![]() In a departure from the beaten track of old, the air battles take place in real-time (although action can be paused with a tap on the space bar). In the early exchanges that we experienced, the enemies you come up against are weaker and less effective than your fighter planes, so taking them down is relatively straight forward. Up to three units on each side shoot it out during aerial combat. You can assign engineers to build new planes and armoured scouts, you can recruit troops and tinker with their equipment, your base is modular and needs expanding, and researchers investigate the things you bring back from the battlefield so you can use them yourself in later scraps.Ĭombat comes in two forms, either between UFOs and the planes in your hangar, or via troops on the ground. There's a variety of different ways to prepare for the war to come, and each section of your base caters for one area. Like X-COMs new and old, you play as the commander of a secret military organisation, briefed to combat the threat of an alien invasion. This handcrafted feel permeates every element of the game, from the different areas of your home base, to the maps that your troops move through on the ground. It might scream retro, but it's well implemented. Polygons are replaced with hand-drawn backgrounds, and they look really nice. Gone are the 3D stylings of comparable recent alien fighting strategy games, and instead we're greeted with a crisp HD makeover. Epic in scope, but allowing for the smallest levels of customisation. ![]() It's complicated, sure, but it's also clearly deep and immersive. ![]() Xenonauts looks like it's going to succeed where so many have struggled before. What we experienced was an interesting game, with bags of potential and its fair share of technical issues. We played that first build upon release, and then returned to it recently for a more elongated play session. It's been in the works for a while now, but last year it came to the fore after it became one of the first games to launch on Steam Early Access, and in doing so presented itself to a keen and eager audience. Though even with a few antiquated kinks ironed out, Xenonauts is undoubtedly homage to the classic strategy game. There's a few subtle changes to the formula, new ideas that gently soothe the original gameplay so it doesn't jar too hard against our modern sensibilities. ![]() It'll also be of particular appeal for those who enjoyed the recent update from Firaxis, but who perhaps felt that the Civilization developer may have strayed too far from the original blueprint. Xenonauts is about as old school as you could possibly imagine, and for fans of the original X-COM, for those who've been waiting for a game that truly recreated the experience they had with the original almost twenty years ago, it's going to be like mana sent from heaven. ![]()
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