![]() Hopefully that hasn’t entirely ruined your memories of UFO. I was too young and naïve to realise I’d inadvertently made it look like they were noshing each other off. To do so, they had to spend eight action points, which meant making them kneel in front of one another, and then stand up again. (Tangent within a tangent - during quiet moments, usually when hunting down the last alien on a map, couples would occasionally smooch. Dogs lying down with cats, and then making out with the cats one last time as they bled out covered in plasma burns. Grizzled veteran Trent Reznor cuddling a gerbil. When every other barrel o’ names had been scraped to its very bottom, I gave new soldiers the names of my pets. The whole thing became even more creepy when I ran out of celebrity names and started using friends. That one guy called with the Guile haircut (Trent Reznor) was totally in love with the new recruit (Billy Corgan), and the mission became personal when Corgan died in the middle of an orchard without a single kill or time unit to his name. I used to write what was essentially fan fiction about the lives and deaths of my soldiers, filling in the background of their lives before the invasion and (oh god yes it’s true) lingering on the romances that sprang up between missions. Melodrama! Turns out Xenonauts brings out the giddy diarist in me just as the UFO: Enemy Unknown did way back when. He’s only killed abstract shapes framed in a scope and with their own crosshair to bear, but he’s seen death up close, ragged and steaming. He’s a sharpshooter, a sniper, a death-dealing veteran of two campaigns against brutal insurgents. The squad have taken up position, ready to blow seven shades of reconstituted genetic material out of whatever freak opens the door, but Toshio has been told to hang back. It’s his first time in the field since recruitment and everything is going smoothly but a sense of déjà vu washed over him just now as the downed UFO came into sight. And some anecdotes about intra-squad romance. ![]() Several days of playing later, I have the answer. With its loyal approach to the original design, Xenonauts doesn’t step on XCOM’s toes, but I wondered if it could succesfully muscle in on the original game's territory. Following a successful Kickstarter and a period in Early Access, the game has been available for almost a month now. Xenonauts is a spiritual successor to UFO: Enemy Unknown, which means that it’s also a spiritual successor to many of the most tense and glorious hours of my teenage years.
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