Editing XCOM (section)

==A General Gist==
A general synopsis is that in [[grimdark|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). You didn't exactly have a time limit, but the more time passed, the harder aliens arrived, starting with one-man(alien?) scouts to do Roswell-grade pranks to Harvester grade ships to abduct and mutilate cattle, to fuckhuge battleships that eventually started attacking your base.

It kicked ass. It was good enough to spawn a sequel, ''Terror From The Deep'', which was basically the same game, but underwater (therefore areas to cover are multiplied by three. You do the math)  and infinitely harder ([[FAIL|due to a bug in the original XCOM resetting difficulty back to Beginner after the first mission]]) with a direct nod to Call of Cthulhu. Story-wise, the destruction of the Martian base activated a fail-safe in the aliens' system that woke up T'leth (not R'lyeh, but you get the point), their 'secondary' (and mobile) base buried deep under the seas of Earth, ran by a "Sleeping, Gigantic Alien In Coma That Can Manipulate Dreams" with an octopoid face, real subtle there. 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 [[rage|extreme rage-inducing]] turn one [[TPK]]s 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 cattle prod to stun it in close quarters? And that said alien was [[rip and tear|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 [[rape|that the specimen didn't wake up with a grudge before he got there and the mission ended]]? Yeah, it was kinda like that. And the final level had THREE unsaveable separate levels full of extreme ambush points that had to be completed with no failure, a textbook example of "oldschool gaming". 

It then spawned a second, far easier, somewhat different but still appreciated sequel, ''X-Com Apocalypse''(a.k.a Libertarian Cyberpunk Paintball-deployed McXenocide Simulator). The destruction of T'leth had a heavy price: when it rose above the clouds, it was self-destructed, killed the whole boarding team and fucked up Earth's biosphere. Humanity retreated to quickly built mega-arcologies to survive, the first among them being Mega-Primus built on the ruins of Toronto, a Cyberpunk corporatocracy with retro-futuristic art guidelines, libertarian system, along with the discrimination of Alien-hybrids and androids any cyberpunk corporate shitholes straight out of Hunger Games Panem city would display. One day, tetrahedral bright gates appear 24/7 in the city's skyline, and spews UFO's; and [[Meme|aw shit, here we go again]]. This time, X-COM, this time being a corporation, can keep existing even when the government hates you if the player gets hideously rich selling psionic crack stolen from cultists. To make the game far easier, the Aliens' Homeworld, a separate pocket universe behind a black hole can be visited and/or attacked any time with appropriate ships, each organic Alien "building" making the Xenos lose steam and eventually stop building UFO's. So unlike the other two games, after a certain breaking point the game gets ''easier'', not harder.

The Alien Planet which orbits a recently supernova'ed star is a bleak, dying world and the hivemind organism that lived there was minding its damn business before we blew up that star in the Prequel, X-COM Interceptor. Isn't it lovely, every time we do desperate stuff life shovels shit in our face?
 
The quest line is more or less the same: wait for the aliens to show up, down the UFO, research the three alien aeronautics technologies(Energy Source, Navigation, Propulsion), reverse engineer some prototype and strike back while killing whatever ground forces they deposit and vivisecting the survivors. 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, or risk denial of public and material services(no free travel if Transtellar is mad, and Megapol, the McPolice corporation won't sell you guns or vehicles). It tried to blend Turn-Based & Real-Time strategy into one so you could play it at the speed you wanted, and even attack other human factions for loot and in the case of Cultists, a public service. All in all, a decent and ambitious, if not overwhelmingly good game (mostly because a ton of content was cut before release). Basically this time it was one [[Cyberpunk]] city against extra-dimensional aliens, though the equipment from the first two games gave the player (and humanity) a far greater head start and replicating alien equipment is nanotechnologically done and doesn't need trophy materials but just money. 

Combat-wise, both aerial and ground, it's far more beginner-friendly, dynamic with unique armament choices even for the endgame. In the air, corporations have plenty of military gear and flying vehicles to sell, and unlike the first two games vehicles can swarm a single UFO. As UFO's arrive, every passersby with a McRocket launcher or McAutoCannon will tell the organic UFO's to get off their property. The city can be damaged, and flying rubble can instantly kill the biggest UFO's. (Mind you, that game is made in 1999!) The deposited aliens breed and flee across the city slums and sewers, so it pays to watch where the damn UFO's beamed down. And if pissed off royally, Aliens drop a KAIJU-SIZED lifeform to demolish everything in hopes one of the buildings is where you guys live. City damage gets paid out of part Government, part the property owner and they ''will'' angrily ask for compensation when your fusion missile leveled that shiny multimillion dollar mall, hospital, psionic TV station and the CEO's apartment. When you finally make the ships to pass over to the Alien dimension to say hello, it is possible to wipe out the Alien Planet's fleet in advance so no one can annoy you with Alien alarms blaring all over the city for a week. 

On the ground, no longer is the game bound to a boring Heavy Plasma/Sonic&Guided Waypoint Rocket combo, necessitating a dozen different weapons, personal energy shields, gas grenades, smoke grenades, explosive grenades and many more gadgets, including psionic projectors. Earliest aliens cannot even penetrate the bulky Megapol armor which is easily available, and only can scratch the lighter, permanently gravitation optional Marsec Armor. Shit only gets dangerous when alien humanoids pack molecular beams which can be easily replicated by YOU once you hit a certain point ceiling which guarantee an injury on each hit unless very lucky. Of course, said beam also works against them, so Aliens develop personal shield generators which you can only capture when gassing the xeno scum without any explosive damage. Match that too? Aliens start packing "Entropy Launchers" which, unless blocked by a shield, LITERALLY MELTS the target in 2 shots max. So the arms race is constant, and it ends up ''dynamic AND asymmetric'', Aliens' final weapon is Entropy Launcher which do not harm theirs, but annihilates your men on impact(you can outrun the living missile if smart). Your side, [[HFY]] develops LITERAL NERVE GAS tailor-made for aliens (Yes, harmless against humans) launchable from corporate-sold McRocket launchers, [[Bolter|Mcminirocket launchers with gyrojet munitions]], grenades and X-COM made PAINTBALL automatic pistols which fuck Alien shit up in miliseconds. Committing biochemical genocide sponsored by McGovernment never felt this fun! Endgame-wise, the Alien Planet is no longer a single mission but 10 different repeatable missions, each weakening the Alien city by one building; level 5 permanently stopping any alien UFO production so the game can be finished at your leisure.

Saddest part /v/-wise, it had a colossal amount of content cut off. Corporations were supposed to be actively buying-selling property buildings and jockey for power which could be exploited by XCOM([[Edgy|threats, ransoms and kidnappings]]), as well as brainsucker-infected civilians could be scanned and arrested. Aliens were supposed to be multiple empires which expand in their home dimensions, all nine dimensions of them with bad ending branches existing if XCOM fucks up the wrong dimension and thinks they are gone for good.

Then Microprose was bought by [[Hasbro|that which must never be named]], who proceeded to nose-dive the IP with games like [[Shit Twinkie|X-COM: Interceptor]] and [[Fail|X-COM: Enforcer]]. At least Interceptor had a decent backstory and for those with a good eye, explained where the aliens in ''X-Com Apocalypse'' came from and what happened after X-Com 2(Written above, Interceptor's Final Mission happened in the same pocket universe the Apocalypse hivemind was chilling in). X-COM: Enforcer was little more than a horribly cheap third person shooter fit for 90's arcades.

Fucking [[RAGE|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 anything remotely resembling their own terms, you need upgrades. And lots of them. 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 [[Space Marine|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 [[Colonel Greiss|manly badasses]].

The Aliens in the first two and the Interceptor prequel are a diverse bunch led by some creepy floating cloaked asshats, ranging from the rank-and-file 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, think Xenomorph meets Genestealer). Their entertainment is neural stimulation implants which trigger exact effects of LSD, and they simply harvest anything and anyone and puree them alive before injecting into their bloodstream when hungry. 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, making the invading Aliens strangely civilized, yet nauseatingly, well...Alien.

The series' legacy, not just its squad-based combat phase but also the general outline of the Fluff (X-Files meets S.W.A.T) also inspired a fuckton of clones and remakes of the idea, see below.