#x com ufo defense

[doolallymagpie]

my psionics tables for XCOM-in-7TV carry an extremely slight chance of, on failing to use a psionic power, exploding

entirely because it’s the kind of thing that’d happen in the 90s XCOM wargame that doesn’t exist

[playstationpark]

Aliens Are Here 'X-COM: UFO Defense' PlayStation

[thecountofs]

XCOM: We Were Never Alone (Comic)

'Interception'

[jolikmc-thoughts]

It's finally happening, boys. And it only took Elon's team, what? Two years? Bravo, Musk. Bravo. 👏😒

[ventxekart]

Ah, I remember when the X-COM: Complete Pack was released on Steam. Good times.

Steam's top sellers for September 2008

[wonncageart]

oh...oh no... D:

[mysteamgrids]

X-COM: UFO Defense

[cerastes]

Today is Day 9 Of Me Playing Girls' Frontline 2.

Like any other gacha, the start is braindead because they need even the most non-sentient of creatures to be able to clear. This is nothing new, but it really stuck out like a sore thumb in this particular case because this game heavily uses the XCOM formula as its inspiration. For the uninitiated, the original 1994 X-COM: UFO Defense starts incredibly brutal and only gets harder as you advance. The 2012 reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown starts reasonably brutal and scales pretty harshly and always demanding you really, really are learning what your tools can do and what the game mechanics are as you basically fight an asymmetrical Civilization III game against an opponent that 1) outguns you most of the way and 2) fights you with the hatefulness one only reserves for someone that has fucked one's wife. GFL2 starts you off against enemies that require absolutely no tactical acumen whatsoever, that do not use cover, and that deal pitiful amounts of damage even if you yourself don't use cover. This lasts a little too long for comfort but again it's industry standard. Once you get to parts of the game that require sentience, it's fun to see how they've gone about the flow of combat: You're basically pitting your characters with their own special conditions, specialties and passives against many enemies that initially are simple as hell (they just move and shoot) but steadily become more complex and nuanced (enemies that target an area for bombardment at the end of their turn, enemies that can counter in specific circumstance, enemies that trap your enemies with overwatch fire, reaction intereceptions, AoE, etc). The system definitely has potential. I've yet to truly find anything actually challenging that wasn't me fighting enemies 10-20 levels higher than my units, but the fundamentals of cover and risk-reward are there even on-level; if you get shot at completely exposed, you are going to take hefty damage (unless you are rocking a Suomi shield).

The biggest departure from XCOM proper is that there is no accuracy: All attacks will always hit, unless certain abilities outright deny the damage -- like certain enemy Medics that can use the Anesthesia skill to negate one instance of damage -- and the game really favors a more aggressive style for both the player and the enemy through the Stability System: All units have a Stability counter, which decreases by certain amounts depending on the attack received. Once it's depleted, units can only benefit from the most bare and basic defensive effects of cover, which are not very good. Stability Break also may have additional special effects on certain enemies, chiefly bosses, resulting in extra damage taken, reduced attack power, changing forms, losing certain active or passive skills, etc. As a huge fan of systems like this, I Enjoy.

The game is gorgeous looking: The environments are highly detailed, the character models are incredibly well made, the guns are lovingly sculpted. I know the overarching meme is that it's got the best anime girl feet in the industry -- and it's true, they put more love into rendering and modelling these girls' feet, stockings and socks that I've seen parents put into raising their children -- but the model quality is truly overarching, they spared no effort in any obvious area, it's a really gorgeous looking game. The sound design and the music are all fine and have not wowed me in any special way, really, but visually, good lord, the game truly does go hard. Another thing the game does really well is video cutscenes, the action and choreography of actually very decently lengthy cutscenes they show pretty often go very hard, with good explosions, good gunplay, fluid and good looking motions, etc. The animation direction in GFL2 is really, really good, something I wasn't expecting given they've not really delved on this area particularly in previous games. They probably hired a really good studio for this-slash-got themselves some very talented and skilled personnel for it.

The game economy is Post-Mihoyo style: There's a set cast of Max Rarity characters, called Elites in the game's nomenclature, that inhabit a Standard Banner with absolutely fucking horrendous rates. 0.6% chance of rolling anything Max Rarity, 0.3% of an Elite Doll, 0.3% of an Elite Weapon. Besides this, there's the Limited Banners, which is every banner ever, meaning post-launch Elites are all Limited with a Limited Signature Weapon. In other words, shit sucks. The only saving grace is that the game, in thankfully true XCOM fashion, is much less about having Strong Individual Units, and much more about having a team with good synergy, and there's plenty of great non-Elites you'll have plenty of copies of. Gameplaywise, you won't get shafted by not having the Newest Woman With A Broken Kit, which is good. Signature Weapons so far from what I've seen are very nice to have but no functionality is tied to them and no character feels incomplete without their Signature Weapon or without multiples dupes, which is really good practice and a deal breaker for me if it's present. About the only stupidly broken character I can think off right this second is definitely Suomi, who supports so incredibly well that she lets you Not Play XCOM. She's seriously and hilariously busted and futureproofed.

The writing is pretty damn stiff. This is nothing new with Sunborn. The thing with Sunborn is that when it hits highs, they are VERY high, but the trip to those highs is clunky and stiff, with an overabundance of nothingburger technobabble and tacticool filler dialogue that, were this a megahit the way One Piece is, would definitely inspire a dogged group of fans to make a website that tells you exactly where to read and where to skip to avoid all the meaningless filler. Even if you like some tacticool, it's just SO much of it that serves no purpose. The characters are... Unfortunately, not super fun. Our old friend Oats, ahem, Groza (OTs-14) is there, and she's fun, but the rest of the characters have not done a good job to endear me to them: Colphne I'm pretty ok with, Nemesis and Krolik really have exhausted the fucks I can give for them by this point (I'm in Chapter 4). This is particularly painful in the case of Nemesis for me, a character whose design I really, really love and who I was looking forward to a lot. Nemesis' whole thing is that she literally cannot speak normally and has to communicate entirely in cryptic theater kid ramblings, and Krolik conversely only exists as the only person that can somehow accurately decipher what the fuck it is she's saying. This is charming for all of three cutscenes before it becomes very old and basically filler: Nemesis says "The embers of starlight long forgotten by statues lingers in the fingertips of the deaf" and Krolik replies with "Hah!? Who are you calling a coward?! I'll beat you up!" because Nemesis shittalks Krolik a lot, and that's the crux of both of their personalities. I know they are building Nemesis for something else but good lord it's torturous and stale. There's a Super Powered Child that I don't care about and she's the main plot device. Mayling is funny and endearing, and I like her. We meet characters from Ye Olde GFL 1 days and so far it's been pretty nice every time: Suomi, Lenna (UMP9), Kalina, Leva (UMP45), always a good time hanging with them. I particularly enjoy how divorced Commander and Kalina are. Oh, the Commander (your character) is an actual character, fully voiced and all, I like that a lot, and I like them. You can choose a male or female Commander, with fully 3D rendered distinct non-obscured, non-masked models and that's pretty damn cool. Still, can't help but miss the bangers that were ST AR-15, RO635, DEFY, and others from GFL1.

There's plenty of stuff to do without using Stamina, especially event stuff, but I fear that once you run out of it, you enter that weird limbo of "logging in, autoclearing the RNG drops mode, logging out". I'm not there yet but I dread reaching it. I know they just launched the game here (1 year old in CN) but, I guess I've been immensely spoiled by Arknights' several replayable game modes, this game, being XCOM in nature, would ROCK a roguelite mode or some sort of replayable game mode so much.

Overall, it's been a pretty nice time, as someone who dropped but nonetheless greatly enjoyed GFL, it's great seeing the Old Friends better than ever. My friend Suomi and my friend Tololo (CHILE MENTIONED 🇨��🇨🇱🇨🇱) are there for me and I'm glad to hang out with them again. I wish my friend Sabrina would also join me sooner than later :'). Color me surprised that so far, the gameplay seems both fun and has potential, but we'll see how it goes from here. Overall: Good first impression.

Say something nice about my friend Tololo

[prince-atom]

Look out! There's a Muton right next to you!

Today a Sikorsky MH-53E Sea Dragon of the United States Marines made an emergency landing on a rice field in Japan, no injuries were reported and the helicopter later took off on its own.

[biggestart]

Last year, I tried making an XCOM 2 screenshot Let's Play similar in nature to Guavamoment's old X-COM: UFO Defense Let's Play, but abandoned it quickly due to the difficulty involved, as well as the strain it put on my computer.

Nonetheless, I did manage to make a "Commandersona". Because of the way everyone in the game hypes up the importance of The Commander, I thought it would be cute and funny to make him an unassuming older guy. Plus it made it more fun to ship him with the haggard middle-aged XCOM 2 version of Bradford.

Maybe I'll try it again someday.

[chubbykanmuses]

Giving Yuugumo not food, but access to a new game- X-COM: UFO Defense!

"Oohhh... ohh... I do appreciate the gift lots but... h-how do you play this? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with it... so perhaps I would need some um... help."

[doolallymagpie]

…canonwelding the Tzun to the Sectoids and the Colonists actually makes sense

[modded-xcom2-aar]

About this blog

In 2008, Something Awful forums user GuavaMoment created a screenshot Let's Play of X-COM: UFO Defense. Let's Plays were still a very new phenomena, they were still a very experimental concept.

A notable aspect of the Let's Play was the collaborative approach it took to it's writing. Forum users could not only submit their usernames for the LP's cannon fodder soldiers, but they could could write their characters by writing in-character posts and documents from the character's perspective.

The LP was archived and can be read here. (Just a little warning: these were written in 2008 on an internet forum famous for its edgelord comedy, so there may be upsetting content.)

As a teenager, I found this approach to writing very interesting, and it made me a lifelong fan of the XCOM series (rather conveniently, the release of Enemy Unknown was just a few years away).

As a fan of XCOM 2: War of The Chosen and modding, this idea has been kicking around in my head for a while now.

A key aspect of this is that I am accepting user-submitted characters and posts. Feel free to submit a character and I will add them to the pool.

In addition to here, this will be crossposted to cohost, if you understandably prefer that website. This tumblr will be the main feed, as it's more convenient for mass-posting images and allowing user submissions.

[humor-y-videojuegos]

X-COM: UFO Defense 🏢 MicroProse Software, Inc., Mythos Games 📅 1994 🖥 Amiga, Amiga CD32, DOS, PS1, Windows #videogames

[datcloudboi]

List of Video Games Turning 30 Years Old in 2024

Aggressors of Dark Kombat (what if Mortal Kombat was made by the KoF devs?)

Alone in the Dark 2

Art of Fighting 2

Beneath a Steel Sky (a highly influential point and click adventure game from the same team that would go on to make Broken Sword)

Blackthorne (a 2D platformer made by Blizzard)

Breath of Fire (the 1st one)

Bubsy 2

Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales

Bust-a-Move (known as "Puzzle Bobble" in Japan)

Castlevania: Bloodlines

Contra: Hard Corps (the first game in the series to have multiple endings)

Cosmology of Kyoto

The Death and Return of Superman (a side scrolling beat 'em up made by Blizzard)

Demon's Crest

Donkey Kong (the Game boy version of the arcade original)

Donkey Kong Country

Doom II: Hell on Earth

Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls (as opposed to a beat ‘em up like the other four games were, this one was a fighting game)

Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom

Dynamite Headdy

Earthworm Jim (with music from Tommy Tallarico. His mother is very proud.)

Ecco: The Tides of Time

The Elder Scrolls Arena (the very 1st one)

Final Fantasy VI

Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (the 3rd one)

Ghoul Patrol (the sequel to "Zombies Ate My Neighbors")

Heretic

The Horde (a hybrid action/strategy game made by Toys for Bob, who are known nowadays for making Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time)

Illusion of Gaia

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures

Killer Instinct

The King of Fighters '94

King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride

Live a Live (the original version, which went unreleased in North America. We wouldn’t get this game until the HD-2D remake 28 years later)

Majin Tensei (a strategy spin-off of the greater Shin Megami Tensei franchise)

Marathon (one of the earliest games made by Bungie)

Mega Man 6

Mega Man Soccer

Mega Man V (on the Game Boy)

Mega Man X

Mortal Kombat II

The Need for Speed (the very 1st one)

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures (as an empath, seeing Pac-Man in pain makes me feel sick)

Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure

Pocky & Rocky 2

Policenauts (a visual novel and one of the earlier works from Hideo Kojima)

Rise of the Robots (often considered one of the worst fighting games ever made)

Robotrek

Samurai Shodown II

Shadowrun (the Sega Genesis version)

Shaq Fu (also often considered one of the worst fighting games ever made)

Shin Megami Tensei II (which, to this day, has never been officially released outside of Japan)

Shin Megami Tensei If... (also never officially released outside of Japan)

Shining Force II

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (just in time for the third movie)

Sparkster

Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage

Star Wars: TIE Fighter

Streets of Rage 3

Super Adventure Island II

Super Metroid

Super Punch-Out!!

Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (this release saw the first playable appearances of T. Hawk, Fei Long, Dee Jay, and Cammy)

Super Street Fighter II Turbo (saw the series’ first secret character, Akuma)

System Shock (a remake came out very recently. It's quite good!)

Ultima VIII: Pagan

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (the very 1st one)

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

X-COM: UFO Defense (the 1st game in the series)

Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II (one of the last first-party releases for the NES)

Zool 2

[never-obsolete]

X-COM: UFO Defense (1994)