Reviews// XCOM: Enemy Unknown

In the barracks menu is the officer training school where you can buy bigger squads and other boosts to help you both on and off the battlefield. There is also an option to view the memorial, which gives you a run-down of lost soldiers and their kills/mission counts. This seems pretty redundant as I found it hard to make a connection to my people.

In the hangar there’s a list of all your aircraft and where they are stationed. Air battles themselves are pretty disappointing, though. A UFO appears, you choose whether to scramble fighters or not, then you watch a little representation of a UFO do battle with a little representation of one of your fighters.

I found myself getting excited when I had my first UFO encounter. That was until I found how removed from the action I was at this point. Aerial combat is just used as a cheap way to set up a slightly different map to battle on.

Sitrep
The Situation Room gives you an overview of panic levels all over the world. The countries shown are all part of the XCOM council. If the panic levels reach max (such as in one case where I lost an entire squad thus ensuring that the government lost faith in me) the countries will leave the council. So what? If the countries leave they take funding away, but worse - you lose the option of having a satellite in each country of a certain area, which leaves you without a vital intelligence tool.

In Mission Control you'll find a giant representation of the Earth that's a little reminiscent of the Death Star. From here you scan the planet for any alien activity, be it UFO or ground-based.

Into battle we ride!
Now, in-the-field battle is the main aspect of the game and, unfortunately, this is where it disappoints most. Now don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed playing, but there are a few gripes I have with it.

In battle you are dropped by aircraft onto the battlefield. These are usually cityscapes with plenty of cars and building to use as cover or a UFO crash/landing site in the middle of nowhere with lots of natural cover. Occasionally you get a council mission to rescue a VIP, or a bomb disposal mission. These break up the often dull flow of run-into-environment/UFO, kill all aliens, save what people you can, rinse/repeat. They happen far too infrequently to have any real impact, though.

I have found all the maps to be pretty much the same, very linear and after a while the challenge they present is lost.

The camera can be moved, or the angle changed quite simply, making it easier to get around. Walls and scenery in your way also become transparent when walking around. Cover can be found almost everywhere, taking some of the challenge of flanking an opponent out of missions. That said, this cover can be destroyed and cars can catch fire and explode, though you do usually have a turn to get away from being hit.

One pleasant thing I found in XCOM is that the AI is well-programmed. Most of the time, it gives you just enough of a challenge to make you feel you accomplished something. That said, the further you get into the game, the more it becomes a case of more health/more damage, thus removing a lot of the strategy from the game. The introduction of new aliens mostly meets your completing of research and provides a good sloping difficulty.

The movement and battling system reminds me a lot of when I last played Civilization. You can shoot, move and shoot, move and overwatch, move and hide or move and move.

If, when moving your whole squad you move your last person twice you get a camera following them. This also happens occasionally when shooting. I have found this camera to be very jerky in its movements, as if it is stuck to the soldier's back.

One thing I do like about the game is the use of sound. Both the music and the alien sound effects are very well done. The battle music, especially, helps keep your attention. But on the sound issue there is one downside. All your soldiers are from the countries in the council, yet they all have American accents. These are people from Argentina, Mexico, Germany, India, Australia, Nigeria etc. all sounding like the same typical American Jock squad.

The aliens mostly attack you with guns, but occasionally they can intimidate your people. This causes them to fire erratically, run and hide, cry and beg for retrieval. In doing so it also costs them their next turn.

It can get annoying when you have them positioned as you want, only to find them whimpering in a corner on your next go! In addition to being intimidating, a select few aliens can also mind control your people for a few turns, turning them on you. Later on in the game, after building a PSI lab, you can turn the tables. All this leads up to you being able to mind control some aliens. Watching as they fire on their own and do the work for you is fun!

There isn't much of a story to all of this. Aliens attack, we retaliate. They want to take the planet, we want to save it. Just see pretty much any alien attack film to get the gist of the storyline.

The council is this mysterious entity that provides funding for you every month and also gives you a grade on how you are doing (straight A's for me, get in!), providing a framing mechanism for your progress. You can lose the game if eight countries leave the council, so try to keep them all on your good side. Sometimes that is easier said than done!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is largely a single-player game but it is one for casual fans and hardcore gamers alike. It does offer online multiplayer against one opponent for people who like a bit of human competition to add to their war, but the meat is in the single-player.

The difficultly curve and length of the game should please all who play it, if they can get past the repetitiveness that the battles provide. It's a solid choice for fans of turn-based strategy games, as well as a good challenge for anyone who fancies themselves a battlefield commander!

Pros:
+ Easy to pick up
+ Good length to the single-player campaign
+ Good difficulty curve
+ Pleasant sound
+ Can save at almost any point

Cons:
- Repetitive
- Poor graphically
- Too drawn out

SPOnG Score: 7/10