X-Com is a Harsh Mistress

I’ve been playing the original X-Com lately. Sad to say, I hadn’t touched the game since 1995 or so. Every time I got near it, I was held at bay by its dated graphics and cludgy interface. I know, I know — a true gamer would look past these things, or even embrace them a symbols of his geek purity. (“I don’t see blocky, pixellated characters. All I see is strategy.”)

The time has come to try again. And once I got past the graphics and interface, I found myself caught up in the game more than I would have expected. I was the commander of the X-Com forces, fighting a desperate struggle against invading aliens armed with what little tech I could scrabble together and an army of untrained morons straight from the local temp agency. It was the summer of 1995 all over again, and I was sitting in front of the computer at 2:00 AM, sweating in the cramped and overheated apartment I shared with a half-dozen geeks, trying to finish one last mission before going to bed.

But it’s not 1995. I’m not just a geek, I’m a game-designer geek, which means that I can’t just play the game, I have to analyze it. (I know. It’s sick.) After all, this is a game that’s over 15 years old, but still considered one of the greatest. I want to understand why.

Here are some of the things I’ve found so far:

• Every decision counts. During the tactical mission, each unit only has so many time units. If you spend them to move one more space, then you might not have enough to take a shot at the alien you uncovered. Do you spend them to rotate one step? Two? There could be an alien right behind you, and you won’t see it if you don’t look. During the strategic part of the game, you must decide what to research, since each new item unlocks subsequent items in its chain. Running out of money? Better sell something — but what? The game has so many decisions, and every one of them is meaningful — either immediately, or somewhere along the line.
• The split between the strategic and tactical elements provides pacing to the game. The elements are virtually separate games; though they deeply affect each other, their methods of play are so different, switching from one to the other feels like taking a break to play a different game. And that feels good.
• But I think the most engaging element of the game is that it is tense and scary. It is a horror game, wrapped in a sugary outer shell of sci-fi. The fog of war means that you are always dealing with the unknown: What aliens are here? Where are they? What are they doing? Like any good horror story, you get glimpses of the monsters as they scuttle and attack from the shadows, but rarely get a good look at them. And like the protagonists in an H. P. Lovecraft story, your units are fragile, physically incompetent, and given to panic. The sense of dread is overwhelming: In other games I might be disappointed that I’ve run out of enemies to frag for xp on this level; in X-Com, as my troops are dying and panicking, I find myself praying to nameless, uncaring gods of PC gaming that each alien I kill will be the last, so that this fatal mission may finally end. (I think 2K’s new XCOM game captures that horror atmosphere, so even while it’s a completely different animal, it might be able to retain the creepy feel of the original.)

I’m still playing X-Com. Turns out I’m still pretty bad at the game, so it’ll take me a while to finish it. If you need me, I’ll be here in 1995, sweating and playing just one more mission before going to bed.