Welcome to Xcom: UFO Defense blog part 1.

I have just recently purchased X-com: UFO Defense and this partly due to the excitement around Xcom: Enemy Unknown. Before I start I have to be upfront about this, I have NEVER played any X-com game not even the new one. This is a challenge which I have set myself which is to break the myth that the original X-com games are hard.

Time to start X-com

The opening cut scene was just amazing, if you have not seen it please check it out.

As soon as you hit new game and select a difficulty (I’ll stick with beginner for now), it dumps you straight into the game with any explanation on the story or what to do. The first task is to select a location for my first base which i accidentally selected to be northern Africa.

The most jarring aspect of the game so far is the interface and this may put off a lot of people but I was not bothered by it (I’m going to regret saying this statement), the game came out in 1994 and you have to be mindful of that fact. The next thing was explore the bases option and discovered I can setup my units, create new bases, research new items etc. You’re given a budget and common sense tells you spend wisely and you’ll be ok.

Fast forward time

A UFO has been detected! I scrambled my interceptor jet to intercept the ufo and attack when seen but nothing happened. The ufo ran away, a small victory for me but I have no idea why it did not attack it. Fast forward time and another ufo approaches and again I repeat the same action with the same result. I may have to do some digging around to find out what is going on. At this point I had decided to look through the menu’s and gather as much info I can on all of the different mechanics the game when another ufo was detected, but this time it was a mission.

Mission time

My first mission and remember when I said the interface was not an issue well take a look at this screen.

WHAT AM I LOOKING AT!!!!! When I first looked at this I had to stop playing and think really hard at what each of the buttons represent and let’s just say everything fell apart. Some of the buttons are obvious like the up/down view screen option, crouching, select next soldier but some I had to find out by clicking them (big mistake). The up arrow on the plane button had caused me to ditch my team, plane and fail the mission all in a matter of seconds. I stopped playing the game at this particular moment.

So is X-com: UFO Defense a difficult game in terms of a rough interface design, I’m going to say yes. I wonder if I had the manual, would it explain the interface for me? I will go back to the game but I probably need to do some soul searching on the net before i make another attempt.

Thank you for reading and coming soon X-com: UFO Defense part 2.

I have just recently purchased X-com: UFO Defense and this partly due to the excitement around Xcom: Enemy Unknown. Before I start I have to be upfront about this, I have NEVER played any X-com game not even the new one. This is a challenge which I have set myself which is to break the myth that the original X-com games are hard.

Time to start X-com

The opening cut scene was just amazing, if you have not seen it please check it out.

As soon as you hit new game and select a difficulty (I’ll stick with beginner for now), it dumps you straight into the game with any explanation on the story or what to do. The first task is to select a location for my first base which i accidentally selected to be northern Africa.

The most jarring aspect of the game so far is the interface and this may put off a lot of people but I was not bothered by it (I’m going to regret saying this statement), the game came out in 1994 and you have to be mindful of that fact. The next thing was explore the bases option and discovered I can setup my units, create new bases, research new items etc. You’re given a budget and common sense tells you spend wisely and you’ll be ok.

Fast forward time

A UFO has been detected! I scrambled my interceptor jet to intercept the ufo and attack when seen but nothing happened. The ufo ran away, a small victory for me but I have no idea why it did not attack it. Fast forward time and another ufo approaches and again I repeat the same action with the same result. I may have to do some digging around to find out what is going on. At this point I had decided to look through the menu’s and gather as much info I can on all of the different mechanics the game when another ufo was detected, but this time it was a mission.

Mission time

My first mission and remember when I said the interface was not an issue well take a look at this screen.

WHAT AM I LOOKING AT!!!!! When I first looked at this I had to stop playing and think really hard at what each of the buttons represent and let’s just say everything fell apart. Some of the buttons are obvious like the up/down view screen option, crouching, select next soldier but some I had to find out by clicking them (big mistake). The up arrow on the plane button had caused me to ditch my team, plane and fail the mission all in a matter of seconds. I stopped playing the game at this particular moment.

So is X-com: UFO Defense a difficult game in terms of a rough interface design, I’m going to say yes. I wonder if I had the manual, would it explain the interface for me? I will go back to the game but I probably need to do some soul searching on the net before i make another attempt.

Thank you for reading and coming soon X-com: UFO Defense part 2.

Hey if you ever want to play it on a harder difficulty you need xcom util. There's a bug on all versions bar the gold bersion (incl steam version) where the difficulty reverts to beginner after theh first ufo. Also, here are the buttons from left to right, top row/bottom row.

Fly up/fly down, level up/level down, map/kneel, equipment/center on, next dude/last dude, can't remember/can't remember :), end turn/dust off.

Can't remember all of them it's been a bout a year or two since I played it last. If you need to know anything the ufopedia wiki is good or you can mail me.

You are right in your suspicion that the manual is key. People tend to think that old games didn't do "hand holding", but that's not really true. The tutorial was just printed in the manual, sometimes to the extent of walking you through the first mission step by step, but certainly always describing every button in the interface and even some of the mechanics in detail. We just got used to not reading manuals when tutorials became a commonplace thing, but nobody ever expected anybody to just jump onto X-COM and start playing.

The GOG version includes manuals, if I remember correctly, so that's the one I'd recommend for a newcomer, but looking up tutorials online also works.