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X-COM comes to Steam
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 5th September 2008
The X-COM series has just been re--released on Steam for download.
I had The Secret of Monkey Island, while Tim had Asteroids. For resident tech-guru Richard though it was X-COM: Terror From The Deep - which has just been re-released on Valve's Steam service.
Valve today revealed that the entire series of X-COM games from UFO Defense through to Apocalypse is now available to buy and play through Steam for a very tempting fee.
Each game in the series can be picked up from a meagre $4.99, while the collection can currently be had with a 10 percent discount until Sept. 11th for just $13.49. In pounds sterling that means you can pick up one of the most memorable sci-fi strategy games of recent years for less than £10.
The X-COM series is often held up as one of the most influential turn-based strategy games, casting players as the director of an anti-alien task force which must defend the world from off-world threats.
Terror From The Deep is especially remarkable for no other reason than the fact the soundtrack is enough to reduce Richard to a trembling, frightened wreck.
Plan on picking up a copy of one of the X-COM games? Let us know in the forums.
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Comments (19)Stats: 0.028 seconds
I'd highly reccommend them to anyone who likes a bit of strategy and depth in there games, although feel free to forget enforcer exists :D
May buy the first two if I cannot find my original X-COM CDs. :)
Terror from the Deep... Great game! ;)
My favourite tactic for finishing off alien bases was to send two soldiers equiped with the mind control device and four "tanks" as backups.
The soldiers would control the aliens and use them to kill other aliens, the tanks provided cover for the two soldiers and recon.
The terror sites in ships were hard!
XCom can be tough especially in the later stages of the game when you come under strong psionic attacks (and sheesh, the final assault on the offworld base!!) but TftD is murderously hard right from the start - the dreaded Lobstermen!! I also recall dealing with the Chrysalids from the first game was quite challenging as well, especially on terror sites when they used the civvies as hosts for the zombies.
Bu the way I agree with the destructable landscape mention above, the petrols stations were the best if you have large number of aliens in the area. It was also the best way to deal with those pesky Sectoid snipers, particularly during the early parts of the game when your weapons are fairly weak - a couple of H.E. rockets sorted the little buggers out. Although it was kind of hard to do an autopsy on a pureed corpse.
It's easy to appreciate old skool action games with 'poor' graphics because the basic gameplay isn't miles away from a game with 'good' graphics.... but when it comes to strategy games, it's too easy to slate something by way of it's graphics style and forget that there is a great game beneath.
Sorry, I freaking love this game- at the time it was groundbreaking- like GTA3 x a million.
S*D
I don't know if I'd play through the UFO series again though - the first game took me a few months to enjoy and complete, and I dont know if I have the time any more. These days games which take a few hours to complete, sadly, are more accessible to me.
UFO Enemy Unknown Intro
The TFTD page on steam says Vista is not compatable. :(
The chap from 2K who is managing them has said that he plans to make the dos version of TFTD available alongside the current windows one so it can be run on vista through a custom dosbox shortcut as the first one is right now, but hasn't given an exact time/date for when it will happen. Getting them all working in vista seems to be one of there goals although they apparently don't actually have the source code for the games, so they're stuck with figuring out ways to emulate things to get them working.
Would be cool to see an open version created like OpenTTD. :)
Um... They did... it was Chaos Gate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000:_Chaos_Gate