X-COM: Apocalypse

The Good
Everything, its like the first game - but ten times better. There are so many levels to this game: politics, corporate wars research etc. Often I found myself forgetting the point is to stop 'the alien menace' and instead concentrating on turning a profit and raiding my rivals base for laughs!

I have kept coming back to this game over the course of the last 5 or so years - its got replayability in droves!

The Bad
The graphics are poor even for the time it was released, and the music is made up of fairly annoying 80's style synths which you'll want to turn off straightaway. The sound effects are good and solid though.

I found the real time play option redundant. I always preferred the turn based action, but this was mainly personal preference

The Bottom Line
In depth squad based strategy

The Good
I liked the classic X-com part of the game..down an alien craft, investigate it, research new alien technologies, manage your base, buy weapons, all that good stuff.

The Bad
I hated the insanity of every combat aspect of the game. For starters, the game almost required you to play it in real time(you can choose either real time or turnbased) since one turn base mission usually takes about 4 hours. I really did not like playing this game in real time..I'm more accustomed to the traditional turnbased style of UFO Defense. I also hated the fact that rarely does 1 alien craft come through the portal to attack, it's usually several..making many companies hate you early on in the game. All in all, I was for the most part disappointed by this game.

The Bottom Line
If you think real time fighting is more fun than the traditional x-com turnbased fighting then you may like this game, if not, I recommend you stay clear of this game.

The Good
You can blast almost everything to bits! A very easy (though not always smart) way of killing your enemies, whether they be aliens or evil cultists, is using high explosives to level all the buildings and structures on the screen - and a very pleasing way at that. Never mind the civilians, they always get in the way anyhow (you often have to murder a couple of innocent fools just because they block doorways). The aspect I like most about all the UFO (or X-Com) games is the fact that while they are essentially tactical wargames, they acknowledge the fact that raising hell is actually a tactic.

The ability to choose between real-time and turn-based combat from mission to mission comes in handy, as certain types mission do not require a lot of control over the units, and combat can be quite tedious if you command a dozen or so agents in turn-based mode.

The retro-futuristic hi-res graphics are also very nice, and the sound effects are quite rewarding (aieegh! boom! zap!), though the music is quite hum-drum.

For a game that needs no storyline the storyline is OK, but the overall atmosphere and the constantly increasing difficulty kept me motivated enough to actually finish the game (which for me is something quite rare).

The Bad
As with the first two UFO games, some of the combat missions tend to drag out, but Apocalypse is much more playable than its predecessors in this sense. Also, on more difficult levels of play the bases tend to get very crowded right at the beginning, which is not a good thing, though it does make the game more difficult all right.

The music could have been more inspiring, or inspired.

The Bottom Line
Running an X-Com operation in a self-contained metropolis of the future means having to deal with evil cultists, criminal gangs, political organizations and mega-corporations while fending off (and eventually destroying) evil aliens from another dimension. While most of the action takes place at UFO (or IFO, if you research them) infiltration and crash sites in fierce isometric combat, but you also get to look at the city map while building your base, researching alien technology, arming your troops and using you craft to shoot down enemy vessels - in short, this game has it all! (Including hulking monsters rampaging through the city, destroying buildings.)

Though some aspects of the game could have been developed further (like the political and economical life of the city, space travel, etc), this game is one of the best in its genre as far as it goes. It's no Jagged Alliance 2, but well worth the price if you can find it!