD sounds like. Still, sounds are heavily improved and overall feel fits better to the theme.

Spending few hours (missions) underwater makes you miss the daylight. Sadly, there's almost none in this game. This gives somewhat worn out and repetitive feel, especially since game is much longer and harder.

The Bottom Line
If you liked UFO: Enemy Unknown and seriously need more, pick up this game. But remember that techno-thriller'ish joyride of the first game is now replaced with fear-inducing, dark battle for survival.

And your chances for survival are low, much lower than before. Quite literally, if you're not a patient, experienced hardcore player, you WILL die alone in darkest depths and no one will ever know what happened to you. No merry civilians wandering around this time.

DOS · by The Doom (2) · 2009

Improves on X-Com : UFO Defense in every way. Except you can't beat it.

The Good
The most obvious positive is that it's virtually the same game (Which can be a good or bad thing with games - in this case it's, for the most part, good). If you have any prior experience with "X-Com : UFO Defense", then there will be a very low learning curve in regards to this game's interface. Missions that involve underwater combat may initially present some interesting challenges to those used to fighting on land, however, namely due the rather bumpy and litter covered terrain. Speaking of terrain, it may only be because it's more detailed, but it does seem at times that randomly generated maps (particularly underwater ones) are somewhat larger than they were in UFO Defense (though I could be wrong).

As far as true improvements to the game engine itself, the sound department is quite a bit more impressive this time around, with ambient environmental sounds in the background, generally more impressive sound effects, and sound distortion while underwater (I believe this was the first game to do this, in fact). Another plus is the in-game music, which is a vast improvement over the comparatively dull music in UFO Defense. It has sort of a low-budget early 1980's synth sound to it, which complements the invading sea creatures theme rather well indeed.

As far as graphics, there are also several improvements here as well. Besides a more colorful palette to work from during land battles, there appears to be a palette shift while operating underwater to allow for more blueish-toned colors than those seen on land (either that or it's a semi-transparent blue overlay), which, especially during night missions, lends a certain atmosphere to underseas missions. Also, while there was animated terrain in UFO Defense, there wasn't very much of it. Not so in TFTD. A particular favorite of mine is the underwater volcano terrain, which feature bubbling lava vents and "streams" of molten material illuminating the nearby landscape. Great stuff.

The Bad
Microprose did a fairly good job regarding the design of the features that came with this game, but they failed miserably with monster creation. The aliens are either too easy or (more often than not) too hard to defeat. The worst offender is the Lobstermen, who are walking crustaceans with tank-like body armor and enough health to soak up the damage of a small thermonuclear device. The only way to kill them in an expedient manner is to use various melee weapons that you later research to drill rather large holes in them, and many times that is rather difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, forcing you to expend several magazines of ammunition to kill just one (!) of them. The only way to fix these problems is to use an editing program to increase or (again, more often than not) decrease the statistics of the various types of aliens, even though that's commonly regarded as cheating.

Another problem is the sameness this game shares with UFO Defense. While I did list this as a positive earlier, there are some things I would have liked a little different, in particular the available inventory. It's rather disappointing to find that most of the weapons and utilities available for use are exact carbon copies of items from the previous game, with some new sound effects and a change in graphics and text. Also there are three weapons that only operate underwater, but besides that they are also carbon copies of land based weaponry from the previous game. The only new additions are the Vibro-Blade/Lancer weapons (which are quite useful against Lobstermen), and that's really about it.

The Bottom Line
Terror from the Deep is a fun, atmospheric game that's neigh impossible to beat. It will take you several long weeks/months/whenever to beat.

DOS · by Longwalker (723) · 2002

Hey, I for one thought it was a good addition to the series!

The Good
If you are planning on playing this game- do not unless you have played the original first (X:Com: UFO Defence/Enemy Unknown). This game has a healthy dose of strategy, adrenaline pumping suspence, and plot. The missions are involved, your decisions in the campaign screen affect the success of the project, and research/financal politics are your life source. The atmosphere of the underwater missions are heavy and lonely.

The Bad
There were not a lot of things I didn't like about this game. My biggest beef was that some of the missions were very long. In fact some of the new types of missions (such as the attacked ship terror sites and the alien artifact sites) were as long as the final mission in the first game. These missions tend to take a long time to finish as well. The maps are much more complex- so when you get down to the final alien it can take you as long just to track the thing down as it did to kill all of its buddies.

The Bottom Line
This game is a worthy sequel to the original and a joy to play for people who like turn-based strategy.

DOS · by Gene Davison (801) · 2000

[ View all 11 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Steam powered!? Xoleras (66143) Aug 17, 2007

Trivia

Bugs

The research tree in this game had a few bugs which prevent you from researching certain items, one of them can even stop you from successfully completing the game. Luckily there are guides that contain ways to avoid these bugs.

Development

After completing UFO MicroProse wanted to do a quick follow up within six months. We said that this was not feasible, and if it were possible it would be little more than the same game with different graphics. Instead we started work on X-Com:Apocalypse, which was much more ambitious. Once UFO/X-Com was clearly known to be a success, MicroProse suggested that we license the code for them to develop their own sequel. The rest is history.

-- taken from the Mythos Games web site.

References

X-COM: Terror from the Deep is heavily based on the writings of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Many names and creatures are taken straight from HPL. Also, T'leth is R'lyeh, and in the final mission, you can see the tomb and the portrait of the Great Cthulhu himself.

Awards

  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1996 – Best Strategy Game in 1995

Information also contributed by Jaromir Krol and Spearhead51

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by IJan.

PlayStation added by Trixter. Windows added by Xoleras.

Additional contributors: Narf!, Kasey Chang, tarmo888, n][rvana, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger.

Game added December 6, 1999. Last modified January 19, 2024.