Upon intercept, you can auto-resolve the conflict or take control of your planes via a top-down barebones RTS battle that lasts maybe ten to twenty seconds. The excitement (and dread) comes into play when a UFO enters one of your base’s radar range, allowing you to dispatch planes in an attempt to shoot it down. You can pause time in case you need to catch up on some housekeeping, but the majority of your time on the base management screen will be spent waiting for troops you’ve ordered to arrive, tech to be researched, or stuff to be built. When you’re not embarking on a ground assault mission (which are turn-based), the game plays out in real-time. Recruit & equip soldiers, research technologies, build new weapons and vehicles, customize the layout of your bases…it’s all very in-depth and quite possibly intimidating for the uninitiated. To do that, you’ll need to build more bases (at a cost) and populate them with the tools you’ll need to fend off aliens around their immediate vicinity. The base is prepopulated with some troops, planes, and equipment to get you started, but it’s up to you to expand your reach around the globe. If you want to start in North America or Europe, for example, you can do that. You’re given a base, the location of which can be manually selected by the user. “Xenonauts”, for the benefit of those who aren’t familiar with the “X-COM” series at all, will task you with fending off an alien invasion. I’m probably jumping ahead of myself here. “Xenonauts”, it turns out, may take me even longer to master. ![]() They’d look at me with those pleading eyes on the roster select screen as if to say, “please, for the love of god, don’t pick me.” I eventually became better at “X-COM: Enemy Unknown” and its expansion “X-COM: Enemy Within” to the point where I could beat the game with only suffering a casualty here or there, but it took time. My troops were practically begging me not to send them on missions and even began to regularly update their wills based on the fact that my squad survival rate was abysmal. Like with “Xenonauts”, I was unprepared for the beating I’d received when trying it out for the first time. I myself was first introduced to “XCOM” via the Firaxis/2K Games remake (“XCOM: Enemy Unknown”) in 2012, having never played the original. If you’ve never played the original 1994 “X-COM” game by Mythos Games/Microprose, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
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