Game Moment # 3 - X-Com
So there I was, hunting for aliens at a UFO crash site (crashed because my fighter had shot it down, of course). The scientists back at the base needed a LIVE alien to study. They'd learned all they could from autopsies on the corpses I brought back. But the request was problematic - to take them alive, you had to stun them, and at this point that meant getting close to them with a shock-rod.

When these guys were shooting blasters twice as deadly as our rifles from dozens of yards away, hidden in shadows and orchards and old farm houses, how exactly were we supposed to do that?

The game this time, of course, is X-Com (titled in the UK as "UFO Enemy Unknown" or something like that). Now, modern game design thought would tell you that it's unwise to mix a high-level strategic game with a low-level tactical combat game. Just like mixing action sequences in adventure games - you'll end up annoying everyone but the subset of people who like both kinds of games. But in X-Com, it worked beautifully. The strategic game gave you a chance to breathe and relax a bit from the relentless, methodical pace of the squad-level combat, where one wrong move could kill your "squaddie" - possibly taking his entire squad with him. After all, the aliens seemed to take unholy delight in shooting soldiers who had pulled a pin out of their grenade, but hadn't yet been able to throw it. The grenade would land at the feet of the disabled soldier, blowing up him and everyone who happened to be near him.

The strategic game had you building bases (which could come under alien attack later in the game, allowing you to fight in the bases you built); recruiting soldiers, scientists, and engineers; researching the aliens and their technology; mass-producing the rewards of your research for resale to help fund your operation; and trying to prioritize targets based on your needs for international funding. Oh, yeah, and shooting down UFOs and sending your soldiers out to crash sites - or landing sites - or the dreaded "terror sites" where the UFOs launched an attack against a major city.

When your troops would land, the game would switch to a "tactical" mode, which was really the guts of the game. Your soldiers ("squaddies") moved in a turn-based fashion, though you could always reserve some of your action capability for "opportunity fire" so they could fight back on the alien's turn. Like a roleplaying game, your squaddies improved in skill (and rank) as they had more combats under their belt. Keeping them all alive to use that experience was a trick.

The map gradually appeared as you explored it. Once you'd seen an area, it was no longer blacked out, but you couldn't see enemies unless at least one of your squaddies could currently see them. And if you could see the aliens, it meant the aliens could see you. And shoot you. Which they did with great malice. Oftentimes the aliens shot from cover, so you still couldn't see them - you could only see the path of the blaster shot as it flew towards you. This led to a tactic called "reconnaissance by fire." One of your squaddies with a rocket launcher would open fire in the general vicinity of where the shot originated. If you heard the alien's death scream, it meant you got one. Sometimes you'd get lucky and hear two screams.

So prior to this particular mission, my research from the strategic part of the game was stymied because I hadn't brought in a live alien in for my scientists to study. I had a couple of shock rods carried by my soldiers on each mission, but there was just NO WAY we could get close enough to use them. I had TRIED, but I had lost squaddies each time. I wasn't sure how we'd pull it off. This mission was no different. My squaddies had had a brief firefight just out of the shuttle - as usual - and they were now slowly covering each other moving forward to sweep the area for more aliens (and to find the enemy ship).

A shot came from the nearby farmhouse. It was impossible to tell, but it LOOKED like it came from the bedroom window on the top floor, but it was impossible to tell exactly. I brought a squadie with a rocket-launcher into position and fired a rocket through the window. There was an explosion, and I heard an alien make some kind of noise. It didn't sound like a death-scream, though. More like a sigh. Suspicious that the alien was still alive and capable of killing more squaddies, I slowly had them make their way into the house. And there... on the bottom floor... was an unconscious alien.

Apparently he'd been hiding on the ROOF. The explosion had destroyed part of the roof (where it had been standing) and the floor below. The alien had fallen two stories and been knocked unconscious - purely by accident. My scientists had their live alien to study, and none of my squaddies had died.

It's not a way you were SUPPOSED to accomplish this task, but hey - I'll take what I can get! That's the joy of unscripted games - sometimes things just "happen". It's sometimes called emergent gameplay. It can be a pain in the butt for a developer, because these "open" games can be harder to debug and balance. But boy, do they have payoffs!

UPDATE:
Mavlok the Midnightman reminded me of something. Where WERE you when you were playing these games - and what memories do they conjure up?

My first child was born while I was still playing this game (eleven years ago). We were living in a pretty tiny rented home at the time in Provo Utah, and the room that had formerly been "my office" was converted to the baby's room. But we had no other place to move my computer out to, so I just had one corner of the baby's room.

My wife and I had a deal worked out. She's a morning person, I'm a night owl. So my wife would go to bed at something like 8:00 at night, I'd go to bed at sometime around midnight. We both had to be up at around 6:00 or so (but then I had an hour's commute by bus each way, where I got much of my sleep). The rule was that if the baby woke up before 1:00 AM, *I* was the one to get her up, see if she needed changing, bring her in to Mommy if she was hungry, etc. After 1:00, it was my wife's job.

So I found myself in the baby's room late at night, all lights turned out except for the glow of the monitor, playing X-Com (turn-based means not having to hit pause in an emergency). The weird, creepy background music was barely audible. And I'd keep checking behind me to look in awe at the tiny sleeping form, realizing, "Holy COW, I'm a daddy!"

Labels: Game Moments, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:38 PM (Permalink)