XCOM: Enemy Unknown

9 Overall Score
Gameplay: 10/10
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 8/10

Great Strategy Gameplay | Tense, weighty missions | Brilliantly challenging

Occasionally buggy graphics | Underwhelming sound | Unnecessary multiplayer

Game Info

GAME NAME: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

DEVELOPER(S): Firaxis

PUBLISHER(S): 2K Games

PLATFORM(S): PC, PS3, XBox 360

GENRE(S): Strategy

RELEASE DATE(S): 10/9/2012

XCOM doesn’t know me – I’ve heard for years its maddening difficulty and depth of strategy.  But I’m the quintessential armchair general.  I’ve got Von Clausewitz’s On War right next to my copy of Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812, shoehorned between Hart’s Strategy and the seminal Art of War.  I’ve got a stack of Kissinger’s books, and I even sat through the entirety of Zulu.  Twice.

And then I miss a shotgun blast from two tiles away, and my highest-ranked soldier is turned into a bright red cloud, like when you put a Capri Sun in the microwave.  You are never safe in XCOM, and XCOM lets you know that at every turn.

Aliens have invaded, and it’s up to you as the commander of XCOM, Earth’s first, last, and only line of defense against the attack.  And man, is your job daunting.  There’s personnel to manage, a base to build, tech to research, and UFOs to shoot down.  So let’s take this one step at a time, shall we commander?

Your base is basically an ant farm of a menu, with all the information you’ll need divided into their respective rooms.  Your Situation Room tells you how panicked the various nations of the world are, and what the Council (the leaders of the nations you’re defending) needs from you.  From there, your research department reverse-engineers the technology you’ve taken from missions – and your engineering department builds the stuff.  All of this gets to your troops in the barracks, where you deal with your soldiers – from outfitting to customizing their hair color.  There’s the hanger, where you manage your fighter jets to deal with UFOs, and then the Control Room, where everything meshes together and you send your now fully-equipped with reverse-engineered, rebuilt weapons to your upgraded soldiers who go after a downed UFO, shot by a fighter jet.  Whew.

And we’re not even into the meat of the game, which is controlling your small squad of 4-6 as you deal with these aliens.  You’ll start with a bunch of rookies, eventually leveling them up to various roles: sniper, support, heavy, and assault.  These roles further specialize with ability choices as your guys rank up.  Missions drop you in various locations around the globe, with 80something maps and mostly random enemy placements that keep the action fresh and tense.  And boy, is it tense.  The fog of war, the skittering of an alien in the dark.  Every tiny choice becomes a life or death decision.  And since your characters will die and not come back should they fall, these decisions gain weight with each passing mission.  Do you send your crack A squad in on a Very Difficult mission, hoping they’ll suffer minor casualties but get the job done?  Or throw 6 rooks into the meat grinder, and promote any badass who makes it… if any do?

So I play it safe – I keep a few soldiers in 2-man groups, using a “doctrine of autonomy” plan that keeps my 2×2’s under constant cover.  It’s slow-going and mostly works, until XCOM decides my plan is stupid and sends Chryssalids to dice up Hulk Hogan.

Which is brilliant in its allowing you to fail.  It’s a difficult game, but that it lets you lose a mission (or a nation) is so refreshing in an age where games make it nearly impossible for you to die that it requires you to think outside your comfort zone.  So without my slick 2-man fireteams, my hotshot Russian sniper, “Emo,” stepped to the forefront and started firing off trick shots from half a map away.  XCOM challenged me, and I answered.

Talk to anyone who’s played XCOM, and they’ll have a dozen stories just like that.  Similar scenarios, but played out in different ways.  It’s wide open, and every scenario can be won (or lost) in a ton of ways.  It’s an open-world game without all the boring fetch quests (they’re there, but they require stunguns and a healthy amount of courage).  Movement, cover, and flanking are your key tools here, and if you’re smart with them, you’ll generally prevail.  And aside from an occasional odd decision, AI is smart enough to provide a fun challenge.

Multiplayer is included, and seems like a last minute add-on.  Build a small squad and send it against your opponent.  The single player game here is the star, so stick with that.

XCOM uses the Unreal Engine for its graphics, so this is nothing we haven’t seen before.  Although Unreal does a great job of showing us the action, it’s definitely showing its age.  There are also little graphics bugs that pop up more than one would like – I’ve had all my soldiers look like the same guy, arms akimbo, with an assault rifle through his right hand – they have only happened, at least in my playing, in base mode.  Since the base itself is basically a bare graphical representation of a complex menu system, these bugs are easy to overlook.  And although, as is Unreal’s signature, textures take a while to load, when they’re in, everything looks great.  The short action sequences that zoom in when something exciting happens are also fun to watch.  They’re skippable in the options menu, but I actually wound up leaving them on.

The sound setup in XCOM is just fine, but with some added little quirks.  While you can customize your soldiers’ voices with wide selection, none of the voices particularly stand out from one-another.  Also, your characters are made up of soldiers from many different nations, but none of the voices have much accent.  I want my Argentinian sniper to sound Argentinian, ya know?  These are a bit nit-picky, though, as the in-battle stuff is all quite good and sets a good tone for the combat.  The music is appropriately moody and thoughtful, and the various noises the aliens make will all become very familiar as you traipse the world.  It really helps strengthen the sense of tension that every mission generates.

And that’s where we’re at with XCOM: Enemy Unknown.  A tenseness, in every sense.  Every mission, every decision, every factor.  The world hangs in the balance, and you really have no idea what you’re up against.  But it’s an open, smart game that lets the choices you make really affect your gameplay.  It’s easily the best strategy game to come out in years – minor graphics bugs and sound issues aside, this is a game you’ll want in your collection.

 

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Author: James View all posts by
Dangerously fat. Twitter: @hypersaline