X-COM: UFO Defense
X-COM: UFO Defense is a strategy game that combines tactical combat with base management and global defense. Players lead an international organization tasked with defending Earth from an alien invasion. The game unfolds on two levels: a global view where players manage resources, research alien technology, and intercept UFOs, and a tactical combat mode where squad-based battles occur. Players recruit and train soldiers, build bases, and develop new weapons and equipment based on recovered alien technology.…
Terrifying, deep and unforgiving, it's one of the greatest strategy games ever made.Kit · Sadkitty Games
Loved
- Real tension in every turn-based mission
- Great research and base management layer
- Your soldiers feel like people you lose
Not so much
- Brutal and opaque for newcomers
- Clunky interface and long late-game missions
Play it if strategy fans who love emergent stories and permanent losses.
Skip it if players who hate losing hours of progress to bad luck.
No cheat codes
X-COM: UFO Defense doesn't have cheat codes. The tips and secrets below are the next best thing.
Play it better
- Kneel before shooting. It boosts accuracy a lot.
- Make sure your soldiers have enough time units left to react. Ending a turn with units out of TU leaves them open.
- Research laser weapons early, then alien alloys and plasma. Tech is the real difficulty curve.
- Sell spare alien loot like Elerium and corpses for cash, but keep enough Elerium for your own craft.
- Use smoke grenades and flares at night. Aliens see in the dark and you don't.
- Build bases on different continents to cover more of the globe with radar.
- Save before every mission. Terror missions against Chryssalids can wipe a squad.
Hidden in plain sight
Tap a secret to reveal it.
Trivia
- Julian Gollop and his brother Nick designed it at Mythos Games.
- The original release had a famous bug that reset the difficulty to the easiest level after the first mission, whatever you chose.
- Firaxis rebooted the series as XCOM: Enemy Unknown in 2012.
- The follow-up, Terror from the Deep, came out in 1995.
