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On the global “Geoscape,” you’re vectoring interceptors to bring down UFOs in flight while managing your budget, growing your bases, directing your research, and trying to keep your funding council of nations happy. I’m of the opinion that good art direction trumps polygons and 3D any day.Īs in both the original and the remake, you are tasked with battling the aliens on two different levels. The decision to keep the artwork mostly 2D, with kind of a comic book aesthetic that harkens back to the original is another nice touch.

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The randomly generated maps on the tactical level feel like real places, full of tiny details, helpless civilians, and occasionally helpful local forces. The authentic weapons and realistic starting aircraft-closely based on the F-16 and the Foxbat-are a nice change from XCOM’s generic futuristic interceptors and boxy assault rifles. In Goldhawk’s universe, the “Xenonauts” were created as a secret NATO-Soviet Union joint venture after a UFO crash-landed in the 1950s “Iceland Incident.” Now, in 1979, the alien armada has arrived and the Xenonauts have been forced to go public, intercepting UFOs and battling aliens across the globe. Firaxis’s over-the-top “space marine” art style was off-putting for some, too Xenonauts has settled for updating the original’s graphics while going for a more gritty, realistic aesthetic.Īnother welcome change was the shift backward in time from the near future to the late Cold War.

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For example, soldiers were now assigned to “classes” with pre-defined equipment loadouts and upgrade trees, instead of having customizable inventories and growing their skills organically. The reason some fans (myself included) were dissatisfied with XCOM: Enemy Unknown was because, in the name of streamlining and modernization, Firaxis had removed a lot of control and customization from the player’s hands. Since they didn’t have the rights to the franchise, Goldhawk came up with its own unique universe, setting, and rogue’s galleries of enemies while keeping the original’s turn-based gameplay, base management, and global “Geoscape” view. The small team at Goldhawk Interactive had been working on Xenonauts, a “spiritual successor” to X-COM, as Goldhawk says in the game overview on its website. Now, back to the future-I mean, back to the present. I apologize for dumping all that backstory and flurry of titles on you, but, again, it’s impossible to view Xenonauts without understanding the complicated history fans have with the series. After the backlash against The Bureau, 2K finally announced what the fans wanted: a more faithful remake, this time helmed by strategy veterans Firaxis, which would become the excellent (but flawed) XCOM: Enemy Unknown. In 2010 a new X-Com game from a big name studio was announced, but it was the alternate -1960s continuity shooter “ The Bureau: XCOM Declassified,” which provoked howls of outrage from fans of the original and it eventually flopped. X-COM has been remade several times: first there were sequels ( Terror from the Deep and Apocalypse), then a couple of ill-advised genre changes ( Interceptor and the truly terrible Enforcer), followed by a bunch of “spiritual successors” from other developers ( UFO: Aftermath, Laser Squad: Nemesis, etc). Whether you’ll love it or hate it, though, depends on what you want out of a X-COM remake. X-COM is widely acknowledged as a classic and regularly appears in lists of the top 100 games ever created, so Xenonauts has very large shoes to fill.

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It’s essentially a remake and update of 1994’s groundbreaking “ X-COM: UFO Defense” (known outside North America as “ UFO: Enemy Unknown”). Xenonauts is one of those games that is impossible to review on its own. If not, then you’ll likely still enjoy it, but you may not understand what all the hype is about.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you’ll get a nostalgic kick out of Xenonauts. Every step could be their last, but they were humanity’s best hope. They were crafty Grey buggers, armed with plasma pistols, while my own anime-haired troops were frail and unarmored. Interface is still somewhat clunky.Ī big chunk of my childhood in the late nineties was spent hunting down pixelated aliens in cornfields. Vastly streamlined interface compared to the original X-COM.

Will be a delightful nostalgia trip for fans of the original. Passed Inspection: Brings back the tension and complexity of the original X-COM.

Publisher/Developer: Goldhawk Interactive.

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Xenonauts – PC Game Review By Matt Richardson