A whole city rotting from the inside while you juggle a budget, raw recruits and aliens.

When the community picks on gut feeling alone, X-COM: Apocalypse holds up decently, ahead of around 63% of games. That is on few votes, so treat it as a first signal. Dig into the details and the picture hardens. Fun puts it right at the bottom, ahead of only 4% of games. Controller feel, barely better. The wish to rediscover it, very low too, on very few votes. One line climbs clearly: attachment, ahead of more than two thirds of games. There is the tension. The people who lived it hold on to it, yet almost nobody describes it as a game you fire up for instant pleasure.

That is the usual fate of a 1997 tactical strategy game, dense, austere, built around management and friction rather than sensation. A game that asks you to hold a city, not to have a good time in ten minutes. The criteria here, tuned for emotion, style and playfeel, do not really measure what made it strong.

So, who is it for? For you if you love deep systems, decisions that cost you, the paranoia of a city where even the police can turn on you. Much less so if you want something comfortable and immediate that rewards you fast.