XCOM: Enemy Unknown Reviewed By Reardon Jones

Rating: 80% (Ratings Key/Explanation)

The sign of being invested in a game; forgetting that you actually need to review it. Enter XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

This turn based strategy game revolves around "our" world being attacked by an unknown Alien force. It's a fresh approach to the strategic war-game genre that has you on the edge of your seat with every turn.

The gamer takes up the role of "The Commander", in charge of the base of operations with the sole purpose of researching, fighting and ultimately defending the Earth from the Alien invaders.

In taking on the enemy you are required to build a rag tag squad of soldiers all with a different skill set, ranging from the heavy based weapons experts to the dead-eye snipers. With every mission comes a varied level of difficulty and with every win the chance for a promotion of rank and level up on skills and abilities.

Having the soldiers level up and adopt nicknames makes it harder to watch some of them fall (Yes, you grow attached to some of your soldiers). Those Aliens can be pretty nasty and when you haven't positioned your troops under appropriate cover, well, let's just say, you might be saying goodbye to one of your best soldiers.

The gameplay runs something like this; Each soldier and enemy has up to two strategic moves to position themselves in the best battle spot (You can take an extra dash to cover more ground but that will end up costing you two moves for one). Easy enough? The trick comes when finding cover or avoiding being flanked by the enemy. This is complicated by the large variety of Aliens that came at you.

Putting it another way, XCOM is similar to a game of chess. Each soldier has a specific job to do and need to be positioned accordingly. Likewise for the enemy which ranges from little "Sectoids" right the way through to the big Daddy "Uber Ethereal". With a total of 18 different types of enemy, each mission isn’t only about destroying the enemy but learning about them. A true Commander knows thy foe.

Research and engineering are the other two major aspects of this war. The only way to protect the world is to know the enemy and adapt their technology with our own. Developing better weapons and armour, understanding the weaknesses of each Alien by performing autopsies and live testing. These are all part of the XCOM experience. Victory shall come to those that build better response vehicles, supply ships and enormous Battle Cruisers.

All of these positives are only slightly clouded by the repetitive nature of the level layouts. It gets to the point where predicting where the enemy might turn up shadows the enjoyment of the challenge. That and the lack of auto-save (something not often found with games these days) created some frustrating moments.

The camera angles that are designed to help with the forward planning and movement of your team also created some headaches. This, combined with the all too frequent visual glitches, really do emphasise the need to manually save the game frequently.

If you are a gamer who loves going into battle and taking on enemy’s left, right and centre in a flurry of bullets, this game is probably not for you. XCOM requires a commanding eye, a Generals approach to battle and a lot of patience. It's quite slow going at times.

Taking the time to set up a perimeter that allows for both covering fire and the potential to ambush leads to single mission times in excess of 20 minutes. You really do require patience to play this one.

But I tell you, it is completely worth it. When your squad returns with promotions in hand (or your favourite soldier falls in the line of duty), it makes all the time and effort worth the experience. With 4 different levels of difficulty to play at, I will be revisiting this one time and again.