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Reader review by Suskie
June 05, 2009 I’m in a habit of paying no attention to Steam’s frequent pop-up advertisements that bring to light the various discounts the service offers on games I generally don’t care about, but the announcement that all five titles in the renowned X-COM series would be available for something like fifteen dollars was difficult to ignore. That purchase was supposed to be my gateway to a series that I’ve been meaning to catch up on for quite some time, given that it’s rooted in a genre I’m fond of: turn-based strategy. I don’t necessarily consider it wasted money since the price was so minimal to begin with, but what a shock it was to come upon the realizations that (a) most of the sequels had absolutely nothing to do with the first X-COM and weren’t even turn-based strategy at all, and (b) the original game wasn’t even particularly good to begin with, based on the extremely limited time I was able to spend with it.I’ve made two (2) attempts to play UFO Defense, each lasting about one (1) hour total. From what I could tell, the game is plot-free aside from the basic setup that Earth is under attack by aliens and that it’s up to you to stop them. The idea is that you build a base and send out a scouting craft, and whenever you detect a UFO, you launch a fighter jet (or something) to gun it down. You’ll then order a shuttle craft (or something) to investigate the crash site, which usually means you’ve got to engage in a turn-based battle against any aliens that survived the wreck. And you continue doing this forever, I presume. It’s not in my place to say whether UFO Defense is as open-ended as it sounds, or whether it has an actual “ending” of any sort. But I take issue with that, because structure-less games don’t give me the impression that I’m actually accomplishing anything – and even if I’m wrong, then in any case, the appearance of structure is every bit as important, because it’s all about making the player feel as if they’re getting something done.
But even putting that aside, good lord is UFO Defense ever slow. It takes ages just for a UFO to pop up on your radar, and then the only way to initiate a battle is to ensure that it doesn’t crash in the ocean (which it probably will, since 75% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, as you know). As such, UFO Defense is punctuated by a lot of wandering and waiting. A fellow HonestGamers regular has assured me that the game’s initial slowness was intentional to give you a fighting chance, and that the game eventually picks up in pace and becomes engaging. And you know what? I don’t deny that. But I never had the patience to get to that point.
UFO Defense, more than other games, seems to suffer from its age. Starting off slow and easy then gradually accelerating in difficulty and pace is a pattern most games follow, but they find ways around it. That UFO Defense doesn’t have a plot to cling to, again, is the result of having been released in 1993 – but it’s nevertheless a detriment. Furthermore, the game’s lack of a tutorial means that in those few cases where you do get to fight, you’re confused and disoriented. Why can’t I see my enemies when they can obviously see me? Why, so early in the game, am I barely able to scratch opponents that gun down my troops in one hit? Where do I get more equipment and soldiers, and what do I do if most of them die and I’m not fit to fight another battle? Like I said, I’ve made two attempts to play UFO Defense, and both have been such off-putting experiences (simultaneously boring and tedious) that I doubt there’ll ever be a third.
As for the rest of the package, there isn’t much to discuss. Terror from the Deep for some reason doesn’t run on Vista, so I can’t make judgments on it until Valve releases the patch they’re supposedly working on. (Or maybe they’ve finished it by now. Damned if I care.) On the other hand, I spent about sixty seconds apiece with Apocalypse and Interceptor, staring at their complicated interfaces and trying to figure out what, exactly, I was supposed to be doing. Both suffered from the deadly combination of being too cluttered while simultaneously giving the player no direction whatsoever. I couldn’t even tell you what Apocalypse was supposed to be – from the minute I spent with the game, it looked, I swear, like some sort of SimCity clone. This paragraph will likely be the most I ever spend talking about any of these games, and if I had physical copies of them, they’d be buried in dust by now.
And then we have Enforcer, supposedly the “worst” game in the series if GameRankings is to be believed, yet the only X-COM game that I was able to spend a significant amount of time with – in fact, I completed it just moments before writing this. The concept behind Enforcer probably sounds blasphemous to those who loved UFO Defense and would hate to see this beloved turn-based strategy franchise morph into a generic shooter, but I’d make the argument that, hey, at least something happens in this game.
The setup is… well, you’re a robot called the Enforcer who was built to defend Earth from an ongoing alien invasion, and… that’s it. The scientist who builds you dies rather quickly (good thing, considering how annoying he is) after which it’s up to you to… save the Earth… from… aliens. By shooting at them. Yeah. The game’s design is about as hollow-minded and unoriginal as that setup would lead you to believe, so simplistic in nature that Microprose didn’t even bother to implement vertical mouselook. You shoot aliens, and then you shoot more aliens, and this goes on for thirty-some missions with little in the way of variety or challenge. The levels are pretty directionless in layout, and the aliens themselves are so tactless and unthreatening that I’m wondering why the services of a super-powered cyborg are even required. But while I wouldn’t call the game “entertaining,” it is often at least diverting in the mindless way that generic shooters tend to be.
And that’s all there is to say about Enforcer. The game certainly isn’t bad, it’s just so bland and insubstantial that I had to pad this review out with my impressions of the other X-COM games just to inflate it to a decent length. You never escape the feeling that there are other, better games you could be playing … but then again, you’re never “glad” to be pulling yourself away from the game, either. Whereas UFO Defense felt like a test of my patience (and the winners get rewarded by eventually playing a game that’s actually entertaining, supposedly), Enforcer never beats around the bush, and I appreciate that. Enforcer is a game to be ignored by most and forgotten by a few, but for me, coming after three disappointments and one game that didn’t work, it was great to play a game that actually held my attention.
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