It’s fair to say that even if you’re a PC gaming veteran,
the titles that inspired the development of the latest XCOM may well have passed
you by in your youth. So luckily, Firaxis decided it was time for a revival of
these classic games.
XCOM is a turn based strategy game set in the near future.
Aliens have just made first contact with Earth, and strange occurrences have
been reported around the world. Tasked by a shadowy council of nations, your
job is to command an elite squad to tackle and repel the invasion.
Your time is split into two distinct halves. The action
takes place commanding your squad through tricky missions, fighting the aliens
head on. When your missions are complete, you return to your home base where
you manage your resources carefully between a number of high priority projects.
The action on the ground is well designed as the gameplay
offers up a number of different strategies for you to choose from. You command
up to a squad of six soldiers, each with their own specialist skills and equipment.
Each encounter with the aliens starts with your team landing in the corner of
the map, leaving you to push out and reveal the pesky aliens lurking in the
darkness.
Every member moves in a set turn order. So using the terrain
to approach in cover is vital. As soon as the enemy is spotted, it gets a chance
to scurry into cover. Planning your
firing positions is a good idea as cover plays a key part. Fire-fights are
often short and brutal exchanges of shots. When you have enemies in your
sights, the game tells the odds of hitting each target and the chance of doing
critical damage. Hitting fire is always a tense moment, watching your soldier
line up a shot that can make the difference between victory and defeat.
Each time you score a hit is satisfying as your volleys thud
into the target. Every enemy downed bringing you closer to a successful mission.
However, that can be quickly turned around by a bit of bad luck. What can
appear to be a simple shot can easily end up being a rather embarrassing miss,
leaving you crossing your fingers while the enemy return fire.
It is possible to carefully advance across the maps. But the
missions mix things up. Sometimes all you need to do is sweep the area of
threats. On other occasions the council will task you with saving as many
civilians as possible, forcing you to swiftly push out into the map. Your performance will make all the difference
when it comes to your funding.
And you funding is your most important resource. Several
nations around the globe are willing to contribute funds to you on the
condition you keep them safe. Ignore a country in need for too long and its
citizens will reach a state of panic, causing your funding to be cut. Failure
to keep global panic levels down will lead to the aliens taking total control
as each nation falls prey to them.
Every dollar you earn can be pumped into various projects in
your home base. Both research and engineering are vital to understanding your
foe and bringing new equipment to the field. However both will take a lot of
time unless you fund team expansions. You also have to maintain a fleet of
fighter aircraft and satellites around the globe to intercept UFOs. Balancing
you budget is a tricky choice, especially on your first play-through.
I never really felt sure where to use my money. I was always
worried that I might not advance in technology quickly enough to combat the
tougher aliens, or not build enough satellites and lack funding. As it turned
out, the game is quite lenient on normal difficulty and I never found myself in
tricky situation. Although I did miss out on a few UFO events as I had focused a
little too heavily on research.
My main criticisms of the game come from the combat. There’s
only a small amount of maps and you will spot some repetition after a while.
Also, far too much of the game was set at night. It was only after several
hours play that I actually got a mission set in the daytime.
The cover and line of sight mechanics are also a bit wonky.
Cover is clearly indicated by shield icons, but with the game having an isometric
view of a square grip map; it’s not always clear what directions you’re covered
from. Shots can also happily go through
large chunks of scenery as if they weren’t there. Spotting an enemy through
solid objects is no problem, and it’s the same vice versa!
I didn’t mind losing a team member when I made a clear
tactical error. But every now again the AI would be extremely lucky and pull
off an impossible shot, usually getting a critical hit and killing a team
member in cover with a single shot. Since the game uses probability to resolve
all the combat, there will always be some unfair moments, that’s a given. However
it doesn’t stop it from being incredibly frustrating.
Thankfully, as I’m a sane person who played on normal
difficulty; a quick save game reload would undo any ridiculousness. If you’re a
madman who plays iron-man mode where there’s no such luxury, be prepared to
recruit many new team members.
Overall, XCOM is probably the finest example of a turn based
game in the modern era of gaming. Completing the game once took a good twenty
hours and left me looking forward to upping the difficulty and heading back in.
