Story

Half a century after the end of the second X-COM

X-COM: Terror from the Deep

X-COM: Terror from the Deep is a strategy video game released in 1995 for the PC. It is the sequel to UFO: Enemy Unknown, and the second part of the X-COM series.-Gameplay:...

 campaign, the last battle of T'leth has severely damaged Earth's biosphere

Biosphere

The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed and self-regulating system...

. As a result, several self-contained Megalopolis

Megalopolis (city type)

A megalopolis is typically defined as a chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas. The term was used by Oswald Spengler in his 1918 book, The Decline of the West, and Lewis Mumford in his 1938 book, The Culture of Cities, which described it as the first stage in urban overdevelopment and...

-type cities were proposed to provide habitation for humanity. The game follows Mega-Primus, the first of these cities, built over the ruins of Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Canada. Meanwhile the off-world colony of Mars

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

 is exploited by the Elerium mining corporation, Solmine, and oppressed by MarSec (MARs SECurity).

The alien threat in the game is presented by a new race of organic, extradimensional aliens that initially seem to have no relation to the aliens of the previous two games, though later missions set in the aliens' home dimension reveal they have enslaved Sectoid survivors. These new aliens attack the city through tetrahedron

Tetrahedron

In geometry, a tetrahedron is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, three of which meet at each vertex. A regular tetrahedron is one in which the four triangles are regular, or "equilateral", and is one of the Platonic solids...

-shaped teleport gates. The player must find out how to send their own aircraft, along with X-COM agents, through these gates without being destroyed and take the war to the aliens. Apocalypse has fourteen fictional races of alien beings

Extraterrestrial life in popular culture

In popular cultures, "extraterrestrials" are life forms — especially intelligent life forms— that are of extraterrestrial origin .-Historical ideas:-Pre-modern:...

. Each race has various strengths and weaknesses, and some races are dependent on other races. The "alien life cycle" plays a crucial role in the game.

Gameplay

Similar to the first two games, Apocalypse features a map-like management mode (the Cityscape) and an isometric combat mode (the Battlescape). The management mode takes place in a single city, called Mega Primus, rather than being spread out over the entire planet Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 as in the previous games. In addition, Apocalypse was the first game in the X-COM series to include a real-time combat option as well as the traditional turn-based mode.

Apocalypse features a re-done interface with new graphics. It is more complex, and the task of keeping and increasing the funding of the X-COM organization now extends to not only intercepting UFO

Unidentified flying object

A term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...

s, but also to minimizing collateral damage, preventing alien hostile takeovers and even raiding the buildings of other organisations, of which there are several in Mega Primus.

A new feature is the choice of playing the tactical missions in either the familiar turn-based

Turn-based tactics

Turn-based tactics , or tactical turn-based , is a computer and video game genre of strategy video games that through stop-action simulates the considerations and circumstances of operational warfare and military tactics in generally small-scale confrontations as opposed to more strategic...

 mode or real-time

Real-time tactics

Real-time tactics or RTT is a subgenre of tactical wargames played in real-time simulating the considerations and circumstances of operational warfare and military tactics...

. In the turn-based mode, the aliens and humans switch turns to perform actions while in real-time, everything happens simultaneously, though the game can be paused at any time to issue orders to agents.

X-COM: Apocalypse claims to have a self-learning AI

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

-module. The developers' homepage suggests that one may copy the AI file and swap it with another player's AI file. The result should be a different playing experience (at least in terms of AI behavior). There is little evidence to suggest that self-learning AI was actually implemented, although it is evident in the game that aliens react intelligently to certain player tactics, such as grenade attacks, hand-to-hand attacks, and smoke cover.

The game features self-adjusting difficulty, where player performances influences the Alien zeal to expand and infest. Sluggish X-COM responses, total failures, and a bad weekly rating slow the alien build-up of weapons and creatures (but not ships) on their homeworld. This gives the player the chance to amend their failures and rethink their strategy. For example, a high rating in first five days can make the Aliens attack your HQ head-on with a large heavily armed mob often. Conversely, a low rating in the first five days can make the aliens only incur twice a week, with a very small force. This also affects the equipment quality of the aliens, so if a very high score is acquired quickly (for example by using a bug that allows the player to raid allied organisations without hostile response), the very first batch of aliens might be found with personal shields and disruptor cannons (which normally would appear only much later in the game).

Mega-Primus

The city is run by thirteen elected senators. Large corporations maintain the environmental, social and economic structure of the city, while the populace live in relative comfort. Mega-Primus has its own marginalized minorities, consisting of Sectoid-human hybrids and androids, both by-products of the previous wars. These minorities have set up their own political pressure groups. When the aliens invade, the city government reestablishes X-COM. This time there is no absolute support by world/city governments. Mega-Primus has its own governing body who supply nearly all of X-COM's income. X-COM would have to support its income through the sale of alien artifacts captured from missions, and items manufactured in their own workshops.

X-COM must maintain a good rapport with other organizations in the city. If X-COM angers any of them, or fails to contain the alien incursion, organizations will demand compensation or even actively attack X-COM forces. They will also withdraw their support (if any) for the X-COM project. For example the Transtellar organization would prevent Agents and science personnel from travelling around the city. The corporations and political organizations will make profits, perform research, manufacture items, and even fight covert battles with one another independently of the player. For example, if Megapol, the city police, are making lots of money, they will be able to maintain a strong presence in the city, attacking alien ships and other hostile aircraft. The more damage to the city, and the greater Megapol's financial trouble, the less they will be able to respond to enemy attacks across the city. One of these organizations, the Cult of Sirius

Sirius

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The name "Sirius" is derived from the Ancient Greek: Seirios . The star has the Bayer designation Alpha Canis Majoris...

, is a group of religious fanatics who worship the aliens, and is inherently hostile to X-COM. The aliens, rather than simply signing non-aggression treaties with the various corporations, will attempt to infest their CEOs and take control of the organizations themselves.

If the Government becomes hostile towards X-COM for any reason, such as alien interference or excessive damage to Government property and personnel, then the X-COM project will receive no further funding. This is a potential disaster for the player, and can lead to X-COM scrounging out a miserable existence, stealing from other organisations in order to survive. However, with perfect management, X-COM can outpower the entire City's military, while being richer than even Food Monopoly Company Nutrivend, then destroy the whole city and get away with it, given the game's superb flexibility. Having friendly relations with both minorities (the android organisation S.E.L.F and the hybrid Mutant Alliance) can result in superbly talented recruits of these races becoming available in following weeks.

Originally the game was going to be much larger and be even more in-depth, with political intrigue helping to bring the city of Mega-Primus to life. An unimplemented weapon called the Tracker Gun could be fired at an unsuspecting enemy, attaching some kind of tracer onto his clothes. The person could then be trailed around the city by one or more X-COM agents. All of this political intrigue was cut down to the bare bones due to the aforementioned constraints.

Development

During the creation of Apocalypse, Mythos created the game but Microprose wanted to create the graphics. Julian Gollop

Julian Gollop

Julian Gollop is a British designer of strategy video games and founder of the defunct game studios Mythos Games and Codo Technologies.Gollop's career spans over 25 years, during which he has designed games for numerous systems over the years, from the early 8-bit home computers to 32-bit PCs...

 called the relationship "disastrous", and said of the game "It was a disaster area. Apocalypse was quite a sophisticated and ambitious game, but it was a big mistake from our point of view. In retrospect, we should have originally agreed to do a sequel in six months, and spent a year doing it, like they did! It would've been a lot better."

Re-releases

The game has been re-released as part of the compilations X-COM Collection by Hasbro Interactive

Hasbro Interactive

Hasbro Interactive was an American video game production and publishing subsidiary of Hasbro, the large game and toy company.Hasbro Interactive was formed late in 1995 in order to compete in the computer and video game arena. Several Hasbro properties, such as Monopoly and Scrabble, had already...

 in 1999, and X-COM: Complete Pack in 2008 and 2K Huge Games Pack in 2009 by 2K Games

2K Games

2K is a global developer, marketer, distributor and publisher of interactive entertainment software games. 2K Games is a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, which also owns Rockstar Games notable for the Grand Theft Auto series...

. On September 5, 2008, the X-COM series, including X-COM Apocalypse, became available for sale on Valve's Steam platform; the game runs in a specially configured version of DOSBox

DOSBox

DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....

.

External links

• X-COM: Apocalypse on UFOpaedia