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alt title(s): X Com The brainchild of Julian Gollop and other assorted Microprose personnel, UFO: Enemy Unknown was produced in 1993 and unleashed upon the European gaming public. A year later, it jumped the pond to grace American players as X-COM: UFO Defense, since there was a naming rights conflict with an American-made DOS shooter called UFO. By either name, X-COM puts the player in command of an e Xtraterrestrial COMbat unit charged with protecting Earth from an alien threat, managing resources and researching captured technology in the process. The hybrid of Real Time Strategy (improving X-COM's overall condition and catching UFOs as they land - or crashing them yourself) and Turn Based Strategy (exploring crash sites, stopping terror attacks, and defending and assaulting bases) quickly won the hearts of the gaming public.
Almost 15 years after its initial release, UFO Defense still attracts players and tops lists of the Best PC Games of All Time. A 2007 assessment by IGN has it edging out fellow Prodigal Son of Microprose Sid Meier's Civilization IV for the Number 1 slot.
Not to say the X-COM legacy is a solo act, however. While Gollop's team set to work on X-COM: Apocalypse, an in-house crew at Microprose beat him to the punch with X-COM: Terror From The Deep in 1995, a Mission Pack Sequel created to satiate player demand for more alien-assaulting action. Apocalypse hit the shelves in 1997, to mixed reviews due to its Art Shift into pseudo-3D futuristic graphics and the clunkiness of a newly-introduced real-time option for playing missions. The last days of Microprose (and its acquisition by Hasbro Interactive) saw X-COM trying to get back on its feet with two Genre Shifted offerings: X-COM: Interceptor (1998) kept the base management elements while swapping out the strategy missions for space-bound Flight Simulator action, while X-COM: Enforcer (2001) ditched the strategy part outright to make a First Person Shooter running parallel to the timeline of UFO Defense. Sadly, neither had the mystique of their ancestors, and are often shunted away from canon due to the Unexpected Genre Change (and in the case of Enforcer, being awful).
While the possibility of a future X-COM game continues an infinitely long march towards zero due to the license being passed through a variety of incapable hands throughout the 2000s, the earlier games attract a variety of player-made mods and remake attempts in numerous stages of completion. Various Spiritual Successors also exist, such as UFO: Aftermath and its sequels Aftershock and Afterlight (unrelated to the game UFO listed above), the Game Boy Advance sleeper Rebelstar: Tactical Command, and Laser Squad: Nemesis (in and of itself a sequel to X-COM's own predecessor Laser Squad). All have attracted moderate attention from X-COM fans, largely for either the similarity in gameplay (the UFO After Blank series) or the connections to Gollop and other former X-COM staff ( Rebelstar and Laser Squad).
Whether due to the entire series being re-released on Steam or the runaway success of GuavaMoment's Let's Play of Apocalypse, X-COM has experienced a resurgence among retro gamers, especially those eager to chronicle their campaigns.
Not Enough Trope Units!
- Abnormal Ammo: Brainsuckers for the... Brainsucker Launcher.
- Also, the Entropy Launcher: A bioweapon firing homing missiles which release a compound that will dissolve through armor.
- Abusive Precursors: The Alien Brain in UFO Defense claims that the aliens created humanity.
- After The End: Thanks to the events of Terror From The Deep, Earth is effectively a wastleland.
- Alien Blood: Green and Yellow seems to be most common ones.
- Alien Invasion: Duh.
- Aliens And Monsters: Mostly aliens, but their Terror Units are often engineered (genetically or otherwise) to either capitalize on their owner's strengths (Chrysalids having weaponized the Snakemen's rapid asexual reproduction, for example) or cover their weaknesses (Sectopods distracting the enemy with conventional attacks while their Ethereal masters make with the Mind Rape).
- But what of the Mutons' Terror Units? Silacoids and Celatids are more Goldfish Poop Gang material.
- Aliens Steal Cattle: Several missions involve "Harvester" UFOs sent to meet the aliens' carnivorous needs. They are, of course, equipped with Cow Tools.
- All Deserts Have Cacti: Any desert you visit in UFO Defense has Cacti. Even the deep Sahara or the Rub al Khali. Even the desert in Enforcer has cacti.
- All Your Base Are Belong To Us: A major gameplay element; you have to design your hidden underground bases with defense in mind, since aliens will eventually find and attack them. Later in the game, of course, you get to do the same to them. (Or earlier, since unless you're doing a really bad job, you'll find some alien bases before they find yours.)
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Each difficulty level you beat Enforcer at in single play unlocks a few new skins for the titular robot.
- Another Dimension: The Alien Dimension in Apocalypse.
- Anticlimax Boss: The Alien Brain at the tail end of UFO Defense. See the page for examples of just how pitiful the final fight can get.
- Anyone Can Die: And anyone WILL die until you've got solid armor research going. Or even afterward.
- Apocalypse How: Varies from Class 3 to Class X.
- Armor Is Useless: A soldier with maximum health and the best armour can still be killed in one shot if the damage roll is high enough.
- To clarify, X-COM soldiers take 0 to 200% of the listed damage from firearms. Unarmoured troopers can survive several heavy plasma blasts and take absolutely no damage... only to be offed by a single pistol shot the next turn.
- On the other hand, the better armors available for X-Com Agents render at least normal weak weapons useless against them. Of course, the only benefit of being immune to rifle bullets is that if your friend carrying a normal rifle gets mind-controlled, he can't even dent you by shooting you in the back.
- In addition, the Power Suit also makes it possible for agents to use Autocannons loaded with explosive ammunition in close-quarters combat with little risk of being badly injured by the splash damage.
- Truly badass and lucky troopers can claim to survive point-blank Blaster Bomb detonations thanks to this.
- Averted in Apocalypse. Megapol Armour is fairly competent, particularly against light friendly fire and early disruptor weapons, but is terrible against devastators. Marsec's flying armour is weaker but allows flight. On the other hand, X-COM manufactured "Disruptor Armour" transforms soldiers into nigh-unstoppable death machines who can practically waltz through multiple explosions without even taking a mortal injury. The shields certainly help, though.
- A Team Firing: Most recruits will hit everything except the aliens◊.
- This is especially evident when using Auto Fire (which makes soldiers shoot 3 less-accurate shots in rapid succesion). Agents can even be firing an accurate weapon like any of the Rifles at point-blank on full auto and have the shots knock down the walls and trees behind an alien without even grazing it. On the other hand, Aimed Shot (a single more-accurate shot that uses up more of your Time Units for the turn) is actually very effective with enough training in Firing Accuracy.
- Attack Drone: Cyberdiscs and Bio-Drones.
- Enforcer's protagonist. Recursively, he too can get an Attack Drone.
- Attack Of The 50 Foot Whatever: The Overspawn from Apocalypse.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Aliens only in the first two games.
- Not necessarily true with human soldiers, depending on whether the player has the officers on the battlefield getting exercise along with the other soldiers or leaves their muscles to atrophy in the back of the Skyranger.
- Awesome But Impractical: Several weapons and base components, either due to how easily their replacements can be researched or by being Nerfed by the game mechanics.
- Badass Normal: Any human who lives long enough. Everybody starts out as a Red Shirt, but over time they can become absolutely terrifying, some even capable of single-handedly slaughtering entire alien craft full of enemies in a single mission.
- Saffron Cloak: The Ethereals.
- Bee People: The Sectoids and Aquatoids are described as such. The Apocalypse aliens as well.
- BFG: The series is full of them, from the Heavy Cannon to the Rocket Launcher to the Heavy Plasma to the Blaster Launchers and their counterparts.
- Body Horror: Chrysalids, Bio-Drones, Tentaculats, several of the Apocalypse aliens, and so forth.
- Bottomless Magazines: Only for laser weapons in the first game, the major reason they are so good. Hideously averted for everything else (see Easy Logistics below) except for aircraft and HWP energy weapons and even those just have very large magazines (100 or 255).
- Brain In A Jar: The Bio-Drones.
- Brainwashed: The common state of victims of Ethereals, high-ranking Sectoids, and their successors. Often, they're also crazy.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: The end of Terror From the Deep results in T'leth's destruction spreading chemicals all over the world's oceans and thus snapping a few links off the food chain. Oops.
- Bullethole Door: Great for reducing the effects of Drone Jam during Terror Missions. Busting through the walls of UFOs, however, will take well-placed/lucky plasma holes (interior) or Blaster Launcher shots (exterior).
- Charles Atlas Superpower: With sufficient combat experience, a soldier can eventually beat out a tank in health, movement, accuracy, etc. Oh, and tanks can't get those nifty Psi abilities.
- XCOM Util's modified HW Ps, on the other hand, are absolute terrifying, and are capable of reliably hitting an enemy from a considerable distance away. And if they miss, well, that's why you use the Rocket Tanks... until you get the Fusion Ball Tanks. Which can never miss, unless you're bad at setting in the missile course.
- Also demonstrated by Commander units on the enemy forces, particularly in X-COM and TFTD. Your average Floater, for example, dies if you so much as glare at it. Floater Commanders can take several rifle rounds to bring down, on the other hand. Rank distinctions were removed in Apocalypse, however, though enemy stats could vary greatly.
- The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard: Most prevalent in UFO Defense, where aliens don't suffer from Fatal Wounds unless they were inflicted under previous mind control, magically know the entire map (and your soldiers' positions) after Turn 20, and can target any of your soldiers as soon as just one is in visual range (particularly rage-inducing with Ethereals' psi-spamming).
- Even so, it's possible to fool them by bringing a psi-decoy with low mental defences and no weapons to suck up all their psychic powers, as they are always going to target the people wth the weakest minds.
- Colonel Badass: The Commanders of both sides.
- Combat Medic: Anyone with the medkit, and boy, you gonna need them.
- EVERYONE should have a medkit. No exceptions.
- Cool Starship: Completing a game often requires research and construction of an "Ultimate Craft" and interrogation for the whereabouts of an alien stronghold to drive it to.
- Cow Tools: Aliens bases and some ships are filled with these. Some you can research, some just look appropriate.
- Critical Encumbrance Failure: Of the "carry items up to the soldier's Strength in weight, then take Time Unit penalties for going overboard" type.
- Critical Existence Failure: Averted - Soldiers lucky enough to survive alien gunfire (and that won't be many of the unarmored ones, mind you) will leak HP from "Fatal Wounds" to their various body parts until they fall unconscious and are either treated with a Medi-Kit or left to die. More often than not, it's the latter. Wounded troopers also suffer an accuracy penalty.
- Played straight with Cyberdisks. Due to how 2x2 monsters work, a stunned cyberdisk is effectively a dead cyberdisk. Actually killing it results in a rather impressive boom. Which can also cause chain reactions, if other cyberdisks are close enough.
- Played straight in Terror From the Deep with Bio-Drones.
- Cult: The Cult of Sirius.
- Cutscene Power To The Max: Inverted - the opening animation of UFO Defense features troops facing down Mutons with Personal Armor, a couple of the beginning rifles, and an Auto-Cannon. By the time you normally face Mutons, however, you'll be trampling them with Powered and Flying Suit-equipped soldiers packing any combination of Psi-Amps, Laser Rifles, Heavy Plasmas, or Blaster Launchers.
- Played straight in that you will get your ass kicked.
- Amusingly played straight in that you will never see a red-suited Muton in the game; the Muton Commander seen in the opening does not exist ingame. Mutons have no commanders.
- Death From Above: The Floaters. Players can also do this once they research a means of flying.
- Some Enforcer enemies will do this. In parcticular one floating buzz-saw thing likes to reach you and flip up to where you can't possibly get an angle on it, attacking all the while.
- Deflector Shields: Disruptor Shields in Apocalypse, for both individuals and vehicles.
- Demonic Spiders: In the early game, candidates abound- Chryssalids (able to go from off-screen to melee attacking in one turn) and Ethereals (champions of psi-spamming) deserve special mention as frustrating and unfair enemies. Later in the game, this is reversed and a strong squad is virtually invincible, not in the least because you are the one making with the psi-spamming at that point.
- Chryssalids have as many as 80 or more Action Points/Time Units on the hardest difficulty, and as little as 60 on the lowest. To move one tile takes 4, or 6 if diagonal. Thus, they can blitz your troops from alleyways and corners. On top of that, if your suprised agents kill the Zombies created by a Chryssalid with reaction fire, out pops a new Chryssalid.... with FULL TIME UNITS and ready to make more Zombies out of your men. Chain reactions of frightened soldiers killing zombies with Reaction Fire before getting zombified by the freshly hatched Chyrssalids are the number one cause of Total Party Kills when battling against Snakemen.
- There's also a fair share of these in TFTD. Tentaculats take it to a whole new level with their ability to ''fly'' when underwater. Combine this with the fact they love to hide in little nooks and crannies (which exist in alien bases for this sole purpose, it seems), one Tentaculat can decimate an ill-prepared attack force single-handedly.
- And Bio-Drones. Don't you just love enemies that upon being shot, immediately spin around and return fire with 100% accuracy?
- Derelict Graveyard: Small ones when recovering US Os in TFTD.
- Destroyable Items: Repeat after me. No grenades or rockets in the alien engine room.
- Disaster Dominoes: What happens when your units are low on morale.
- Doomsday Device: Project Doomsday from Interceptor.
- Drone Jam: Civilians are NOT your friends during Terror Missions. They move about at random, block your movement from place to place in the process, provide excellent breeding opportunities for Chrysalids outside of your visual range, and turn hostile when you mind-control them away from enemy fire (thankfully, as they're unarmed, it's a token hostility). If you're not particularly concerned with their well-being, then what's another few human casualties alongside your squaddies?. Otherwise, check the page for nonlethal civilian control methods of varying degrees of effectiveness and hilarity.
- Drop Ship: Ranger and Triton from UFO and TFTD respectivly.
- Dummied Out: One of the many things left unused is the "Alien Reproduction" item and research line in UFO Defense - strange considering the resultant Half Human Hybrids wind up playing a key part in Apocalypse. The sequels also include other things that were ultimately left out due to time and budget constraints.
- Dungeon Bypass: Tired of slogging through Cyberdisks and Sectoids while being panicked and mind-controlled? Breach the hull at the top floor and reach their Leader immediately with a Blaster Bomb! Other weapons can also breach the less-durable inner walls of UFOs, and human buildings are all too easy to destroy.
- Dynamic Difficulty: Regardless of the difficulty your campaign starts at, most of the games will see fit to ramp up alien activity to correspond with consistent positive performance.
- The bug in UFO Defense caused the difficulty to scale back to beginner. Because of that, gamers complained that the game was (relativly) easy, which made the developers of TFTD to increase the difficulty across the board. And here where the fun part comes in: because of the the unchanged engine, the difficulty resetting bug is still there, only apparently it goes to superhuman instead of beginner.
- If you don't eventually go for the Big Bad in TFTD, alien bases will start to proliferate faster than you can keep up with them.
- Earth Shattering Kaboom: Interceptor's Nova Bomb is designed to take out a star and everything orbiting it (a lower-level Class X-2 on the Apocalypse How scale).
- Blaster Bombs could certainly count, as well as Cyberdiscs, particularly when chain reactions are caused. But as we already know, they're Made Of Explodium.
- Repeated explosions will start to dig a hole in the ground. In UFO Defense this hole is purely a visual artifact as eventually concrete or a road will be destroyed exposing dirt...at the same level. In TFTD, most things take place on ground anyways but it still happens in port terror missions. In Apocalypse, as the Lets Play demonstrates, it's possible to accidentally end up digging an enemy that can withstand multiple missile hits a foxhole.
- Easy Logistics: Averted so very hard. While ammunition for conventional weapons can be bought as long as you have money, more advanced weapons require manufactured or captured ammunition to work. And then there's allocating a limited stockpile of Elerium between manufacturing and aircraft fuel.
- Moreso when XComUtil's "Improved Laser Weapons" fix is implemented. Sure, the Heavy Laser finally gets Auto Shot capability, but must it come at the cost of using Elerium for Laser construction AND not being able to make Plasma weapons (even after taking into consideration that the aliens drop Heavy Plasmas like candy)?
- Eenie Meenie Miny Moai: They show up on island terror missions in TFTD. Must be some kind of fad in 2040.
- Elaborate Underground Base: A necessity due to X-COM's covert nature, often leading to All Your Base Are Belong To Us should the aliens stumble upon it (hopefully "them" by the time an Alien Retaliation fleet comes calling).
- Aliens get these, too. Which you have to break into to kidnap high-ranking officers for interrogation to complete the game.
- Enforcer does this in a few levels.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Big Bad from the TFTD is the sleeping one from T'Leth, and he waits.
- Elite Mooks: Alien Squad Leaders in general. Later-Game Aliens (Mutons, Tasoth, Lobstermen) also may count.
- Enforcer bosses, which are usually giant versions of other mooks like Reapers or Chryssalids, with special attacks.
- Energy Weapon: Laser and Plasma weapons.
- Encyclopedia Exposita: The UFOpaedia in its various forms across the generations. Even more so the fansite of the same name.
- Exploding Barrels: Fuel drums in your bases, gas pumps in Terror Missions, and certain UFO components all explode when shot. Frustratingly, so do Elerium pods exposed to explosions.
- In TFTD, the normal skirmishes (USO Recovery) sometimes have what seems to be oil pumps. Also, apparently sunken aircraft's engines are Made Of Explodium.
- Face Full Of Alien Wing Wong: Chryssalids, oh God, the Chryssalids... Tentaculats and Brainsuckers fill their niche in Terror From The Deep and Apocalypse, respectively.
- Fake Difficulty: TFTD was probably the worst offender, but the game balance would not suffer if the standard rifle from UFO Defence were capable of reliably hitting anything a distance greater than it could be thrown. Lampshaded regularly in the Lets Play.
- Flying Saucers: One of the smaller alien craft in the first game take this form, as does the first X-Com built craft. The Cyberdisc is essentially a miniaturized flying saucer with a powerful plasma cannon.
- The hovertanks appear to be based off the cyberdisk design. As in, they just look like repainted cyberdisks with a tank cannon mounted on top.
- What do you get when you take the cyberdisc, miniaturize it, waterproof it, replace the CPU with a still conscious human brain and replace the plasma cannons with a concentrated sound wave generated by said brain's reactions to the inherent agony of the process? The answer is: The Bio-Drones.
- Fish People: The Gillmen.
- Frickin Laser Beams: The Laser weapons obviously.
- Fun With Acronyms: The fact that a robots' rights group in Apocalypse would call itself the "Sentient Engine Liberation Front" clearly indicates that they deserve more credit than they're given.
- Game Breaker: Arguably, human Psionic capability in UFO Defense. In TFTD it was nerfed. Then Apocalypse rolls around...
- Special mention must be made of the almighty Blaster Bomb, with a monstrously powerful explosion of an 11-tile radius and the abiliy to punch holes into heavily armored Battleship hull plating. If its amazing stopping power isn't enough to impress, the fact that it can be guided via waypoints to weave through the corridors of a ship (and even up or down elevators!) to kill off a specific enemy should be enough to make soldiers clamor for it when you load one in the Skyranger. Suffers from Cool But Inefficient at times though.
- Game Breaking Bugs: Never research the Tasoth Commander.
- Geo Effects: On the Strategic scale, where you land determines what kind of terrain it will be in the battlefield. In TFTD landing in seas around Europe makes it very likely that the mission will take place among the Underwater Ruins, and in the very deep areas it's dark as in the night mission even during the day.
- Giant Enemy Lobsters: The much feared Lobstermen aliens in Terror of the Deep.
- Giant Mook: Many terrorist aliens. The Megaspawn from Apocalypse. Enforcer bosses.
- Good Bad Bugs: Most every release and patch of UFO Defense has introduced or fixed a couple of these. Whether they are to be exploited or patched depends on how Nintendo Hard you want your X-COM experience to be.
- Sadly, their evil twins are just as commonplace in Terror From The Deep.
- A fun exploit involves hitting certain sides of the UFO with explosives; due to imperfect wall structure, explosions can "leak" through certain parts of the UFO hull. Roast the aliens in their (UFO) shell...
- This troper is a fan of standing on a bale of hay so you can see and shoot through the ceiling at the aliens on the floor above. Especially given that they're usually camping at the top of the stairs to ambush you when you come up.
- Global Currency: Everything bought and sold in the main games is apparently done so in U.S. dollars.
- Grenade Hot Potato: With a little coordination and luck, a soldier in the back can prime and pass a grenade to the front.
- The Greys: But of course.
- Grid Inventory: Multiple grids throughout the body and uniform (and multiple Time Unit costs for movement of items from location to location) make a refreshing take on the Inventory Management Puzzle.
- The true Inventory Management Puzzle (at least in the first game or two) was deciding what 80 pieces of gear to bring along on a mission. A fully loaded transport could consume 40 of those slots just giving each soldier a gun and its ammunition. And that's without bringing extra ammo for reloading.
- Guns Akimbo: Apocalypse's Real Time combat mode allowed this - oddly, turn-based did not; carrying two guns penalized accuracy and only let you fire one at a time. Whilst troopers suffer (sometimes considerable) accuracy penalties for dual-wielding certain large weapons, it's quite feasible to use two autocannons at once if one so chooses. With a bit of tweaking for fully automatic fire and large magazines, you really have to be careful with that Explosive and Incendiary ammo.
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: "Ooh, what's this? Chrysalids? I wonder how this'll turn out!"
- Hive Mind: The aliens in UFO Defense take orders from one, another in Terror From The Deep tries to play Cosmic Horror while it's at it, and the Biomass in the UFO games is a weapon designed to turn a planet into one.
- Hold The Line: The objective of any Base Defense mission. Can literally turn into Hold The Line if you choose to adopt such tactics, although in some cases it's not so much line-holding as shooting fish in a barrel with a BFG.
- This probably only applies if your base is attacked early in the game where aliens' psi attacks turn it into a nightmare. But, once you screened your recruits (and sack the weak minded ones) and researched alien weapons, even if you have poorly designed base, a defense mission is just a shooting gallery.
- One early Enforcer mission. It will make you want to scream and cry at the same time.
- Hovertank: With your choice of Fusion Bomb launcher or Plasma cannon. Arguably, the Cyberdisc can be considered one of these sans turret.
- Humanoid Aliens
- If It Swims It Flies: US Os (Unidentifed Submerged Objects) from the second game and your flying subs that intercept them. Both can fly over land, but your subs cannot fire unless underwater.
- It would've been nice to bring in local air forces and then recover the wreck on land with leftover laser weapons.
- Immune To Bullets: Because of how armour works and damage is rolled, certain enemies are actually immune to standard rifle or pistol rounds. Some are even highly resistant to otherwise powerful alien weapons (hello, Sectopods and Lobstermen).
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Best way to describe the accuracy of any Rookie. They can literally open a door, find themselves toe-to-toe with an alien, fire repeatedly at it, and still miss. Bonus points if their Shooting Accuracy is low. More bonus points if attempting to Auto Fire. Jackpot if they're suffering from Fatal Wounds in one or both arms. (The aliens' snap shots tend to be considerably more accurate ...)
- Ocasionally subverted by the odd rookie trooper who has uncannily high accuracy and can out-shoot some of your crack troopers.
- Implacable Man: The Lobstermen. They. Will. Not. DIE.
- Imported Alien Phlebotinum: About 75-90% of gameplay revolves around the acquisition, understanding, and implementation of cool alien toys. Or in the RPG terms: Kill them, take their stuff, reverse-egnineer it, Repeat.
- Reversed in Apocalypse: when you sell some of your stuff to a Mega Corp that's been infiltrated by aliens, the aliens will import your phlebotinum.
- Just Before The End: The aliens in Apocalypse invade from a doomed, volcanic planet in another dimension where most other life has been scorched away by the local star's supernova.
- Kill It With Fire: Burning the zombies (with incendiary ammunition) will also kill the chryssalid without it popping out.
- Les Collaborateurs: Repeated screwups in a particular funding nation or outright political manipulation thereof by the aliens can result in said nation cutting its remaining funding to X-COM and signing a nonaggression pact with the grey bastards.
- Living Ship: The Apocalypse UF Os.
- Lizard Folk: The Psychic Tasoth from TFTD.
- Lost Colony: T'Leth is a massive colonizing ship that crashed billions years ago.
- Mega Corp: About ten major ones in Apocalypse, among a few others it'd probably be a good idea to defend against alien infiltration.
- Mind Probe: A handy tool for either side to gather information on the other. Best used for determining how close an enemy is to collapsing from stunning, or whether that alien right there is a Soldier/Medic (Mook), Engineer (useful for research), or a Commander (Boss, crucial to capture in the late game).
- Becomes obsolete once you get high-psi strength units equipped with psi-amps, which can take total control of an enemy and allow you to see its stats at any time for the remainder of the turn.
- Money For Nothing: UFO parts and corpses sell quite well and X-Com itself can self-finance through arms manufacturing.
- Multinational Team: You recruit from around the world. However, recruit names are exclusively drawn from Russian, French, German, Japanese, and British/American pools (the last two being a little difficult to distinguish).
- My Brain Is Big: The Sectoids and Aquatoids obviously.
- Interceptor's Psilords are apparently all brain.
- Next Sunday AD: The original game was released in 1993 and set in 1999.
- Nightmare Fuel: Chrysalids again. But they're just the tip of the iceberg once you factor in Bio-Drones in Terror From The Deep, what with the majority of them being still-conscious human brains strapped onto a submersible weapons platform and implanted with alien control modules.
- Don't forget the Tentaculats, which are outright described as being Lovecraftian. They're giant, floating, eyeless brains. With tentacles. And beaks.
- Nintendo Hard: At least two cases:
- Psionic enemies before you get psionic troops (Mind control hell)
- Any fight against a battleship when the doors on the bottom are propped open (by a dead body) or destroyed (Blaster bombs will hit you)
- Treat these as: "Sacrifice 1/4th your troops to let the others escape, or sacrifice 3/4ths of your troops for a chance of success". (So I play M:TG)
- Terror From The Deep in general, where because of the (then unknown) bug in UFO Defense locking the difficuly on Beginner prompted the fans to complain about it being (relatively) easy, which prompted the developers to make TFTD's Beginner setting as hard as UFO's Superhuman, not knowing that the same bug transferred over due to same engine, which now locks on Superhuman (UFO's superhuman +4) instead. Welcome to Hell.
- No Waterproofing In The Future: Weapons and other technology developed (or reverse-engineered) during the decades of fighting in UFO Defense are completely useless underwater, so, in Terror From The Deep, you must restart the researches from scratch. Consider it a Justified Bag Of Spilling... that is, unless you're a clever enough hacker to exploit the similarities of the UFO Defense and TFTD engines and carry over goodies whose quantities were stored in the same data addresses.
- Partially justified by the fact that the alien gear needs Elerium, and the rest of the stuff is lasers. Still doesn't explain why they don't keep a few crates of lasers around for land missions, though.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: The same staff of scientists does everything from reverse-engineering captured weapons to designing new aircraft to interrogating prisoners. Although considering that you NEED a lot of them to have a decent research progress, it could be handwaved that, say, a research on Plasma Weapons is led by the specialists in the field with everyone else following instructions.
- In Apocalypse we got two types of scientist: Quantum physics and Biologists.
- One Hit Point Wonder: Your units actually have a life bar but, until they gain lots of experience or get some armor, they might as well have one hit point.
- One Stat To Rule Them All: Psionic Strength in the first game (and its cousin MC Strength in the second) is the only stat that cannot be trained and it determines both resistance to alien mind control and the soldier's ability to control aliens. Actively using psionic abilities provides experience for all but three other stats.
- Only A Flesh Wound: Averted. Arm and leg wounds will greatly reduce a soldier's fighting ability, just like head and torso wounds. And that's on top of bleeding to death.
- Organic Technology: All sorts of purpose-bred aliens in the first two games, and practically every aspect of the alien threat in Apocalypse. The UFO games invert this, with bio-weaponry becoming more and more scarce throughout the sequels.
- Powered Armor: Later armor suits in UFO Defense (and the whole lot of 'em in Apocalypse) use Elerium-115 to power shielding, muscle enhancers, and the occasional flight module. Flight and protection are the only benefits; armour has no bearing on a soldier's strength or other stats (the muscle enhancers are just fluff that indicates a lack of weight-related decrease in soldier performance).
- Properly Paranoid: Anyone who takes great care while handling Terror Missions. If you aren't covering all the angles, you're just Tempting Fate.
- Psychic Powers: Of the telepathic kind, making victims panic (or go berserk) to controling them.
- Psychic Static: Cyborgs in Apocalypse can not be controlled at all.
- Presumably, neither can the protagonist of Enforcer.
- Punctuation Shaker: T'leth from TFTD.
- The Puppet Masters: The Micronoids from Apocalypse.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: Recruits can be either male or female. This has absolutely no effect on starting stats or stat growth. All it does is paste a slightly different head on the sprite and give ladies a different scream when they die.
- Random Number God: See Armor Is Useless trope above.
- Recycled in Underwater: Terror from the Deep.
- Raygun Gothic: The general art-style of Apocalypse.
- Real Time Strategy: During the Geoscape.
- Red Shirt: The default state of every X-COM recruit. Turning them Mauve is a Luck Based Mission in itself.
- Not quite a challenge since you can abuse save scumming. Once you have those psi devices, you can make the aliens throw away their guns and turn them into target practice for your new recruits.
- Red Shirt Army: What you start the game with.
- Roboteching: Blaster Launchers and their diabolical waypoint-based targeting system.
- Save Scumming: a common strategy, unless you think this is cheating or dishonorable, it is possible to win the game with 0 casualties.
- Sequel Difficulty Spike (To a game bug related to difficulty)
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Of the Conqueror type.
- Screw The Rules I Have Money: You can do this in Apocalypse. No, really. Even if every corporation in the city turns against you (either by subversion by the aliens or by hating you for any number of reasons) and the Senate ceases funding and threatens to shut you down, you can keep Fighting For Survival so long as your bank account remains in the positive... and as long as you have a functional base and a steady source of income to sustain your private army, you can go renegade. Want to show the Senate what you think of their threats? Go level half the city. Mwhahahahahahaha!
- Sources of said income include: Raiding enemy corporations. Manufacturing and selling alien equipment. Selling captured alien equipment. Acting as a pusher for alien techno-drugs.
- It is strongly recommended that you cease employing conventional vehicles as soon as feasibly possible, as alien-derived craft do not require maintenance fees or fuel. Doing so can considerably reduce your maintenance bills.
- You cannot make an enemy of Transtellar, however, as they control all public transit. Civilians like your scientists and engineers require public transports to move from base to base, or to bring new hires to your labs. They cannot use your own vehicles for this, which means you can flip off the police, vaporise the assets of the Megacorps and violently depose the government but God help you if you annoy the Taxi drivers.
- Another reason for not making enemies out of everyone is that you'll be tormented with frequent base invasions if you annoy someone too much. This invariably results in the death of a few of your unarmed and unarmoured scientists, as well as being extremely irritating.
- Sealed Evil In A Can: The Big Bad of TFTD is one, not suprising since he a expy of Cthulhu.
- Self Imposed Challenge: Probably the greatest fan-mod undertaking for UFO Defense is fixing a bug that locked the starting difficulty of the game at "Beginner".
- There are a bunch of challenges listed with one of the well-known editing utilities, including things like refusing to research any new tech (thus making the game technically unwinnable, but few get to such a point since it's damn difficult without) and not killing any aliens (winning is still possible since they can be stunned).
- Sequelitis: After the original, the overall quality of each successive installment of the series was lower than the previous, regardless of their genre.
- Sequel Stagnation: Averted. After Terror From The Deep, which was basically an underwater rehash of the first episode, new elements and even Genre Shifts were introduced - unfortunately, they didn't result in good games.
- Your Mileage May Vary. Apocalypse was fairly good, introducing elements like collapsable terrain pseudo-physics and had the real-time combat mode, but Interceptor and...
That Which Shall Not Be Named Enforther Enforcer are looked down upon. The latter so hard that it is considered completely non-canon.
- The mileage for Enforcer varies quite a bit; viewed purely as a run-and-gun arcade shooter, in the Smash TV line of things, it can be hugely entertaining. Viewed purely as an X-COM game, however, it's sort of like meeting the Antichrist.
- Shiny Looking Spaceships: UF Os of the first game. X-Com fighters in Interceptor.
- Shout Out: The Calcinites in Terror From The Deep bear a laughable resemblance to the titular antagonist of the B-movie Robot Monster due to them impersonating old-school divers. Enforcer also features a mishmash of resources from two fellow X-COM titles scrapped during its development, Genesis and Alliance.
- Shut Up Hannibal: UFO Defense's ending.
- Slippy Slidey Ice World: Artic and Antarctic missions, thankfully without the slippy slidey part.
- Sorting Algorithm Of Evil: In UFO Defense it's Sectoids and Floaters and early Snakemen if you're unlucky > Snakemen if you're lucky > Mutons > Ethereal.
- In TFTD it's Aquatoids and Gillmen > Tasoth and Lobstermen.
- Also lampshaded in Guava Moment's Apocalypse LP.
- Squishy Wizard: Ethereals' bodies have atrophied so much that their self-sustaining functions have to be governed by their immense Psychic Powers. Which does not prevent them from having the best armour values and second best hit point totals among the non-terror unit aliens.
- Their huge cloaks present a considerably larger profile then their actual bodies...hitting the cloak is not necessarily hitting the Ethereal.
- Stop Helping Me: The scientist in Enforcer will leave you with a pathological need to kill him. Sadly, even at the beginning when you can actually see and shoot him, it has no effect.
- Strong Flesh Weak Steel: Individual soldiers, in the late game, are far stronger than tanks, since soldiers improve their stats and tanks don't.
- Inverted in Enforcer, where you will chew through Sectoids, Snakemen, and Chryssalids with one shot each while their feeble attempts to harm you bounce off your armored hull. It will give your positronic brain much amusement.
- However, a hovertank/launcher can still fire fusion balls without ever needing to reload until they run out of ammo. Although, this is balanced out by having a maximum of 8 fusion balls per mission and doing less damage than blaster bombs. Also, tanks can't be stunned or get fatal wounds. Or Mind Controlled.
- Stun Guns: From Stun Rods to Stun Bombs, a variety of nonlethal arms gradually come into X-COM's possession and employ for the capture of necessary live aliens.
- Super Soldier: Mutons and Lobstermen. Your soldiers will become this if they lucky enough.
- Enforcer's protagonist, who racks up over a hundred dead aliens a mission, and sometimes as many as four hundred fifty.
- Tank Goodness: HW Ps are a refreshing alternative to the hopeless rookies in the early game, at least in Enemy Unknown.
- Take Cover: Very important, given the computer's cheating tendencies and the power of alien weapons. Unfortunately, most forms of cover can be destroyed.
- Tech Tree: While almost all physical alien artifacts can be researched as soon as you recover them, several conceptual lines of research require either the interrogation of live aliens or a series of prerequisites.
- Telepathic Spacemen: Ethereals, experienced Sectoids, their underwater cousins Aquatoids, Gill Men commanders, Tasoths, Psilords in Interceptor, the list goes on...
- This Is A Drill: Terror From The Deep features a series of power drills that are the most effective weapons against Lobstermen. Combine with Mind Control to conserve ammo.
- Time Keeps On Slipping: The various incarnations of the Geoscape allow you to pass the time by anywhere from 1 second per second (slowest setting in Apocalypse) to 1 day per second (fastest setting in UFO Defense and Terror From The Deep) while you're waiting for the next alien sighting.
- Turn Based Strategy: The Squad-Level type during the battlescape.
- Under The Sea: Half of TFTD is this.
- Underwater Base: X-Com's base of operations in TFTD. Also, one of the rarer terrain type in the USO recovery missions is a small series of underwater modules.
- Underwater Ruins
- Unobtainium: Elerium-115, in spades. Ununpentium has long been theorized to work that way, but currently doesn't. Also, Terror From The Deep's Zrbite.
- Un Winnable: The state of any Terror From The Deep game in which the Tasoth Commander has been researched. Thankfully, patches and mods keep this (and other deadly bugs within the Tech Tree) from happening.
- Unfriendly Fire and/or The Uriah Gambit: Note that the post-mission analysis does not have a spot for "X-COM Operatives Killed By X-COM Operatives." Your use of this oversight to justify friendly fire or the immediate court-martial of an alien-controlled operative will practically be a given.
- Used Future: The Aliens of TFTD seems to give this vibe.
- Videogame Caring Potential: Just TRY not to get attatched to your soldiers who got promoted to Sergeant or above rank. I dare you to.
- Vendor Trash: All those alien corpses, spare UFO/USO compoments, and ammunition? Yeah, a good deal of that gets sold off to finance the organization. Even a relatively small UFO captured intact can net nearly a million dollars depending on how much loot you hold on to. Alien corpses are often extremely convenient for research, but supply exceeds all possible demand, so selling them is a non-trivial but disturbing source of income. (A strategy guide suggests that they make for excellent sushi. And a certain fan wiki suggests that bases frequently fighting Lobstermen requisition above-average amounts of butter.)
- This Troper markets his dead Ethereals as "Psycho Jerky." (Sectoid officers count as a mild flavor.)
- To be fair, they do the same to us in the first place. They deserve every bit of what the scientists and chefs do to them.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The aliens' Mars base in UFO: Enemy Unknown, T'leth in X-Com: Terror from the Deep and heck, even the hidden star system in Interceptor.
- Bear in mind that that last one is hidden on the other end of the event horizon of a black hole, not only necessitating your fighter piggybacking on another carrier to get in and out, but justifying the use of the Nova Bomb.
- Violation Of Common Sense: Someone explain to me again why buildings in Apocalypse have their "crumple points" on the freakin' roof?
- So that when you accidentally level a corp's HQ, they have a reason to turn hostile and start invading your base. And then go "No, we love the aliens, so you can't appease us with money".
- Windows in Enforcer are good for about ten research points when destroyed. A dead Sectoid or Snakeman is worth one.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Speaking of Sectopods, a misprint in their Encyclopedia Exposita entry means their primary weapon counts as a laser attack (which they're weak to) rather than a plasma attack. Combine that with the fact that 2x2 enemies have to be mind-controlled one block at a time and that blocks controlled by opposing sides can fire on one another...
- Controlling part of a Cyberdisk or Sectopod is, in fact, the easiest way to destroy one.
- Tentaculats in TFTD, unlike the UFO Defense counterpart which can damage tanks, Tentaculats can't damage your SWS, and will still stupidly try to attack them anyway to no avail. So always bring one if you are expecting them.
- Lobstermen in TFTD while even the alien's own Sonic Cannons can barely scratch them, they are surprisingly vulnerable to melee attack, that includes tazers if you haven't got drills yet.
- We Have Reserves: Rookies make good scouts.
- We Sell Everything: Played straight until Apocalypse, which required you to maintain good relations with a variety of Mega Corps to obtain troops, aircraft, weapons, safety from police interference, etc.
- Strangely, We Buy Anything is not similarly averted. However, apparently Adam Smith Hates X-COM's Guts, since market prices for player-manufactured items in Apocalypse can only go down.
- It should be noted that although We Buy Anything is in effect, you should never sell your Entropy Guns. Seriously, don't do it. At that point in the game, some corporations will have been taken over by the aliens and you'll have effectively given the enemy access to their Infinity Plus One Sword.
- With This Herring: With this bunch of folks who would have failed the physical for any self-respecting military and have the reflexes of a dead fish, you must save the world...
- With this lack of basic night-vision technology, you must fight at night on land, and underwater, and in buildings full of smoke a thermal viewer could see through easily. (But see below.)
- What Measure Is A Non Human: Asked by S.E.L.F. and the Mutant Alliance in Apocalypse as they fill X-COM's needs for robotic and alien-hybrid soldiers, respectively.
- Yet Another Stupid Death: Players who are unlucky, forget to take precautions, or just play poorly, will get lots of these. Even a seasoned player will have some of these from time to time.
- Zeerust: Handheld night-vision equipment was still costly, encumbering and not very good in the early 90s.
- Zerg Rush: The only way to take a small alien ship in Enemy Unknown is to keep pushing soldiers through the door until you kill everyone inside. This will almost certainly cost you several troops. On a larger scale, X-Com typically has extremely high casuality rates in all three games and Zerg Rushing strategically to replace lost soldiers and interceptors is the only way to keep your head above water.
- On the other hand, most of the aliens will leave their ship and actively hunt for you starting with the 21st turn. Camping their ufo doors lets you snipe them as they poke their heads out.
- One-robot Zerg Rush is probably the best way to play Enforcer, as it lets you get those research points.
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