X-COM: Terror from the Deep and Family

X-COM: TFTD

I remember this game fondly and with fear at the same time.

I originally bought Terror from the Deep, somewhere around 2000, and by that time and due to my age it was one of the most terrifying games I had played, even after trying my hand at Diablo and coming out alive of that one.

It was always pitch dark, and forget about grues because there were deadlier things underwater like a giant jellyfish, some sort of squid or even a T-Rex!

If you couldn't see you couldn't fire at your enemy and your enemy had night vision so in other words it didn't matter how accurate your soldiers were, if you couldn't see it there was a high chance you were going to die.

Sonic weaponry turned you into a puddle of jelly, yes you heard me right. Screw your lasers and other crap, we got weaponry that'll turn your bones into nothing in a second.

Then the screams... sweet mercyful Lord the screams... even though this was a computer game the screaming was so surreal it made me jump once or twice from my chair as I sometimes had the tendency to use headsets so I wouldn't disturb my parents with the infernal blasting, at least that is how they called it.

How was the game though?

Hard, it was damn hard and I loved it for that. I spent hours playing the game and it took me some time to get used to it and actually get somewhere with it, specially since I wanted to understand how the damn thing actually worked and why some of the research trees died at some point which would be later explained to me as a horrible bug that Microprose would never correct.

A lot of people have complaints about this game because it turned out to be a copy cat of X-COM UFO Defenses but since back then I hadn't had the chance to play it, only seen it once and it was in a floppy, a floppy by the gods a floppy, that would be my first and last contact with the original until somewhere around 2002 or 2003 when I would find the X-COM Collection and play the crap out of it... and Apocalypse.

Being fair to the game it was decent, not the best, but you'd have a good time playing it, unless aliens were hiding in one by one spaces in which case you were screwed trying to find the bastard, and the music added a really nice bit to the game which really immersed you into it.

To close out I have only one more memory to deliver here people, one more painful and aggravating memory that has been hiding deep in my cerebral cortex and just a few days back came to me...

T'LETH.

A fair warning for those who haven't played or never finished any of the X-COM games, there will be spoilers delivered on the next few lines.

If you ever, EVER, made it this far in the game you were either super-gifted or a genious. I am not joking, ask anybody who played TFTD and they will tell you about it, getting past "half" the game was already hard enough with the damn multi-level missions like the ships, the relays, the bases, but T'Leth has this piece of my heart and all of my hatred.

Cydonnia, the last mission of X-COM UFO Defenses, was hard if you weren't properly prepared. It had, if I recall correctly, two levels and in the last one you couldn't save. That wasn't so hard as you had good chances of making it at least with more than half your squad, which was approximately twenty something men, into the second part in which it was balls to the wall to find your target and end the menace.

T'Leth on the other hand was a massacre. Not only would you not make it through the first level with your full squad, that was a fact, but you had to go through three levels to get to Cthu-- I mean the Great Sleeping One and destroy the orbs or whatever the hell they were that kept him alive. Mind you, in the last level you couldn't save, mind you the aliens pounded you worst than if it was 1984, mind you the aliens deliver their best of the best on this one, mind you, YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL AND DIE IN THE END. Don't take the last line personal, your soldiers actually fail to return back alive as the explosion from T'Leth is far too powerful and if you ever played Apocalypse you'll know that the Aliens did somehow manage to win the war as the explosion from the giant underwater city contaminated the surface and destroyed a good part of the ozone layer which provokes the construction of Mega-Cities, as known in Apocalypse, in which you'll play in due time.

And there you have it, a little bit of everything rolled in and delivered to you in a pancake.

If you can buy it then do so, or if not you can try your hand at downloading it from the underdogs site.

Enjoy!