Firaxis are developers with experience. From SimGolf, to the latest iterations of the Civilization games, they have proven themselves to have a deep understanding of the simulation and strategy genres, while still being able to make smart design decisions that make their games more palatable to modern gaming expectations. This experience shows in their latest offering: XCOM: Enemy Unknown – a re-boot of the cult-hit and punishingly hard X-COM franchise that started in 1993. Long-time fans can rest easy in knowing that the original X-COM experience hasn't been diluted. The game manages to marry tactical ground-combat, with base-management in such a way that every decision you make feels important.
At its core, XCOM is a tactical, turn-based strategy game. You are the commander of the XCOM project, attempting to stymie the progress of technologically advanced alien invaders. This means you’ll be delivering orders to each of your troops in a small squad on the battlefield, telling them when and where to take cover, who to shoot, and hopefully making sure that they all make it out alive.
The game goes round-by-round, swapping between your team of 4-6 soldiers, and the alien team. On your turn, you can cycle between any of your squad members, and give each one a command. Each soldier’s turn can essentially be broken down into two parts: movement, then an action. This action can vary from shooting a visible enemy, reloading, preparing to shoot an enemy that enters your line-of-sight, or moving again. Before you move your unit, you will constantly find yourself scanning the environment, looking for optimal cover to get them behind – as the game makes it very clear early on that an exposed soldier will most likely be a dead one by the start of your next turn. Indeed, the game is so brutal, that a mission is considered to have gone well if only one or two of your troops dies.
When firing at an enemy, a number of factors determine the ability to hit – from the distance to the target, the weapon used, the soldiers individual accuracy, to the current cover the target is using. All of these are collated, and presented to you with a flat percentage of success. Knowing when to act on that shot, and when to play it safe, are concepts some may have trouble adapting to at first. In fact, sometimes having a high percentage to hit, but consistently missing because of bad-luck can almost feel unfair. Learning that a percentage is no guarantee, regardless of how high, and coming to it with that statistical awareness makes the randomness pill a little easier to swallow, and will ultimately make you a better tactician on the game’s battle-fields.
As your soldiers get experience in the battle-field, they rank up and evolve into different classes. These classes have different skill-sets and modifiers, with each class being integral to your success on the field – from Snipers who can pick off foes from a distance, to the Heavy who can destroy enemy cover with his rocket launcher. Given the huge benefit that class soldiers bring to the fight, I found myself playing the game a lot less recklessly, in the hopes of not getting them hospitalized and losing their expertise, for what can amount to days of in-game time.
In-between the harrowing ground-missions, the game becomes about base and resource management. At the start of each month, you are given a stipend from the shadowy Council who over-see the progress of the XCOM project. The amount you are awarded is based on your performance; namely your success in ground-missions in certain countries. If you choose to ignore a country’s cries for help, their ‘Panic’ rating increases. If you let that get too high, then they pull their monthly funding from the project. The game will actually give you a game-over if enough countries leave the project, but I often found myself just restarting my game entirely before I hit that point.
With the previously mentioned stipend, you can hire new rookies, or build facilities in your base. These help aid research, and the creation of new technology for your soldiers to carry out on to the battle-field. When building these facilities, you are presented with a grid of possible places to build. Building similar structures next to each other on this grid gives a permanent bonus (say if you build two labs next to each other, you’re granted a permanent +10% to research speed). That bonus incentivises a more cerebral approach to the base-building process, and knowing how to maximize the space you’re given, and when to build what, can make-or-break your progress later in the game.
The game is populated with a variety of different enemy alien types, each with their own aesthetics, weaponry and tactics. The aliens themselves actually feed into the research aspect of the game, and are probably the most obvious example of the symbiosis between the tactical ground-combat, and the base-building metagame. In order to progress your research back at the base, and develop new weapons and armour that increase survivability in the later game, you have to retrieve alien technology intact. To that end, you can opt to use no explosives on aliens, as well as attempt to bring some in alive (though this is a very risky option, as you have to get close to them and attempt to use a stun-gun on them). For me, this created an edgy and interesting risk-reward of “Oh god, I need that research” and “Oh god, I want this squad-member to get out of here alive”.
Mechanics aside, XCOM manages to create a very believable universe; one where humans are very clearly the underdogs. From the initial dissimilarities between the human tech and hyper-advanced alien tech, to the sections of flavour text used to describe newly discovered research avenues, you can tell that mankind is making it purely by the skin of its teeth, interpreting this foreign technology and putting it to use at a purely facile level. You get a real sense of desperation from these small touches, and they manage to permeate and run collinear to the actual desperation you get from the battle-field. Not many games have managed to create such a sense of dread for me, on so many different levels. These feelings are compounded even more by the savage alien design. Indeed, a lot of the aliens in this game, are, appropriately alien – the Chryssalid with its strange chitinous plating, the Floater with its primal howls, erratic movements and horrifying combination of biology and technology. The designs help every encounter feel appropriately threatening. The level design varies, from decimated urban sprawls, to the interior of crashed flag ships. However, by the end of my time with game, I was hoping for more tile sets, simply for a little more visual diversity.
The sound design is what you’d expect, but nonetheless well done. The aliens all have appropriate screams, the plasma rifles have a satisfying thud to them, and explosions crack through the air. Battles are punctuated by Michael McCann’s musical styling; string and synth are woven together beautifully, and interspersed with deep bass and heavy drums. One of the very slight critiques I have is that there are only really three different combat songs, so you’ll probably cycle through all of them on a single mission. This can be overlooked however, simply because the soundtrack is so competently produced.
From a technical standpoint, XCOM isn't a tour de force – but the art style is so well realised that it doesn't have to be. That’s not to say that it looks bad; the iridescent colours on alien space-ships are particularly nice to look at, and the particle effects are well done. The menus and HUD elements are functional and useful. For example, the ability to see at a glance how many aliens can currently see the unit you are currently controlling is critical to your survival. Character animation sets are small for humans, but varied across the alien species. I often found animation routines simply not triggering, or characters standing in positions they obviously shouldn't be able to, however these hiccups were so few-and-far between that it never really impacted my immersion.
The mouse and keyboard control scheme was initially a little counter-intuitive (things like scrolling the mouse wheel changes elevation, while holding the mouse wheel and moving the mouse up and down zoomed in and out), but I quickly overcame that hurdle. The biggest problem I had was telling my soldiers where to go in multi-storied battles. Choosing a specific tile to move to that had corresponding ones both above and below it was an exercise in frustration, as the game just wouldn't highlight the appropriate tile 100% of the time. This could often lead to soldiers running in front of enemy fire because they moved to the completely wrong tile, forcing me to reload a mission. The game also locked up on me occasionally, where an alien’s turn just wouldn't end. But again, these problems were so few, that they’re really just minor blemishes on an otherwise tight experience.
The game is mainly focused on its single player offering, lasting a good 15 or so hours for one complete play through. This is, of course, neglecting the fact that you may lose multiple times, and have to start again. At the time of writing, I have spent a total of 43 hours playing XCOM. The game has multiplayer, but it feels more like a nod to today’s standards, rather than a fully featured mode. Each player has a set amount of points they can spend before a match begins. These points are spent on human units (and then more are spent customizing them with specific armour and weapons), or on alien units – with, appropriately, stronger units costing more points. In the time I spent playing the multiplayer, I found no real reason to not just spend my points on decked-out human units, as they vastly overpower the majority of alien units.
Sometimes the base management can make-or-break the game, and you won’t feel the effects until hours after you make your decisions. This can be frustrating at times, but it’s all part of XCOM’s steep learning curve. Some may critique the game for that, but my time spent deconstructing and mastering that curve was so enjoyable, that treading the same territory, with more of an understanding of the gears turning underneath the surface, was a reward unto itself. When I found myself in a losing position, I got a strange satisfaction in knowing that I could start again, using the knowledge I had gleaned, hopefully not repeating the same mistakes again. Yes, the game has the occasional technical hiccup, and the multiplayer doesn't feel fully fleshed out, but all of these are just the footnotes on an otherwise stellar game; a game that blends micro and macro management, all connected with a sinew composed of a real sense of place.