UFO: Enemy Unknown
1994 retro games PC gamesAmiga gamesPlaystation games
adventure gamessci-fi gamesstrategy games
One of the best strategy games ever made - mixture of strategy, combat, economy and little green men.
The number of reports about UFOs have increased significantly and the governments of the countries around the world decided to caught up the money and pay the X-Com agency to actually start doing something about it. First step is to establish a base with radar, which will detect the alien aircraft and interceptors to chase them and shoot down. Second step is a bit more complicated - once an alien vehicle hits the ground another phase begins - you send a team of soldiers, who will deal with the survivors and gather the artefacts left behind. Once you gather some artefacts or the aliens, the third phase begins - analysis of the data and research of how the alien invasion can be stopped. Once you start to get the hold of things, the fourth phase will begin - aliens will send bigger aircraft and actively fight your forces.
All of it sounds straightforward, but UFO: Enemy Unknown is anything but simple - you start in quite obvious reality, in which aliens are visiting our planet, but soon the game is getting more and more nuanced. You want to stop the invasion, but at some point you will need to catch an alien alive, so your scientists can done some research. This means putting your soldiers into a risk and they are not immortal. You want to use weapons that will be more effective in killing the enemies, but each grenade or rocket explosion can evaporate some vital items you could bring back to your base and gain some knowledge about the alien technology.
To make things even more interesting, aliens will move on to more offensive methods, f.e. sending larger ships, trying to terrorize the populations of the cities or going for the jugular and straight up attack your own bases, so you have to be constantly vigilant of what your opponent is doing and finding a way to counter his moves.
It is hard to describe how huge the project was compared to contemporary titles - the multi-layered construction of the game, the variety of challenges you will face, the unique atmosphere and the progress of the enemies. All of this was un precedented and crated a new standard for strategy / tactical games.
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User rating: 5 based on 3 votes
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MicroProse problems
During the production of UFO: Enemy Unknown MicroProse was already in a difficult financial situation and the company was preparing for merger with, or rather to be takeover by, Spectrum HoloByte. Originally the project was put on hold during the negotiations, but the creators decided to work on it anyway, so the new owners would be put in front of an already finished project, so they could find it harder cancel the whole thing.
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