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[umiman]

I've always wanted to try playing X-COM, but the sheer number of versions totally baffles me. How on earth do I start playing? Which one do I play first? Can someone help me out? Keep in mind I've never played it before, so I don't even know which ones I need to play before the other, etc.

[Sowelu]

Start with X-Com: UFO Defense (the first one).  See if you can get 'gold', the windows version.  If it looks corrupt, there's a fix out there, but most versions you will find are fixed.

You start playing by making a base (it starts you on that screen), put it somewhere in the middle of north america or central-west europe or something.

Now, you can poke around your base and look at the shiny buttons, or wait for a UFO to pop-up. First thing you want to do is go into your base, research button, and start researching medikits with all 50 researchers.  (Later, once that's done, you'll put all your engineers that will fit on building medkits.)  But mostly wait.  After starting research, put time up to 1hour or something, time will skip by fast.

Within a day or a couple weeks, your radar will pick up a UFO.  Set time to 5s from the menu it gives you, and send an interceptor after it to shoot it down.  Once you're in range, set aggressive mode (closes in faster).  If you shot it down over land, dispatch your skyranger to the white crash site.  (If it landed before you shot it, dispatch your skyranger to the green landing site!)

Now shoot aliens.  You'll die a lot.  Save at the start of tactical.  You'll get the hang of it soon enough.  Congrats, you downed your first alien ship, and captured some loot.  If you research an alien plasma pistol and an alien plasma pistol clip, you can use that gun...and it will beat the hell out of your first weapons.

[Virtz]

I've always wanted to try playing X-COM, but the sheer number of versions totally baffles me. How on earth do I start playing? Which one do I play first? Can someone help me out? Keep in mind I've never played it before, so I don't even know which ones I need to play before the other, etc.

Concerning the series, there's not that many games. There's just 3 games in the real series, 2 spin-offs and 2 versions of the first one.

The first one you should play is X-Com: UFO Defense (aka. UFO: Enemy Unknown). Preferably find the gold version, as that can be run from XP.

Next would be X-Com 2: Terror from the Deep, but that's actually just a harder, reskinned version of X-Com 1, so you might want to skip that, depending on how challenging X-Com 1 was for you.

Last one still somehow resembling the original series (yet very different) is X-Com 3: Apocalypse. It did add a few good things (like extra factions and more realistic destruction), but, in my opinion, messed up some others (combat is duller, difficulty scaling can go berzerker, units are too durable).

Concerning the spin-offs, Interceptor could be fun to you if you like space dogfight games. Enforcer is action arcadey garbage, avoid it.

There are some "UFO" games released recently (the AfterX series), but they're not part of the series and I found those to be kind of lacking. It's like they took the worst changes from Apocalypse and added their own (like no more destructible terrain and even more durable/irreplacable units).

[Sowelu]

I actually like apocalypse a lot, but it's more confusing to get into and I think it expects some basic knowledge from playing an earlier X-Com.

If you do get into Apocalypse, make sure you play in real-time combat mode.  Turn-based is great on UFO and TFTD, but not so hot in Apoc...The big draw of Apocalypse is having your soldiers walking down a corridor WHILE unloading their guns in full-auto.

[Ampersand]

Would you believe that I actually have ancient bootleg floppies of this game on my desk?

[Metalax]

Check out the xcom wiki here. The beginners guide is a useful start.

[lumin]

Here's my suggestions:

For XCom 1, download these three patches for a much better experience:

1. UFO Enemy Unknown ET edition
This is a MUST HAVE.  It fixes many things that are broken in the game, like the clock and several other bugs (like making single man ufo's appear more often which is broken in vanilla).  With this patch, you can also run it with an anti-aliaser.
2. PS1 music patch
Replaces the original DOS quality music with the higher-end music from the Playstation version.  I think it sounds much better.
3. Alien Voice Patch
This replaces the alien "death scream" with the original.  It is much creepier and adds a lot to the atmosphere.

[lumin]

Duplicate post...

[Ampersand]

Does that patch require the CE version, or does the old Dos version work too?

[lumin]

Does that patch require the CE version, or does the old Dos version work too?

I'm not sure.  I got the patch to work fine on UFO "Gold", but I don't know what the difference is.  I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try...the ET patch only contains 5 files.

[Ampersand]

Eh, looking at it, it's definitely not for the dos version.

[Fikes]

Steam has the complete pack for 15 bucks. Thats all of the games people have mentioned.

I agree with almost everything previously said.

X-Com 1 is great, but kind of sucks towards the end game. You end up re-equipping you guys every 2 minutes (since the equipment load out doesn't get saved) and there really isn't much you can do to prevent terror attacks.

The worst is that your base gets invaded every 25 seconds. You can (and should) setup defense so you can aviod the tactical fight (wait untill you have fusion defense) but it still ends up showing a cutscene type thing that you have to sit through. So frustarting.

Also, your men are so fragile that you end up loosing several every mission. This is espically true if you are up against one particular type of alien that mind controls your men.

These things aside, X-Com 1 is incredible. I just beat it on Super Human, Iron man (no saving or loading).

X-Com 2 is terrible. The aliens see further than you, never miss, and hide in tiny rooms. It takes 4 or 5 shots from your starting weapons to kill them... assuming you can hit. Clip size is also pathetic, so you waste a bunch of time reloading.

X-Com 3 is my favorite. It is true that soliders are more durable, but this means they spend a lot of time in the medical ward also. Squad sizes are much smaller and even mid to late game you only have 20 or so men.

It also feels like you have more power over what happens. It is fairly simple to shoot down the aliens and prevent them from attacking civilians. Since your men don't die in one shot, it is easier to retreat and attack from a different angle.

Start with X-Com 1. Skip to X-Com 3. The other two (Enforcer and Interceptor) seem to have issues on Steam. I don't think you can get a joystick to work with Interceptor in XP. Either way, the first two are worth the money.

[umiman]

Thanks for the help guys.

Lumin: I would get those files, but it's all hosted on a forum that requires registration so... nah.

[codezero]

I'm playing tftd atm. Just got to a point in beginner where I could easily win(got mc), so I'm starting again on supergenius with the so-called difficulty bug fixed, and then I can finally claim, irrefutably, to have beaten tftd. It's tempting to have another crack at apocolypse, I don't remember it as being great though, more like what priv2(not rf) was to priv1.

[buman]

There is an open source version called UFO:alien invasion.

It's not complete but its allot of fun
http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/