By – Mike Bezek
Let’s get something out of the way right off the bat here: I did not play any of the previous entries in the original X-COM series. There is something about extraterrestrials that scared the living hell out of me when I was yet just a babe. Although my age in my “babe” phase was 16 years old, that doesn’t change the fact that Signs forever scarred me with its bad ending and that horrifying Mexican birthday party scene. Firaxis Games has decided to dredge up the irrational fears of my youth with their remake of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and I was the lucky winner who was chosen to dissect its glowing Sectoid-filled innards. Gross.
Set in the very near future, it appears that aliens are pissed off that Curiosity just got a bit too curious, and their only rational recourse was to harvest our organs. Quite refreshingly, the art design behind our doomsday providers is centered around early idealizations of extraterrestrial life. Opponents reminiscent of the film The Day The Earth Stood Still mixed with some progressive Half-Life reiterations provide a perfect blend of old and new. The first enemy you encounter, the Sectoid, is something straight out of the sketch pad of a farmer in Wyoming who insists he was probed back in ‘76. It’s great to see that Firaxis wasn’t taking the theme overly serious and reached back to interpretations of the past to give life to their recreation of Earth’s aggressors. The Sectoid scampers around the map on all fours, an obvious necessity, as his massive cranium does not permit him to walk upright for extended periods of time. The Thin Man is evocative of early 50’s paranoia when conspiracy theorists were almost positive that aliens were disguising themselves as humans. Sadly for ol’ Thin, his getup is about 60 years out of date.
Judging from any screenshot, it is easy to tell that production quality was a bit lower down on the list of priorities. Nothing in XCOM jumps out at you, while the effects are flashy, it overall look is dated. This is not to say that Enemy Unknown is ugly in any way, as the game sports some very cool effects coupled with some down right terrifying audio tracks. Missions that involve civilians are filled with blood-curdling screams in the distance as sounds of gunfire and evisceration permeate the air. Story sequences are nicely animated and voiced, which brings a bit of humanity to a game that could have otherwise felt very clinical.
Yet the air is thick with echoes of 2009 as some clipping issues and awkward camera positions sometimes obscure the slightly dated look A little into pops up when you happen upon enemy units, but the camera sometimes obscures the view and causes them to pop through walls. Some maps even make it very difficult to navigate your squad inside of certain buildings, which adds frustration to an already stressful experience. For example, you will eventually find yourself navigating cramped UFOs where each level of the construct is only the average height of a soldier. Attempting to direct a unit to a specific location is a battle with the camera and you personal limits of patience. The camera will constantly move up and down levels to give the player a better view, but it ends up zooming so far out that you find yourself staring at the outer shell of the UFO.
Normally, these cosmetic faults would be the sign of a quickly sinking ship. The game suffers from issues that seem to stem from the developer skirting basic priorities, which obviously raises red flags. Camera angles becoming hazardous in a largely isometric game is something largely eradicated in modern games. Yet, XCOM goes above and beyond in terms of content and flat-out fun in a way that outweighs any misgivings that may arise about the way it looks. That’s right, fun trumps design flaws in a nail-biting, teeth gritting, strategy-inundated experience.
Focusing on a traditional turn-based system, players guide their soldiers across a variety of battlefields that rapidly change due to destructible environments. While in the beginning, weapons will not make a dent in the environment, advancements in technology will quickly change seemingly smart tactical maneuvers into imminent death. Blowing holes in walls, destroying cover with high power weapons, and even luring the AI into traps by sabotaging the structural integrity of buildings adds to how dynamic each battle can be.
When I first started, I was hasty to call the system boring and hollow. I was almost convinced that I was taking part in a Starship Troopers clone in which the focus was buried in ‘hunter vs. hunted” rather than both sides having certain advantages. I soon found that patience and diligence pays off as you clean up the battlefield and ship the seeping carasses of your adversaries to the science lab. Each battle you fight allows the scientists back home to develop technology to employ in later battles.
While your team starts off as typical soldiers with carbon fiber and steel as their cutting edge technology, they soon become capable of equipping laser weaponry and armor with jet propulsion. There is a rewards system that consistently empowers the player for choosing to play smart, rather than mowing down the competition. While you can lob grenades around like a demolition team hellbent on watching alien corpse fireworks, you will summarily destroy important technology that can be harvested and repurposed for later missions. Adding to the incentive to keep your squad alive is a levelling system which provides new abilities and passive bonuses to hardened soldiers. In my time, I have played quite a few games based around skill trees, and a majority of them boil down to a singular build that trumps all others. While you can choose the less viable talents in an attempt to mix things up, you will always be at a disadvantage. But in Enemy Unknown, the power and viability of the direction you decide to allocate talents is based on how effectively employ them. Redundancy is virtually negated when you can have two of the same class on your squad who have a totally different skillsets.
Just like your rookie soldiers, you will slowly learn how to use every single option available to you on the battlefield. If your opponent is hiding behind volatile cover, lay some fire in his direction to set said cover on fire. If they are hiding behind walls, or setting up a makeshift gunner’s nest in a fortified building, use a Heavy to blow the walls away with a rocket. You simply will not succeed in XCOM unless you are always planning to be one step ahead of your opponent.
Time is an element that affects everything in XCOM. From the R&D of new guns, to the tiny window of opportunity available to rescue unsuspecting abduction victims in Guadalajara, you are always racing against the clock. Represented by a holographic globe that sits monolithically at the top of your command center, you can “scan” the Earth for alien activity. Everything from construction projects, research, and soldier recuperation revolve around a schedule that requires very careful management. Attempting to save money by not hiring new recruits while your vets are wounded can lead to you sending untrained soldiers to their deaths on a mission critical task. The ramifications do not stop there; failing to quell alien activity will raise the Panic Level in a given country. Too much panic and they will pack their bags and leave the X-COM project, along with the revenue and bonuses they provide. Failing to plan very far in advance can lead to your entire operation being shut down, and the amount of stress that these small calculations provide evokes the delighted tactician that resides in all of us.
Outstretched from the spreadsheets of your financial reports and clever time negotiations are the palm-drenching battles that will take your ability to make a preemptive strike while effectively blindfolded to its limit. There are no missions in XCOM that are simply a walk in the park. Your abilities will be continuously tested and your patience bent by the introduction of new and devious enemies that require constant shifts in strategy in order to survive. The enemy AI is quite impressive in its ability to completely rout you for making one bad move. Don’t be surprised when one of your beloved soldiers is taken out by a tactic you thought was a personal exploit. Not embracing a mantra of forethought and adaptation will only leave you scattered on the battlefield.
Battles are not to be taken lightly at any point, as the player never has the jump on the enemy. Moving along a grid pattern, it is a constant mental battle to traverse the killing fields with tact and quite a bit of forethought. Once one of your soldiers advances far enough to confirm an enemy combatant, they quickly scramble to advantageous positions. But fear not, as your once bumbling, wide-eyed elite soldiers who couldn’t shoot themselves out of a box (seriously, some fresh recruits qualify for legal blindness in my book) can be equipped with space-age advancements to bring the fight right to the aliens um, uh….doorstep? Do they even have doorsteps?
Never before have I a felt such an overwhelming pressure to perform well in a strategy title. The looming Council, which could also be known as your benefactors (to sound more sinister), are always watching your performance. Their constant reminders that they are always monitoring your every move is a unnerving incentive to always be on your toes and perform admirably each and every time. Letting civilians die on rescue missions, or allowing your soldiers to be made into bullet-riddled lunchmeat will affect your overall rating, which in turn revokes financial backing to your projects. If you ever wondered what it is like to be a small business owner with the IRS at your front door, here is a perfect simulation.
The aforementioned R&D is an integral portion of whether you succeed or are reduced to ash. Focusing solely on Science and skirting Engineering will lead you to great discoveries, but not enough manpower to give life to these advancements. The game balances itself out beautifully by keeping the player from moving forward too quickly, as each facet of the R&D complements the other when handled properly. The sheer amount of satisfaction gained from devising a well-oiled machine brings excitement to a normally mundane process.
Is It Worth Your Money?
Do you remember the part of my review where I talked about negative things? What was that, two sentences? That should be your first indication on the quality of the XCOM experience. A robust single player campaign with dozens upon dozens of hours of rewarding and engaging gameplay is the tip of the iceberg in terms of quality. I have not been so enamored with a strategy title since the original Fallout, which consumed all of my free time and made me appreciate all the small nuances it contained. Echoes of past triumphs present in the original game resonate strongly and make this game worth every single penny you spend on it.
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