Been playing this lately, brings back some old, old memories.  I wish someone would do a true sequel to this and include multiplayer support.  Back in the day, my friend and I would do ghetto hotseat multiplayer, each taking control of half the squad on missions.

The only other game we did that with was the first Civilization, and they eventually wisened up and put Multiplayer support in sequels

I wish that they would remake them, better graphics but still the same gameplay.... hours I spent defeating those bloody aliens...

A spiritual successor to X-Com is the UFO series ( Aftermath, Aftershock & Afterlight ) Good graphics and gameplay but X-Com has just that little bit more. Aftermath is the best I reckon the other 2 not too bad but buggy...

im very close to agreeing on choosing apocalypse as my all time favorite as well. I just played through it again a couple of minths ago, and no other game has come even close to reproducing the same flow of battle.

There are quite a few other games on the same vein.

Fist there are the commercially made UFO: Aftershock, UFO: Aftermath and UFO: Afterlight, which are pretty decent.

Then there's the open source UFO: Alien Invasion which is free software and very nice to play (plus it gets improved all the time and this will never go away as long as there's a community around it)

Project Xenocide is one that tries to recreate the same exact game that XCOM was (but with improved graphics). It's free software as well but after 6 years of development It looks like it will never finish.

And then there's Microsoft's own UFO:Extraterrestrials which I haven't played but I read is supposed to have the same storyline as XCOM and the same gameplay.

i loved the first Xcom; UFO defense..

only played on basic difficulty (and it was HARD.. and FUN)so many fond memories of my troops getting utterly owned,demoralised, blaster'bombed, zombified, and me managing to get a victory with a bunch of rookie soldiers..

Or when i invaded mars with 4 basic tanks and two soldiers.. and won. losing only the tanks at the surface combat.

I want one.. like the first, but with an user interface that dont make my eyes bleed and an alien force that dont have magical factories that build battleships by the hundred for free at the endgame..

I have the original version when it was called UFO-Enemy Unknown on the Commodore Amiga

While not involving aliens a great game in its' own right is Silent Storm and the sequel Sentinels. Imagine X-com tactics with teh ability to take out half a building.

Very cool tactical game. Combined realtime/turnbased kind of a mix of X-Com and Jagged Alience. It uses the havoc engine and you can get some very realistic battles. I heard an enemy on the 3rd floor (I was on the 1st) so I had my heavy weapons guy shoot up through the floor and get him. It aslo did enough damage to the floor the body came crashing down to teh 1st floor.

I was playing Silent Storm yesterday and shot a guy with my handgun point blank in the chest, head, arm and then 1 more in the chest and he was still standing! My last shot was in the leg which caused him to fall back and out a window to his death but of that I am not sure. I lost site of him after he fell through the window.
I sent all my guys/gals to the basement of the house and had them line up against the far wall facing the stairs. I could hear the Nazis on teh floor above walking around and one was coming down the stairs. In the corner by the stairs there was 2 barrols of gas so instead of waiting for the soldiers to come down the stairs I shot the barrols. *KA-BLAM!!* i took out the stairs and about 1/2 of the floor above killing the Nazis on the 2nd floor as it dissapeared and they fell to their deaths.

The first trainging mission instead of shooting through the window at the soldier I aimed for the propane (??) tanks against the far wall and it blew out 1/3 the wall and roof. The blast threw the soldier flying through the window and head first into a telephone pole across the road.

Lol at lugge....you keep popping up in the same places I do (you are just more nickname loyal then me )

yeah, I took the step to try it out.    I don't know what all the features are yet ;   I have just been playing by finding what buttons DO work and  using only them (like when the aircraft nears aliens, there are like 10 buttons, and I only have found a use for like 2 of them)