Also available for XBox 360 and PC
Developer: Firaxis
Released 12/10/2012
8/10
XCOM is a new remake/re-imagination of a classic strategy and tactics alien invasion game.
It’s a ballsy choice to make a game with a turn based gameplay, but to stay true to the form of the originals it had to be done.
Fortunately, the game is a huge breath of fresh air, being different to every other soldier vs alien shooter that’s been out lately. The turn based strategy allows for a new type of tactical gameplay that rewards you for being clever and careful rather than being a Rambo.
If you’re the type of player who likes to go in all-guns-blazing, you will be punished. Your men and women will die. The aliens will overwhelm you. This game rewards the more intellectual player, who enjoys taking their time in making moves and planning ahead. It’s almost like an extreme chess game.
The game opens with an in-depth tutorial to ease you into the gameplay, with Central Officer Bradford pretty much dictating every step you should take so that you make no mistakes and understand how the game works before letting you go ahead on your own.
You are introduced to a squad of four soldiers: Shaun Ramirez, Alejandro Guzman, Vladimir Smirnov and Ayaka Okada. They’re a selection of people from various nationalities showing how the alien invasion has united the planet against a common enemy. As your army grows you may hire more troops from around the world. No one country is the hero here, which is nice.
Battle involves attempting to keep your troops in cover while moving them into ideal positions for the best possible attack against foes. As you progress, your soldiers gain experience which earns them promotions and allows you to upgrade their skill sets.
In this way, the soldiers become quite individual, often allowing you to become somewhat attached to them. You can even rename them and change their appearance in order to have a squad of avatars of your own friends in game.
This attachment and the uniqueness of your soldiers makes death of characters all the more painful. When a trooper dies, he or she is gone for good. There are no second chances (not including reloading earlier saves.) Because of this, it is vital that you take care of your army, else you’ll end up with nothing but rookie recruits when you get to hard missions.
A nice touch though, is when a soldier dies, their name and rank is added to a Memorial wall for you to mourn at.
As well as tactical choice in battle, you will also need to make decisions at your headquarters. You must choose how to spend your money and resources to best grow your base and strength. Building different facilities grant different boons to help you in the war.
As well as this, you may be forced to choose which nations to help when invasions happen. Helping one will mean allowing another to suffer without you. Ignore a nation for too long and they will leave the world council and take their funding with them. Usually helping a country will lead them to reward you with money or more scientists and engineers to further your causes.
You will need these people. Scientists research new technology for you to strengthen your army, while engineers build things to equip them. The more you have, the faster they work and the better gear they can make.
The heads of these departments will want you to collect resources from the battlefield too so they have items to work with. They will warn you that using explosives like grenades and rocket launchers are likely to damage the precious devices. Those and the destructible environments.
You will also be required to maintain an airforce. You will have to deploy satellites to watch for alien incursions while also guarding them with fighter craft. Similarly to the troops, you can upgrade and strengthen them.
One of the best things that makes this game stand out from many others is the challenge it presents. Not only does death carry a real consequence, it is also unavoidable. I can guarantee that not everyone in your first team will survive. The enemy are powerful and smart. It will take all your skill to pull through the tougher missions, let alone keep the council of the world working together.
At first, the game seems to give you a lot to get your head around, but as with many things, you will soon have an idea of what needs to be done. Managing to do it is the question.
There are only one or two niggles I have with the game. The first and worst is that most of your soldiers come with an American accent despite their nationality.
The others are logical problems that are obviously included for gameplay reasons. Your soldiers may only equip one extra item besides standard weapons, which means you must unrelated items that shouldn’t effect your ability to carry the other.
The last is the strange fact the the nations of the council are not extremely helpful in providing funding and assistance despite your organisation being the sole defence against the global scale invasion.
Obviously these problems are very minor when it comes to the game as a whole and really do not take much away from the play.
The game is a great example of the strategy genre and does a great job of becoming addictive to the player. It’s a different pace to the norm nowadays, but that is really a good thing. Not one for button bashers or those who rely on regular checkpoints, this is a challenging game that offers a real feeling of achievement when missions are completed well.
