XCOM Enemy Unknown (PC DVD)

I was a big fan of the original Microprose XCom release, and keen to see what the 2012 update would bring to the table. As with a lot of games, this is a mixed bag. The tactical RTS side of XCom has been massively face-lifted, and remains a difficult and absorbing sub-game in its own right. Most of the tactical skills from the original are transferable, but there's also been some notable changes. As noted, a lot of the "micro-management" has been removed, and it's not all for the better - e.g. if I wanted, I could load up a trooper with any combination of weapons they could carry. 12 grenades ? If you want. Throwaway 1-shot rocket launcher ? Sure. This is all gone in favour of pre-selected loadouts with only moderate customisation. For example, only "heavy" soldier classes can carry heavy weapons, and nothing else. Support classes carry assault rifles & pistols, and nothing else, and so on. If I want to load-up on grenades, well, you basically just can't, and only the support-class can carry more than 1, and then, only with the "deep pockets" perk after several promotions. If you want to pack a med-kit or a stun-gun, you can't carry grenades anymore - and so on.

Base management is also very different. You no longer have total control over the base's inventory (largely because this is no longer needed with the aforementioned pre-selected weapon loadouts). If you want more engineers, you simultaneously need to build workshop space for them and they come bundled with the facility, and, if necessary, build power generators beforehand to power the workshop, or you can't build the workshop at all and- it can all get rather needlessly complex. Further, early in the game, it's very easy to find yourself chronically short of cash, which has knock-on effects later. The tutorial also doesn't help much here, largely forcing you down a particular path to potential financial ruin early on (i.e. it doesn't emphasise that you earn cash by building & deploying satellites over supporting nations, and instead forcing you to build an alien containment/interrogation facility which is kinda useless early on - you don't have weapons or armour to safely try capturing bad guys.).

With that said, the tactical combat is difficult (as a veteran, I started on the "classic" difficulty level) which makes winning all the more satisfying. There are also some new twists to the combat. Weapons are tied to their alien owners, so if you kill an alien, whatever weaponry they were carrying self-destructs, leaving you only with fragments to research more slowly over time. Getting an intact weapon requires you to stun and capture it's wielder, and that's stupidly dangerous early on in the game. On the plus side, while weapons still need to be reloaded, troops now have infinite ammunition (except grenades & rockets) and you don't need to worry about supplying it in the loadout. Another huge change is that your squad is limited to at most 6 troops on any mission, whereas in the original game, you could have as many as would fit inside your Skyranger and you could be bothered handling.

In all, thinking about it makes you consider it to be a mixed bag, but, I started playing at the weekend, blinked, and a couple of hours had gone past in what felt like minutes. I'm enjoying it, anyway.

EDIT : Finished this, playing on and off since the original review was posted. I'd be surprised if I've put less than 20 hours into a single campaign, but I did feel it was all becoming a bit of a chore towards the end, so replayability will probably be limited. In all, I can see how some people feel it's been dumbed-down, while I think that to some degree it's been streamlined in some ways. I encountered a few bugs over the whole playthrough, only one of which was semi-fatal. The game needs some rough edges filed down - there needs to be an "overwatch all" button, and the graphics go annoyingly mental on the multi-level UFOs, changing your vantage point and sometimes, where you think you're pointing. The semi-fatal bug occurred on the end-game level, where I couldn't progress until I found & killed the last bad guys, which was tedious. The end-game itself as a whole is pretty disappointing too. Terror From The Deep, anyone ?

As with many reviewers here, I grew up with the original XCom, playing it on my Amiga back then. It was amazing and I have been hooked ever since. As no real update for the original ever arrived until now I salved my need to play it by playing games like UFO: Aftermath and its two follow ups. They were pretty good, and very close to Xcom's legacy.

Now we have the updated, 21st Century vision of XCom, and its not to bad really, but far from perfect. After reading all the current reviews here I have to agree with most opinions, although I have to say Steam wasn't an issue for me and after all this time I wish people would simply rate the game play, not the Steam. Everyone knows Steam sucks, we don't need to keep hearing it, nothings going to change so get over it.

The game has been simplified, it has to be said. Whether to accomodate the new surge of young teen game system enthusiasts who can't seem to handle proper PC games with a little thinking required, I don't know. But its a shame developers seem to think they have to make games that Wii and Xbox players can manage rather than us PC gamers.

As for the game itself? The downside first. I really miss the inventory for soldiers because this games inventory is terrible. You have four spaces, armour, main gun, back up gun, and extra. The armour and weapons choices upgrade as you research new tech, so no problem there. But where are the spaces for extra ammo? Why can I only have one extra item? And why are the extras so stupidly listed? I mean you can have one grenade, a medkit, a sight for your gun, extra body armor, but they all go in the extra slot rather than upgrading existing items, so you can only have one at a time. You can't have a sight, extra body armour and a grenade. Why can't the sight go on the main gun? Why can't the extra body armour upgrade your current armour? Why only one grenade? Also, as someone else mentioned, you are now told what your soldier has upgraded to rather than having the choice. I want to be able to choose if soldier A has the skills to be a sniper and not have my game tell me thats it, no choice allowed. Also once that soldier has been pigeon holed into his class, his main weapon is immediately changed to that class and you can't change it back. So if a sniper he gets a rifle, if a heavy he gets a light machine gun, etc, etc.

Also you only get one base. You can send satellites to watch over other countries, and even a couple of interceptors to be stationed there as the ones at home base won't reach most other countries, but thats it. You'll get alerts occasionally that always list three emergencies, but you can only ever respond to one! So the other two countries suffer and their opinion of you drops accordingly. I was hoping this kind of thing would be handled a lot better for this game. Why not be allowed to have more than one team? You could respond to a number of emergencies then as long as you had the money and resources to accomodate all those soldiers and aircraft. Also the storyline is very rigid. Things seem to happen at set times no matter what you do which gets a little boring as you don't feel in control.

Lastly on the negatives, the learning curve for difficulty seems higher on this game, even on easy. I might be looking back with rose tinted glasses at the original XCom, but I don't recall massive alien invasions so soon into the game. I remember many enjoyable hours of shooting down UFO's, stopping abductions, doing enough research to actually stand a good chance at fighting off the oncoming hordes. Not so here. About an hour in, after completing a few pretty easy site recovery op's and 'stop the abductions' op's, I get notified that a major alien incursion is occuring and I have to immediately go stop it ... with my five soldiers. So I get to the scene and immediately am set upon by about ten aliens, of different types. I hardly have time to do my first few moves before my guys start dieing around me. I don't know if there were more aliens past those ten, I guess so, but as I died so fast I don't know. Also I should quickly point out, I'm no newbie to strategy games, I know how to move soldiers around a board.

On the good side, however, the tactical battles are still as gripping as the original XCom to my mind. I love the two stage movement, the way cover is handled, the little mini movies thrown in occasionally when a soldier moves. The graphics aren't incredible, not when you consider whats possible these days, but they easily handle the job at hand. Being able to climb a drainpipe to send your sniper to the rooftop for maximum overwatch is great to see. The story is just as captivating to, researching all the cool alien tech, cutting them open to see how they tick, its all there from the original game.

So, to close this rather long review, yes, its XCom, but its also suffered the curse of the console playing community. Gone is the cool and indepth micro-management, in is the streamlined, compact gameplay that significantly reduces the length of the game, and to my mind, the replayability. Its a shame that XCom's rebirth seems to have been handled in the glib manner most of our golden oldie games that have resurfaced recently have been. For my money? Glad I bought it, fun to play, but I think I'll go back to UFO: Aftermath for a proper XCom fix.

I cant deny that XCOM: Enemey Unknown is fun to play. But like Firaxis last release of Civilization V, this game has been heavily "streamlined". This is a term I am begining to become very wary of, as all too often it is a double edged sword.

With XCOM the game has been radically simplified in both the tactical and strategic gameplay. Whilst this speeds up game play and removes some of the frustratingly slow bits of the old game, I am left feeling like I have less control over events and the result is perhaps more exciting action, but a less overall satisfying experience.

The fixed character classes, limited inventory (you can only carry one bit of extra kit), inability to swap equipment with characters in the field, unlimited ammo all seems to remove an element of the game I actually liked - ie micromanaging things! Great moments when characters ran out of ammo, and someone throws them cartridge; or characters pick up their dead or incapacitated comrades equipment are gone...
The base management is stripped back now your no longer managing several bases, tessellating rooms into a limited floor plan, or designing bases against outside attack - you're limited to placing rooms next to each other for bonuses. Equipment is made instantaneously, but research still has lead times which is weird. The "ant farm" representation looks great but adds nothing to gameplay.

Dispite people claiming this game proves PC gamers have not been forgotten, I actually think it shows the opposite. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a fun fast moving game, but the gameplay feels like a made for console casual tactical action game, fun and fast moving, but lacking the depth of control which I for one like in my strategy games. This may appeal to a wider audience but is not what I was hoping from the new XCOM game.