Kotas Reviews XCOM: Enemy Unknown

TL;DR - Skip to the last paragraph for the summary.

Recently I ended up purchasing XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Steam. If you'll recall the original XCOM: UFO Defense game, it was a turn based tactical squad game with a ton of micromanagement elements and some pretty hoss simulation sections involving building bases, doing research, gathering logistical support, and especially outfitting your soldiers with endless minutia. A number of people have fond memories of that game. My own memories involve watching someone else play it and getting frustrated when my whole squad was wiped out on the tutorial mission the one time I was allowed to play.

After watching several video reviews, and some gameplay footage, I took the plunge, ultimately buying it through Steam for the convenience factor. There are 4 levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal, Classic, and Impossible. Classic is "true to the spirit of the original", which was quite difficult. Because I SUCK at video games, I set the difficulty on Easy, and left on the tutorial, so I could get used to the game. There are options to turn on Autosaving, as well as something called Ironman Mode. Ironman Mode enables much more frequent autosaving, and also disallows having more than one save game. In a nutshell, you can’t reload a save game when something goes horribly wrong. It’s another way to increase the challenge and I think that anyone who played a Hardcore character in Diablo II or III will appreciate this sort of gameplay.

I turned up the graphic settings as high as they would go and I have noticed exactly zero problems with this, even on my 2 year old gaming rig (which wasn't top of the line when I built it), so most people should be able to play the game pretty well. The animations of the models are nice and fluid, though by no means are they the top end of the graphics spectrum. In fact, they seem like the overall graphics are about a generation behind. The aliens all are distinct and interesting, though the soldiers do sort of all look the same. In fact, they sort of resemble the Roughnecks from that CGI cartoon from about a decade ago. The best part of the game is the Action Cam. What's the Action Cam? Well, when your soldier does something particularly cool, like murder an alien in one shot or bust through a door or something, the camera shifts to a more "action movie" perspective and you see the stuff up close and personal. I think that the Action Cam is just zooming in very close to the in-game models, at any rate.

The story of the game is explained in a number of cutscenes, which roll in response to various in game events. Performing an autopsy? You get a short cut scene for it. Sending out a squad of soldiers? Cut scene. The Council of Vague Rulership is calling? Cut scene. Your Engineers want you to build a particular thing? Cut Scene. The send out squad and mission start cut scenes can get a little repetitive, but you can skip them with the Esc button. The cut scenes use the same models as the regular game, and thus have that same dated, cartoony look. The voice acting is...well, there is voice acting. It’s not the worst I’ve ever heard, but it’s not exactly Bioware quality.

The story advancing scenes are actually kind of fun. The basic plotline is that you are the Commander of XCOM, an International paramilitary force tasked by the Council of Vague Rulership to defend the people of Earth against the growing alien menace. You manage your base, your fleet of interceptors, and your force of soldiers. One of your first real choices in the game is where to have your base of operations. Whichever country (or region, like Europe) you base out of gets you certain bonuses, like discounts on research, more staff for the base, and so on. The tutorial restricts you to United States or Europe, presumably because they make the game a little easier.

Soldier customization is...not super extensive. You can't pick the gender of a soldier (that is assigned randomly when they are generated at the start, or when you hire new recruits), but you can change things like ethnicity, hair style, hair color, facial hair or not, skin tone, voice of the soldier, and name of the soldier. Apparently there are add-on packs, or pre-order bonuses or something that adds a ton more options and things like armor style, armor color and so forth, but my version does not have them. From some gameplay footage I’ve seen, they can get pretty outlandish, allowing for things like brightly colored armor, awesome helmets, and my personal favorite, the pirate hat. I’m sure we’ll be able to purchase these customization options as DLC in the future.

You’ll spend a lot of time in the Tactical Combat view. This is where you directly control your squad of 4 to 6 soldiers (depending on upgrades purchased) as they move through a map partitioned with a grid overlay. The overlay stays hidden for the most part, unless your cursor is moving around, highlighting squares. When you hover over a square, you see the path your soldier will take when moving to that square, along with if any object near that square provides a half cover or full cover bonus, represented by shield icons. Cover is provided in a 180 degree arc in the direction of the shield icon, so you’ll sometimes end up with weird situations where you are standing RIGHT NEXT to an alien, but it somehow has full cover against you, and you have full cover against it.

Each soldier has, in D&D terms, a Move Action and a Standard Action. They also get "Free Actions" like opening a door or interacting with something, if they are adjacent to the something and have a Standard Action left. You can move a certain distance and then Act, but once you use a Standard Action, you can no longer Move. If you want to do a double move, you can "do it all at once" with a Dash, which gives you a bonus to defense while running, but it is a Full Round Action. Some skills can get around these rules, and some weapons require a Full Round Action to use. One of the most used actions will be Overwatch. When you set a soldier to Overwatch, he or she will watch for alien movement and if an alien moves within range, they will take a shot at them, with a slight accuracy penalty. Grenades and Rockets have Free Aim, where you place them in a particular location rather than aiming at an enemy.

All soldiers start as Rookies, who can use the “standard issue” Assault Rifle and Pistol, and as they go on missions and rack up kills they get assigned a class when they are promoted. Class dictates what weapons you can carry and what special abilities you can earn as you increase in rank. The Heavy uses a Machine Gun, is the only class that can use the Rocket Launcher, and can earn skills like Holo-Targeting (bonus to Accuracy for other people shooting at your target if you connect with your hit) and Suppression Fire (penalty to enemy’s accuracy and if they move, you get a free shot at them). They are also pretty sturdy. The Assault uses a Combat Shotgun and a Pistol, and earns skills like Run and Gun (may shoot or Overwatch after Dashing) and Tactical Advantage (bonus to defense for each enemy in sight). The Sniper can use the Sniper Rifle (of course) and Pistol, and uses skills like Headshot (Full Round Action, guaranteed critical and boost to aim) and Gunslinger (additional damage with pistols). The Support still uses Assault Rifles and Pistols, and uses Smoke Grenade (bonus to defense to units in the smoke) and Healer (can use a Medkit 3 times per battle instead of only 1). All classes have a slot for Body Armor and a slot for Miscellaneous Gear such as Medkits, Grenades, Stunners, and a variety of other useful bits.

The other side of the game is base management. Time passes fairly quickly, with every second being roughly one minute in the game’s time frame. The base interface, affectionately called the Ant Farm View by some, allows the clicking of a specific room OR just hitting a button to open that interface. The portions of the base you control are Research (where artifacts are studied, captives interrogated, and technology researched), Engineering (Build equipment, build new facilities, excavate more portions below your base for more room, etc.), the Barracks (Customize soldiers, hire new recruits, view the memorial to dead soldiers, and purchase squad upgrades), the Hanger (purchase fighters, assign them to regions, and customize them), the Situation Room (launch satellites, sell off tech to the grey market, view objectives, see pending requests, launch satellites, and see how panicked the various nations of the XCOM project are), and Mission Control, where you “Scan for Activity”, which greatly speeds up the time so you can watch projects complete, and get various mission notifications.

The first type is an Alien Abduction. You'll be merrily scanning away, and then notifications of alien abductions will appear, and give you a choice of 3 locations to go to. You can see the difficulty of each mission, the rewards for completing the mission and the "panic meter" of the country where the mission is located (which you can also see in the Situation Room). The panic meter is very important. The more panicked a country, the more likely they will "pull out of the XCOM project", which presumably reduces your incoming resources. The mission you choose (and hopefully succeed in completing) will reduce panic in that area and give you the reward listed. The other two locations will have their panic increase. I learned this the hard way when I picked a mission in Germany based on the sweet reward of a fully trained Lieutenant Support soldier instead of on the panic meter (both missions I was considering were "Very Difficult") and India is super pissed at me right now. All abduction missions are "sweep and destroy".

The second type of mission is a "Terror" mission. These pop up periodically and involve rescuing civilians from an alien attack. The map you are placed on has civilians standing still with terror until you move a soldier near them (like, they have to run directly past them or stand adjacent to them), at which point they run to the ship and are "rescued". Of course, aliens are murdering civilians "off camera" and a handy meter at the top keeps track for you. If you succeed in the mission (kill all aliens, rescue 50% or more civilians), panic is reduced across the board.

The third type is "UFO Crash Site" mission, which is a sweep and destroy that you can go to after one of your interceptors shoots down a UFO (or if a UFO just lands). You get lots of loot from these, and your only opportunity to face an Outsider type alien, who are relatively easy to kill, but they pack a wallop. Interceptors are stationed by region, and you can have up to 4 per region. They can be modified to have different weapons, but all other capabilities are shared between all of them. Your interactions with them are very limited, only being able to click a few buttons to add buffs to your computer controlled fighter. It's simple, but it works.

The fourth type of mission is the Council Objective. When the Council of Vague Rulership have a very special mission for you, they will pop up special missions, that usually have more complicated objectives than sweep and destroy, such as "rescue a single person" or whatever. They are rarer than the other types, and I've only gone on one, but they tend to be interesting if nothing else. Alien Abductions and UFO Crash Recovery are most of what you will get, and they are randomly generated in terms of mission name (such as Operation Deadly Moon or whatever), map (wilderness, cityscape, Graveyard, etc.), and enemies.

The interface takes some getting used to, since right and left click do different things depending on context. Normally, left click is "select" while right click is "move to this point". However, sometimes right click is cancel (Esc is always cancel), and sometimes left click is "finish action" or "perform action" instead of select. The hot keys for skills also change, depending on what skills you have and what weapon you are using. So, sometimes the key for “Overwatch” will be 2, but sometimes it is 3 or whatever, which can be very frustrating. There is a “confirm” for all non-move actions, so it’s not too terrible. The camera controls feel clunky, and "mouse move" can be almost detrimental. I dislike the "move cursor to edge of screen to move the camera" style controls, but it just takes some adjustment to this style.

There is a multiplayer mode, which I’ve only just barely played around with. Multiplayer is 1v1 tactical engagements, with each player building a squad of up to six units, using a point buy system. The creator of the game sets the point limit, the amount of time each player has to take a turn, the map, and if the game is Public or not. My one and only engagement ended quickly when my badass sniper got mind controlled by the other person’s crazy strong Etheriel, and shot the crap out of my scout. One thing, there are NOT a lot of games being played right now, so the multiplayer action is pretty thin. It took me 20 minutes to get my one game going, and it lasted all of 5 minutes.

At the end of the day, XCOM: Enemy Unknown provides a solid tactical experience and a lot of alien whupping fun. The graphics may look a little dated, but the gameplay is very enjoyable. Besides, nothing is more fun than watching a soldier you named after a friend shotgun a bug-eyed alien in the face! On a scale of 5 frowny faces to 5 smiley faces, I give it 3 smiley faces. I do recommending trying before you buy, and the demo is freely available on Steam or on the XBOX 360 and PS3.