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As Victor moved throughout the city, it became apparent that somehow, beyond all reckoning, he was blessed. The aliens fired round after round – and sure enough, round after round ricocheted off of trash cans, windowsills or doorframes. Pretty soon over half of the aliens were dead, and I thought maybe, just maybe, the kid had a chance. As luck would have it, he didn’t disappoint me. After countless close-calls and some brilliant shooting, Victor killed the last of the aliens and saved the city. My X-Com squad suddenly had a heroic new leader, and I was now completely, totally, and unshakably addicted to X-Com. That was about eleven years ago, and I still end up pulling the game out of the moth balls every few months to play through the campaign. Much to my dismay however, I’ve also been waiting eleven long years for something that may never arrive: A proper follow-up.

The Original

The original X-Com was and is, a true work of genius. Released in 1993, X-Com: UFO Defense (which we’ll refer to herein as “X-Com”) still stands up against the very best of the strategy genre today. For those of you who may not know the series, in X-Com, you are the commander of a top-secret, globe-spanning task force, charged with the mission of defending the planet against a wide-spread alien invasion. You start with one single base, a couple of fighter jets, a troop transport vehicle and a handful of very green infantrymen to fill it with. Only your cunning strategy in battle, research, and resource management can make the difference between life and death for all of mankind. Battle in X-Com takes place on a 2-D isometric battlefield, your soldiers versus aliens who are controlled by surprisingly cunning AI.

These battles are huge part of why X-Com is so great. The developers of X-Com used a combination of line of sight, dark lighting, and ominous music to heighten suspense, and create a genuine feeling of drama. Another reason why they were great was the great deal of variety from one battle to the next. For instance, in one mission you’re trying to flush some aliens out of a farm house, in another you’re raiding an enemy base and gutting it for resources. If that wasn’t cool enough, all of the environments are destructible. For instance, if you need to exit a building fast, you can just blow a hole through the wall and hop right on out. I can think of only a few contemporary titles that let you do things like that, and this game was released over ten years ago!

Perhaps the most important component to making the game great was the utterly unforgiving difficulty to battle. Your X-Com troopers can, and most likely will be killed if they are ever successfully hit by enemy fire. As I described above, a single mistake on your part could spell death for some or all your men. And make no mistake, these aren’t just nameless grunts. Each of your troopers has a unique name, appearance, and personality. Each of them also grows in a different way as they gain experience in battle. For instance, you might have a trooper who’s a crack-shot, but is easily frightened and runs for the door at the first sign of trouble. You might have a trooper who’s extremely brave, but unfortunately also very susceptible to mind control, and so on. As you take them to battle after battle, your trooper’s skills will improve, and you will grow genuinely attached to them; which makes it even worse when one of them gets blown up. What makes this part of the game so good is: instead of creating an engaging cast of characters for you, X-Com gives you the tools to develop your own. For example, that trooper I was describing earlier – the one who killed 20 aliens single-handedly – well, I knew he was a hero because I fought the battle with him, not because the storyline told me so.

Winning battles in X-Com isn’t just about beating back the enemy, you also get rewards. You can actually recover alien technology not destroyed on the battlefield and take it back to base for research. Before long you’ll be taking the alien’s own technology and using it against them. Added on top of all of this are budget and personnel management systems, a political system, and research and manufacturing systems. As you can see, X-Com has the things so many strategy games lack: true depth and real style.

The Great Pretenders

X-Com’s first “sequel” came just 14 months after its release, in a game entitled: X-Com: Terror From the Deep. Featuring a bunch of new art assets, and slightly improved enemy AI, in TFTD, the action is set under-water instead of on the surface, so your team of X-Com operatives will be patrolling the world’s oceans and port cities instead of major inland centers. Despite the odd choice of setting, TFTD is a very good game, but in truth it’s more of an expansion pack than a successor to X-Com.

The second sequel to X-Com was X-Com: Apocalypse, released in 1997. I remember being very excited about this game… until I played it. There are a lot of reasons why X-Com: Apocalypse isn’t a worthy successor to X-Com, but the main reason is this: The combat is not turn-based. The elegant turn-based combat that is X-Com is not present in X-Com: Apocalypse. Instead, it was replaced by real-time combat, which utterly destroyed the suspense which is so important to what made the original so great. (There is an optional turn-based mode, but it feels tacked-on and doesn’t really fit with the gameplay). Don’t get me wrong, X-Com: Apocalypse isn’t all bad. Developer *Mythos Games got a lot right with X-Com: Apocalypse, adding some depth to the resource management section of the game, and improving the graphics. However, making the game primarily real-time ruined the experience for many X-Com fans, including myself. The game’s artistic style is also very poor. Instead of using the sleek, grey ships of the original X-Com, you are forced to roll out in super-deformed fire-engine red vehicles that look down-right ridiculous. I don’t even want to get into how bad the aliens look in this one, but no one will ever call them menacing (think Muppets, but with more tentacles). *Apocalypse isn’t that bad of a game, but it isn’t the sequel X-Com fans really wanted either.

The Not-so Great Pretenders

Two other games that have the X-Com name, but are X-Com in name only, are: X-Com: Enforcer, and X-Com: Interceptor. Neither of these games bears any resemblance to X-Com in gameplay, nor are they even strategy games. X-Com: Interceptor was Microprose’s attempt at a hybrid in the franchise. While fans were crying out for a proper sequel with X-Com’s gameplay, Microprose instead created a mediocre space-combat game with resource management, and X-Com-like simulation elements. The game tries to be a lot of things, but in the end it’s not X-Com, or all that great. X-Com: Enforcer, on the other hand is an average third-person shooter that borrows the X-Com name and lore. Neither of these games is a proper sequel, and both smack of trying to cash in on a good name.

Sadly, developer Microprose closed its doors in 2003. As such, the name of X-Com probably has died with it, and fans of the series will have to look elsewhere to find a true successor to X-Com – albeit, in spirit only.

CoDo

With Microprose gone, it doesn’t look good for a true sequel at this point in time. Perhaps someone will eventually pick up the license and give it the old college try, but frankly I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, we must look elsewhere. Thankfully, there is some hope for die-hard X-Com fans like myself. Much of this hope comes in the form of CoDo Games, which was founded by the Gollop brothers, Julian and Nick. These two are largely responsible for the original X-Com, so who better to create a proper follow-up? CoDo Games' first two offerings are Laser Squad Nemesis, and Rebelstar: Tactical Command. Laser Squad Nemesis has the isometric combat perspective X-Com fans know and love, but lacks the pacing and suspense of a true X-Com game. To be fair, it really isn’t trying to be X-Com anyway. Laser Squad Nemesis is a good strategy game; it just isn’t the game we X-Com fans want. Rebelstar: Tactical Command is considerably closer to X-Com in terms of gameplay. Yet, the game features a colorful, almost anime-like artistic style, and also lacks the true depth X-Com. The Gollop brothers and CoDo Games may very well create the sequel we’ve been waiting for; they just haven’t done it yet. Their first two games are very encouraging, and I encourage X-Com fans to take an interest in their future projects.

U. F. O.

Perhaps the best attempt at a spiritual successor to X-Com, is the UFO franchise, developed by Altar Interactive. Altar Interactive’s first UFO game, the eagerly anticipated, UFO: Aftermath, was released in 2003. Unfortunately, the game was a major disappointment for X-Com fans who had the game pegged as X-Com’s first true successor even before it was released. There are strong similarities between UFO: Aftermath, and X-Com (the game even has a Geoscape), but UFO: Aftermath lacks much of the depth that made X-Com so good. The resource and other management systems were streamlined so much that they were no longer an interesting part of gameplay. One would hope that the tactical combat system would pick up the slack, but problems with path-finding, enemy AI, level design, and other issues left the experience lacking. Still, the game was promising, and UFO: Aftershock, a sequel to Aftermath, was released in late 2005, bringing with it many hopes and expectations. UFO: Aftershock introduced new X-Com-like features to series, including a beefed up resource management system, diplomacy, improved enemy AI, destructible environments, and a much sought after research system. Unfortunately for X-Com fans, UFO: Aftershock failed to do a good job in implementing these systems, and the second effort was arguably worse than the first. A third entry to the series, *UFO: Afterlight is on the way in 2007. Will it be the successor to X-Com that X-Com die-hards like myself have been waiting for? I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.