Review of XCom: Enemy Unknown

Developer Firaxis Games came up with "XCom: Enemies Unknown", a re-imagined version of the 90's cult classic game known as "UFO: Enemies Unknown". The game is a top-down turn-based tactical game in which aliens have started a hostile takeover of Earth. You 'play' (and I use the term loosely) as Commander of a special organization task force which is the first and last line of defense against the 'alien threat'. Now, even though this is a turn based game (which I know not everyone is in to), XCom can be entertaining if you allow it to be. What do I mean by that?

Okay, the first mission is a straight tutorial. They show you how to move along the map, how to attack the enemies, how the 'fog of war' works and yadda yadda yadda. Your characters speak and seem to have personalities of their own. The cool, dynamic camera angles bring your view down from the god-like top-down view to the characters' level whenever certain actions allow for such things. It brings you closer to the characters on a emotional level. You know their names from the heads-up display and they seem like serious soldiers fighting a war. Then shit gets real quickly when your team members start dying one by one in this first mission! It is a fierce gun battle where you take down the immediate threat. But at what cost? The sole surviving member of the encounter gets promoted and must lead the next team to the next battle. And this is where the game already had you hooked and you didn't even know it. Soldiers are generated through the game if you happen to run low, but you don't want rookies fighting such an important war on extraterrestrials that want nothing more than everyone's insides on the outside, as the outsides sizzle from the plasma blasts from their weapons. So you want veterans who have seen the battlefield and have come back to tell about it. The point of each mission isn't to just complete the mission but to come back alive. When I was playing the game, I realized I got attached to certain soldiers. I even created a few myself, thinking that I would do whatever it took to make me and my team survive. Needless to say, many digital generations of me and my friends have fallen to protect Earth from the alien threat. And that is what makes XCom fun! And I do not mean with the death and mayhem. I remember feeling this feeling back in the PS1 days playing Gran Turismo. I first played the game and hated that I kept losing. And right before I would hit the power button, I would think to myself, "Maybe if I upgraded the tires" or "What if I change the steering ratio?" and before I knew it, I was pretending to be sick from school because of lack of sleep. I knew that if I were a little more patient and understood how the mechanics worked then I would win a race (not THE race, A race). XCom will make you buckle down and work your damnedest to make sure your men survive! When I was playing, I learned that my greatest enemy wasn't the aliens, but my own patience. I had to slow down and change my tactics from my own instincts to run into the battlefield, guns-a-blazing to taking things cautious and slow. I had to send out scouts to check out the area and keep my rookies teamed up with a more experienced veteran. I planned out who had the med kits, who had the grenades, who was the sniper, and who was the heavy duty cavalry to handle situations when shit hit the fan! But yes, sometimes soldiers die. And even though I knew they were digital, I mourned their deaths on the digital memorial wall that the game allows you to see. Why? Because when a veteran dies, you know they have actually seen battle. They have gained skills that were paramount in getting through missions and their sacrifice will be remembered by you, their Commander. SHIT! I am hooked! Okay, look, the game is fun because you have to put time and effort into making sure your guys survive to get promoted, get more advanced skills and gadgets to fight the good fight, and aide the new recruits that you will definitely have to babysit until they find their position in the team. YOU make them veterans. You do have to slow down because rushing into battle will just get your team killed, and even though there is no actual penalty to losing men, you realize that you don't want to lose your more experienced soldiers because it takes time to raise another soldier. Besides eliminating the aliens, you have other objectives to complete as well. The enemy is unknown (oh, I see what you did there Firaxis), so you have to find out more by bringing back alien tech intact (without blowing shit up completely) and by bringing back aliens (both alive and dead). In doing this, you'll learn more about them and their technology and motives. You use what you find to make your own weapons more powerful and deadly, or even to develop brand new weapons and armor from the alien tech. You do all the research at your own personal HQ base. Your Headquarter base can be located on any of the continents on Earth but honestly, they all look exactly the same. The customization comes in when you start building facilities like labs, containment fields and power sources. Your personnel will come from the best and the brightest from all around the world, which you will gain as you play and have the space for them in your base. You also have a hangar and a factory where you build satellites to monitor the other countries around the world. Each continent has something in stake when it comes to world domination from aliens. But if you fail at a location, panic will spread throughout that continent. If the panic gets too high, that particular place will back out from funding the XCom program, which is bad because each continent funds you. If they back out, then what are you gonna use to pay for your secret facility to do more research, house your people, and create more resources? Keep them happy and you keep them safe, right? If 3 different places need your help at the exact same time, however, you have to choose your friends carefully and find out what they are worth. You gotta pick what continent is worth pacifying while the others burn from the panic. This game isn't really a pick-up-and-go kind of game. You will invested a lot of time into what you do. After all, the world is at stake. If you have the time to play this game, then try it out. If you would rather run and gun through terrorists from a first-person point-of-view or slash through enemies in a third-person environment, this might not be your type of game. For those true gamers that want a challenge and something to really get into, though, XCom is a definite pick-up. Try out the demo on the console and PC marketplaces and see if it is your cup of tea, but I am sure you will answer the call to be what Earth needs you to be.

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