XCOM

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

This article or section is about something oldschool - and awesome.
Make sure your rose-tinted glasses are on nice and tight, and prepare for a lovely walk down nostalgia lane.

This is a rare treat. X-COM, or as it's called across the pond, UFO: Enemy Unknown is a turn-based strategy game that is, to put it simply, about as close to a game of Dark Heresy as one can get in isometric 3D. Note that X-COM is significantly older than Dark Heresy, and older than all but the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, so it'd be better to say Dark Heresy is a lot like X-COM on the tabletop. Dating back to the much-lamented Microprose, it set a gold standard for atmosphere and playability that has, frankly, not been breached in ages.

The game is old as balls and in isometric view, which, paired with the Dark Heresy similarities, makes it more /tg/ material than /v/.

A General Gist

A general synopsis is that in the not-so-distant future, there is war - and aliens. Aliens are arriving, and they are most assuredly hostile. It falls upon the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or the eponymous X-COM, a multi-national task-force, to deal with the invasion by blasting the fuck out of the Aliens, stealing their shit, researching their technology, and using it to fucking kill them off, all the while fighting off terror attacks and trying to figure out where in Uranus these fucking things are coming from (as it turns out, from Mars, and if you win, the final mission involves you going to Mars and dropping an Exterminatus on their asses).

It kicked ass. It was good enough to spawn a sequel, Terror From The Deep, which was basically the same game, but underwater and infinitely harder. Story-wise, the destruction of the Martian base activated a fail-safe in the aliens' system that woke up T'leth, their 'secondary' (and mobile) base buried deep under the seas of Earth. X-Com now again must protect the people while finding out about where exactly T'leth is and go in to blast it to smithereens with extreme prejudice. It was hard. Really hard. Not only do aliens have a major advantage technology-wise at the start and they tear through your recruits with impunity, but later in the game when you catch up they start using a nasty trick to take control of your troopers, leading to sometimes hilarious and extreme rage-inducing turn one TPKs as your heavy weapon trooper gets controlled and fires his heavy weapon inside the transport while the team is busy disembarking. Oh, and did we mention that the only way to research the best armour in the game was to capture a live specimen of a rarely-appearing alien? And that to capture a live specimen you had to send a poor redshirt in armed with an oversized cattleprod to stun it in close quarters? And that said alien was able to tear a human apart effortlessly in close quarters? And (as if all that wasn't bad enough already), that the poor redshirt then had to pick up and to carry the damn unconscious thing back to the human ship praying that the specimen didn't wake up with a grudge before he got there and the mission ended? Yeah, it was kinda like that.

It then spawned a second, somewhat different but still appreciated sequel, X-Com Apocalypse. Destruction of T'leth fucked up Earth biosphere and humanity retreated to quickly built mega-arcologies to survive. Unlike the two first game, there's a bigger political aspect to things as you have not only to make sure you deal with the damn aliens coming to fuck your shit up, but remain best buds with the other humans while doing so. All in all, a decent, if not overwhelmingly good game.

Then Microprose was bought by that which must never be named, who proceeded to nose-dive the IP with games like X-COM: Interceptor and X-COM: Enforcer.

Fucking Hasbro.

Anyway. Combat is a lot like Dark Heresy's in that it's exceedingly lethal; at the game's outset, you have no armor beyond jumpsuits with Kevlar stuffed into them, and your firearms are the best and most powerful weaponry that chemical propelled explosives can provide only moderately capable against alien forces (though quite diverse). In order to properly take these fucking things on on anything remotely resembling their own terms, you need upgrades. Upgrades come through research, and research comes by shooting down UFOs, landing a ground assault, killing the surviving aliens, and stripping the UFO like the Blood Ravens do other chapters' shiny bits. Once brought back to base, your researchers can look into what makes the alien's gear work, research your own weapons and tech, and develop technologies to help in the fight against the Aliens. Eventually, you can load your forces up with Power-armored bad-asses, but starting out, your forces are fragile, and fighting smart is vital. You will suffer casualties early on - guaranteed - but such is war, and you must press on, allowing the survivors to grow into manly badasses.

The Aliens themselves are diverse, ranging from the Sectoids (conventional "gray" aliens), to Chryssalids (horrifying abominations that inject targets with eggs that turn them into mindless drones which will explosively birth new Chryssalids thereafter). Nightmare fuel = yes. The game manages to be exceedingly creepy for one so simple, and is one of many reasons that X-COM works so well.

Tales of Heroism

In accordance with /tg/'s love of war stories about your dudes, several examples of awesome have been compiled:

Instant death doesn't always happen. Occasionally, one Rookie will be touched by God and succeed against all odds. After that, he will die horribly. Just as Planned.

X-COM agent of note: Marc Lecointe. Lecointe survived numerous missions, got the highest kill count on most missions, killed a Snakemen leader and his bodyguards (despite losing over half the squad), and got shot in the face and back with plasma and lived. He eventually was hit with return fire in an alley and began bleeding. He returned fire and killed the Snakeman, but bled to death before help could arrive. Lacointe lives on in our hearts.

Another agent of note is Gristle McThornbody, a Rocket-Toting Team-Killing asshole who refuses to die OR be mind-controlled. He's so badass, that even when he has 85% or more to hit on a 2x2 alien, he'll still hit the wall twenty tiles to the left.

New Stuff and Things

According to things /v/ likes to watch on the Internet, a new X-Com game is in the pipes, set to be made in the gameplay and spirit of the old games, with new graphics and updated for the new generation of gamers to be introduced into the X-Com game style. It lost the dash along the way someplace, and got re-named XCOM: Enemy Unknown. This new game, which has spawned joy boners in many on /v/ and /tg/ alike, is believed to stem from the utter, burning fury that was originally spawned from 2K's simply-titled XCOM game, which, near as we can tell, is an FPS that takes place in the 1960s and has exactly nothing to do with the actual X-COM franchise. Seriously, don't look into 2K's game if you're a fan of the series on any level - it will cause veterans to spontaneously transform into Angry Marines and/or Khornate Berserkers. Apparently, those in charge had the wherewithal to note that if they didn't make a proper X-COM game, /tg/ (and by extension, /v/) would leave their asshole in ruins. They even went ahead to declare the two games take place in separate universes. If only Games Workshop had that much sense...

XCOM: Enemy Unknown by Firaxis

And Firaxis came to the rescue, promising to return to the roots of XCOM (note the lack of a hyphen this time around, although the logo does have a horizontal stripe taken out of the "COM"). Since Firaxis has a lot of ex-MicroProse people, a lot of them have had to do with the original as well, and the original musical score will make a return. Although it's changed a few things to avoid hurting the brains of delicate little console kiddies like removing time units, removing ballistic simulation, cutting down on your maximum amount of squad members (4 at the start and 6 maximum) and limiting us to one base (though each base location gives its own unique bonus), it still somehow manages to be a good game in its own right. If the original X-COM is like Mordheim, then XCOM is like Space Hulk: massively simplified and more heavily dependent on the luck of the die, but with less micromanagement and long-term planning required.

If you haven't bought the game and you're a TBS fan, everyone in /tg/ that isn't That guy, would highly recommend you give it a whirl at the modest price of ~~$39.99~~ $16.49 for all the good remade XCOM games because of our father Gabe Newell on PC, still is 39.99 for console/Non-Steam or $9.99 on mobile/tablet devices. Like always, we have footage for vidyas: https://youtu.be/qDhuZ4b51hA https://youtu.be/-SKoS5BYVuY https://youtu.be/bxuzLyR-000

XCOM: Enemy Within

Did we mention melee combat with exosuits?

Enemy Within is an expansion pack (and unlike most "horse armor" tier DLCs with the name this one actually deserves it) that completely re-defines how the game progresses, compared to the original one. The game's story still progresses like the original game, but expands on it for a more entertaining experience.

It adds the "meld" resource to the game, a type of alien organic/synthetic-hybrid nanomachine that allows you to unlock two powerful technologies: MEC and genetic modification. MEC allows your troops to interface with a Mechanized Exoskeleton Cybersuit, a heavy exoskeleton that brings the heaviest of weapons to the field (Including the option for a powerfist equivalent called a "Kinetic Strike Module". Yes, make your own faux Terminator squad! Especially when the Tier-3 Paladin upgrades bulks up your suit's armor that you look vaguely similar to Termies.). Genetic modification allows you to augment your troops using data gathered from dissected aliens, making them killier than ever before. Infact, you can create your own equivalent of an Imperial Space Marine with the list of available modifications you can do (Two of these specific upgrades are a second heart and the ability of self-regeneration) .

It also adds new aliens to the xenos' side, like a cloaking squid robots that chokes your troops to death and their own brand of exosuit troops. It also introduces another enemy into the game: EXALT. EXALT are a bunch of power-mad blokes who sees the alien's invasion as a way to gain power by adapting their technology for themselves, inching them closer to world domination. They see you as an obstacle and are determined to undermine your efforts to defeat the aliens by disrupting your operations through a number of ways and sowing panic amongst XCOM-member nations, generally making your already hectic life even more hectic. You must now defeat this new threat through a combination of cunning brutality and brutal cunning. They have most of your technologies to go toe-to-toe with you (Except for their own exosuits) and they are well hidden, so bringing them down won't be an easy affair.

XCOM 2

A direct-ish sequel to EU/EW, XCOM 2 seems to decide that what's canon is not: not "you killed all the aliens, now here's more aliens", but "you know that Impossible Ironman game you played for a laugh and got utterly stomped? That's the canon ending". (The utterly stomping part takes place in the base assault, and it is so bad that two of the most important things got taken: The Commander, and more importantly, central officer Bradford's sweater). The aliens won before humanity even got to laser weapons, taking over the world and unifying humanity (read: ruling over them in a pseudo-utopia "Brave New World"-style), and basically preparing to turn them into another of their slave races (not that most of humanity knows this).

XCOM refused to back down even after the Council of Nations ceased to exist and instead went underground, hijacking an alien supply ship to act as a mobile base for hit-and-run operations against the alien occupiers, in the hopes of toppling the ADVENT (the puppet government aliens've set up) and exposing the true purpose of their supposedly ideal society to the world.

New features include: The Assault class has been given a makeover to focus even more on Rip and Tear, replacing the sidearm with a sword and changing title to the Ranger. The Sniper has been renamed the Sharpshooter and given a pistol-focused skill-tree-route that turns the soldier into Clint Eastwood (literally, like you can have a stand-off by firing 3 pistol-shots in the same turn). The Support class has been renamed the Specialist and been given a drone to hack, heal, shield and/or zap shit remotely. The Heavy has been given a nice grenade launcher to act as your cover-stomper, and been renamed the Grenadier. Psi-operatives are their own class now as well, and get hate-hair and purple eyes because that makes sense and all psychically talented people look like neo-punks. Troops can be captured, and then rescued, which also reclaims any expensive gear they had on them (but it's never the captured troops you actually need back). New enemies (without spoilers), including human ADVENT security troops (who really love to say "bitch" and pointing towards your soldiers) with magnetic weapons who look like humans till you get their armor off, sectoid-human hybrids with teeth, thumbs, and belly buttons (which can be really creepy if you really think about it), and transsexual Snake-women called Vipers (which is what the Thin Men actually look like without their disguises). Yes, there were snaketits on the thread that announced this to /tg/. Yes, /d/ has drawn porn of them. Yes, it will be added to the gallery.

Moving on.

XCOM 2 also contains an in depth explanation for the aliens' motives that many fans felt was lacking or too ambiguous in Enemy Within. Apparently, the Ethereals have some kind of fatal disease they can't cure, so they've been trekking around the galaxy culminating genes to form the ultimate bodies for themselves, while amassing a genetically supreme army. When the Ethereals found humanity, they found their genes to be so awesome and powerful that just adding some of them to a lowly sectoid turned it from a pathetic 3' tall creature you could kill with basic weapons, to an 8' tall psionic rape machine that could raise the dead and withstand salvos of bullets to the face. They then set up an alien government on Earth so they could discretely process humanity's best genetic material and slowly form new bodies for themselves that don't die called Avatars. And by don't die, we mean have copious amounts of health, teleport every time they're injured, regenerate like crazy, are guaranteed to successfully mind control anything, and are immune to any of your psychic abilities. And the boss fight involves killing three of these dick-butts and an endless wave of alien reinforcements. Using human DNA is also where their ADVENT troops came from, they grew armies of human spliced with unspecified alien to act as their public face to the humans. But humanity wins anyway, because humans are just that fucking awesome.

The game is also notable for abandoning the usual conditions for losing. The norm for the series is for your funding to get cut if too many countries lose faith in XCOM. Since you're fighting a guerilla war and your support are humans fighting to survive outside the aliens' control zones, that isn't happening. Instead you lose if the aliens complete the Avatar Project, their goal to mass produce the bodies for the etherals. If they do you get treated to a scene of almost all resistance being crushed because the Avatars are dangerous enough in small numbers and army of them would unstoppable. You can slow progress, but can only stop it by finishing the game.

So far there have been recently four DLCs for XCOM 2. "Anarchy's Children" added new customization features for your soldiers, most of which you wouldn't ever really use. "Alien Hunters" adds a new mission, weapons, and alien rulers who you have to hunt down. The alien rulers get to take an action every, single, time, one of your soldiers does. This is even more infuriating then it sounds. Some more customization options are added too. "Shen's Last Gift" adds another mission and the SPARK class soldier. SPARKs are robots you have to make in the proving ground that wish they were half as cool or good as the MECs from Enemy Within. Hopefully, someone in the modding community will fix this soon. You also can't add modifications to their guns, which is stupid, and their guns, while much larger and more powerful-looking than the other squad specialized weapons, don't do more damage than the rest of the squad's specialized weapons. This is also stupid, as an auto-cannon would naturally do much more damage than a SAW. And here comes the fun part; if you read the developers blog, their idea of "balance" is to actually nerf plenty of stuff...so the game is harder after having a buffed-up alien lord chase your dudes all over the game. Was old-school really this hard?

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

This brand new expansion gives us three new allies to aid us.

Reapers: Stealthy hunters who are armed with nothing but a rifle and explosives. It's enough. They wear trench coats and gas masks. Have a special ability where they have a chance to not reveal themselves upon attacking. Enemies have vastly reduced detection ranges against Reapers, and Reapers can detonate explosives on the map without revealing themselves. They can also throw an environmental explosive. They also have an ability that lets them shoot at an enemy until they run out of ammo. Long story short, these guys are only slightly less powerful than the Reapers from Mass Effect.

Skirmishers: ADVENT defectors who are armed with a grappling hook that can pull them to a rooftop and pull themselves to the enemy or vice versa and at max level allows them to have the alien rulers ability to gain action points Everytime. The. Enemy. Moves Except it only works three times a turn, and doesn't trigger on non-move actions. The game doesn't tell you this.

Templars: a resistance group made of only psionics that wield psi blades and machine pistols, but you'll probably never use those. They're fast, hard to kill, and hit like a brick. Like the rip and tear half of the Ranger, but with psionic powers. They're also fantastically hammy and roll their Rs.

But these new allies come with a catch as you now have to fight the titular chosen who can adapt to your soldiers abilities with their own strengths and weaknesses, and the Lost (zombie swarms) that attack both you and ADVENT. Along with these new allies and enemies is trying to get the three resistance groups to work together, as well as a new fatigue and relationship system.

XCOM: Long War

What, the new XCOM wasn't complicated enough for you? There's a mod called "Long War" which goes into lots more detail, a bit more like the classic game. Now, the aliens will advance their plans and escalate their forces and assaults based on their own progression system, and the game is rebalanced around the expectation that you will not succeed at every mission (and you won't -- the aliens are plenty tough to see to that).

XCOM: The Board Game

From Fantasy Flight Games, there's a board game adaptation of XCOM (in fact, XCOM: Enemy Unknown was quite inspired by board games, with the two-actions-per-turn system instead of the old 'time units'). There's a companion app for smartphones, tablets, and computers which controls the aliens and informs players of events, a bit like a Game Master, but without exposing the players to too much bookkeeping. Amazing what games can do with computers these days -- just imagine if such a thing had been available for FATAL! On second thought, don't.

Players (1-4) take on different roles in the XCOM organization. The Commander keeps an eye on the budget and allocates interceptors. The Chief Scientist directs research efforts. The Central Officer works the app and solicits input from the others (if there are any) to make decisions (many of which are time-critical). The Squad Leader manages troops and base defense. Together, they need to allocate their resources, judge when to push risky but rewarding avenues (inviting retribution from the aliens if they fail), and defend humanity. Like the games, successes are rare -- a die only has a 1/3 chance of coming up with a success, and tasks may need multiple successes. There is also an "enemy die", a d8 that is rolled against the number of times that task has been attempted. If it rolls equal to or under that number, something bad happens. So, do you pool resources for critical tasks (neglecting anything else, and hoping that your priorities are correct), in order to most likely be successful before the threat level climbs too high? Or do you stay flexible but push your luck? Your call, commander.

XCOM 2: Long War 2

If you thought XCOM 2 was already hard, thanks in part to the involvement of the original Long War modders in the game's development, said modders come back with a sequel mod for the game. Not only does this go even further than the first Long War in going into a lot of detail, such as new graphical touches, significant rebalancing and completely overhauling the global map to be more reminiscent of classic X-com. But the difficulty is amped up even more, with missions even requiring you to send in potentially fatal scouting parties to make sure your other squads don't die on the spot. Also, rather than launching parties directly into battle, missions spawn on the geoscape with an expiration timer. The player can launch immediately, but the enemy presence will be drastically increased! Instead, the idea is that the squad can spend time infiltrating, to let ADVENT get complacent and draw troops elsewhere. Having more Resistance folks working Intel increases mission expiration times, but the bigger and heavier the squad, the more infiltration time is require. And vice versa -- short-staffing a squad can allow a player to infiltrate to high percentages on short notice...but now you've only got like four guys on the ground, and that might not be enough firepower if activations go badly...

This mod requires dramatically more strategic thought and care. Weapons, armor, and equipment are all purchased individually, forcing you into decisions like 'do I continue the rollout of my newly available armor-piercing coilguns, or do I buy armor for the two rookies I've trained up?' and 'do I send my last seven man team to secure me an engineer, commit them to a long infiltration to wipe out an advent tower, or hold them in reserve for a better opportunity?' The difficulty is likewise much higher, but you have dramatically expanded options to combat it with special weapons, squad leaders, extra inventory slots packed with flashbangs, veteran troop skills, chooseable bonus perks, a psi advancement training regime that makes some actual sense, and many, many more troops and mission opportunities. Minor reinforcement on that last one, in fact: in stock XCOM 2 you'll likely end the campaign with fewer than twenty soldiers, whereas here it's pretty common to have a hundred active-duty troopers at a time.

The Shinobi (all the Ninja IRL schools have closed up shop) is the most overpowered class. Making missions easier then they should be as he can bypass Overwatch and has a very low impact on infiltration. Making missions unrealistic for players who hate RNG and want a pure stealth game.

The Devs of Long War have said there will not be making a Long War for War of the Choosen. As Firaxis added a ton of crap that would take years for Long War Studios to shift though it and make the mod playable.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Despite having the name XCOM in the title, the game really has little relation to the series. The reason behind this is because 2K passed this game on to the lovely people that brought you Bioshock 2; meaning it was made by a studio that makes more or less decent games. It's supposed to be a prequel, set in the 1960s during the Cold War era. The protagonist, William Carter, was a CIA agent just delivering a suitcase of classified "documents" until an Outsider disguised as a female agent got ahold of it. Not long after that, an alien invasion commenced!

The Bureau is a RPG that plays like Mass Effect, but not as good for a variety of reasons. One reason is in the dialog scene, you're given choices of what to ask/say. They really don't impact the game, nor changes it for the most part, so you can skip a majority of it if you want to. The agents in your squad are pretty dull, sure you can change their names and how they dress, but really doesn't offer any friendship/foe engagements. If they die, you will need to recruit another agent and start him off from scratch, but really, leveling them up isn't fun and customizable, so just restart a checkpoint if they do die.

The agents in your squad have bad AI if you don't babysit them and give commands on what they should do, and their skills at fighting Outsiders are... Well, okay. The best they can offer is their abilities, so spamming them and you taking care of the killing is an effective way to go (Some recommend starters to start their first mission with a Recon to cause critical damage on certain enemies and a Commando for taunting the grunts and make them easy picking for you.

There would be more to go on, but if you want to know more about the game, you can search up reviews of XCOM Declassified. In short, it's a decent prequel that fans can find some enjoyment, but it's not as good as Enemy Unknown. Without going into spoilers, there's also a reveal during the last few levels that's surprisingly meta and well-written. Still worth looking into if you can find it for cheap or rent it.

Interestingly enough, turns out that the universe in XCOM Declassified is the same as that of Enemy Unknown/Within's. After the events in The Bureau, all records were wiped. This explains why the player had to start from scratch at the beginning of Enemy Unknown. When the Ethereals of Unknown/Within spoke of their own failure to ascend, they really meant that they wanted to be like the Ethereals from The Bureau. Either way, only time will tell exactly what the hell they were preparing humanity for.

Xenonauts

X-Com coded by Reasonable Marines.

A faithful remake of the original, with time units and all that. Changes a few things (like lack of Psionics on your side) and adds vehicles (yes, blowing up half a building with a rocket jeep is awesome) and controllable dogfights. Basically the alien invasion is during the Cold War and makes everyone shit themselves simultaneously when THOUSANDS of spaceships are openly in orbit and fucks humanity's shit up in creative ways. Every day the UFO's are left wandering, news bulletins full of terror emanate from the screen, worrying you further.

The ending is very creative, particularly concerning the plot of how an inferior species can even bother to defeat a powerful empire. Stunningly well-made, desperate final mission which may result in a glorious ending, or a bittersweet ending where you still win but the assault team is martyred.

Other differences between it and the original include:

Maps are mostly pregenerated, not fully procedural.

Fewer weapon and ammo types. Seriously, you've got the big five (pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, sniper, and LMG) and a rocket launcher. No variant ammo types, although the weapons do have researched tiers (which are simply damage-ups). ~~This means no unfairly powerful weapons like the Rape Launcher or the Stun Grenade Launcher.~~ There *are* a few super weapons but seriously, if you waste a "Singularity Generator" which is an ENTIRE CAPTURED BLACK HOLE (a hot commodity salvageable from alien battleships) for a 50 kilogram (without ammo) glorified grenade launcher that doesn't even one shot its AoE, you are a fucking moron.

More basic inventory control. You don't micromanage producing and storing individual missiles, and you can have as many magazines, grenades, and med-kits as you want, limited by carrying limit. You just build the alien-based laser or plasma gun, base gives you ammo made fashioned from a melted-down alien cells. (Alenium is basically a quantum-grade battery aliens came up with. Usually it powers the alien craft, you simply creatively salvage the spent ones into explosives because HFY.)

Smaller team sizes. Max troop count on a mission is 12, with the best drop-ship.

Fewer oddball items, like the motion scanner or psi-ball, but there is now an assault shield, so your dudes don't immediately die when popping open a UFO. Said shield gets upgraded with Alien alloys, and even the final mission sees use of it. Trust me.

Rookies are better out of the gate, but are still shit compared to your colonels. Still, they have a decent chance of killing an enemy in a turn, doubly so if carrying a missile launcher. No longer to operatives miss the broad side of a barn. They *will* miss the spot but will still shake it badly.

Explosive weapons damage items, lowering the amount of money you receive from selling. This is for the best, because explosives are stupidly powerful and are probably the most reliable way of putting a fool down. Considering Reaper, the expy for Chyrssalids are even faster and crazier, you *are* going to need them.

Saveable, customizable loadouts for all of your troops, and obviously no engine-based limit on the amount of items you can bring into a mission.

Aliens don't really hide in corners or really hard to find spots, which makes flushing them out a lot easier. I said flushing out mind you, as they DO charge out and deal extremely serious amounts of damage before going down, to say nothing of teleporting aliens that burst fire in your face if they are lucky.

Troops remain vulnerable a lot longer. You are never at the point where you can float an invincible army of death-dealing demigods over a cowering cadre of snakemen, raining death and destruction down with maddened glee. Even if you do, weird aliens will teleport close and blow you out of the sky, or your flyer will fry a nerve from psionics.

Country relations are more important than after-mission loot.

You can kick or pistol whip an enemy to death. Cue surrounding an annoying alien marksman and beating him to death with riot shields.

You can call airstrikes to cancel boring UFO raids.

Xenonauts 2

Now with 3D graphics! A demo is available through GOG.com, with the release planned to be later in 2017.

UFO: Alien Invasion

The most detailed opensource version of XCOM based on the Quake 2 engine.

Buildings are not destructible and it doesn't have a great fog-of-war. It doesn't have unmanned vehicles like the current iterations and sadly doesn't have any sort of Chryssalids yet.

Has a better world map than any other XCOM in that you can fully explore it like google-earth, even showing ship movement on the globe in real time. The campaign is more forgiving in that it does not force you through Acts like Enemy Unknown where you can't possible keep everybody happy, or has nations constantly bitching at you for radar coverage like in Xenonauts. Instead you get to bid captured UFOs and give preference to unhappy nations that feel neglected or where you haven't been saving civilians frequently.

The camera is completely free in battlescape mode just like in Enemy Unknown, complete with zoom capabilities. Lots of different weapons, though you will find yourself a fool if you don't immediately start using alien weapons. Also levels tend to have more floors than other iterations, such as one mission in which you're going through an office building or another where you're entering a subway.

The only major problem with the game is that the smoke grenades are so overpowered your guys will be coming out of your drop ship like Snoop-Dogg out of his trailer. Otherwise you'll find aliens are more than happy to shower your guys with plasma from across the map.

After a general huge update smoke is now useless and aliens are much, MUCH more powerful.

Oh, and its free. Still, fuck it. Final version is broken, often locking the game, and developers have been keeping silent, the fucking FAGGOTS.

Phoenix Point

A spiritual successor by Julian Gollop himself. As of the time of this edit, fully funded and in development with a backer pre-alpha coming quite soon. The basic idea is; some kind of strange virus has been dug up in the permafrost and has had two outbreaks so far, each escalating in severity. Now it's invading the land a third (and fatally final) time, most of humanity is gone (Partly cus of the virus, partly cus of WW3 happening during the second outbreak), and you must defend the survivors from both the creatures and each other, you poor sap.

The virus morphs all life into Lovecraftian horrors. Literally Lovecraftian; it is implied that Howard the Great was inspired by ancient findings describing an outbreak of the same virus a few million years ago. It even came from Yuggoth. Humanity being humanity, there are several factions with drastically differing ideas on how to deal with it; there is a faction based around a religion worshipping the mutations that is also capable of retaining human conscioussness despite said mutations, another is high-tech anarcho-communists trying to coexist with the virus and other factions while the third faction Is a high-tech PMC turned millitaristic civilization with "Service Guarantees Citizenship" that just wants to destroy the virus and any of its sympathizers..

So far, the game has managed to gather enough funding and reach one stretch goal for a floating base that will be given as FREE DLC, along with other stretch goals at a later date should the game be succesful.

Expected; large bosses, your own mutated soldiers with crippleable limbs, the option of saving a group of people by landing on a giant creature and injecting it with poison, Deep Lore, A hybrid of the old TU and new Two-Action system, unique tech trees for each faction (which you can also get in on by either allying with or stealing from them) and randomized global events (ala Crusader Kings 2). Oh, and there are flamethrowers, Shoulder-Mounted missiles, power armor, gauss rifles and other goodies, such as a mutant mount for the cultist faction.

XPiratez

What XCOM 2 was to XCOM: Enemy Within, XPiratez is to X-COM: UFO Defense. Made of pure awesome, you lead a crew of female mutants on a quest to kick ass, gain riches, and fuck bitches. A mod for OpenXcom, it's completely free and gets constant updates. Go check it out! Nothing's more satisfying then crushing a pureblood's head in with a sledge hammer and then mowing down his mates with your custom Boarding gun. To say more would be to spoil its unique atmosphere and feeling of exploration as you uncover what has happened to the world. Let's just say it's a long, long time after the events of XCOM: UFO Defense.

The Tabletop Game

Yes, there was a Tabletop game, made by Fantasy Flight Games, so this article has some direct /tg/ relevance. The problem is, you need a cell phone app to play it.

Aliens

Needless to say, in this game, there are many different types of aliens that your teams are going to have to fight.

Original Continuity

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Sectoid

Cyberdisk

Floater

Reaper

Snakeman

Chryssalid

Muton

Celatid

Silicoid

Ethereal

Sectopod

Aquatoid

Gillman

Lobsterman

Tasoth

Bio-Drone

Calcinite

Deep One

Hallucinoid

Tentaculat

Triscene

Xarquid

Brainsucker

Multiworm

Hyperworm

Chrysalis

Anthropod

Psimorph

Spitter

Megaspawn

Popper

Skeletoid

Micronoid Aggregate

Queenspawn

Overspawn

Reboot Continuity

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The reboot continuity has its own array of different monsters, with some changes in variety between the first and second game.

X-COM Enemy Unknown / Enemy Within

Sectoid: Tiny little grey men in the first game, these are the first Psionic enemy you'll meet, with the ability to boost each other in combat. This can be rather nasty giving them an extra hit point and a +10 to hit and dodge, although if you kill the booster, you'll kill whatever Sectoid they're boosting as well thanks to Psychic feedback.

Sectoid Commander: Only in the first game, these guys are Sectoids on psychic steroids. You'll see one on the tutorial mission and get a taste of what they can do, even if you don't fight it. They're stronger, tougher, and more psionically powerful than the basic section, and are the first unit that can possess your guys mid firefight.

Thin Man: Apparently an "Infiltrator Unit" nobody would mistake these guys for human at close distance as they have snake scales running up their necks, and are skinny enough to make a super-model jealous. Apparently they were made from genetically modifying Snake-Men as they can spit clouds of poison at great distance, and will explode into one when they're killed. Otherwise they're real flimsy.

Muton: How you know the aliens are stepping up their game. Everything up till now has been child's play (for a particularly psychotic child), then these guys come along. Big, tough, "smart", and dangerous, these guys will mulch a squad equipped with regular weapons and armour without breaking a sweat, and capturing one of these guys alive brings one of the better upgrades. Have fun.

Muton Berserker: Ha, ha, ha. These guys are melee monsters, capable of soaking up bullets by the magazine, and slowly getting angrier and angrier as they do. If they can get in close they'll unleash the melee hurt, but thankfully they're not amazingly fast. Thankfully, their instinctive charge of the last person who shot them means you can set them up to run a gauntlet of Overwatch fire, with a bit of luck.

Muton Elite: As much health as the Berserkers, plus armor, and lacking the berserk charges. Instead, they carry heavy plasma cannons.

Floater: Apparently reject Mutons, stripped down to an upper torso and fitted up with cybernetic implants, mainly a jetpack. They're basically the fastest unit in the game, great Overwatchers, and pack about s much punch as a standard Muton. They have a special ability that sacrifices all their actions for the turn to instead fly to any single spot on the map, which they love to use to get the drop on your team.

Heavy Floater A tougher, armored version of the standard Floater, with a bigger gun.

Outsider: Strange "digital" lifeforms that serve as the technicians of the alien forces. You need to capture one of these in order to advance the game. They're wimpy, but their light plasma rifles are deadly accurate, so they can gun down whole teams if you're careless.

Sectopod: The aliens' equivalent of a tank; an enormous, heavily armored killer robot with insanely high health, high armor, a 50% damage reduction ability, and the ability to blaze away with both a fuck-off huge laser and to launch showers of cluster bombs. They also blow up when you kill them. Your most hated enemy.

Cyberdisk: A ridiculously fast flying robot that can shapeshift between a flying saucer-like flight-mode (in which it's harder to hit) and its unfurled combat mode. Not quite as killy as the sectopod, but still really adept at ruining your day.

Drone: Small flying robots that basically zip around like laser-spitting wasps. They don't do much damage, but they can repair mechanical aliens and they explode like a grenade when killed. And they're extra-hard to hit, for added nuisance factor.

Chryssalid: An absolute fucking nightmare, just like the original series. These bugs are lightning fast, vicious, and if they kill anyone they'll automatically plant an egg in the corpse, which will turn into a zombie before hatching a new chryssalid three turns later. And these zombies are tough enough to weather several turns of shooting. One of the standout points of the first game is a pre-baked mission where you get to investigate a whaling ship that crashed ashore in Alaska after being infested by Chryssalids who turned the catch into their personal hive. Your job is to first investigate the area, and then light the place up for your bombers so they can nuke it from orbit.

Ethereal: The leaders of the alien forces, physically frail but masters of psionics, which they can use to really fuck up your day.

Seeker: A relatively weak squid-like robot that uses camouflage to sneak up on its prey and then tries to crush it to death with its tendrils. They like to go after isolated members of your squad, which can be used to bait them into going after Assault troopers with Close Combat Tactics for hilarious effects.

Mechtoid: An armored exoskeleton piloted by a sectoid, carrying twin plasma mini-cannons. Sectoids can use their mind merge ability to give a layer of shielding to mechtoids; killing the sectoid removes the shield and causes some damage to the mechtoid.

X-COM 2 / War of the Chosen

ADVENT

The end results of what the Ethereals want to do with humanity. Puppet soldiers controlled by a series of psionically linked chips that feed back to command nodes. It's stated that the commander was supossed to be one of these before XCOM manages to rescue him in the tutorial mission.

Trooper: The grunts, they come in three flavours, with increasing HP, Dodge, and Accuracy. Challenging only in numbers, and then only thanks to the fact that a shot will hit you at some point, and they can take fire away from the actual threats.

Officer: These guys aren't a threat on their own, however they can Holo-Target one of your guys for free, granting their allies a +10 to hit against that soldier. either take out everyone around them, or take them out, before that becomes a problem.

Shield-Bearer: The most annoying ADVENT type in the base game, these guys can pop a shield that gives avery ADVENT and Alien soldier in range +3 or +5 temporary HP. Combined with their armour these guys can take a licking and keep on ticking. Take them out pronto otherwise the fight is going to take far longer than it should. They also kinda look like Robocop so they have that going for them.

Stun-Lancer: Melee focused, these guys are noticeable by the fact they were far less armour than any other ADVENT soldier. They'll charge forwards if in range, and attempt to stun your guys for a turn with their Melee beatsticks. Otherwise they've just got regular ADVENT Rifles.

Priest: Introduced in WotC, these guys are the ADVENT Psions, they can boost another ADVENT soldier, much like Sectoids could in Enemy Unknown (and like that game if you kill the priest the soldier will suffer psionic feedback and die), or they can put one of your guys in Statis for a turn, preventing them from doing anything. Advanced and Elite priests have additional tricks that allow them to Mind-Control your guys, and place themselves in Statis if they would be killed, instead staying around with 1 HP for another turn.

Purifier: Flamethrower wielding ADVENT troops that only appear in WotC. The guys are kept "secret" from the public (despite that fact they can appear in any mission if the RNG says so) as they are supossed to hunt down and kill the lost in the old, abandoned cities. As stated they use flamethrowers, alongside incendiary grenades, and when you kill them there's a good chance they will explode, so don't kill them with melee unless you want to lose your eyebrows. Athough that can lead to some hilarious chain reactions if you're lucky.

General: Only appears in assassination missions in WotC. Essentially just a beefed up Officer with a shit ton of HP, and the ability to throw Flash-Bangs.

MEC / Heavy MEC

Turrets: It's a turret. What more do you want? They have some armour and a decent amount of HP, but they can't move, and are fairly easy to hack to your side. If all else fails tossing a frag grenade at it is a guaranteed kill.

Sectopod

Aliens

Sectoid: Tougher than you remember due to the infusion of human DNA. Now have the ability to resurrect dead troopers - yours and ADVENT - as zombies, and all sectoids from the get-go can lay a mind whammy on your troops, randomly panicking, disorientating or controlling them.

Chrysallid: Because why the fuck wouldn't the Ethereals keep their most effective terror weapon. These guys have changed from scuttling horrors, to burrowing, venomous, scuttling horrors, capable of turning anyone they kill, either with their venom or their claws into a slowly metamorphosing cocoon that, if it reaches maturity, will spit out THREE new chryssalids, because Firaxis hates you. They are rendered mostly harmless by being set on fire, so if you think you're going to run into them bring incendiary rounds, fire bombs, and hell weave vests.

Viper: The most famous of the new aliens because they look like humanoid snake-women with nice tits and a sweet pair of hips. Appear pretty early in the game; not much tougher than sectoids, but quite annoying. They can drag you out of cover with their tongue whip attack, spew toxic clouds like the Thin Men, and strangle you in melee like a Seeker. These gals represent the true form of the Thin Man alien from the last game.

Andromedon: One of the cooler new alien designs, it could almost have been ripped out of the old X-COM series. It looks like combination of an old diving suit and an iron lung, filled with green sludge, and a single pickled alien who apparently needs that sludge to live. When you kill it the first time the suit reboots and come to life by itself, dropping its heavy plasma cannon and charging into melee. In its first form an Andromedon is a tough customer, with more armour & health than a Muton while packing the same firepower. In its second form it will only ever try to hit you with its fists, but it leaves behind trail of acidic and poisonous sludge that hurts your guys if they try to move through it (because jumping isn't a thing, despite the ability to haul yourself up drainpipes) which makes navigating the battlefield a hassle, especially in densely packed urban missions. Thankfully their second form will be easier to deal with. As these Powered Armor wearing little shits will Overwatch to hamper squad mobility and toss Acid Bombs at your_dudes if not killed ASAP.

Faceless: A new enemy that should only appear in Terror Attack missions. Shapeshifters that look like ordinary humans until your troops get too close, then they turn into fucking huge moaning melted-wax men with claws the length of shotguns. Can take quite a beating and will literally tear down houses to get at your troops. They can be seeded in regular missions if you pull the Dark Event that allows them to mingle with the regular citizens during missions. Isn't that lovely.

Muton: Remaining as the ethereal's shock infantry, these Mutons have apparently been crossbred with humanity, making them smaller, faster, and deadlier. Apparently they're smarter too, but considering just how badly the A.I can flub up sometimes, you have to wonder about that. They aren't packing any more HP, but they're now armoured, so they'll soak up more damage unless you can shred their armour with heavy weapons and explosives. They'll still be a threat until you get Plasma weapons, and 3rd their armour, but once you're there, they pretty much become chaff beneath the scythe. They also like tossing grenades if they don't have a direct line of sight on your troops. Along with the ability to use suppression if a Muton can't get into melee. Making them an annoyance well into the late game.

Berserker

Codex:A replacement for the Outsider, but far more annoying. The Codex first appears when you Skulljack an ADVENT officer, and it looks like a wierldy sexy woman made of pure energy, but with a cybernetic brain & spinal column. They can teleport around the battlefield, and when struck by an attack that fails to kill them, they split into two Codexes with half of their remaining health. They can also create temporary zones of energy that suck all the ammo out of your guns, and then close with deadly force. Naturally you want Snipers or Magnetic/Plasma Weapon chain attacks to kill them quickly.

Gatekeeper:

Archon: So someone in the Alien's side realised that having a heavily mutilated torso mounted on jetpacks, which actively tore at its implants and constantly mounted suicide charges so it could be put out of its misery was bad for PR, so they replaced the Floaters with these guys. They look almost angelic, and their design incorporates a lot more white and gold and less obviously chop-shop cybernetics. The nigh-constant pain going away has made them far smarter too.They still like to jump around the battlefield, but now they can also rain rockets down on your guys after a turns delay and will actually take advantage of cover.

Avatar: The Ethereals' plans are revealed when you discover these creatures. Avatars are genetically engineered lifeforms created from the genes of the most psi-capable humans, crafted to house the essence of the Ethereals, whose own bodies are breaking down irrevocably. Extremely tough, powerful psionics, kill on sight. The Commander gets one of his own at the end of the game. This is because they plugged him/her into their psionic network and never bothered to remove or change anything after XCOM recovered them. As the Ethereals are really quite stupid despite claiming to be a superior race.

The Chosen: The new Dragons aka Second in Command below the Ethereals. Coming with a bunch of BS abilities that can wreck your troops at lower levels. You also want to find their base ASAP as they gain upgrades through the game like you do and can hurt your income. Getting their OP shit is also a nice bonus.

When first encountered they'll attempt to stun and capture one of your troops. If they appear during a Blacksight mission, The Chosen AI will just straight up murder them. Despite the game not giving hints to this change in behavior. So if counting on manipulate their AI into kidnapping a soldier who is near death during those missions. The Chosen will just slaughter your squad like the rest of Advent. Because all bets when are off when your trying to kill mommy? and/or err daddy? Shklee maybe? Thankfully, the game rolls to give them permanent weakness, along with an arch enemy who will deal extra damage to a Chosen among the new Hero classes. They will also roll for one immunity and a special ability, though the immunities are things that many players will hardly ever use against a boss regardless. The special power can either be meh, or fuck you right over. Good thing for the player the summoning powers are mutually exclusive and can't gain strengths that counter most of their weaknesses.

They can also be countered by researching Mindshields, your own (fully upgraded) Psi operatives and the buffed Sparks. When you have the latter two the Mindshields are redundant as the last two are right out immune to being stunned and mind controlled. Too bad there isn't new lines for a spark with Julian's voice. As hearing a GlaDOS expy with the attitude of Bender snark back at The Chosen would have been hilarious.

The Assassin The first of the Chosen you'll meet if you're playing the "Lost and Damned" mission to introduce yourself to the new mechanics introduced in WotC, the Assassin is a dark reflection of the Ranger class. She attacks mostly with Melee (although she does have a rarely used shotgun, and you'll thank the programmers she rarely uses it), striking out of concealment to stun one of your guys (Who you'll then have to revive or risk them getting kidnapped), before running away. In the same turn. Because the Bad Guys get to move, shoot, move, but the player doesn't get nice things. To top this all off she's immune to overwatch so you either have to try and escape from the current mission, or take the fight back to her just as hard. Oh yeah, and avoid bunching your guys up, or she will stun half the squad at a time with an area of effect special attack, but don't get too spread out or you won't be able to revive stunned soldiers before she kidnaps them. Thankfully, her concealment works by the same rules as yours, and it'll break if one of your guys flanks her, so if you've got a good idea of where she is, you can move someone in to reveal her, and then light her up with the rest of the squad. To make her easier to deal with make sure to take a Specialist with Scanning Protocol.

The Hunter While you would expect a roided up Craven the Hunter cosplaying furfag by name alone. He is instead a more or less a hit man armed with a pistol and sniper rifle with an Affably Evil personality. He's also known team killed some of the weaker Advent aliens when he got bored. Unlike his siblings he outright admits that he is a psychopath who likes killing things. The Hunter's abilities are a bit mundane compared to the other Chosen. While still being effective non the less. His Tracking Shot can aim at your troops from the other side side of the map, and if they don't move he will kill them the next. This makes mind controlling Advent and hacking MECs as recon useful for once. He also come with a grappling hook with no cool-down, stun grenades and pistol tranq shots that never miss. So don't be stupid and send a lone Reaper. As they don't put out enough damage to out snipe him and will end up killed or captured instead.

The Warlock

The Lost

Regular: Introduced in WotC, these are the zombie horde style enemies of the game. They have a unique mechanic where if you kill one, you get a free action point to continue killing. A soldier with decent Aim, an auto-loader, and an extended mag can decimate entire swarms if lucky.

Dasher Faster, and with slightly more HP (4-5, as opposed to 2-3) these guys aren't exactly more of a threat than the regular lost. They're just more likely to pull off a successful ambush.

Brute These guys have a lot of HP for a Lost, and can actually deal some melee punishment, and will start coming out in decent numbers by endgame. Then again, by endgame you'll have the best weapons and armour, so once again... only really a threat if you're unlucky, and there's a lot of them.