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Xenonauts

Goldhawk Interactive · Jun 17, 2014

PC

Rating pending

About

Xenonauts is a strategy game in which you control a multi-national military organisation defending a Cold War-era Earth from alien invasion, using small squads of persistent soldiers to eliminate the extraterrestrials and recover their technology in turn-based ground combat. A detailed strategic layer allows you to co-ordinate the defence of the planet, using your interceptors to shoot down UFOs and researching captured artefacts to learn about your foes and unlock new combat equipment to use on your missions.

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Scores by platform

PC

Critic 7.9 (9 critics) · Gamer 8.6

8.0

Critic reviews

  • IGN

    Dan Stapleton · Aug 06, 2014

    7.8
    Xenonauts makes a noble effort to replicate the brilliant and tense style of old-school X-COM’s multi-layered tactics and strategy. It even breathes new life into the ground and air battles with some original ideas, albeit with a bland art style. However, Xenonauts has major issues with conveying crucial information, and fails - or rather, makes little effort - to smooth over its interface or otherwise make itself palatable for anyone who isn’t already intimately familiar with the 1994 original.
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  • GameSpot

    Daniel Starkey · Jul 02, 2014

    8.0
    Xenonauts is an unlikely success, a challenging clone of a beloved classic with enough tweaks to entice fans and newcomers alike. It might look rather cheap at first glance, but underneath that rough exterior lies something special. Breaking the game down and looking at all of its pieces in isolation would do the game a disservice, because every facet helps focus the true luster of the whole.
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  • PC Gamer

    Ian Birnbaum · Jun 21, 2014

    8.5
    If you're an old fan of the X-COM series, of course, forget about finding your old install disks or putting up with twenty-year-old graphics—playing Xenonauts is the best way to relive those glory days with deeper systems. If you're new to X-COM, Xenonauts will let you explore the series' classic roots with added depth and details.
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  • Euro Gamer

    Paul Dean · Jul 03, 2014

    7.0
    This game rewards the most patient of tacticians. If that's you - if you're the person with enough time units of your own - it will certainly satisfy. Xenonauts knows exactly who its audience is, exactly what it's aiming for and, while it may never achieve a wider appeal, it will capture that audience in a very familiar act of alien abduction.
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  • Game Watcher

    Michael Johnson · Jun 20, 2014

    8.0
    Xenonauts is a faithful modernization of a classic. It retains the features that made X-COM such a tense and memorable game, with base invasions and a gigantic open-ended campaign of depth and freedom. If Firaxis’ revamped take on the series felt a little too directed and linear for you, then Xenonauts is likely to delight. By removing the fat and giving us a non-headache inducing UI, the games strengths are allowed to shine through and they remained undimmed by the passage of time.
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  • 4players.de

    Benjamin Schmädig · Jun 06, 2014

    7.8
    Die Ähnlichkeit ist verblüffend: Xenonauts gleicht dem 20 Jahre alten X-Com so sehr – es erscheint absurd, dass dies keine offizielle Neuauflage ist. Vom Aufbau und Verwalten mehrerer Stützpunkte über die freie Entwicklung der Einheiten bis hin zum fordernden taktischen Rundenkampf: Das Independentspiel übernimmt das Original im Kern unverändert, entstaubt seine Bestandteile nur geringfügig. Einmal mehr forsche ich nach neuen Technologien, um den überlegenen Invasoren irgendwann auf Augenhöhe zu begegnen.
    Read review from 4players.de (opens in a new tab)

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