For die-hard fans of the series, though, the game plays so much like X-COM that you'll already understand all but the most specific details.
XENONAUTS BASE MANUAL
The manual is opened through the launcher, but an in-game tutorial would've made it more accessible for new players. If you've never played X-COM or anything of its type, you may have a hard time getting up to speed in Xenonauts, which presents you with a ton of menus and not a lot of in-game guidance.
Xenonauts includes a detailed online manual, but it's a bit of a retro throwback that fails to take the place of a hands-on, in-game tutorial. The days of scouring the far corners of the map for the one alien hiding behind a rock have been thankfully left behind. It's an incredibly useful addition that fits right in with the classic mechanics.Īnother welcome addition: if you capture the UFO and hold it for five turns, you win the mission. You can use these time units in any order, one or two steps at a time, and you'll still reserve a chance to shoot back when an alien flanks you by surprise. If your soldier can move 70 units this turn at a dead sprint, you can tell them to move less and reserve enough time units for a quick shot-or save more time for an aimed shot. Xenonauts sticks very close to X-COM's roots here, but my favorite improvement is a time-unit reserve slider. Each soldier has a reserve of time units they can use to move, check their inventory, open doors, and shoot.
XENONAUTS BASE TRIAL
This phase, which makes up the majority of the game, plays out in a classic, turn-based style that is second-nature for classic X-COM fans but could involve some trial and error for newer players.
It's intricate fun, but there's an auto-resolve option that will skip this phase if you'd rather get straight to the nitty-gritty.Īfter a UFO has been brought down, you send in a dropship with an assault squad to kill the surviving aliens and capture technology. Each fighter can be individually ordered to move, use evasive maneuvers, and target specific opponents. The on-rails button-pushing of Enemy Unknown's air combat mode is more fully realized in Xenonauts. This second phase of the game is Xenonauts' largest single addition to the classic formula: an overhead, strategic air combat map that plays out in real time. Once you spot a UFO, you scramble your nearest jets to go meet it. Every time a crop circle goes unanswered, for example, that might be one less jet fighter you can put in the air. As a country loses faith in you, they decrease their funding $5,000 or $10,000 at a time. It's a constant balancing act that is familiar to X-COM players, but Xenonauts represents this tension with a fantastically granular system using dollar figures instead of star-based “panic” metrics. Too many of their citizens are dying, and you're not everywhere at once. Here in 1979, you'll need to build and manage supplementary bases to protect everyone.Īs time goes on, the many nations of the Xenonaut project start to complain. Unlike in Enemy Unknown, satellites and sci-fi won't help you intercept UFOs on the other side of the planet. Placing a base and building a radar station allow you to track and intercept UFOs across a continent. The first thing you'll see in-game is the Geoscape, the world map. An alien invasion has interrupted the apocalyptic bickering of the USA and the USSR, and the international forces of the Xenonaut project are Earth's only organized defense.
Amazon Prime Day deals: see all the best early offers right here.The result is a deeply engaging, indie version of an alien invasion that stands toe-to-toe with X-COM-the classic and the reboots. From individual, grid-based inventories to a line-of-sight cover system and destructible environments, every mechanic from the classic has been reimagined, rebuilt, and given an extra layer. But where 2012's excellent XCOM: Enemy Unknown modernized the setting and recreated the franchise's systems in broad, easy-to-read strokes, Xenonauts threw itself headlong into the details. Xenonauts began life as a reimagining of the classic turn-based strategy game X-COM: UFO Defense.
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