History VideoGame / XComApocalypse

* BiologicalWeaponsSolveEverything: Boy do they ever! Once you get access to Toxins you will absolutely wreck the aliens. Toxic guns ignore enemy shields and will drop most aliens with a few hits, enabling you to quickly kill them while leaving their equipment intact to salvage. This is a particularly effective way to get free personal shield generators. For bonus points, as the projectiles are tuned to work on ''alien'' biology they do almost nothing to humans, hybrids, and androids (just a tiny amount of physical impact damage from the dart hitting, at most). So if your toxigun-wielding agents get mindcontrolled or brainsucked, they're far less capable against their former squadmates.

* EnemyMine: Factions have a matrix of relationships, and an attack on given faction will cause those who are more hostile to the target to support the attack. If attacking aliens causes relationships to decrease with other corporations, then they like the aliens a bit more than they like X-COM.

** The only organization you should routinely bribe is Transtellar; if you lose them, your new agents and scientists won't be able to use taxis to get to base (there are ways around this) and you will be unable to transfer equipment between bases, which can be a big problem since you cannot transfer non-researched items manually (other items can be transferred by equipping them to an agent or vehicle).
* EvilerThanThou: The aliens are revealed to have enslaved the surviving Sectoids as livestock - saving these Sectoids will greatly improve your relationship with the Mutant Alliance.

* FunWithAcronyms: The fact that a robots' rights group in ''Apocalypse'' would call itself the "Sentient Engine Liberation Front" clearly indicates that they deserve more credit than they're given.

* HatedByAll: Raid the Cult of Sirius ''constantly''. No-one will care, and you can raid their stashes of drugs and then sell them.

* HeroInsurance: Averted - you pay for the collateral damage.

* JustBeforeTheEnd: The aliens invade from a doomed, volcanic planet in another dimension where most other life has been scorched away by the local star's supernova.

* RobotBuddy: Androids are the [=UAVs=] of ''X-Com: Apocalypse''. An Android's stats are based on its construction and they are not able to improve physically in any way. Though this may appear to limit their usefulness, androids have good starting stats from the moment they are hired and work well as bullet sponges. Also unique to the Androids is their immunity to psionics: Brainsuckers take no interest in attacking them.

** You cannot make an enemy of Transtellar, as they control all public transit. Civilians like your scientists and engineers require public transports to move from base to base, or to bring new hires to your labs. They cannot use your own vehicles for this, which means you can flip off the police, vaporise the assets of the Megacorps and violently depose the government but God help you if you annoy the Taxi drivers.

* UrbanSegregation: Outside of Mega-Primus there are few old, degraded buildings that is all that is left of old Toronto. Hybrids and Androids are forced to live here, while the gangs operate from there.

In the developer's zeal to change their most successful build while retaining the basic concept, ''Apocalypse'' was a game whose reach [[ObviousBeta exceeded its grasp]]. It could have been a lot better if [=MicroProse=] had allotted more time to the developers -- but naturally it could also have been worse. Its influence on the current iteration of the franchise is obvious from the Skirmishers in ''[[VideoGame/XCOM2 War of the Chosen]]''. ''[[VideoGame/XCOMChimeraSquad Chimera Squad]]'' is another game which drifts sideways and takes place in a MegaCity where XCOM serves as a coalition of multi-species police. However, ''Chimera Squad'' is markedly different in theme and scale.

* ObviousBeta:
** Due to budget and publisher issues, ''Apoc'' is a mere shell of what it was going to be. The interface is very clunky and soldiers often respond poorly to your commands.
** The game is pretty stable... as long as you play it in real-time. Turn-based works, but the game definitely was not balanced around it. And since the missions are often TFTD cruise ship-style Bug Hunts, it becomes tiresome quickly. At times, you will spend an hour finding the last alien in a map, and it will end up being a brainsucker on a roof that you can't get to (say, on top of a skyway between two towers).

* TheSyndicate: Three of them.

** Given its similar name and design, the Megapol Lawpistol is likely a reference to the Lawgiver MKII from ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd''.

** Brainsuckers for the... [[ShapedLikeItself Brainsucker Launcher]].

* OffModel: Gollup [[NeverMyFault blames the in-house artists]], who were simply not up to the task of rendering 3-D sprites on an isometric field. This is why humanoid characters look a bit ''off'' when they move around.

* NothingButSkinAndBones: The Skeletoids look like UncannyValley skeletons with skin draped over them.

* DifficultySpike: When the aliens get personal Disruptor Shields they become much harder to kill until you research Toxiguns (which ignore shields). Even worse when they start combining them with personal cloaking devices, making them difficult to spot and more difficult to hit.

** Successfully completing the Dimension Gate Generator Mission in Real Time on the Superhuman level is nigh impossible, due to the sheer volume of reinforcements that flood the building.

** Also, the Entropy Launcher: A bioweapon firing homing missiles which release a compound that will dissolve through armor. It will also dissolve ''you'', should you be unarmored. As an added bonus, they'll make any explosives you're carrying... well, ''explode''.

* MobWar: Rare, but happens sometimes, as there are two major opposing gangs in the city.

* {{Nerf}}: Psionics. Hybrids are poor agents due to their low strength, which also makes them slow as hell in Megapol armor. Psy abilities also take a ridiculously long time to train; you have to be willing to keep your psy-troopers on the bench for a couple of months. Even then, a lot of alien types are completely immune to psionics.

* TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon: The alien dimension is an excessively long version of this trope.

* WeirdTradeUnion: "S.E.L.F." - the Sentient Engine Liberation Front - is an activist group fighting for Androids to have the same rights as humans. X-COM needs to be on good terms with them before they will allow androids to enlist. See also the "Mutant Alliance" which addresses the same needs for hybrid soldiers.
* YouALLLookFamiliar: ''UFO Defense'' only had two sprites for men and women, but every soldier in ''Apoc'' looks the same (some Korean-looking dude), even if they're half-alien or a robot.

* BiologicalWeaponsSolveEverything: Boy do they ever! Once you get access to Toxins you will absolutely wreck the aliens. Toxic guns ignore enemy shields and will drop most aliens with a few hits, enabling you to quickly kill them while leaving their equipment intact to salvage. This is a particularly effective way to get free personal shield generators.

* ShoutOut: Marsec and the M4000 autogun are a reference to the early Gollop brothers game, Laser Squad.

** The aliens' BizarreAlienBiology is just so unnatural and grotesque (for example, the Megaspawn has numerous organic weapons imbedded in its body, and the Spitter has no head or organs, and upon being subjected to a autopsy is revealed to not even have a brain) that it's hard to see just HOW they could possibly all be the same species. [[spoiler:As it turns out, they're not. They're all just various types of (presumably) genetically engineered meat robots for the [[BigBad Micronoids]].]]

* OffModel: Gollup blames the in-house artists, who were simply not up to the task of rendering 3-D sprites on an isometric field. This is why humanoid characters look a bit 'off' when they move around.

* TeleportersAndTransporters: Personal teleporters in ''Apocalypse''. Aliens appear to 'beam down' to buildings on the Cityscape with some form of white tube effect; not to be mistaken for the ominous blue [[spoiler:Micronoid Rain]].

* FictionalPoliticalParty: Major parties of Mega-Primus Senate are NotSoDifferent rivals [[http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Extropians Extropians]] and [[http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Technocrats Technocrats]].

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: Raid the Cult of Sirius ''constantly''. No-one will care, and you can raid their stashes of drugs and then sell them.

* DummiedOut:
** There's a bunch of unused images in the game files relating to [=VIPs=], holding cells for human captives, non-researchable projects like capturing a live Overspawn (best not think about where you'd keep it!) or a couple X-COM inventions, unused alien ship devices, and something called "One Way To Win."[[note]]See here for a lengthy explanation on what this was supposed to be: http://openapoc.org/threads/what-was-the-one-way-to-win.279/[[/note]] The latter was presumably an alternate path to win the game.
** One noteworthy incomplete weapon is an X-COM built weapon that shoots pink disruptor bolts like the alien weapons. If hacked back into the game (via inventory editing or similar means) it doesn't do any damage but its victims are immobilized and cannot physically move from the tile they're in. They can still shoot back, though.
** There was also a weapon designed specifically to destroy Personal Disruptor Shields, which was probably dropped because there already are weapons that simply ignore the Shields, which made it rather redundant.

** You can resort to bribery, but it's not generally not worth the bother. Alliances are expensive and some organizations are "destined" to fight each other, so you can't fight the inevitable for long. If [=MarSec=] has turned hostile and you really just want to stock up on heavy launchers before you wave goodbye to them for good, it might be worth it as a one-off.

** Ground vehicles (motorbikes, roadsters, [=APCs=], tanks, et al). They instantly die whenever the road under them is shot out -- which is always, since the roads are easily destroyed. It doesn't help that roads are repaired only at the end of each day; before long, road vehicles won't be able to connect with many areas. Sorry, no [[https://tvtropes.org/Manga/Akira Shotaro Kaneda]] cosplaying for you. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, road vehicles can't be used to recover crashed [=UFOs=].

** Ground vehicles (motorbikes, roadsters, [=APCs=], tanks, et al). They instantly die whenever the road under them is shot out -- which is always, since the roads are easily destroyed. It doesn't help that roads are repaired only at the end of each day; before long, road vehicles won't be able to connect with many areas. Sorry, no Shotaro Kaneda cosplaying for you. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, road vehicles can't be used to recover crashed [=UFOs=].

** [[spoiler:The [[PupeteerParasite Micronoids]] themselves. They're near identical to [[VideoGame/MetroidFusion the X]], and have been controlling all the aliens simply by existing in their bloodstream.]]

Politics still play a role, with each neighborhood being owned by a seperate conglomerate. Each company has their own staff, budget, weapons, and vehicles. If a faction becomes your enemy, they deny you any special services and products they would otherwise provide. Hostile factions may also attack and raid one another, depending on their philosophy. Players can join in on the fun, too: Fed up with a company? Then [[CorporateWarfare destroy it beyond all recovery]]. (They need funding too, and if you hollow out their buildings and raid them...) Everything in the city is [[EverythingBreaks destructible]]. After a big fight, whole districts can become one giant landfill.

In the developer's zeal to change their most successful build while still retaining the basic concept, ''Apocalypse'' was a game whose reach [[ObviousBeta exceeded its grasp]]. It could have been a lot better if [=MicroProse=] had allotted more time to the developers -- but naturally it could also have been worse. Its influence on the current iteration of the franchise is obvious from the Skirmishers in ''[[VideoGame/XCOM2 War of the Chosen]]''. ''[[VideoGame/XCOMChimeraSquad Chimera Squad]]'' is another game which drifts sideways and takes place in a MegaCity where XCOM serves as a coalition of multi-species police. However, ''Chimera Squad'' is markedly different in theme and scale.

* ActionBomb: The Poppers.

* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: Civilian vehicles are cheap, and a swarm of them can carry all of your agents to their destination. You'll still only be able to take one air or ground vehicle into an alien site, though. An ''X-COM'' tradition, perhaps?

** Ground vehicles (motorbikes, roadsters, [=APCs=], tanks, et al). They instantly die whenever the road under them is shot out -- which is always, since the roads are easily destroyed. It doesn't help that roads are repaired ''extremely'' slowly (at the end of each week); before long, road vehicles won't be able to connect with many areas. Sorry, no Shotaro Kaneda cosplaying for you. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, road vehicles can't be used to recover crashed [=UFOs=].

** Psionics, while not useless, are simply not efficient. Especially if you raid [=MarSec=] and grab a couple of mind shields. Stun grenades better than PSI stun, and panic is largely irrelevant. Psi Troops need to start their training early and can only be improved by [=3x=] their base stat which is why only Hybrids make good Psi Troops. However, Hybrids kind of suck due to their poor strength, which makes them slow as hell in Megapol armor.

* BlobMonster: Micronoid Aggregates. [[spoiler:They're really how the Brainsuckers take over their victims]].

** Megapol Armor: In a notable contrast to the prior XCOM games, the starting armor in this one is actually quite good. It provides a very high degree of protection against the starting conventional weapons. However, this can backfire, as it means if a squad member is taken over by a brain sucker, it can take a lot of shots to kill them.

** The Marsec 4000 machine gun doesn't do a lot of damage and it's accuracy is rather poor, however it's a common weapon and readily available unlike the plasma gun and power sword. Also it has the best rate of fire especially if you dual-wield it, this futuristic Tommy Gun can last you until Devastator Cannons and Toxiguns are commonplace.

* CripplingOverspecialization: The Hybrids. They have great psychic powers and slightly greater reflexes than human soldiers, but are inferior in all other ways. Even worse, they improve their physical stats slowly, and you must assign them to a gym if you want to train their low strength -- i.e. they will either be unable to carry much, or they won't be able to train their psychic powers in the psy-gym. Finally, they need a special device to use their psychic powers, which means one of their hands will always be full -- i.e. they're usually restricted to using pistols, or suffering speed penalties. All that said, they have the ''potential'' to become X-Com's most powerful agents; it's just that getting there requires literally ''months'' of in-game time as well as careful planning and supervision on the player's part.

* EarlyGameHell: The start of the game can be a nightmare, particularly when playing in turn based mode. You'll have to deal with a lot of brain suckers since the early game anthropods are almost always armed with brain sucker launchers. In turn based mode, most of the time the only way to kill brain suckers before it latches on to someone is with reaction shots. The problem is your team full of rookies will have very limited time units and terrible accuracy, meaning most of their shots will miss. Have fun watching your entire team miss an incoming brain sucker or popper before it latches on to someone or blows your squad to bits. Later game becomes a lot easier as your team gains experience with reaction shots and accuracy. Also brain suckers are encountered less often since later game enemies mostly switch to more conventional weapons.

** The only organization you should routinely bribe is Transtellar; if you lose them, your new agents and scientists won't be able to use taxis to get to base.

* InfinityMinusOneSword: The androids are strong, tough, fast, very hard to tire out, almost impossible to make panic, and ''completely and utterly immune'' to two potentially devastating forms of attack; Brainsuckers, and Mind Control. Early and late-game, they make very dependable soldiers- but the price for this dependability is ''glacial'' stat-growth (so slow that most players will insist they have no stat growth at all) and inability to learn out of combat using combat facilities. Human soldiers will eventually come to outclass androids, but only after months of training and (potentially lethal) battlefield experience.

* ShoutOut: Marsec and the M4000 autogun are a refrence to the early Gollop brothers game, Laser Squad.

** Marsec Armor: In a notable contrast to the prior XCOM games, the starting armor in this one is actually quite good. It provides a very high degree of protection against the starting conventional weapons. However, this can backfire, as it means if a squad member is taken over by a brain sucker, it can take a lot of shots to kill them.

* CityOfWeirdos: The city is divided between the government, Megapol (city police and weapons manufacturer), Transtellar (who supply the city with elerium from the mines in our solar system), Evonet (who supply the city with power) and many many others including several gangs and a cult called "Cult of Sirius" which believes the aliens to be some kind of saviours.

* SequelDifficultyDrop:
** In general, your agents have more [=TUs=] and consume less, so you should be able to [[http://i.imgur.com/eBI2Elj.gif lay down a sheet of continuous fire.]] Note that the aliens can also do this. Or rather, they ''could'', were their AI not so laughably broken. The aliens will just run around in circles without firing while in plain view of your units.
** You have access to armor from the get-go, and you start off with a rather large selection compared to original ''X-COM'', much of which will remain useful even late in the game. In fact, it takes the aliens a good bit of effort to damage you, save for things like hyperworms or poppers. The only real threat early on is the brain sucker.
* SequelDifficultySpike:
** ''Apoc'' expanded the geoscape phase of the game, but the 'air war' requires constant micromanagement of a fleet of vehicles. UFO attacks come in waves ([=5+ UFOs=] at a time), so ganging up interceptors on your targets is necessary.
** Your bases can still be raided, and unlike the original ''X-Com'', your scientists and engineers are now targets of opportunity. Also, since your bases are basically built at the basement level of above-ground structures, aliens and enemy factions can simply bomb them into the ground to purge one of your bases (which also results in a score penalty for you thanks to extensive damage done to [[NoHeroDiscount city property]]). In ''Apocalypse'', you'll have to consider the above ground structure as well as the basement layout when building new bases.

* BrokenBridge: If you piss off the Taxi company, you probably lose, because your newly-hired soldiers, scientists and engineers can't figure out how to walk to your base.