Xenonauts ( 1 DVD )
Any
discussion of Xenonauts must make a nod to its clear inspiration,
X-COM. While I'd like to say that this is a spiritual sequel to 1994's X-COM: UFO Defense, it's a lot more accurate to say that it's more of a remake than even Firaxis' XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
Xenonauts strikes a balance between large-scale, real-time global
logistics and small-scale personnel tactics. You must capture and
research alien technology in the dire hope that humanity can
reverse-engineer weapons to match and ultimately exceed those of the
invaders before it's too late. You may also name your squads after
friends and family to make ckear the human costs of war. With these
parallels, Xenonauts struggles to establish its own identity. There are
only a handful of substantive differences between it and the games that
preceded it, and while each difference adds a lot to the game, it's also
impossible to shake the feeling that you've done this all before.
The war for Earth is pretty
slow at first. The aliens you face hail from a planet with an extremely
thin atmosphere, and they have to modify their ships before they can
land. This minor narrative touch may seem insignificant, but it gives
the early hours coherence by explaining the slow ramp-up in the enemy
offensive. It's apparent that you're living on borrowed time. These
visitors aren't friendly, and they have Earth surrounded.
Your
main goal is to construct and maintain bases that monitor and guard as
much of the world's airspace as possible, as well as to launch ground
missions to recover alien technology or capture one alien leaders. And
thus rises the multilayered strategy that links everything together. You
need cash to run your bases, supply your troops, and keep the aliens
from wiping out humanity. Missions help keep the international community
happy, which keeps the money flowing. Every mechanic feeds into
another, and a weak plan on one front can have a lot of critical
repercussions. When starting up Xenonauts for the first time, I
attempted to build two bases right off the bat. I wanted to secure a
decent chunk of the planet and steadily expand from there.
Unfortunately, founding and supplying two facilities rapidly drains your
cash and keeps you from being able to carefully invest in the
development of new, efficient weapons and tech for your soldiers and
fighter jets. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but poorly conceived
plans lead to humanity's doom.
It's immediately apparent that you're living on borrowed time.
Failing
to protect some regions causes your program to steadily lose funding as
those regions lose faith in the Xenonauts project. Because humanity as a
whole is on the defensive, downing enemy aircraft is your bread and
butter. You need to keep UFOs from bombing cities, abducting citizens,
or straight-up attacking your bases. Initially, that's not a tall order.
At first, only small craft like probes and corvettes can be modified to
enter Earth's atmosphere. Intercepting them carries virtually no risk.
You can have battles auto-resolve, with the game using basic aircraft
statistics to determine the victor. If you prefer more direct
interaction, you can play out the dogfights with a system that very
closely resembles Cold War-era radar screens. Ships and planes are
represented by green 2D sprites, and their firing arcs and weapon ranges
are clearly displayed. If you're careful, manual dogfights can assist
you in your path to victory. About midway through the game, I was
lagging behind my fighter upgrades and couldn't keep up with the
stronger, faster alien vessels, but I could still survive thanks to
smart maneuvering. With a few careful clicks and some liberal use of my
afterburners, I kept two of my jets in the aliens' blind spots and
downed the ships before they could reach Dublin and initiate a wholesale
slaughter.
When you can successfully scrap a UFO over
land, you have a narrow window in which you can launch an automated
airstrike to clear out all of the alien troops and pick up a moderate
amount of cash, or you can choose to launch a ground mission. These have
you organize landing squads to scavenge what alien tech you can and
bring it back for future research. They also give your soldiers an
opportunity to accumulate valuable battlefield experience, dramatically
improving their stats over time. The surviving extraterrestrial troops
and robots attempt to fight you off, making these missions dangerous
propositions. The technological superiority of your foes makes itself
readily apparent here; the extraterrestrial soldiers can immediately
kill one of your soldiers if you're not extremely careful. Your weapons,
and later your cheap imitations of the alien weapons, just aren't as
effective. These ground missions help distinguish Xenonauts from its
influences. Whereas XCOM: Enemy Unknown had small, tight levels that
helped clearly identify threats, Xenonauts has sprawling levels with
extremely limited visibility. Cover is also of limited use; in almost
every case it can be destroyed with a few shots or a stray grenade.
During night missions, your soldiers have severely limited visibility.
The aliens, once again, have an advantage, with infrared vision. The
result is an extremely lethal set of missions that help drive home the
overwhelming danger posed by Earth's visitors.
During
one excursion, with a squad of battle-hardened veterans, I caught
myself screaming at my computer screen, begging them to stop succumbing
to a previously unknown line of alien androids for just a few more
turns. After the anger and panic subsided, I realized I had no one else
to blame but myself for the loss. Yes, Xenonauts is lethal, but never
unfairly so. The environments are almost completely destructible with
the right gear, and once you've cleared an area of civilians, wanton
destruction comes with almost no penalty. Xenonauts necessitates a
metered ruthlessness, a barely contained thirst for devastation that you
periodically release to ensure absolute dominance. This is ultimately
the game's single best design decision. Xenonaut's gameplay ably
complements its narrative. You aren't just told to feel desperate; you
must take desperate measures to have any hope of victory.
Unfortunately,
while Xenonauts creates a network of mutually reinforcing sections, it
borrows too heavily from the 1994 X-COM in some not-so-flattering ways.
The user interface can be obnoxious and obtuse. Even with an internal
game manual, I didn't figure out that right-clicking and dragging would
change which direction a soldier was facing until a few too many hours
into my first run. Outfitting your squads with the gear and equipment
they need can also be a pain. In addition, the game's uninspired visuals
lack the panache of its more recent competitor, XCOM: Enemy Unknown,
which magnified powerful attacks with its cinematic, over-the-shoulder
camera. A similar brand of drama could have made Xenonauts' battles all
the more thrilling, but the distant camera keeps the action at arm's
length.
Xenonauts is an unlikely success,
a challenging clone of a beloved classic with enough tweaks to entice
fans and newcomers alike. It might look rather cheap at first glance,
but underneath that rough exterior lies something special. Breaking the
game down and looking at all of its pieces in isolation would do the
game a disservice, because every facet helps focus the true luster of
the whole.