Rob was just introducing me to turn-based strategy games. At the time, I didn’t know anything except for RPG’s, and he had started me out with an early console version of World of Warcraft (which was kind of like “chop your wood to build your armies, and if you want flyers you have to do something else” kind of a thing) so I got the concept. Then I get dropped into X-com.

The plotline in X-com is that the world is being attacked by aliens in this slow kind of introductory but very up-front and confrontational way. People see UFO’s all over the place flying by, every once in a while they land in a city and try to terrorize the people or take them for experiments or something. It starts out small, though, kind of with little recon ships, and the governments of the world team up, throw some funding together, and give you a base to run operations from. But like reality, some countries are poorer than others, so most of your funding originally starts from the US, GB, and I think maybe France and Spain. Probably Japan too. But other countries are poorer, like Africa, so they can’t necessarily fund you as much. So you start with these little jet fighters that are trying to shoot down superior aircraft, and trying to arrange it that you shoot them down over land, so that there’s something to salvage from the wreck.

Your base is populated by scientists and engineers, and they can research whatever you tell them to. So you can focus in the beginning on laser weapons that are superior to bullets and don’t have alien tech, or you can focus on armor for your guys, or whatever. Every time you scavenge from a wreck, there’s more stuff to research, and your scientists cost money. Everybody has a salary, and that has to come from your budget. Your engineers can build things (I usually focus on developing laser rifles, and have them build them non-stop so I can sell them off to other nations to aid in my own funding. But that’s me.) They build until they run out of materials or funds, and every month there’s a little tally of what’s going on financially. That includes any of those poorer countries that you may not be trying so hard to defend…if ANY country funds you, and you don’t really help them out, naturally, they’re going to pull their funding. They don’t do it all at once, but they start reducing what they’re giving you, and there are graphs to keep track of that.

You can add rooms to your base (if you have the funding) and include things like Alien Containment Centers…because if you catch a live alien they just die if you don’t have a place to put them. (But you can still research their corpse and sell them off to other nations who want to research them too.) If your base ever gets attacked by aliens, you will have to defend the base that you have built, every nook and cranny, every hallway that may or may not have kill zones in them…so it’s not a bad idea to pay attention when building…but it isn’t vital if your soldiers are good.

Your soldiers come from all over the world…so they all have names like Ludmila Yenkovich, or Ng Sao Fen, or Friederich Gutsen, or Roberto Rodriguez. They have pictures, so you can see what they look like, and each one of these guys has stats. They have a marksmanship rating, a rating for reflexes, a rating of how well they can throw, or how fast they can move.

I’m a simple girl with a poor memory…so I rename all my guys to whatever job I want them to do. They get names like Snipe, or Snipe Medic, or Medic Snipe (if his movement rating is better than his marksmanship) or if they’re good at everything I usually name them Da Man (or Da Woman, if they’re female, because female soldiers are in it too) and when I send them out to combat, I make sure to equip them with the weapons that usually suits their stats. (For instance, a guy named Tank, I give my heavy weapons to, so he won’t get tired carrying them. A guy named Snipe gets my long-range weapons, and medics carry medikits.) OH! and this becomes important…guys with really fast reflexes get named QuickDraw…because you really need them for the most amazing part of this game evar. And naturally, the longer they survive, the better their stats get, including their strength, endurance, and accuracy. So someone can start out mediocre, but they sure as shit don’t end that way.

SO HERE IS WHY IT’S SO AMAZINGLY FRAKKING COOL.

When you shoot down a UFO (or if you’re lucky enough that you can get to one that has landed without shooting it down so it’s in pristine condition) You send out a squadron of guys, who start out in your carrier plane. Everything around the carrier plane is dark because there’s no one looking over there. The back door is open, so you can see a straight line behind the plane. That’s it. Resources management is OVER, and it has become, temporarily, turn-based strategy. Sometimes, your guys can detect an alien right from the get-go because they’re in a building that’s right behind the plane looking out a window.

Yes. This takes into account a 3-D world. It’s like chess, but with guns. :-D….. I’m drooling to get my hands on this. Can you tell?

When you step out of the plane and turn, whatever your soldier can see suddenly becomes visible on the screen. There could be an alien RIGHT behind them, and they wouldn’t know if they don’t turn around. So you disembark a couple of guys and try to position them so nothing can sneak up on them (kind of in a really wide circle with their backs to the center so you can’t get taken out by an alien grenade) and you move until all your guys can’t move any more (I usually reserve enough for a triple reflex shot. More on that in a second). That does NOT mean they all get off the plane. Usually only about four at a time can get out, and each time it’s your turn you have to fan them out a little to expose more territory and make room for the new guys coming out. But I digress….BECAUSE…when you turn and you see an alien, or an alien sees you, if you have a higher reflex rating you get to shoot first. Or hide and take cover first. Depends on the alien and your guy. But if one guy sees him, and you have a sniper at the other end of the board, he’s got a chance to pick him off from a distance to help his buddy out.

Once all your guys have finished their turns, the aliens go…and the screen covers up because you can’t see them if no one is facing them. You can hear them though…sometimes you hear them opening and closing doors, or shooting at civilians (and if they kill them you know because they scream) but if anything happens in front of you, even if it’s just the path of a bullet, the screen activates so you can see what your guys saw. So even if you can’t see the alien, you can see where the bullet came from and take an educated guess. Maybe throw over a grenade, if you have them. Sometimes they walk into your view and kind of go “oh shit! Human!” and retreat back into cover where you can’t see them anymore. But if your guy has a high reflex, and you’ve saved the action points, your guy can kill them before they retreat. And it doesn’t have to be just one guy. If two guys are facing that way, they can both take shots. (And if one is behind the other one, and is a poor marksman, he may shoot your guy in the back. I’m just sayin.) Sometimes the only way you can tell there’s an alien in a house is because they left all the doors open, and you can just follow the open doorways to where they are. Sometimes, you can shoot a hole in the ceiling and nail them on the 2nd floor without ever bumping into them.

And if you know the technology, you can pick up their more powerful more accurate weapon and start shooting. If you’ve researched it, that is.

There’s also terrain to consider, sometimes this happens in the woods, and they’re hiding behind trees or rocks. Sometimes they’re in a city, and they’re picking you off from the windows. Sometimes it’s in the country, and they’re in the second floor of a barn standing at the top of the stairs waiting for you to step into view. Or worse, right on the other side of the door waiting for you to open it so they can pop you. Fast reflexes are a must for the guys who are out in front and opening doors.

ALL THIS WOULD BE COOL ENOUGH…honestly…but they went a step further. Two or three steps further.

First off, the aliens have flight technology, and you don’t. Which means that sometimes they’re hovering in the air over your head picking your guys off. You can see when a bullet flies past yout, so you can track it to where they are to pick them off…but still. Eventually you can research a flying armor suit, and when you do, your guys (I usually make him my sniper) can hover at the top of level of the screen like an eye in the sky, rescuing anybody that needs rescuing by popping aliens at a distance. Sometimes you can’t see them cuz they’re in a building, so I usually have one of my heavy weapons guys blow a hole in the building so my sniper can nab them. But you don’t really need flight for that, do you?

Second, there are different types of aliens. The flyers usually travel with these monstrosities they’ve cobbled together from cow parts. They look kind of like Daggits, but they move REALLY fast, and they just KILL things almost immediately. There’s another kind that tries to infect humans, so you can start out with an alien and a human and end up with two aliens. Very bad.

But the third kind, the grey, have a psionic ability…and they can mentally take over one of your guys if they see them. Which means in the middle of combat, your sniper can go nuts and start picking off your own guys. Which means you gotta put him down if you can’t find the guy. In addition, guys who aren’t combat hardened also have a bravery statistic, which makes them more or less likely to panic in battle. And by panic I mean either just shoot everywhere not aiming at anything (sometimes they get lucky, but mostly they just shoot your own guys by accident. Not too bad if they run out of ammo. Very bad if it’s a laser weapon and they can’t run out of ammo) or literally drop their weapon and run like a bitch. I think the greys can trigger that, but I’m not sure.

You can research psionics and train your guys to resist them. I never have, I just kill them. You can develop smart weapons (probably based on alien technology) that can turn up to 7 corners to hit their target and explode in a HUGE radius. Great in the woods. Not so good in the city where you can tank civilians. Sometimes there’s a gas station, and you can shoot the pumps so they blow up in a large radius. Greys are soft, they go down kind of easy. It’s their little hovertanks that are a bitch.

There’s other stuff too, like sometimes they frighten a country so much that the country signs a pact with the aliens and pulls ALL their funding. They build bases in those places, and to clean those out it’s like walking into alien architecture, furniture, recreation. It’s just weird.

Eventually, you take the battle back to the home planet. I’ve never gotten that far. I have trouble managing the world once I get three bases on it. I’ve never had my base attacked and had to defend it (which I kind of wish I had. All your surplus weapons are in the storeroom, I hear, and you can just grab em and go) but I have done everything else, I think.

I can’t wait until this is re-released (can you tell?) If I could I’d blow off the budget portion, but you know…you gotta hire your soldiers and your researchers, or there’s no developments. My favorite is the 3D chess thing. Amazing. One time my Eye in the Sky Sniper got taken over by an alien and he just started picking off my guys. It’s just an amazing thing to have to incorporate into your strategy.

So yeah. X-Com. Want. Totally Want.