Xenonauts – a remake of a game of old.

UFO: Enemy Unknown is one of the most influential games ever made. This is clearly visible by the amount of games that tried to mimic its gameplay like Altar’s UFO series or UFO Extraterrestrials and XCOM Enemy Unknown to name a few. Still some people were not satisfied by the above and wanted to recreate the know experience to their liking. One such project is Xenonauts.

My first encounter with this game was not a rather positive one. I saw it at a friend. The game was half finished with tons of missing graphics and an unfinished campaign. After this experience I forgot about this game for several months until some sale on Steam and since I had some extra cash I gave the game a second chance (I’m a sucker for his kind of gameplay and own every commercially released UFO game and their clones for PC).

The game itself is almost a direct clone of UFO: Enemy Unknown though there are several differences. Setting wise, the game is set in 1980’s during the cold war. As a bonus to the game you get a free novella in a PDF format, titled “Crimson Dagger” by Lee Stephen, which serves as an introduction to the game setting and describes in detail the first human contact with the aliens (quite a nice read). Apart from the setting, the most obvious difference is seen as soon as you start the game – there is no rotating globe, just a flat map of the earth. Than again the graphic design of the game is very nice, esthetic and functional. The core gameplay is identical to the original – you start with one base, some interceptors, a troop transport, soldiers, scientists and engineers and slowly advance the story by assaulting shot down or landed ufos, researching alien tech, acquiring new weapons, armor, craft and vehicles up until the final mission when you save the earth for good. And this all works pretty well. A nice touch is the casualties counter which track the number of people killed due to alien activities and also the on map reports of various event like forest fires, tidal waves, strafing runs ets. which might help to track a ufo outside of radar range. Some people might not like that certain parts of the game are more streamlined. There is no need to buy the basic weapons or ammunition, for both soldiers and jets. All is provided free and in unlimited quantity. Furthermore, jets have a fixed set of armaments per jet type and all upgrades to weapons installed on them are done automatically after researching certain technology, also free of charge. This take a lot of base management of ones mind though it comes at a price in ingame currency. First, funds are scares and getting stuff from ufos for sale is a must. Second, loosing a country is quite easy as building a new base is expensive, not to mention the prices for manufacturing new craft, armor or weapons for you troops. Furthermore, there is no possibility of self funding your efforts by selling weapons that you manufacture as the selling prices are way below the production costs.

As for the combat part of the game, there are two types – dog fighting ufos in the air and ground combat in the form of assaulting grounded ufo, alien bases or defending cities in terror missions. The air combat is the part I like the least about this game. Its done with a pseudo radar view of the situation where a squadron (1 to 3 jets) you sent to deal with a ufo is under your direct command in an RTS like manner. You have to manage the position of your craft, range of your and enemy weapons, represented by cones projected from craft silhouettes, fuel reserves and craft health. The key it to either take out the enemy with your long range missiles or to try to get you planes in the ufo’s blind spot and use you short range weapons. If you get in trouble you can press special keys to dodge incoming fire or use the afterburners to fly quicker but use more fuel. If things get nasty, you can order your jets off the combat field and run away. All in all I’m very glad that the creators of the game gave players the option to auto resolve this part of the game. For me it’s a blessing as I really didn’t like this particular air combat system.

The ground combat, on the other hand, is done extremely well. The graphics are sharp, clean and present different types of object on the map in a way that players will immediately understand. The animations of units, both your and aliens are nicely done and you rarely have problems distinguishing units one from another. Terrain sets are varied and depict farmlands, cities (in Eastern European, US and middle east styles), military bases, forests and sub-polar regions. The alien craft themselves are varied and interesting on their own. The combat itself is done in turns using a time units system for performing actions. What is nice is that the game will inform you how many points an action costs before performing it (e.g. little numbers by the target indicator before a shot is fired) or how many time units will be left after moving a desired distance. Furthermore, a cover system is implemented, not unlike the XCOM Enemy Unknown, which has to be always taken into consideration when positioning your troops. It works by reducing chance to hit a target that is obstructed by a peace of cover, be it a bush, a fence or a fridge inside a kitchen (the game show which objects reduces the to hit chance by how many %). But its done only when you actually want to take a shot and you never know how good your soldiers cover actually is. Another interesting feature is the suppression system. Every weapon has a chance of suppressing an opponent and machineguns excel at that. A suppressed unit immediately looses all time units it currently had (especially dangerous when your soldier is suppressed by reaction fire), and on their next turn their starting time units are reduced by half. Add riot shields to the mix, which soak up damage very nicely and leave one hand free to fire a pistol or use a stun baton, and you can get a lot of combat options unavailable even in other remakes. On the down side, grenades have no primer regulation. Regular ones explode at the end of the turn while smoke or stun ones immediately after they land on the ground. Additionally, in certain situations the units can get behind object which the game engine does not make transparent. This is annoying as it is difficult to position your men to you liking or you can just “loose” them on the battlefield and not use them for a turn or two. But still, tactical combat should satisfy most of the old UFO fans. As with the air combat, there is also an option not to go and clean up a shoot down ufo and just air strike it. This way you get a fixed amount of cash, dependent on the ufo type. The downside is that you don’t get any special resources from the ufo and after performing a ground mission you always get more cash.

Lastly, sound and music. As for the sound design all is done OK. Every alien, weapon, action has its own distinct sound and after w few hours into the game you will know what happened just by the sound produced, which is especially important in ground combat missions. The part that made a really big impression on by was the music, especially the one in tactical missions. For some time I was looking for a good modern version of the track played on the original – this creepy midi, with a heart beat motif and loads of strange sounds accompanying it. Well, Xenonauts delivered 11 very good tracks made by Aleksi Aubry-Carlson which you can linsten here . Ground Combat Day 2 is the one I had looked for.

All in all I am really happy with my purchase of Xenonauts. It’s a very good take on the classical UFO formula, faithful to the original concept but still bringing its own setting and story that drive you forward to uncover the alien secrets and save the earth once more.

This is a solid strategic game. Sure, it doesn't have the eye-popping 3D graphics of the current XCom games, but what it's lacking there it more than makes up for in challenging gameplay. And by challenging, I don't mean aliens picking you apart while you hide in full cover and wonder what the point was. The aliens here will find ways to flank you with the same type units that at other times often would hole up defensively instead. Sometimes it takes carefully placed explosives / flashbangs / stun gas into an area just to give you a leg up vs. them. It is also a difficult game to master in terms of having a good gameplan finance-wise. Will you spend a pile of your initial funding on science research to get a better technological balance vs. your foe, or will build extra hangars to combat the increasing ufo assault? How much of that funding will go to engineers to help you build better weapons & vehicles quickly enough to be of real use, and how much of it will you spend on soldiers to have enough to stop terror missions while still defending your own base? Or I should say, 'bases', because one will not be enough, as the threat is ongoing and everywhere. It's a fine line to walk (and I'm just talking about normal difficulty here).

So if you get distracted easily, or you're looking for a lot of gloss and entertaining Wow - factor, this game might not be for you. If you're into a game that'll hand you your ♥♥♥♥ the first few times you play it and demand that you improve your strategy, well then you've come to the right place. :)

I finally completed my first Normal Ironman run in Xenonauts after many rage quits, forced restarts... and forgetting to deactive my C4 explosives only to pink mistify half my squad (way... waayyyy too many times). There were many moments that had me mumbling at my screen in frustration or outright had me getting up from the computer, going to the gym, and lifting things up then putting them down over and over again to get the angst out.

It was incredibly frustrating to have some of my wet-behind-the-ears soldiers survive a few missions and pulverize some Xeno scum, only to watch them get one shot by a well placed shot or devoured by a Reaper I didn't plan for. Cover isn't intuitive (or at least for me it wasn't) and there were multiple times I took position only to watch the alien turn, smirk at me, then plant a plasma bolt square between the eyes of one of my soldiers. Refer back to the rage and lifting portion.

Eventually, after epic (and possibly unhealthy) amounts of nerd rage and QQ'ing over cheating alien scum, how insanely difficult breaching UFOs is (Corvettes! I'm specifically hating on you!), and having to make aggrevating economic decisions... I learned from my mistakes (gasp!), had to learn to accept losses, and got better.

I actually started using squad level tactics like hugging walls, throwing down smoke grenades if I absolutely had to turn a blind corner with no indication of what could be waiting on the other side, NOT sprinting down the middle of the street with my entire squad, then getting upset that I got sniped from a random window, making liberal use of explosives even if it meant I lost some money breaching UFOs, and generally just accepting I'm supposed to be out gunned.

The game is remarkably well paced, freakishly so. Due to the ticker implementation RIGHT when you finally have outfitted your fighter jets or soldiers with the appropriate gear new bigger, badder aliens show up that almost make your hard fought gains obsolete. One step forward, two steps back is a common theme throughout the game that makes you BETTER because you have to actually think about WTF you're doing and why.

I'm a father of three, married, and I have a job that has me at work anywhere from a standard 40 hours a week to almost 60, so it took me a month to get through the game. I guess I could've used the common complaint/logic "I don't have that kind of time" or "I want something I can sit down and beat in a few days" but this was far more rewarding. Yes, there were days where after a 12 hour shift I certainly didn't come home and boot up any games, but the time invested was worth it.

I'm glad I stuck with Xenonauts despite my initial frustrations and will be putting many more hours into it either by tweaking the config file or by downloading mods. I actually tried playing XCOM: EU again and couldn't bring myself to do it.

If you've made it through the wall of text (hurray!) I guess I'd split it into three categories:

The Good:

-Excellently designed game that gives you total freedom, no ♥♥♥♥ty tutorials shall be thrust on you here.

-The pacing is genius! I don't know how long it took them, but the game ups the difficulty at the right moment. (unless you're playing bad, then you'll never catch up)

-Soldiers have no role, you determine what they do based on what equipment you give them. Have a guy with high TU (action points)? Make him your scout! Have a guy with amazing accuracy but maybe his HP is kind of low? Sniper! Found a meat shield with high HP and incredible strength, but he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at point blank range with a fully automatic weapon? Give him a metal shield and let him be a bullet sponge! Or don't do any of those things, it's up to you.

-Aliens appropriately out tech you through out pretty much the entire game. You genuinely feel an overwhelming sense of dread as you play the game.

-You will take losses, but that doesn't mean you'll lose the game. You can have pretty substantial set backs and still come out on top. (kind of like how life is!)

-Using squad level infantry tactics ACTUALLY works and is necessary.

-Well thought out tech tree and research progression.

-You can mod and edit the crap out of the game to your liking.

-Music is well done and adds to the setting.

The Bad:

-Even on Easy this game will be too much for a lot of people. This will be viewed as an "elitist" comment, but I think that's more indicative of the gaming industry as a whole and not to Xenonaut's detriment. Nintendo games were soul crushingly difficult and only had one mode, now many games I can hand my six year old that he can beat without having to read any of the text.

-Still some glitches/bugs, namely shooting through walls. It doesn't happen too often, but it can make a huge difference to how that one map will play out.

-The game doesn't explain a lot of the mechanics adequately. This can amplify frustration or make it more rewarding as you progress, depends on your perspective.

-Mind control late game is a bit out of whack. I thought it added a great deal of intensity and dread, but it was depressing to watch two of my colonels that had managed to survive +30 missions get possessed and murder each other. I think it's a great (and necessary) part of the game, but still needs tweaking in either lower % success rate (which you can do yourself) or a turn delay the same way Wraiths can't teleport and shoot in the same turn.

The Ugly:

-Graphics. Eventually they grew on me, but it was admittedly jarring at first.

Xenonauts. It's greatest strength is that it's X-com. It's greatest weakness is that it's X-com.

If you're an older gamer, played the original X-coms, and just wanted them to get a graphics update and maybe some mods on being able to better organise your units and maybe a few updates, look no further. You've found it.

If you don't know what this "X-com" business is about, both X-com and Xenonauts are tactical and strategic games where you defend earth from an alien invasion through a specialised organisation and squad who deals with the aliens.
You'll respond to the aliens by shooting down the UFOs using regular human fighter aircraft, and then landing a squad of soldiers with just plain old human guns near them to clear out the survivors. After that, you'll begin to research better technology. Laser rifles, faster aircraft to take down the UFOs, armour that protects from the alien weaponry, and so on.

You will meet several different kinds of aliens, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and figure out why they're invading. But most importantly, you're going to stop them. You're going to take all their technology and make it your own, and you will end up with several bases across the world to find, and destroy any intruders who push into your atmosphere.

As for the changes between this and X-com, they are mostly good. You have an airstrike option on alien crash sites so that you don't need to do everything or have them expire when you've been too busy dealing with other sites, though it will provide you with far less rewards than if you send in a squad of soldiers. There are new pieces of equipment, such as the shield. You'll no longer need to micromanage every last clip or laser battery in your arsenal and order the construction of small things like two laser batteries - Just keep track of the ones you bring into combat so you don't run out. There are now more involved air battles, along with air terror sites. And cover, along with range, now actually provides a bonus or penalty to your shots. You don't have to worry about this turning into a chest high wall simulator though, it works out well and you don't have to stay in cover. It's just a suggestion that increases your soldiers' lifespan. There are some others but they are mostly positive. One I'd say is slightly negative is that you can not land on a UFO and blast a hole in the ceiling to enter it as you could in the original X-com, though if you never played that game(And even if you did), you might not even notice that option isn't there.

Mechanics wise, it works out very similar to X-com, with an isometric view and tile based map. I've found some maps had too little vertical space sometimes but often this wasn't a big problem, the controls are pretty good, mainly just using your mouse to command your units. It's turn based, with a world map to place your bases on and do your air battles, and a base overview where you can build out your base by modular rooms.
Interestingly, I've found that the difficulty settings actually changes AI behavior, rather than the lazy way of just giving the AI more armour or damage. I'm not sure if it also gives the aliens more stats or makes it more difficult to get money for the player, but the fact difficulty settings actually improve the AI is something that many AAA games completely fail at.

In the end, it's X-com. It has most of the strengths of X-com, but it also has the flaws of X-com. You may need to restart several times if you're new and you might get discouraged. A random lucky shot could kill off your best soldier and send the nearby rocket launcher guy into a berserk panic state right into your own squad. If you're not used to it, you'll wonder just how long the campaign keeps going and it may turn into a game of 'whack-a-UFO' for you with slow or barely noticable progress. Or you may simply not have a clue what's going on until the aliens are already in a better position than you.

Even then, it's a very good game. I would say it's worth grabbing it at some point if you want to see what the fuss is about, or because you want some more of the X-com from long ago (Without looking at Interceptor or Enforcer for now)

X-Com not X-Commy enough for you?

We're going back to our roots here. No fancy 3d graphics hogging your resources. Ain't no voice actors here, just 100% pure, uncut, grade A tactile turn based combat.

Hire people based off stats, Assign them based off stats. Equip them with stolen alien tech to improve their stats. Build up your base to increase stats. Stats everywhere.

There isn't really a whole lot to say here, you know the formula and these guys executed it well. Great combat, music and graphics... just an all around stellar title. Be sure to pick this one up.

i realy love this game,
the strategic elements and the gameplay.
but its very difficult at the end, theres no time to rest. you need to use your time to do reseaches and build better equipment, or the Aliens will kick your ♥♥♥ out of the planet.

9/10

things that have happened in this game:
-lost the highest ranked xenonaut on the assault team because I forgot to assign doormen to the sides of the CH-48
-entire assault team annihilated because I tried to rush a UFO (RIP IN PEACE ALPHA TEAM) that had 2 aliens left
-lost 3 xenonauts to the same alien camping inside a factory
-guy with 70 accuracy and a PSG-1 shooting alien at midrange hits my scout instead (RIP IN PEACE CPL LAUREN "NOOB" MERCIER)
-glorious, cathartic DAKKADAKKADAKKA of a UFO interior once I finally corner the sebilian ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s
-chased UFOs in blinged out MiG-31s

good game. I might stream it once I figure out how not to die horribly

Everytime I get attached to one of my randomly generated Ground-Assault team members, they're killed off through a terrible stroke of luck.

Worse than Game of Thrones.

10/10

Xenonauts is amazing! If u're a fan of the original XCOM or even the XCOM Enemy Unknown/Within, then u'll love this one. Especially if u're looking for more of a challenge compared to XEU. Xenonauts definitely offers the player more control over what/how u can spend and allocate your funds, as well as more randomness in terms of ground combat and enemy placement.

If I had to pick a negative, I would say that the game doesn't necessarily have a random map generator like the original XCOM did/does. Xenonauts has more of a semi random map generator, in which u may come across a similar map, but the layout in terms of what's on the map may be different. For example; instead of a crate being placed in a particular part of the map, there may be a set of parked cars or debris of some kind etc. Of course in the forums, u can always download custom maps ppl design, and add em to ur game to spice it up, and keep the game fresh as well. I would imagine (if they hadn't already or are already in talks) they would possibly put up a patch as far as implementing a random map generator.

Other than that, the game is absolutely Amazing!!! I still haven't even seen all the maps nor all the enemies as well. If I were to pick a number, I would definitely give this game a 9/10, 4/5, B+/A u name it..

Xenonauts is a great game.

Once I shot down a main craft over at snowy I suppose planes of Greenland. Just a routine intercept, kill those alien sum♥♥♥♥♥es, get that much needed dosh so I could build another base and name it something from Secret Warriors. Or so I thought.
My brave men and women including Iosif Nichayko, Ellen Ripley, Rick Deckard and my main killing mean machine lieutenant John Cross who rocked cool moustache, Wolf armor, a riot shield and a plasma pistol were all there.

My prised bull Iosif who was always clearing the UFO itself with a shotgun got shot almost immediately by a crased Icelandic reseacher who mistook our dropship for some sort of huge alien spacecraft. My brave men and women couldn't retaliate and thus commit a horrible war crime of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ a cold dead body of an Icelandic meteorologist because said meteorologist was shot by his pal, another reseacher present on this snowy research station. The man nodded and moved on completely dissappearing from the point of view of my brave men and women.

The research station itself was swarming with reapers, disgusting aliens who turn men into zombies and ♥♥♥♥ corpses. They weren't such a huge problem for mymen since my APC made a quick work of them.

We finally made it to the alien aircraft. It was on fire, dying moans and swearing in some beastly alien language were heard from inside. We sweeped the first hall, nothing but reptiloid bodies and blood. ANd in the second hall we found the same honorable Icelandic scientist executing sebilian officer.

He then slowly walked into the flame and dissappeared again.

The mission was a success.

This game is a sort of spiritual sequel to the original Xcom games that I think is a bit more faithful to the original then Enemy Unknown and despite the fact that I enjoyed Enemy Unknown I definately recommend this to somebody who is looking for a more traditional Xcom experience.

I had bought this game in early access, when Greece was still located in Europe(and not in the Middle East) because I wanted to support the developers and help them finish what seemed like a game with amazing potential.

After that, I followed the development at the forums, I saw all good things about the game being "watered down".
I saw absurd concepts like "indestructible interceptors" being divined and adopted by the developers, despite of the abundance of *much better* ideas and propositions by the community in order to achieve the balance desired, without destroying immersion.
I saw the developers insisting that, after >4 years in development, the trajectory of grenades is not weird to be the same as projectiles(and be stopped on 60 cm walls or on a soldier just in front of you), because "it is not easy to program" :o.
I heard the most absurd excuses about why random maps "are impossible to implement", while the original X-COM had them so many years ago(one of them was "the better graphics" in this game :o ).
I witnessed the arrogance of the developers(threatening their early access clients with banishment from the forums because they did not agree with the turn the game was taking, disrespectful to straightforward insulting replies to criticism and more) and their complete indifference and disrespect to the type of game they were creating.
I was given as excuse for the placement of Greece with the middle east as being "difficult for the game code to handle it being with Europe, because there was no land connection". It does not seem that Scandinavia has such a problem, though, despite not being connected by land to the rest of Europe(or, should I say, Western Europe, since they peculiarly decided to pick the cold war era for their game?).
Realism and consistence with the time period set up was an excuse(whenever they bothered giving one) for the things people did not like as they were holding down game experience, but was never an issue when the decision was facilitating the "development" of the game.
The game was getting progressively worst, cool features removed, flat progression inserted, the development team was obvious that they did not care at all. All they wanted was to be done with it. Believe it or not, 1 1/2 year ago, the Goldhawk owner was asking for coders for another project since "Xenonauts was at the verge of completion" and wanted to share the resources with other projects for cost efficiency!!

This is the history of the making of the game as I witnessed it. Result?

A Broken Game!

The game is aspiring to have all cool features from X-COM, Jagged Alliance and various other great games of the past combined, but it fails in all accounts due to the laziness of the developers, the inexistent game design and the ridiculously high amount of bugs in the game.
This game has the most historically and topographically unrealistic "realistic strategic setup" ever made in a strategy game.
This game has the most lame balance ever in a strategy game I have ever played.

I feel I was cheated by Goldhawk and I can say for certain that I will *never* buy or recommend a title produced by this laughable excuse of a company and they are the reason I will never again buy an Early access game again.

I hope that this review will save some X-COM fans from throwing away their money, because the positive reviews of this game are greatly deceiving and misleading to anyone that reads them.

A few scattered ideas to sum up my dissapointment, what's not mentioned here is probably good in the game, but not enough to recommend it:

Gameplay

The ground combat really kills it.
Seriously, the line of sight/fire issues are horrible. I like playing games like this without saving (I did so with JA2) but here, to me, it seems impossible. It's just not intuitive. If I have a soldier crouch in the center on a warehouse rooftop, he shouldn't be able to get shot by someone hugging the warehouse wall. Or all the times I've moved a heavy for a slightly better position, only to be informed I now have 0% chance to hit, or something silly like a windowpane blocking 50% of my shots and not enough TUs to get back to my original position and fire. Also, I think the entire MG spray hit chance is calculated when you fire, because I've tried firing through those silly waist high walls with screens on them that you get in UFOs, which give you 0% chance to hit your target, because I figured ok, 1 round blows them away and the rest spray the alien behind... well, no, they all randomly hit the air where the screen used to be. This stuff kind of breaks a tactics game. JA2 didn't have these issues and that was 15 years ago...

Also, you can't store extra gear in the dropship. I can't be the only one who used to go back to the ship to get the heavy explosives every now & again in a difficult mission. I miss that.

Mission variety:
There really isn't any. I know there wasn't that much in the original game either, but if there's one aspect where I think the game could've evolved, it's this one.
There was just so much wasted potential here, extraction missions, coming to enforce local forces battle lines (I think they promised a static tank emplacement at one point), pilot rescue missions, I don't know, anything?

Graphics
I don't mind the direction they took or the lack of female soldier models or lots of stuff that could've been. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of local forces and civilians and stuff, but the game has next to no animations, the characters don't sway, don't move, they don't anything. Everything is frozen until you take an action and then it's all very mechanical.

Interface
No option to toggle off centering on selected soldiers starts giving you headaches when you have to move 10 of them through multiple levels like in a UFO or building.
You can't reorganize your squad order, which is a mindnumbing oversight. I can't have No. 1 be the shield, 2 & 3 be assault and so on. Was it so hard to let me drag the ground combat squaddie tabs around?

I would've preferred scroll up/down to change height levels instead of selected squaddies. I guess tab & tilda work well enough, though. You can change the key bindings but you can't bind them to scroll up/down. I guess you probably can if you start tinkering with the game files but I shouldn't have to do that.


Xenopedia
I generally love the descriptions in games like this, even Aftermath caught my interest with their alien types and whatever, but here, it feels too... textbook. I read all the entries but they felt dry and the attempts at humor seemed forced. There was 1 funny joke somewhere in there, though.

Conclusion
In all, it's a real shame and it taught me a lesson about buying into this kind of stuff. Maybe that gives the pricetag some worth.

This is as close to a completly faithful remake of XCOM that we're ever going to get. And boy, is it faithful. It even adds a few new things, like a dogfighting minigame that's leagues better from we had in either the old XCOM or the remake.

Combat is nice in balanced, and my only real nitpicks are that grenades are overpowered and clearing ships is a meatgrinder, since unless you outright destroy the door, UFO entrances will close every round, forcing you to play whack-a-mole.

If you ever played UFO Defense, or even just Enemy Unknown, you owe it to yourself to buy this and give it a whirl. I give it a hearty recommendation to anyone.

Follows the Xcom1 very closely
Yes! at last a game that does it right, a worthy succesor to the origional Xcom.

Its at least as hard as Xcom1, maybe harder
Be warned though, even if your an Xcom pro this game is tough, I'm good at Xcom player but after 4/5 failed attempts at this on "veteran" I had to start playing it on "normal".

It has some differences, but you will be glad.
Despite following the origional game closely, for most of its mechanics, Xenonauts does make some minor changes that improve thinngs, stores are less of a chore (many items like ammo and standard wepaons are free and infinite), intercepts are more important and more fun, funding is more important (the old exploits won't work here).
Also you will generally have to develop new strategies to win.
Obviously the story is different and the techs and the style, but they are all still enthralling and brilliantly done.

Just buy this now.
Honestly, I can't think of a single bad thing to say about this game... although the head scientist is so obnoxious you will want to punch him, but I think that's deliberate.

As a die-hard old strategy XCOM fan, I was impressed with this game. It brought all good memories and got me playing this game until the very end (not a lot of games kept my attention during last few years). In this state, I would give this game 9/10 points, as it "can" get better with bug-fixes and further development.

finaly out. played it since alpha and i find it great.

if had anything bad to say it would be to few maps, however the comunity already have an awsome map mod. thanks to PrPyro for showing this to me.

to put it in one sentence. if you liked X-com then play this. this is more X-com than the new X-com

compared to the new X-com this is the dark souls vesion.

I'm going to start out by saying that I fully support this game and reccomend it. Despite any and all flaws it is well worth the money.

It's been years since people have been trying to bring new life into this genre. Many sequels and clones have gone by with mixed success. Games like XCom: Apocalypse changed the formula too much, while a good game in it's own right, it alienated fans. Other games like UFO: Afterlight and the series tried a different approach, but suffered from clunky menus and combat felt artificial. The recent addition of XCom: Enemy Unknown introduced excellent graphics and animations, but this hid the fact that the strategic map was dumbed down to the point that UFOs that you didn't shoot down were not the cause of missions, in fact it was possible to shoot them all down and still have missions so long as you had a country somewhere you didn't have a satalite over. The tactical was also super simplified. I would call that one an XCom-lite if anything.

Xenonauts does not have the flashy graphics of XCom: Enemy Unknown, nor does it vary far from the original. However it is improved from the original in many ways and is what many fans have wanted. It could be used as another start to evolve this hard to capture genre.

Once again, UFOs are the sole source of missions on the strategic map. If a UFO is ignored, it can generate a terror mission during a landing, or build an alien base. No longer is there effects without causes. In fact the atmosphere of the game is even enhanced by reports of UFO activity across the globe, such as new crop circles, missing ships, and cattle mutilations being reported in areas where you cannot track the UFOs. Also every UFO comes with a mission of their own, something you will discover later in the game. These missions affect their behavior, and you will have to adapt if you want to control the invasion before it's too late.

Many clones/sequels allowed the player to overpower the aliens far too much. This gave the aliens the feeling of being the underdogs despite the fact that they are the ones with the technological advantage. Not so in Xenonauts. While the majority of the alien fleet cannot attack immediately, buying you some time to prepare, their progress is at least in part based on your success. If you are doing well, expect to see harder UFOs and aliens sooner than you otherwise might. This leads you to having to make tough decisions like "Do I let this UFO perform it's missions for a while before shooting it down?" "Do I want to raid every UFO for the bonus cash" etc. because doing so can speed the rate of the invasion if you are successful. In short, go to slowly and risk losing funding and nations. Go too quickly and the Aliens will bring their main fleet before you're ready. Can you walk that line?

Even further you are quickly forced to decide between building better interceptors or getting better equipment for your troops. Bullets will not do for long once aliens with armor start showing up. Some will simply laugh off sustained fire if you aren't ready for them in time. Defense is important too, as even the basic armor could be the difference between a shot instantly killing a soldier or not. Even here, you cannot be reactive, as you stand to lose too much. You have to learn to predict what you will need and when, and if you are wrong, you will pay.

This game is a hard strategy game. Every decision you make will have repercussions you might not have dreamed of down the road. Your soldiers, while they improve, will never be the super soldiers you had in other games. Tactics will always be important, with armor only saving you from a mistake or two if you are lucky. A skilled player might be able to forgo armor completely, though I doubt he would do so flawlessly. I personally am almost a year into my game and I have never used combat shields, something a lot of players say is a staple in their forces. My body count isn't that high either, roughly at about a dozen.

All this praise does come with a cost. This game does have it's flaws. If you need glasses, or have trouble reading small print, the fonts on the strategic map will kill your eyes. I can barely read them as it is on 720p. It may be better on 1080p, but that's not how I stream it. This needs to get fixed.

The graphics look like something out of Fallout 2 days. They are excellent 2d graphics, but do not expect full 3d modelling here. They spent more of their time making sure the gameplay worked well than actually building 3d graphics. Still if you can overlook the graphics, there is a great game underneath.

The interface, while greatly improved, is still very clunky.
1. Double clicking on a soldier in the management panel sometimes takes you to that soldier, sometimes not. It's partly to do with how soldiers are organized on the equipment panel, partly to do with the double click speed required.
2. Planes that need to be refueled/repaired/reloaded cannot have any characteristics changed. Even their name, or loadout. It would be nice to be allowed to change a loadout while loading the plane with ammo. This goes double for positioning soldiers on the dropships.
3. This is also a feature easily missed by most players, as it is hidden almost completely. Placing a button from the loadout screen for the troops in the dropship to link to the positioning would help a lot.
4. The inability to rotate the map or hide walls makes it impossible to throw grenades on tiles behind them.

This game takes place in 1979-early 80's. Some things are anachronistic or inaccurate.
1. The basic starting rifle is the M16A2, which came into use in the 1980's. It had a 3 round burst option and 30 round magazine. The weapon that soldiers should be using is the M16E1 which had fully automatic options and a 20 round magazine.
2. The starting precision rifle pictured is a M16A4 which introduced a modular rail system to a rifle similar to the M16A2 allowing for the addition of scopes, laser targetting and the like. It would have had a 30 round magazine as well, instead of the 6 rounds given. Instead they should have used the M16E1 fitted with a scope off to the side, with a 20 round magazine.
3. The machine gun pictured is the M249 squad automatic weapon. This weapon is designed to fire ammo from a belt in a drum underneath the barrel. It can use M16 magazines, however this is not reccomended due to severe jamming issues. A M249 belt comes in 3 sizes: 100 round for training, 250 round infantry drum, and 500 round vehicle mounted drum.
4. Night vision scopes were around for the Vietnam war, and should be available for snipers in night missions in the game. Full night vision goggle(s) however will not be seen till later in the 80's. A possible tech to research and produce them would have been a nice touch as necessity is the mother of invention they say, and something to counter the alien's advantage at night would have been a welcome choice. Night vision goggle(s) do however restrict vision, and accuracy due to the way they operate.
5. The starting grenade pictured is a fragmentation grenade. It has a kill radius of 10 meters with an effective radius of 5 meters. It does not do it's damage by concussive force, but by shards of metal, like bullets, flying out in all directions. I cannot speak of how alien grenades work, but a rework of basic grenades should be in order to make them effective in this regard.
6. Flares burn can start fires easily but do not do so in game. Smoke grenades produce smoke slowly, and will only burn your hand if you aren't wearing leather gloves. They should not be starting fires in this game.
7. Bazookas are not easily reloadable in field. Carrying one as a side implement should be an option for a soldier, but ammo preloaded. The M25 rocket launcher however could fire multiple rockets, but was a mounted weapon.

Remember the old XCOM titles of the late 90’s? They were something truly special, masterpieces of the strategy and sci-fi genre’s, and while we had XCOM: Enemy Unknown in 2012, it’s something I felt didn’t quite live up to the originals due to its simplified nature, such as smaller squads and amount of hand-holding it insisted on. However, if I were to tell you there was now in fact a game that captured the perfection of XCOM in its own way and modernised it properly, would that sound too good to be true? Because that’s exactly what Xenonauts is.

Xenonauts is an absolutely fantastic strategy game heavily influenced by the likes of XCOM and fans of the series will no doubt enjoy it thoroughly as it’s more of an updated throw-back to the older games as opposed to the newer ones. Newcomers to the genre though may be a little lost in its complexity due to the lack of any proper tutorial, however veterans will no doubt feel right at home and find a huge amount of content at their disposal. The amount of in-depth management can make the game feel like it drags on at times, but again, this is partially to do with the audience it is aimed at, so if you are looking for a more fast-paced game you certainly won’t find that, as it’s about being tactical and planning your moves carefully. The graphical style is very pleasant if a little simplistic but the overall cartoon-esque presentation makes it feel dated yet modern at the same time, giving it a very unique vibe. Ground combat was without a doubt one of my favourite parts of the game and is well designed and requires good tactical planning and thinking on the player’s part, even on the lower difficulties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOMg647Fg9A

Summary:
+ Pleasant and clean graphical style.
+ Ground combat is thought provoking and well designed.
+ Good amount of troop customisation.
+ Management is in-depth and enjoyable.
+ Deep and intricate systems for veterans of the genre.
- Ground battles can cause the game to drag on.
- Lack of any proper tutorial.

So, like a lot of people I was first interested in this when the kickstarter was announced - an XCOM remake in all but name? Take my money sir! And then Firaxis came along, announced their "reimagining" and release a truly brillian game in it's own right. It was X-COM, not quite XCOM but an excellent game. In the meantime Goldhawk (a little frustratingly at times) slowly got on with finishing their game and now it's been released.

So is it any good? This is the closest you are going to get to replaying XCOM again. OK so they can't use the same names or anything, they've set it in the 1970s (which, by the way was a minor stroke of genius) but works. It works sooo well. If you played and loved XCOM, then you can pick this up without even having to refer to an instruction manual. It does play a little differently yes - the beefed up air combat being the main difference, something which I haven't really come to grips with so I'm heavily reliant on the "auto-resolve" button - but they flavour text accompanying the game is genuinely funny in places and very well written.

It lacks some of the creeping dread of XCOM on some of the missions (their Cryssalid replacement for example bears a remarkable resembalance to the Warhammer 40K Tyranid lictor) and suffers for it for some reason, and some of the models are maybe a little lacking. However the UFO design is excellent, and clearing them out a real tactical workout on occasion.

I've not "finished" it yet, but all I can say a couple of hours of playing this over development and now release is that it's pretty damned good. If you tried the Firaxis version and it didn't click for you, then believe me this will. Well worth the purchase price for any XCOM fan.