Recent reviews by llunak

If you are a fan of the original UFO:Enemy Unknown (AKA X-Com:UFO Defence), then know that I used to play it from time to time until 2013, when I found Xenonauts, and since then I can't really play the original game anymore. The simplest way to describe Xenonauts is that it keeps the spirit of the original game and adds many improvements.

If the only game related to X-Com games you know is Firaxis XCOM, then know that XCOM doesn't really have much in common with the original game, despite the name, as at the core they are fundamentally different games. Asking which one is better is like asking whether apples or steaks taste better - some will like one better, some the other, and some will like both while knowing that they are simply different. And the same applies to XCOM and Xenonauts, they are different, and whatever you learn when playing XCOM is best to forget when playing Xenonauts. XCOM is like a Hollywood action move: It's flashy, with explosions, brave superheroes who eventually defeat the aliens with style while uttering their lines, avenging their fallen mates who the aliens had the nerves to inevitably kill early on. And if you like action movies, it doesn't really matter that it's cliched, gamey, doesn't often make much sense, and is hardly "Enemy Unknown" when somebody pops up to explain everything three times the moment you encounter something new. Xenonauts is like a thriller: You don't really know what is going on, and may get lost if you don't pay attention, or may figure it out only later. Things start in a miserable situation, the aliens keep their pressure until the very end, people die when mistakes are made and sometimes even if not and they are merely unlucky. The war is all but lost and hopeless, but it has to be fought, because there's no option and it may be won despite all the losses and setbacks. And that is exactly one of the charm's of Xenonauts - anyone can win a fight that is meant to be won, but it's an entirely different matter if the victory is not given away merely for a pretense of effort, and aliens in Xenonauts do not show up to be just target practice. In Xenonauts, you have to deserve your victory, and the game won't hesitate to utterly defeat you if you fail to deliver. But if you do win, then it is the sweetest of victories, because it was you that made it happen despite everything. And it doesn't matter that there were no cutscenes, because the best story was inside your head.

And if you have never heard of any X-Com or XCOM for whatever strange reason, then know that Xenonauts is a great game, but it is not a game for everybody. If you expect casual play, you'll lose quickly. If you judge a book by its cover, you'll be disappointed by the lack of cutscenes or flashy graphics. If concepts such as "planes with only heavy missiles can't win against nimble fighter UFOs", "soldiers in the open are likely to die", "aliens may attack from behind if that area has not been checked", "humans do not see well in the dark", "items need to be in hands in order to be used" or "your mouse has more than one button" remain a mystery to you, the game will end up being frustrating and "confusing", as there is no tutorial and the game does not spoon-feed information to the player, but rather just provides the information and expects the player to figure it out (or there's of course the manual, but it's 2010s, so nowadays it's much cooler to spend an hour on trial and error rather than skimming over a manual for a couple of minutes). But if you think about what happens, pay attention, are relentless and careful, and like to win because you are good, then this is a game for you.

In Xenonauts, aliens will keep you on the edge for a long time (unlike in X-Com, where it felt more like the aliens were just occassionally stopping by, and they will not wait forever until you research your next "priority" project as in XCOM). You will need to quickly manage setting up additional bases around the globe (wherever you want), expand your air force to hunt flying UFOs (and you really need to hunt them), research new technologies to try to keep up, manage your funds (which may soon get low if the funding regions decide you do a lousy job of defending them), and last but definitely not the least, equip and lead your soldiers to fight ground missions at downed UFOs, cities terrorized by aliens, alien bases (yes, plural) and defences of your own bases (yes, again, not necessarily just once) until the very end. Which, for many soldiers, may be their own personnal end, given they fight a superior enemy, and it is expected for soldiers to die throughout the entire game. Your soldiers have a selection of different equipment available to them, and it is up to you to choose it based on their strengths and weaknesses, and create tactics that will fit your style (there is no perks system giving soldiers "magic" abilities as in XCOM, it is the equipment and the ability to freely combine it that provide variety). And it is up to you to balance all of that.

No game is perfect, of course. First of all, I suggest you consider using the Community Edition, which provides additional bugfixes, tweaks and mods that alleviate some of the problems you might have with the vanilla game (such as a relatively low number of maps). As said, there's no tutorial, so you need to either figure it out using common sense and information in the game (Xenopedia, tooltips), at least glance at the manual, or watch a (good) YouTube video. The game is quite long, so it may feel a bit repetitive if you try to finish it quickly (but there are airstrikes to help with that). You may also easily end up in a death spiral if you do poorly (but then you shouldn't do way too poorly, it either means that you are too careless and do not pay attention, or you should play on easier difficulty). The alien AI is probably the smartest I have ever seen in any X-Com game (in other games they often just wait or wander aimlessly), which may prove annoying if you do not expect that: Alien leaders will often take defensive positions (here the aliens actually care about their UFO) and mindless attacks will often end up in a carnage, and occassionally the aliens are way too smart (the aliens do not cheat as such, but generally smart AIs are hard to do without the AI getting access to internal information, and even though it usually makes the game better, in some cases it may tip the scales of the AI's decision making into doing the unlikely). Finally, the grid structure of the battlefield leads to some unintuitive (even though not buggy) line-of-sight/fire issues, for example round shapes such as UFO hull are rather poorly mapped to the grid.

But none of that matters much if you immerse yourself into the game and let it to scare you during night and terror missions, to make you feel overwhelmed in desperate fights, to get shocked when your soldiers die, to organize your force the way you want and make progress in the hopes of overcoming the enemy, and to let you feel the joy when you make that happen.

All in all, if you like X-Com games, or if you like games that actually challenge you, this is a game for you.

(Note that I do not use Steam for launching the game, so the number of hours played is way way off. I've probably spent few hundred hours on just playing the game, and since the game has hooked me enough to make me contribute to the Community Edition, I'm probably past a thousand.)