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[Drakale]

About a year ago I found a pretty good fan made game inspired by X-Com: Enemy Unknown called UFO: Alien Invasion. It was still kinda beta and buggy with lot of unimplemented features.

I lost interest after a while and completly forgot about it until this weekend. Turn out they where not idle for this whole time and they made a hell of a game.

http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/

It is still not complete but very playable, and the developpers are quite active. The graphics are nothing special, the engine being based on the old quake 2 source, but it is good enough. Many small details have been added that make it even better than X-Com: EU, like persistent equipement for your soldiers, "retry" option in missions, really cool research/weapons descriptions.

The only thing i miss from the old x-com is the destructible environnement... Sadly the quake 2 engine do not make it possible, at least not without some heavy modifications. However the game beign in 3d, there is a fairly accurate modelling of grenade bounce. With some practice you can bounce grenades off a wall to kill/flash bang an alien without exposing yourself.

The AI is decent, and they are working on an improved one for the next update.

It is really worth a try, even in this incomplete state it has totally annihilated my weekend.

[Silleh Boy]

I remember playing this some time back. Wonder if i can progress further in the story now, after the base invasion(?) part...

[Drakale]

I'm not sure you can "finish" the game at this point, i did not even do a base invasion yet...

I really love the research part of the game with the awesome descriptions, this kind of depth is very rare to find in games... Most of it is based on real physics too (except FTL travel), at least as far as i know...

[McDoomhammer]

Ooo, looks shiny.  I will be sure to check it out, thanks.

[Torak]

I'd rather play enemy unknown.

[Drakale]

I'd rather play enemy unknown.

You should at least try it 

But yeah it is not yet complete so not for everybody i guess... As i said there are many good things in there that improve upon the original , but the lack of destructible environnement is the biggest flaw imo.

[Sergius]

I already "finished" it (meaning I got all the research/plot they coded so far). It is quite well done, except for the static environment. The other clone, UFO... something... (EDIT: "Extraterrestrials" I think) that is more faithful to the original, is quite crappy by comparison - soldiers move very ridigly, and burst fire is just awful. Here it feels very smooth.

Shame some company doesn't just license Silent Storm and the X-Com label and make a sequel with it. Silent Storm even has the laser rifle from X-Com already modeled and coded in Instead we get crap like Nightwatch - The Game.

[Drakale]

The other clone, UFO... something... that is more faithful to the original, is quite crappy by comparison - soldiers move very ridigly, and burst fire is just awful. Here it feels very smooth.

Yeah i really like how you can put your soldier on cover fire while the scouts get near and use grenades/pistols to swarm buildings. The action points system is really well done and let you use some real life tactics to great effect. It take some time to get used to, but after a while you get a "feel" for positioning soldiers and moving in dangerous zones while keeping your soldiers well covered. Deepest tactical gameplay i have seen in a while for the turn based genre. It will get better if they implement stuff like functional IR googles and stealth/camoflage.

[lumin]

Yeah, this is a great little game.  Probably the best Xcom remake so far.  It does still need a lot of polish though, especially the interface 

I haven't actually gone and played the campaign yet, but I have played it on LAN against my brother.  Multiplayer is actually REALLY fun.  The strategy is pretty intense, and games can get pretty interesting when your up against a real human instead of a computer.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

This game is allot of fun, but it doesn't have much replay value for me without destructible terrain.

[lumin]

I still prefer the original X-Com to any remakes.  If anybody is interested, there is a forum with a bunch of cool mods to install into the original game.  You can get mods for bug fixes, anti-aliasing, the playstation music (which is better IMO), the original alien "scream" (much better), and there is also some instructions on how to play the game in windowed mode and in Windows Vista.

Find the mods here:
http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showforum=22

I think these mods greatly enhance an already great game.

[Sowelu]

Fans of X-Com?  Why, I'M a fan of X-Com!

At work right now, so will have to download later, but...  I presume it's turnbased-only?  As much of a fan of X-Com: Enemy Unknown as I am, I'm an even bigger fan of X-Com: Apocalypse's realtime tactical gameplay.  (Not much else about that game though.  Ick.)

Also, I really don't see why Quake 2 would rule out destructible environments.  I mean you won't be making voxel-based craters with it anytime soon, but there's no reason not to build the world out of large 3D tiles that can get shot up / transformed, right?

[lumin]

Also, I really don't see why Quake 2 would rule out destructible environments.  I mean you won't be making voxel-based craters with it anytime soon, but there's no reason not to build the world out of large 3D tiles that can get shot up / transformed, right?

UFO: AI is a community built project so there really isn't somebody out there taking requests for what goes into the game.  If you were to ask something like this on their forums they would reply with something like, "you're absolutely right, go build it and put it in the game then".

[Soulwynd]

I played this a while ago, stopped because of a manufacturing bug, might try again when it's more finished. Meanwhile, I'm playing X-Com: Apoc.

[Sowelu]

Also, I really don't see why Quake 2 would rule out destructible environments.  I mean you won't be making voxel-based craters with it anytime soon, but there's no reason not to build the world out of large 3D tiles that can get shot up / transformed, right?

UFO: AI is a community built project so there really isn't somebody out there taking requests for what goes into the game.  If you were to ask something like this on their forums they would reply with something like, "you're absolutely right, go build it and put it in the game then".

That's tempting, and I've got a couple week vacation between jobs coming up...