Let's Play X-COM Enforcer Mission 24

The first of the farm levels!

I like this level. It's one of the more obvious cases of 'Enforcer really needs a minimap why doesn't it have a minimap', as it's easy to get turned around in the corn fields when this really shouldn't be a problem at all, but the level itself is fun and interesting. There's a not-immediately-obvious gimmick of the first few corn fields spawning a single enemy type en mass when you enter them, the corn itself adds a tactical use to jumping as hopping above the corn is a good way to keep track of enemies and identify key items, and once that gimmick is just starting to get a bit repetitive the game breaks it up and has you dealing with barns and whatnot. At the end there's an actual X-COM-style UFO in the area, and it's mechanically plausible for it to be there -I didn't comment at the time, but the mission with a UFO somehow in the sewers or whatever is just bizarre as far as 'how did it even get here?'

This really ought to have been one of Enforcer's first missions. Farm maps are some of the more memorable ones from the original X-COM, aliens landing in the middle of nowhere to abduct people and livestock makes obvious sense in the X-COM lore, and it could've been a good way of easing into the idea of Enforcer as an invincible killing machine the aliens keep stepping up their efforts to fight while hitting them with 'it's like I'm at the ground level of an X-COM mission! Kinda!'

This is where we start getting into the part of the game that got me thinking that Enforcer was largely built front-to-back with the team initially not actually all that familiar with the X-COM continuity, because the quality is mostly-consistently up from here and the game starts feeling like it was actually imagined as part of the X-COM continuity instead of 'let's tell a random studio with no familiarity with the franchise to make an arcade shooter with the X-COM name in it'.

We also get to see that the Pac-man Bonus levels are probably really designed under the idea that you've gotten invulnerability upgraded, what with its first upgrade giving you Touch Of Death, making them actually function like Power Pellets do in Pac-man. Which is a bit weird, since you're extremely likely to get the Bonus level several times before even unlocking the invulnerability powerup, let alone purchasing the upgrade.

See you next mission.