XCOM: Enemy Unknown (360/PS3/PC)

[Winnow]

I grabbed this game off the netz because I have fond memories of the original XCOM game released in 1994. It's past 3:30am and I finally stopped playing but I kept playing mission after mission. It's addicting.

For those unfamiliar with XCOM, it's a turn based, squad level strategy game. The graphics are a bit dated but decent enough. Overall production values aren't the best but the game play is a blast for anyone that likes turn based games.

There's a lot of base building, researching, upgrading, etc. I seem to be managing OK but money is tight and I need more satellites! There's 16 countries that you are protecting and if you lose 8 of them, you lose the game. To stay in their favor, you need to monitor UFO activity and protect against various Alien activity. Your squad starts out with 4 soldiers and can be expanded to 6 using Officer Training School.

Your squad members gain ranks as they kill Aliens, giving them improved abilities but they perma die if killed so you need to be careful. They also take awhile to heal if wounded so you need some spare troops.

There seems to be a shit ton of decisions to make as you determine what you'll be researching, building, etc. You need money, various alien items to complete research. You need Engineers and scientist...more and more of them to handle all the crap that's going on. While the combat is turn based, the clock keeps on running while you are at your base and the days go buy so you need to be building, excavating, etc to keep up with demands, especially with putting more satellites in orbit and creating more interceptors to counter alien ships.

I don't know if it's worth full price due to the dated look and less than top notch production values, but the game play is very addicting if you like turn based games.

They did a good job with the movement mechanics. There are several difficulty modes. Each character has armor slot, two weapons slots and then a specialty slot. So far, the extra slot has been between grenades, health kit, extra armor, or special stun weapon for capturing live aliens for research. You need to balance your team a bit, include some heavy armor/rocker launcher peeps, sniper, assault, and medical personnel. Even your best soldiers you may not have every mission if they're injured so you need a plan B. There's a lot of stuff that competes for your scarce credits that you need to pay for everything and the many types of upgrades all seem worthy but there's not enough credits to go around.

The Tactical Multiplayer for this game might be really fun. Building your team of Soldiers and Aliens and going head to head against someone looks like it could work really well.

[kyoukan]

the irony of you talking about whether or not a game is worth it when you just steal all of them is kind of awesome

[Funkmasterr]

the irony of you talking about whether or not a game is worth it when you just steal all of them is kind of awesome

The fact that you say that about every new game he posts about is kind of awesome. And by awesome I mean sad.

Don't get me wrong, I agree it's bullshit. But still.

[Winnow]

the irony of you talking about whether or not a game is worth it when you just steal all of them is kind of awesome

Even more awesome is that I still spend more than you on games. Well, buying one $5.00 blue light special game would be spending more than "you" do on games.

[kyoukan]

you don't spend any fucking money on games you stupid pirate. every shit thread you make on this form starts with "WELL I JUST DOWNLOADED THIS" like you think it's awesome or something. nobody gives a fuck if you think a game is worth the money because you never fucking pay for anything. you probably eat out of other people's garbage because it's free.

[Winnow]

So I'm playing tonight and I get to part of the game where there's a storyline quest. A couple cut scenes later I'm in this intense battle, going through an underground base. I lose half my team early on, mostly scrubs, and have to three man it through most of the encounter. I manage to barely make it through and get back to base where everyone's happy. My two veterans are promoted to Major.

After this, I take a random crashed UFO encounter and proceed to get my ass handed to me by multiple mind controlling aliens who turn several squad members against my team. The mission's going to be a fail as I can see some shit in the background I'm not going to be able to handle so I abort the mission. Well, there's really no reason to abort a mission as I find out aborting a mission kills everyone on your current team.

Not wanting to lose my couple decent squad members, I reload an old save, but I hadn't saved after finishing the major storyline mission. I suck it up and head back to the underground base figuring at least I know where everything is this time. Turns out, everything is completely different. The base is completely randomized and even the mobs don't come at you by same type or order/locations. The game places a couple key parts of the storyline quest in the base and then generates the area uniquely for your encounter, even for storyline stuff.

There's a lot of good tactics/strategy involved. Ammo (cartridge capacity) is very limited and you need to reload a lot so there's strategy to that as well as what status you leave your squad members in at the end of your turn. Your Heavy Rocket Launcher team members only get a single shot for the entire mission so you need to make them count. Regular rifles last about three rounds before needing to be reloaded, unless your lay down suppressing fire which eats up your ammo quicker. There's unlimited ammo, except for the rocker launchers, but it comes down to figuring out when best to burn a turn to reload. You can also individually set some of your squad members to retaliate if attacked or if they see enemy motion after your turn is over but that burns up ammo as well and those retaliation shots don't seem very accurate.

I decked out my main sniper with a booster scope as well as researched laser weapons and gave him a laser sniper rifle for really high crit damage/chance. Some laser weapons don't require reloading but that's not the case with the sniper rifles. I'm not sure about plasma weapons yet.

You start with 4 man teams and then can use officer training to expand to a 5 man team and then 6 man team. The rocket launchers sure are handy as the grenades don't have much range. But with just a single shot per encounter, I think the snipers become more useful. Might try 2 heavy, 2 sniper, 1 support, 1 assault. Every team member has a rifle so I I might dump the assault for another sniper or support. With perma death in this game, when you get to the main boss, you want those rocket launchers avail to take stuff out quick before the harder mobs start one shotting your team members.

Supposedly the game is 15-20 hours long in normal mode and is designed to be replayable like a Civilization game. I read an article where they made the difficulty levels more than just boosting the mob count/hps. I'm on easy mode and am still finding it challenging. Your four main classes (Assault, Heavy, Sniper and Support) have ability trees but they are very basic. For most of the ranks, you have two ability choices and get only one ability per rank so there's some customization involved there as well as your "loadouts" for each squad member where you decide how to equip them. Hit points are precious. You start with like 6 hit points and gain one hit point per rank. If you deck yourself out with extra armor, you sacrifice being able to take something like grenades, med kits, etc with that team member.

Fun game. I'm going to have to research some psionics protection gear because those mind controlling aliens will wreck your squad fast. XCOM is balanced enough where you don't mind a few squad members dying here and there but it takes just long enough to level up that you really don't want to lose some of your higher ranked team members with their improved abilities...and you definitely don't want to lose your medic after getting the ability to carry more than one med kit. Each hit point takes a day to heal after returning to base so using your med kits to heal before returning helps a lot, even if you don't need them in an emergency situation.

Best thing is that with XCOM being a turn based game you can be doing other things. I was playing tonight while watching Sunday Night Football. You can also save anytime you want, right in the middle of an encounter if needed.

When you hire new squad members at your base, they come from random countries. Anytime I get a Canadian, I designate them as my sacrificial suicide bomber, making them run out in the open and chuck a grenade. Rookies are cheap enough to hire that it's worth it!

[Winnow]

FWIW, this game is getting good reviews on all platforms:

XBOX: 89

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360 ... my-unknown

PC: 89

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/xcom-enemy-unknown

PS3: 91

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstat ... my-unknown

PS3 has the least reviews so the rating may be skewed a bit. It should'nt mater which platform you play this one on.

[Hesten]

I still wonder what is up with the release dates, strange to see so many reviews of it, when i cant start it till in 17 hours

[Winnow]

I still wonder what is up with the release dates, strange to see so many reviews of it, when i cant start it till in 17 hours

Hmm, it released on Tuesday in the Republic of America. Do most game have a delayed release date in Europe?

[Hesten]

I still wonder what is up with the release dates, strange to see so many reviews of it, when i cant start it till in 17 hours

Hmm, it released on Tuesday in the Republic of America. Do most game have a delayed release date in Europe?

Not normally, only one I can even think of was Ghostbusters, due to a PS3 exclusive in europe ni a few months...which meant that i pirated it, since i visited Steam with my CC card, and wanted to buy it, but was not allowed to
NO clue why this one got a few days later, maybe they released the beta on the US population and use you as beta testers till we euros get the finished product

[Winnow]

I did locate my first base in Europe instead of the U.S. My first observation satellite I placed over Canada because that country is highly suspicious to me.

[Hesten]

I just got to play with it today, and I'm having a LOT of fun with it
Still only a few hours in, but enjoying it, but have to agree, the graphics, especially player hair, is lacking.
After doing a game of JA2, i dont miss the action points though, i think the choise to go with 1-3 actions was a better idea.
And i like how the missions '(so far at least) are fairly fast, so you can actually just play 10 min and feel like you do something, instead of the sometimes horribly long missions in the original.