How many of you have actually beaten TFTD?

[iggy]

Quick pole for everybody (out of my curiousity)

[Asmodai]

I beat it a LONG time ago at my dad's h00se. Hehe like 5 yrs.

[NKF]

Seeing as I was introduced to the world of X-Com through TFTD, well before I even learnt of UFO's existence, yep, beaten it several times over. Not recently, but yeah.

 

Not going to vote, but I've beaten it on a variety of difficulty levels ranging from beginner to superhuman. Cheated on beginner the first time through, but did it again proper on higher difficulty levels since you don't want bad karma like that to build up.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

I beat it fairly easily on easy. When my superhuman UFO campaign is done I'll transfer TFTD to my PC upstairs and start superhuman on that.

[Crazy Photon]

Idem as NKF (except that I discovered UFO first)

[Psy Guy]

I didn't (and it not because the game is hard). After installing the collectors edition (all except apoc) i sold it to a buddy. I was mid way in the game (had it for a few weeks) and my comp got to the point of no return (had to nuke it). Well after the nuking i didn't have the game CD (still have Apoc and UFO ENEMY UNKNOWN). Now looking for a copy of the collectors edition/ TFTD.

 

-PSY GUY-

[The Veteran]

Can't you get it back from whoever you gave it to?

[InsaneLapin]

I really don't know what I'm waiting to finish that game.. I just want all my soldiers healthy and I got bored a little these times..

[Cazbol]

I voted no.

 

In my defense I'd like to say that I only started playing TFTD last week, so cut me some slack.

 

Cazbol

[Asmodai]

NO YOU HAVEN'T BEATEN IT! BLASPHEMY! Hahahaha

[PHOENIX]

I'm in the process of beating it. That is if, the wife :inlove: doesn't beat the living crap out of me first. But slowly and surely, I will beat it... Maw-hahahahahahahahahaha

[Sgt. Strike]

I'm working on beating it, slowly, and with alot of patience.

[LTNS]

I've beaten it on the easiest mode. But i... :dontgetit: didn't get the ending. what was with that?

[NKF]

It was a cliffhanger for the next game. Leaves you stunned with disappointment in that you won the battle (not a really tough one come to think of it) only to lose the war.

 

- NKF

[Sgt. Strike]

And the next chapter of the X-Com story is interceptor, right? Or is it Apoc?

[NKF]

Chronologically, according to the game timeline, Interceptor comes in between TFTD and Apocalypse.

 

However Apocalypse was released after TFTD and Interceptor was developed a little later.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

If you play through interceptor while reading the news updates and bulletins every month you'll see what's happening on earth... It's kind of like the Shadows of the Empire book that some guy wrote to link together Star Wars V and VI.

[Pastshelfdate]

Back in the mid-1990s, I beat Terror from the Deep. I set aside a whole day, as I'd read that once started, the T'leth mission couldn't be saved and paused. I even got up and went for a short walk, after the first stage (sea floor, if memory serves). That was on the easiest difficulty level. Back then, I was still clinically depressed, and didn't play games for a challenge, but instead for an ego boost. I had to be really careful not to take on too much.

 

I'm playing on the next difficulty level up, now, as I want to approach the difficulties gradually.

[sp1ke]

I regret to say I have not properly beaten either game in a full campaign, but I have completed the final tactical missions of both games (via XComUtil) and won on Superhuman without cheating by using Psi/MC or loads of Blaster Launchers either. And I have maxed the Research Tree and the economics enough times to know I could make it to Mars or T'leth. I just never put it all together in a single campaign. I got distracted by fiddling and reverse-engineering and updating articles on UFOPaedia.org. I guess it would be kind of cool to go all the way through in one go. Ironman Superhuman. I wonder how much real time (hours, days) that would take?

[szindrom]

Just today finished TFTD on hardest difficulty, I remember playing the game as a kid with my brothers in 90s and actually finishing it now was rather nostalgic. It took a lot of save games though, I think that's the primary fault of the game, it's up to the player to self-regulate saving games, which takes part of either the challenge or the fun out of the game. It's not a real challenge if you just decide not to save games, it doesn't feel like it, since you're self-handicapping, and on the other hand, knowing that you can save the game changes the way you can play it. So in other words I actually think the game would more fun if you couldn't save the game at all at the hardest difficulty. Interestingly though the game remains rather interesting despite the ability to save. I think TFTD is one of the best games I've played overall, though I've not played a lot of games. Thematically TFTD is I think ingenious can't think of anything that would come close. Though there are flaws too, quite a bit of them even. But it's possible that this feeling is nostalgic carry over, and if I played TFTD for the first time now, maybe I wouldn't find it so fanciful.

 

To be honest though before today I hadn't read up on TFTD From any source that included spoilers, but I ran into this problem that one of my bases got attacked by a dreadnought recurringly, with 1-3 days interval. After having defended the base for Nth time I googled to see if there was a solution to this presumed bug. I'm pretty sure it's a bug since it was aquatoids with calcinites everytime. Also the recurring attack made the game a bit easier, since it was like 4 million cash per attack from selling the wares which in a month is 60 million, but then I didn't really need the money that point anyway to finish the game. But the actual point here is that I didn't know that you'd get the final thing from certain research and while stumbling on the wiki to find a solution to the bug recurring dreadnought, I of course ran into the buglist and therefore found out the key to the solution to finishing the game, and well after that the game was pretty much over. Though I suppose I could've given up the base in question. In the process I found that there was a couple of things I hadn't discovered in the game (and actually still haven't, but now have knowledge of them)

 

The final mission was pretty interesting though, I was in a hurry to leave in a couple hours and rushed to finish the game. I didn't have the correct (nor enough) equipment on my aquanauts, lost 2 out of the sent 7 member team (Total I actually had 39 aquanauts, but most of them mere on duty base defenders) on the way to bottom floor, and in hte bottom floor I ran out of ammunition (and didn't bother running all the way back to the earlier opponents to get more) so I ended up advancing with - now - 4 aquanauts equippied with 1 empty DPL, 1 thermal tazer, 5 sonic pulsers and that's it. Ended up losing 1 of the aquanauts to those disgusting squibbly mobs, then eventually ran into some lobs that meleed 2 out of the 4 man team, but I also managed to taze them ( they had paniced and dropped guns) picked up 1 shock launcher, and 4 rounds to DPL, with now - last aquanaut - proceeding to finish the game with those 4 shots. It was pretty exciting to think I'd have start the final mission all over again if that last guy couldn't make it - and note that I didn't know how much longer there was to the mission, which made it kind of desperate.

 

Now I kind of feel like trying to finish TFTD without saving the game on SH, but I don't think I can do it (It's highly unlikely), but I think that would make the game more fun than it is with saving. Though of course now that it's finished in the first place, it's not that much fun anyway. I think TFTD is a classic. ^_^

[Sectiplave]

From memory the first time I finished TFTD was before the year 2000. Since then over the years I keep coming back to this game, and without a shadow of a doubt it is my favorite strategy game. All up I'm going to be conservative and say I've finished the game between 8 to 10 times fresh start to end, it wouldn't be uncommon to start a fresh playthrough during school holidays and be well beyond the point of being able to finish the game by the end of the holiday season. The majority of these play throughs were based on the Vanilla DOS version so I became familiar with all the bugs.

 

I think my most memorable play through was when I had a competition with a school mate to see how ridiculous we could get our save file (money, bases, soldiers) he ended up the winner months down the line when I went and played on his save file and saw that his USO number was in the thousands and the colonies had reached the 100's, the list of "retired" soldiers on each side was similar. (Retired meaning core stats were about to roll over the 255 limit and make them useless)

 

It's been a couple years since I have played Xcom UFO or TFTD (I have played a lot of Xenonauts during this time) and I'm having an absolute blast playing TFTD via OpenXcom, I have been playing this for only 2 days and the 'quality of life' changes in OpenXcom very likely mean I'll not be able to return to Vanilla. Seriously the keybinds and battlescape scaling making playing the battlescape scenarios much more enjoyable for me.

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

As of...lemme check here. Ok as of 2013, I've beaten this game 12 times.

 

This includes all difficulties, (most) mods and strange combination uses such as only using gauss pistols and sonic pulsar.

Thermal Tazers and magna pack explosives.

My favorite of course is the time that I played through the entire game using the MC Disruptor and the DPL.

 

fun times.

 

-n0x

[Sectiplave]

I think I'm at that stage NoX, my next play through I'm going trying to figure out some weird restrictions to impose. Melee weapons and grenades only? Something silly like that would be amusing for me now.

[magic9mushroom]

I beat it once, on Beginner, using Battlescape saves, about 7 years ago. Doesn't really count, but at least I saw the ending.

 

My current project is UFO Superhuman "the hard way", which is no exploits (except the Base Disjoint Bug exploit designs I made myself, and a minor collision-detection exploit I discovered myself*), no mind controlling aliens, and no reloading from mistakes (I keep a save file so I can go do other things and in case of crash, though the latter hasn't happened, but I don't use it to undo events). I'm up to Mar 20, and I'm trying to get to Cydonia ASAP (probably June 1; I couldn't get psi-labs up in time to start screening in April, but I'll be screening 60 or 70 soldiers in May). I know I've done Superhuman before with saves, but I'm not 100% sure if I've done it without and I've had to switch versions since then (switched laptops twice; CE doesn't run natively in modern Windows and it doesn't like emulators much, so I switched to DOS with DOSbox and hex-edited out the Difficulty Bug).

 

When I finish that, I'll move on to TFTD under the same restrictions. Probably at Beginner or Experienced first, because Superhuman TFTD is just brutal (I've tried it twice, IIRC. The first time I got no sub detections for the whole of January and rage-quit after the first mission - i.e. the first terror site - started going south. The second time I got my main base destroyed in mid-January.) and to hopefully reduce the amount of trauma when I encounter the dreaded Tentaculats again (I still literally have nightmares about those things).

 

*There are tiny cracks in UFO hulls. If a soldier sees an alien through one I let him shoot it with projectile weaponry, though I don't go looking for them. I believe the aliens can shoot through them too, it doesn't involve tricking the interface, it's somewhat physically plausible (gunports?), and it's rather rare, so I consider it more akin to the "extra doors" on the Lightning and Avenger than the "true" collision detection exploits (splash damage through walls/ceilings not working as intended, tricking the interface into letting you walk through ordinarily-solid objects). Also, I found it myself without any help so I have fewer qualms about using it.

[Kir'jaeden]

I beat it once, on Beginner, using Battlescape saves, about 7 years ago. Doesn't really count, but at least I saw the ending.

 

My current project is UFO Superhuman "the hard way", which is no exploits....

 

When I finish that, I'll move on to TFTD under the same restrictions. Probably at Beginner or Experienced first, because Superhuman TFTD is just brutal.....

 

 

Test the UFO and TFTD with Extenders from Tycho! There are worthy battles ensue! I think you'll be creamed swiftly!

Digging out 1+ year old topics will not stay unpunished!