I’m trying to get a list of games I would call “X-COM like shooters”. Preferably games in the last 10 years. What I mean by this is, you control your squad as they follow you around, telling them to take cover behind certain points, or move to certain positions. Or at the very least, a squad follows you around.
So far, newer games I am aware of:
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands (very versatile, can tell them to go to specific points, point out specific targets in stealth mode, they get into vehicles with you, etc. Probably best in class).
Older games:
Star Wars: Republic Commandos (can tell them to go to fixed positions, premade on the maps) Star Wars: Battlefront 1 and 2 (originals) (very limited, Follow Me and Unfollow Me only)
I hope there is more to this list, my guess is I just haven’t been exposed to them.
Mass Effect. Also the Brothers in Arms series. And there’s one more series (with two games) that was even supposedly used for training in the US Army, but I can’t remember its name. As soon as I do I’ll let you know.
The earliest one I can think of is Aliens: The Computer Game. It consisted of a number of different minigames. In one of them, four of your colonial marines are spread out in the mazelike corridors of the LV-426 atmosphere processor. When they are alone, they become surrounded by xenomorphs. When there are more than one of them in a screen, the aliens don’t attack. Therefore, it would behoove you to get all of your squad to rendezvous in one place before finding an evac point. You can only control one marine at a time, though, and there’s no map of the place, and your comrade’s vitals are spiking as they’re coming for him, and…
I think I rented this (original XBox, maybe?) and I liked the movement and ordering mechanics. Wasn’t the recent Homefront game made by the same people? Never played it, does it have squad ordering mechanics?
Oh, I just thought of another one. The Outfit. XBox 360 exclusive (I think). That one was great, you could call in vehicles, place MG and AT guns exactly where you wanted them, and had multiple squad orders, like close in and melee, attack, move to an area, etc.
If you like fantasy Xcom, there’s Fort Triumph. I bought it on the Steam sale last week and essentially it’s very much HOMM on the strategic layer and Xcom for the tactical battles complete with physics and destructible/burnable objects. Your wizards can set stuff fire, knock trees over onto enemies to kill and stun, etc. It’s fantastic but it’s in EA and only Act 1 of the campaign is out. Act 2 is supposed to come out any time now. There’s a nice procedural skirmish map generator and it is in the process of being beefed up in the next update. I asked the devs about it and here’s what they said:
The upcoming update (around a week from now) expands on the skirmish mode, allowing both local multiplayer and playing with/against multiple AIs on much larger (procedural) maps. This also includes the ability to configure how many neutral towns there would be).
On the update after that, we’re planning on improving how the skill tree works, which will also include adding more abilities and improving/changing some existing ones that we feel that don’t work.
So, it’s not ready for prime time yet but when it releases I expect it to be very good.
That’s closer to X-com than what @Guap is looking for imo.
Of all the games I tried I probably enjoyed the old Ghost Recon (first 3 I think) games the most, one of the first that made me feel like a proper tacticool badass. Mission variety was pretty great as well. I did enjoy some of the Advanced Warfighter games later too but the first GRs are the real deal.
OMFG. You can’t just drop a bomb like this with Black Friday just behind us. Talk about poor timing! Now I’ll have to wait days, maybe even a couple weeks to see if it goes on sale for the next holiday.
In the meantime, I’ll have to go read up on this sucker.
