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Okay there is some posts about misc tactical squad games here now, so this is a small poll to see witch one gets your heart.

If I forgot your favorite, to bad.

My favorite is Fallout Tactics, cool story diverse missions and great weapons.

Your heresy has been noted, and referred to the Inquisitorial Court. All shall bow before the Most Holy X-COM.

Faram wrote:Okay there is some posts about misc tactical squad games here now, so this is a small poll to see witch one gets your heart.

If I forgot your favorite, to bad.

My favorite is Fallout Tactics, cool story diverse missions and great weapons.

Goddamnit! You just had to list both Fallout: Tactics and Laser Squad in the same poll! Now I can't choose! I still have the version of Laser Squad produced for the PC in 1992. And I think Fallout: Tactics is an excellent squad game (provided one completes the process of mentally divorcing Tactics from the rest of the Fallout universe.)

Silent storm, because it´s only squadlevel turnbased game ,what I have ever played.

There can be only one...XCOM forever.. I still play it..

XCOM is of course near and dear (played it a couple of months ago for the 5 bilionth time), however I'd say the overall title goes to JA2, but not on tactical system merits as much as atmosphere.

I voted Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. The mix of RPGness lights my fire, so to speak. While it lacks the shiny destructable terrain of SS, it makes up for it with its gratuitous violence and gore, not to mention sense of humor.

Never having given significant attention to the two Fallout RPGs, I have to ask why fans of it are so disdainful of Tactics?

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:I voted Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. The mix of RPGness lights my fire, so to speak. While it lacks the shiny destructable terrain of SS, it makes up for it with its gratuitous violence and gore, not to mention sense of humor.

Never having given significant attention to the two Fallout RPGs, I have to ask why fans of it are so disdainful of Tactics?

Because you could name Fallout Tactics into Apocalypse Tactics...change the color scheme, and you would have the same thing.

This thing was a pure marketing to grab people by name and name alone. The game itself wasn't bad, but the fact they used the name and almost nothing of the world was so pointless and insulting to fans.

I vote worms world party

Jagged Alliance 2, bitches!!!!!

If for no other reason than that it had a German schoolteacher named "Buns".....

Seriously, it seems to be the most interactive of the games listed in terms of enviorment. And your soldiers have personality.

X-Com was awesome, but it was something of a debut for the genre. JA2 is simply more sophisticated.

All SHALL bow before the mighty Blaster Launcher, true, but otherwise....

"Jagged Alliance pwnz you, mon!"

*cocks dual Colts*

*pops neck* JA2 might be a more detailed game in a TACTICAL sense, but the rest of the game pales in comparison. Whee, random sectors, some containing towns. Um...yay?

Lots of all-time classics here to choose from, but I have to give the nod to X-Com. Destructable terrain, destructable buildings (even if you could destroy the bottom floor and the top would still be myseriously floating), both of which were actually useful in gameplay. For instance, if you knew there were aliens hiding in a wheat field, an incendiary weapon could light it on fire and smoke them out. Or you could laser a hole in the wall to use as an entrance to a building. For all the infinite greatness that is Silent Storm's destructable environment system, it doesn't really play a big part in gameplay.

The feeling of paranoia in X-Com is unmatched, as well, and it makes you afraid to commit your best guys to the action because no matter how good they are, a heavy plasma gun can potentially take them out in one shot.

The research was very well done. The world map was fantastic. The graphics were simple, well-drawn, and still look nice today. There were a variety of very different, but viable tactics you can use. I consider it to be among the greatest games of all time.

Close behind X-Com is JA2, and also JA: Deadly Games. I don't think I need to gush about them, since there's no shortage of gushing JA fans on the net.

I do have to give an honourable mention to Fallout: Tactics, though, simply because I was surprised it got so many votes. To hear a lot of people tell it, the lead programmer was Satan himself and the demonic members of the dev team had all personally pissed in their cornflakes. And it wasn't fair, because the game was fantastic. It may not have had destructable environments or most of the other standout features of X-Com or JA2 (Silent Storm hadn't come out when it was released, so it's unfair to compare them), but the presentation was fantastic, the missions were varied and interesting, the real-time system was well done, it was easy to get your squad to do what you want by setting aggressiveness level, and the puzzle-based nature of some of the missions were really unique. I think you can still find copies of this game for not much money, something I expect to change within a few years as the price of eBay copies skyrocket.

I go with Fallout Tactics too. I couldn't get a grip on JA2, tried only briefly one of the XCom (don't know which one) and none of the other ones.

*pops neck* JA2 might be a more detailed game in a TACTICAL sense, but the rest of the game pales in comparison. Whee, random sectors, some containing towns. Um...yay?

As opposed to the highly tactical way the alien bases were situated, carefully requiring detailed tactics and expansion to get to. Or the highly complex yet unrandom routes alien ships took, allowing you to predict patterns with some thought.

Oh, wait......


X-Com was as random as they come, aside from "follow the supply ships".

At least you needed to get your town-conquering order nailed down in JA2.

X-Com, far above all others.

Behind that is JA. Then the rest come along in a disordered shambles.

Faqa wrote:Jagged Alliance 2, bitches!!!!!
If for no other reason than that it had a German schoolteacher named "Buns".....

Um-Buns was danish.
While I prefer X-COM overall, where turn-based squad combat is concerned JA2 has it beat, possibly excepting the dearth of CQB scenarios. Plus, I liked the however superficial roleplaying elements.
As for FO:T, that was a nice idea atrociously executed. The engine as implemented sucked donkey balls, and the difficulty depending in no small part on the apparently random availability of useful equipment sure as hell didn't help.
Mind you I DID like the graphics.

1: X-Com It's just too classic.
2: Jagged Alliance 2 personality, and fun
3: Silent Storm ragdolls! ragdolls! ragdolls! And bugs.

Darwin wrote: 3: Silent Storm ragdolls! ragdolls! ragdolls! And bugs.

And blowing out walls. First game in WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to long to let you do that.

X-COM was tense. It was the mood. At any second, your squad could be wiped out if you didn't plan right or was unlucky. If you succeed, you may get a weapon that turns the tide of the war. If you fail, your lead squad could be decimated.

Or, at any time, a full invasion force could come to take over France. Do you have the ability to intercept them in time?

Hehe. Brings back warm memories of my most successful X-COM strategy. The number one killer of X-COM operatives (Behind the Blaster Launcher, of course) is the common door. Ergo, whenever possible, I would use whatever explosive means at my disposal to avoid having to go through them. If I suspect an alien is hiding in a building, I blow the entire wall into rubble with a rocket. If there's anything revealed, or there are too many rooms on the inside that could harbor an alien, I fire a few more and sanitize it completely.

Yeah, my motto for X-com:

Cleanse. Purge. Kill.

Start at one side of the map with autocannons loaded with HE and slowly advance, firing the whole time.

X-com of course reguarding enemy snipers, and my power as a sniper.... Well there was a standard quip of my highflying missile/bomb launchers (Oswald was a Pussy) within my friends.

Jagged Alliance = Excellent
X-Com = Excellent + excessive fireposer

X-Com wins

It's all such a great shame.

X-COM has a great strategic model which gives it great depth, although frankly I think this poll should be about exclusively the tactical part.

JA2 has a neat story/strategic bit, and does (tactically) almost everything X-COM does better. It doesn't have destroyable terrain, however. No more floating barns!

SS has a great tactical engine, it's realtime 3d, it's got physics, buildings actually collapse, and there aren't any 'blaster bombs'. It does, however, have power armour and aliens. Icky.

So if someone wants to make a combination, that'd be sweet. I think it's worth mentioning that X-COM is essentially unplayable these days, since it looks like ass. JA2 is way old (although at least you can get new frontends to change the res) but holds up better. I don't think there's much to choose in the actual tactical elements of the games, so SS wins with it's massively superior graphics, physics and animation. X-COM had such neat atmosphere...

X-COM. The destructible environments, base management, cool plot concept, and superior graphics. Yeah, that's right, I said superior graphics. Why? Because you could tell just by looking at someone what kind of gun they were carrying in X-COM. Not so in Jagged Alliance 2.