full text: https://milkandhate.wordpress.com/2024/01/28/openxcom-terror-from-the-deep/ tts of the full text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fehyO3NNmq4 I did not play X-COM: Terror From the Deep per se, because i've played OpenXCom: Terror From the Deep instead. Not like that has stopped most of the reviewers of this game. Most of them didn't even disclose it. But this is just a re-skin of the original game anyway. Terror from the Deep that is sold on Steam with DosBox and 2Kās config, comes without aspect correction, stretched to widescreen and with a disgusting blur filtre. Itās faster to just nuke this disgusting config and generate a new one, with no soap and with aspect correction. And yes, the game needs aspect correction, even if the developer responsible for geoscape was a lazy arse again. Saying that geoscape proves that the game is widescreen is the same as saying that in-game UFOpaedia proves that this game is wider than ultra-widescreen. All the weaponsā sprites are rotated horizontally and then squished for no reason at extreme ratio. Even in widescreen 16/10 it doesnāt get any better. Battlescape without aspect correction looks like arse. Mythos Games showed the superiority of UFO over Laser Squad, the way Sega Mega Drive 2 did over Famicom ā by using bigger, more detailed sprites, with lower FoV. As if Famicom couldnāt use bigger sprites. But Sega did it in 1988. And UFO is from 1994. Battlescape always looked uncomfortable. Itās chunky, and the claustrophobic FoV just lowers playability. It was not looking good compared to the contemporaries, despite the lighting system. And now Terror from the Deep, being just a re-skin, with barely any changes, had to compete against the 1995 games. Against the realistic C&C with big FoV, against WC2 with its genre-defining interface, against Jagged Alliance. They have unified all the assets. The original game started with a comic book intro, had Guile hair, yet featured many very detailed pictures and had many morbid scenes and assets in it. This game starts with a new CGI cutscene and all of it adheres to the lovecraftian horrors of the deep theme. The autopsy art is way weaker than the explicit images from UFO, but its dark tone is coherent with the gameās theme. All the equipment has blue tint during the underwater missions. The art-style and the underwater theme are great. I donāt think i saw it anywhere else besides Stirring Abyss. The levels ālook greatā they are way more detailed and visually complex. But to see them you have to use that now-less-useless roof button. The hills with nooks and crannies are obscured by fog of war and black voids in a very patchy pattern. Itās very detrimental to readability and the fog of war looks bad on rugged terrain. The levels being so complex is detrimental to the gameplay. This is way worse than forests in UFO. So much verticality is bad for lines of fire, but now the enemies have creatures which shoot in an arŃ. And it makes everything longer, with the last enemy hiding somewhere on the map in some pit between a hill and two trees. The terror missions are way bigger, with even more rooms and buildings. The ships do look good, even if for some reason itās very hard to remove the fog of war from the animated mapsā edges. But these are two-stage missions, four storeys each. And the cruise ships have many tens of rooms, each with a dedicated closed bathroom. On artefact sites the doorsā sprites are indistinguishable from the walls. The colonies also feature two stages. A smaller base above, and a giant sprawling labyrinth below. The animated tiles are alive and pulsating, the walls are decorated with vaginas with balls and clitorises with peeholes. But they are truly giant, separated into small sections with walls and doors everywhere. They are fully perforated with stairs and elevators, any turn a crab can jump out right behind you and pinch your posterior. If your doods stand on one elevator to make it inaccessible there are still 2-3 more nearby. I thought old colonies were big. But these are insane. If they were a rare sight it would be fine. But they appear since the first week and there are a lot of them. And in both phases everyone is using blaster launchers. You dying or not dying this turn is a roll of a dice. The first stage is filled with mind-reading tasoth, the second with pinching crabs. People say the second game is very difficult. And it can actually feel difficult if you to try to play it like a separate game. Your starting equipment entirely sucks. Many enemies are plain immune to it. The starting missions are filled with enemies which can tank multiple harpoon shots. Any one can one shot your dood. You suffer from PSI attacks before you even research your first gun. There are terror sites everywhere. All civilians just run towards the mermaids to die, and to send your score into negatives. Thereās already an alien colony nearby, and even upgraded guns can barely deal any damage. So you have to play it like a sequel or an add-on pack, and use your knowledge of the first game. You start with a bigger transport and a bigger team, and the first thing to do is to hire more goons to fill the ship. It is still a turn-based tactical game built around spotters. And this time you can climb your dropship for better sniping positions. In this game you are very likely to knock out an alien for free with your attacking guns. Which speeds things up, especially if you are prepared. But also it means that during the long end-game battles the knocked out enemies will get up and you will have to comb the whole map again. Half the enemies will at least turn into civilians. But the ones with melee attacks will pinch you in the butt when you least expect it. If the enemy doesnāt scream dying itās not dead. The aliens are equipped with heavy plasma sonic cannons from the beginning, so hire more scientists and research a sonic cannon at the first opportunity. Once you get your sonic cannons you instantly fall back into the UFO late-game routine. Terror from the Deep doesnāt feel like an insane chore anymore, where every enemy takes 15 hits to kill. Itās still a bit annoying though, with just how much RNG matters and with the amount of enemies.
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