X-COM: Apocalypse

X-COM: Apocalypse is the third X-COM game, made by Julian Gollop's Mythos Games and released by MicroProse in 1997. The whole campaign takes place in a single city, Mega-Primus, built after the earlier wars. Aliens arrive through dimension gates, and X-COM must defend the city from them, while dozens of organisations inside it, corporations, gangs, cults and the government, pursue their own interests.

The tactical battles can be played in turns, like the earlier games, or in real time with the option to pause. Buildings can be blown apart, and damaging the property of an organisation sours its view of you. The organisations fund you, sell to you, and can be infiltrated by aliens, so the politics of the city become part of the war.

It has the most ambitious design in the original series. The city is a living map rather than a globe of dots, and your actions in it have consequences beyond the mission. The real-time mode is one of the earliest serious attempts at real-time squad tactics with a pause, inside a full strategic campaign.

It was made under pressure and it shows in places: some features were cut, and the art direction, bright and futuristic, divides players who love the first two. It is sold on Steam and GOG alongside the other classic X-COM games.

Apocalypse keeps X-COM's two layers and changes both. The globe becomes a city, and the turn-based fight becomes a choice between turns and real time. Players who want X-COM exactly as it was tend to prefer the first game. Players interested in where real time with pause came from in squad tactics should start here.