I'm not sure, but I think X-Com: UFO
Defense was the first serious computer game I ever played. That, or
Warcraft. Before that there were a few basic things, like a flying
shooter on the Commodore64 and the freeware Star Trek game that lived
on bootlegged floppy discs, but nothing that even had a 'save game'
option, nevermind a real story.
So you can imagine how nervous I was
when I first learned about XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
It wasn't as though the franchise
hadn't been through sequels and spinoffs before. Terror from the
Deep was a slightly tweaked clone of the first game, while Apocalypse
went so far in its own direction as to be virtually unrecognizable as
a part of the same universe. Then there were Enforcer and
Interceptor, poorly received forays into other genres. So while the
thought of a modern X-Com game, with all the advances of
twenty-some-odd years of video game development behind it, was
thrilling, the franchise's rather checkered history made me
understandably wary.
Having completed my first play-through
of XCOM, on the PS3, I can honestly say... it's good.
That sounds bad, I know. But honestly,
I really enjoyed this game. The controls are solid and intuitive,
the enemy AI is good without being an obvious cheater, and the
customization options are amazing. The new class and skill systems
really helps make your soldiers individually useful, rather than just
being a faceless horde differentiated only by who is carrying the
heavy plasma and who is carrying the blaster launcher. Armour
finally means something, as do medpacks, since alien weapons won't
just casually one-shot every soldier they hit. The aliens themselves
are much more intimidating, which is given an in-game shout-out when
engineers test-firing the laser and plasma rifles for the first time
use cardboard standies of the original Sectoid and Muton soldiers as
their targets. They dropped Time Units in favour of a much more
straightforward 'Move/Action or Action' setup. There's a variety in
the missions, with standard 'kill them all' fights interspersed with
escort, bomb disposal and 'rescue civilians' terror attacks. And the
video cut-scenes finally give a peek into the world of the
characters, though admittedly it's one that raises as many questions
as it answers. Sure, it's chilling to watch them react to an alien
attack on Washington, but what exactly are American politicians and
military officers and citizens saying about that, afterwards? I
suppose it might be a bit much to ask, to have this world expanded to
such a degree. But hey, you opened this door, XCOM. You can't blame
me for trying to push through it.
On the other hand, not everything has
necessarily changed for the better. While the customization options
for the individual soldiers have expanded hugely, a lot of your other
options are sharply curtailed. You can't have multiple bases in
multiple locations. There are fewer research topics, and they're
more tightly focused than before, when it really felt like you were
trying to figure out every aspect of an alien civilization. No
researching Alien Entertainment nowadays! There are a lot less alien
encounters; compared to the first game, where you could regularly
shoot down a UFO and send out a Skyranger at least once a week, it's
not uncommon to have the better part of a month go by before there's
an attack. And you can only have one encounter at a time, unlike
before when, with a couple Skyrangers and a few squads of
well-trained soldiers, you could be taking on two or even three crash
sites consecutively. XCOM is a much smaller, more tightly focused
game than its rather sprawling predecessor, for good and ill.
But with all its faults, it's still a
really solid, really fun game. It's also more of a story of human
resistance, with your base's chief scientist, engineer and operations
officer discussing what they've learned and what their next objective
should be. The cut scenes make XCOM feel like you're really
participating in saving the world, though the few times those
characters address you directly raise a host of questions about just
what you, the Commander, are doing.
If you like turn-based, squad-level
strategy and resource management games, you should pick up XCOM.
It's a little thinner than the first game, but still miles ahead of
most of what's out there these days, and it's streamlined enough that
you can pick it up on the fly, though first-timers will still
probably want to set the tutorial on for the first run-through.
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