Finally I did it!

[Stun Grenade]

After 14 or 15 years of owning this game I finally came around to beating the darn thing today and man do I feel happy. I really don't know why it took me so long. I think I'm one of those gamers that when having a break from a game and finally resume playing I find it hard to get back into the groove (so I think I've re-started a Apoc a handful of times). But this time I stuck it out - YAY! I just had to tell someone(s).

 

Oh, and I've been inactive from here for a verrrry long time. I just felt the urge to tell the community about my accomplishment

[Bomb Bloke]

Well done!

 

If you're anything like me, the bit where you'd petter out would be when you're half way through invading the alien dimension - by then it's abundantly clear that you've already won, and you can't help but suspect that X-COM would be better off just milking the situation for as long as they could (considering that the organisation always just fades to near non-existence shortly after winning a war)...

 

In my last campaign, I got side tracked trying to catch an OverSpawn... Though j'ordos assures me the game code specifically makes it impossible to do...

[Space Voyager]

Congrats on completing Apoc! I know this is a kind of a sacrilege but I liked Apoc most of the three X-COMs.

[Jman4117]

In all honesty, I have never played it. The concept never really appealed to me and I only have the game for the sake of owning it

[Pete]

In all honesty, I have never played it. The concept never really appealed to me and I only have the game for the sake of owning it

 

B... b... but it's awesome!

 

And well done Stun Grenade! It is a VERY long game but worth it when you beat the aliens

[silencer_pl]

In all honesty, I have never played it. The concept never really appealed to me and I only have the game for the sake of owning it

 

When I saw video of my friend playing EU on Amiga I said - 'Bah boring'. But when I started to play myself.....

[Jman4117]

I swore off TFTD as well up until about 10 years ago. Then I was stuck in my house for about a week without power or internet and ran my laptop top off my car battery out of shear boredom. Research silliness aside, probably my favorite to play due to the difficulty. Apoc pretty much gave me the same reaction that the XCOM game coming out does now. Silly 1950's scifi with interdimensional aliens generally doesn't appeal to me. Maybe I'll end up stuck without internet and be forced to play it, and then fall in love with it, but until then, good luck.

[Bomb Bloke]

It starts out confusing. Then you use up every clip available on the market and start to have difficulty mowing the poppers down.

 

Then you get disruptor weaponry and start to make sense of the game. If you're still playing by this point, you generally get sucked in and come to realise that it really is the logical continuation of the series.

 

The main "difference" to the game is not the artistic style, nor even the addition of real-time battles - it's the complexity. The first two titles you can just pick up and play, get a ground battle going on within about ten/twenty seconds of starting a campaign. Heck, the first title can be finished in a day or two. TFTD's messed up tech-tree forces you to play a lot more repetitive missions, but is more or less the same other then that.

 

Whereas with Apoc, your first few fights are more "re-con" then "battle", and you'll likely be at least an hour in before you recover your first alien weapon worth researching. You'll probably have little idea what you're doing until you've completed a couple of playthroughs... Oh, you'll think you know, but there's always another layer to peel off. It boils down to the same thing as the previous two titles, but there's always something new to see or do, long past the point where you could've won. The downside to this is that it really does require a lot more time to fully appreciate. Or is that an upside? All a matter of taste.

 

In any case, there's nothing quite like the site of an alien mothership floating above the city, with half a dozen fighters dodging and weaving around it, the roar of buildings crumbling below... Or better still, having your own ships take on the role of the UFO, crushing the forces of any organisation in the game silly enough to tick you off!

[Pete]

You'll probably have little idea what you're doing until you've completed a couple of playthroughs... Oh, you'll think you know, but there's always another layer to peel off. It boils down to the same thing as the previous two titles, but there's always something new to see or do, long past the point where you could've won.

 

I'm with you there - on my fist playthrough (probably on beginner) I spent a lot of time trying to complete the tech tree, thinking I'd completed it several times and still only ending the game with Toxin type B and the bigger disruptors. It wasn't until several playthroughs later that I had a chance to research a live Psimorph and Megaspawn and actually saw my first Micronoid Aggregate. I think I ended up amassing enough weaponry to destroy all the UFOs the aliens had and, through there must have been Micronoids in the alien dimension they didn't last long enough to be researched.

 

I did also like the link to the original game in the alien dimension - it was a nice twist seeing those particular guys again although a bit odd seeing them in trouble! (I'm trying to be vague here on purpose, but those who've finished it know what I mean).

 

In any case, there's nothing quite like the site of an alien mothership floating above the city, with half a dozen fighters dodging and weaving around it, the roar of buildings crumbling below... Or better still, having your own ships take on the role of the UFO, crushing the forces of any organisation in the game silly enough to tick you off!

 

On Beginner difficulty I found it a bit easier to keep everyone on your side, but on subsequent games on SuperHuman you have no chance. Transtellar seem to invariably be the ones who get ticked off first, which doesn't bode well and you've really got to try and be nice to the other organisations up to the point where you can build your own fighter craft otherwise you could end up running out of anything from fuel (been there) to missiles (been there too).

 

Overall it's got a lot more depth and I've never managed to complete it in less than a fortnight's worth of evenings and weekends whereas I have been lucky enough to complete UFO on Superhuman in one long day - 8am-10pm and bringing just enough firepower to get to Mars and defeat the brain - you have to be really selective about crash sites and terror missions and research as fast as you can and end up building just the one Avenger but it's do-able.

 

Even though they didn't get a chance to put in everything into Apoc that they originally wanted to (tailing VIPs with the tracker gun and slapping them in jail to be interrogated, widespread use of the portable mind shield, multiple alien dimensions etc) it's still the most in-depth title of the series. The only thing I find consistently annoying is that they never finished the jump animation so when an agent jumps on the real-time version they put their hands down at their sides and do a weird hop as though someone has picked them up by their head, moved them and plonked them down at their destination. Surely that wouldn't have taken long to finish

[Bomb Bloke]

On Beginner difficulty I found it a bit easier to keep everyone on your side, but on subsequent games on SuperHuman you have no chance. Transtellar seem to invariably be the ones who get ticked off first, which doesn't bode well and you've really got to try and be nice to the other organisations up to the point where you can build your own fighter craft otherwise you could end up running out of anything from fuel (been there) to missiles (been there too).

One "tactic" I've settled on is to order my craft to fly high only when bee-lining a fight; when actually fighting, I try to keep them below their targets.

 

This way, my craft are firing upwards (towards the wide open skies), whereas the aliens are firing downwards (at all the buildings I'm personally trying to avoid). Once the aliens have leveled the people-tubes a few times (and it's just about always the people-tubes that go first - the highways don't last much longer if you crank the difficulty), Transtellar starts to come around to my way of seeing things.

 

A similar trick is to pick an organisation you don't much care about and start sending hoverbikes to take pot-shots at them. Have it stick around just long enough to pick up a following of fighter-craft, then disable its weapons and order it to fly low towards a potential "ally". Everyone in tow will blast away indiscriminately, making a right mess of their diplomatic status with the owners of the buildings they level (and eliminating buildings you might otherwise accidentally hit yourself when the next batch of alien ships arrive). The "enemy of my enemy" rule kicks in from there - get everyone raging at your victim, and you'll be left alone (or even revered).

 

It's still pretty hard to keep certain organisations happy with you, due to the randomness of the political system running in the background. Best one can ever hope for is to appease just those groups who offer useful goods/services.

[Space Voyager]

Neat tricks, BB! I remember I used the low level flight as well and I tried to use as much tracking weapons as possible to reduce the damage but I don't think I ever thought about taking Cult to my potential allies.