Best Atmosphere In X-com Games

[Cornuthaum]

I only ever played Enemy Unknown, TFTD and Apocalypse - and I must say, the difference is astonishing.

 

Enemy Unknown is a light-hearted work of genius - only in the bases and on Cydonia (or snakemen night terror missions) you ever "really" get the creeps

 

Apocalypse? It has big blue teddy-bears and flying skeletoid donkeys (I stole that description from somewhere else, I know) .... about as scary as ... well, big blue teddy bears with guns (not really)

 

Terror from the Deep? Well. The first word in its name is the complete unvarnished truth. The best soundtrack of all three, this game can boast competing with the Doom games in terms of sheer horror factor (as you slowly creep through the inner side of a synonium device, the dark floors barely illuminated by the shoulder lights of your aquanauts, suddenly two te ntaculats BURST THROUGH THE DOOR AND Aaaaarrrgh...).

 

The underwater feeling from TFTD adds a lot to the scary factor of the game (one rip in that pressure suit and you're dead!), as well as the underwater shot after effects (again, a careful advance - suddenly your partner goes down, a hole in his chest the size of a melon, with nothing more than a violently green streak of death indicating where the shot came from... and while you desperately duck into cover you can see the green beams of death rip through the space where just moments ago your own chest was)

 

And of course - NOTHING comes close to base 2nd level mission with its nooks and crannies, where you -know- that there is a tentaculat somewhere, either behind, above or in front of you .... and all you can do is pray that he runs out of energy before he eats your soldiers.

 

 

Gah. And now, excuse me please, I have to go and blow up a synonium device with judicous amounts of disruptor pulse bombs

[[NKF]]

Both UFO and TFTD have buckets of atmosphere compared to Apoclaypse and its 24/7 full "daylight everywhere" lighting. Just imagine if there were real lighting effects, bam, instant atmosphere. Amazing what a little light and darkness can add.

 

Still, TFTD, except in really shallow missions or on land in full daylight, was almost always immersed in darkness to mimic the time of day and as another way to fake the different sea depths. Not a bad way of doing it too. Because the maps, if seen in full daylight, are a bit of a joke. But add in the darkness, and everything changes. Things are not so jolly anymore.

 

UFO's atmosphere was just as bad, but the mostly whitewashed fences and brightly coloured buildings in the terror sites didn't help it too much. I guess its almost comical look was to mimic the sorto f utopian urban societies where people go to Live a Brighter Future™ suddenly flung into chaos as aliens with ray guns show up in the dark of night.

 

Apocalypse - eh. Too much light. Way too much light. The other two games let the imagination do the work for you. With this, you have to use even more imagination to make it look right. Wouldn't Apocalypse have looked so much better if it were like a crime noir novel? Black everywhere and exaggerated and overly elongated shadows of aliens scittering past lit doorways. Thumps from the darkness and big giant aliens suddenly materialising from the shadows to strangle your bewildered troops. Screams echoing through the empty halls, etc.

 

I guess that would've killed the 80486's that were around at the time.

 

- NKF

Edited January 3, 2007 by NKF

[[Blehm 98]]

TFTD of course

Very deep ocean mission, during the evening. Your face is 4 inches from the moniter. The creepy thumping synthesizer of the music is blasting in your ears. You move three men toward the synonium device's main chamber. End turn. You see a flicker of a tentaculat, and your stomach drops to the floor. A sigh of relief escapes from your lungs as you realize your men will live to fight another day. You move some more men up, and get ready to take out the tentaculat should it show itself again. SWOOSH!!!! and a green blast appears and spears your teams squad leader and best soldier on itself... Your soldier screams. You turn and fire a blast into the shadows, and an unearthly scream escapes from your speakers. You have nearly had a heart attack now. You hope this is the end, when you see a flicker of pink. Your heart stops. You hear a squishing sound, and one, two, three of your best soldiers disappear from your display. You know that this is the end. The mission is over. Your best soldiers have been killed, and your remaining soldiers are outgunned, outmanned, and surrounded. You retreat into the upper levels of the central building, hoping to at least take out the synonium device. Three soldiers fire everything they have at the zombies, killing a zombie and its host tentaculat, but the remaining two survive. In a desperate last ditch effort you rush everything up to the third level of the command building and block the grav lift. Your soldiers get up stairs, and destroy the synonium device. A sigh of relief. You accomplished your mission, even though you did so with heavy losses. A tasoth appears, and fires two blasts of green energy, killing the two man squad sent to destroy the synonium device with ease. the men holding the third level are surprised from behind by a tentaculat hiding behind a computer station. Your last surviving soldier is a spot of blue amidst a sea of green, brown, and pink. In a last ditch effort to kill as many aliens as possible, he primes his high explosives and drops them. The mission ends

 

 

 

 

nothing, and i mean nothing, in the other xcom games can even get close to matching this. The sheer terror upon seeing a tentaculat come up behind your men. and the music is the best in all of the xcom games as well. This is probably why TFTD is my favorite xcom game. The difficulty combined with the very knowledge of the worst thing that could happen, and then seeing that thing happen.

so yeah...

[gufu]

Xcom:UFO...

One of the few games to actually make me cold-sweat...

[koriand'r]

UFO Enemy Unkown (First Xcom game) was deftinely a game that made me cold sweat. TOFTD just made me say 'crap crap crap!' but only because lobstermen make my ammo run low! The Tasoath were dangerous but I never saw them intimidating. With xcom however, seeing the hooded Etherdals at night or alien bases made me go 'shuckeroonies! shuckeroonies! shuckeroonies! shuckeroonies!'. Of course when both games are mastered, the atmosphere is lost a bit but I still say seeing the hooded etherdals or the chryssid's are some of the series more challenging foes.

 

I have to agree the synonium device in the artifcat mission Pt2 in TOFTD have a more dreaded feel to it but at the same time it's not that difficult of a level given half of these aliens come up to you and you can just go up the teleporter and down again and pick them off one by one. It's the fact that like the alien bases, there are sooo many doors to go through and with space as well.

[Sorrow]

I just started playing Laser Squad and I think that it has the best and the darkest atmosphere in series.

[Steelion]

Xcom1 for atmosphere, Xcom3 for gameplay. Never played XC2