Legacy of War
The Geo-Scope, the greatest tool for fighting the alien threat.
The original Xcom might be one of the most terrifying games ever made. Based on sci-fi classics like Aliens and Starship Troopers, it put you in command of a squad of elite soldiers sent to tackle an alien threat. It wasn't just as simple as dropping in a bunch of bad asses and cleaning up the alien filth though, you had to think and plan your moves, both on the battlefield and off. It's mixture of business simulation and tactical turn-based strategy was certainly an interesting far cry from most other games on the market and it's since been a certified classic.
The terror of the original was that you never knew what was around the next corner. You'd be advancing your squad down a hallway, only to run smack dab into an ambush that would wipe you out. Your machinegunner's mind could suddenly be taken over and on top of fighting the aliens you now had to contend with that. The structure your men were taking cover behind could be blown to smithereens and now they were completely exposed to gunfire. The game was top notch when it came to creating organic, unscripted tension and thanks to the low-poly graphics and spooky sound track it still holds up well in this regard.
Xcom spawned a few sequels, including the underwater themed Terror from the Deep and the smaller scale Apocalypse before the strategy games went dormant for fifteen years. Despite being the inspiration for dozens of other TBS games, it never got a proper sequel before the IP was picked up by Firaxis in 2008. This would prove to be not only one of the best TBS games ever released, but also the Xcom game we had always wanted.
Enemy Unknown
Not all foes are carbon based, or even land based.
\The setup for Xcom is simple: There are aliens invading Earth and it's up to Xcom, a multinational coalition of super soldiers, to stop them. You are the newly appointed chief of the Xcom project, an as such it's up to you to control every aspect of the team, be it upgrading your base, assigning engineering or science projects, dealing with the various coalition countries, or sending your soldiers into battle.
This might sound like a daunting laundry list of tasks, but thankfully except for the last item most of it is relatively straight forward. Ostensibly the game is split into two parts: managing your base and fighting aliens on the ground. You only need to worry about one base this time around, rather then the myriad of small bases from the first game, and it's upgrades come in the form of new rooms added to the layout. Even when it comes to interior planning you'll need to think tactically, as certain rooms offer bonuses when placed right next to each other. Build an engineering workshop right next to a satellite feed and your satellites will be that much more effective. Stack your generators next to each other and you'll get a bit of extra power output. Nothing in Xcom can be done blindly, and everything needs to be considered before hand.
No where is this more important then in the second half of the game, the combat. Battles are long winded affairs, and it's a good thing there's a lot of downtime between them. Despite the relitvly small maps and minuscule unit count, each fight can seem like it's own minute war. You can only deploy a small handful of troops in each battle, meaning it's that much more imperative that they survive, and you'll always find yourself outnumbered. You can't out gun the enemy, there's to many for that, so you'll need to out think them, sometimes with only seconds to spare.
Cover and Concealment
Missions can earn soldiers promotions, provided they survive.
The best thing about Xcom's combat is how well it works. It works so well it's sort of hard to notice. Instead of action points, each unit is allowed two actions per turn. They can move into cover and fire, move twice as far at the cost of firing, or perform an action and end the turn. Actions are anything from firing their weapons, to buffing themselves, using items, or tossing grenades. You'll need to think carefully about what you want each soldier to do, and making the decision between firing on an enemy or moving out of cover can sometimes be the difference between life or death.
Victory or defeat often rests on how you plan your strategy, whether you rush in guns blazing or slowly move up using cover and setting up chokepoints. It's tempting to just constantly move your troops one at a time and use the Overwatch command that lets them fire at a moving enemy, but this becomes tiresome and certain resources are time based. You're simultaneously encouraged to move fast and yet take your time and think, and it creates a tension as you weigh each move heavily.
You will, despite your best efforts, loose men in the process. Xcom is an unforgiving game, and walking away from later missions with only a few survivors becomes commonplace. It's important to always have a B team, and as the game progresses a C team as well. It can be down-right devastating to loose a high ranking soldier to a stupid move, and over time you can get really attached to your men, making their deaths that much more painful.
Enemy Within and the Long War
You'll need to build crack squads to save earth.
Fighting aliens is nice and all, but let's face it: in the event of a global war not all of humanity is going to be against the alien incursion. Enter Enemy Within, the expansion pack for Xcom that adds a new threat, and new ways to fight back.
As the name implies, the new foe in Enemy Within is a human group known as Exalt that infiltrates Xcom. You'll need to divert resources into stopping their advances and occasionally meet them in the field head on. These battles offer a nice change of pace from the standard alien ones, and you'll need to rethink your tactics to overcome them. The AI for Exalt behaves differently then the aliens and it's a great change of pace every once and a while.
If I were to recommend a version of Xcom it would be the PC version for two words: Long War. The Long War is a fan made mod that, like Jagged Alliance 2's legendary 1.13 mod, or ...most of Skyrim's mod repository Xcom is a game made that much better by it's own fan base. The Long War is just that, it expands what was already a lengthy game into a downright epic, stretching the campaign time into the triple digits. It's not just that things are slower, although progression is stymied quite a bit, but the whole experience is re-balanced to let the game take longer to develop. The amount of new content is insane, and I really could write a review of the game just based on this mod
Fog of War
The alien threat isn't always the worst thing in Xcom...
It's to it's credit that the gameplay, balance, and pacing in Xcom is so good because on the technical levels it fails quite a bit. Graphically it's nothing to write home about. It's now three years old, which hasn't' helped, but even in 2012 Xcom was far from the best looking game ever. It's running on Unreal 3, but even then it doesn't look nearly as good as some other games on that engine. It's not that it looks bad, per-say, but muddy and washed out to say the least. There's some nice lighting, and plenty of effects, but over all the game looks drab.
It does pick up a few point when it comes to it's design choices. Objects are simple to identify, and more importantly cover is easy to identify. The levels look like they should, cluttered with random objects with the odd encroaching alien device or poor civilian caught in the crossfire. Even better are the character models, with each of the different types of aliens looking unique and terrifying, from the old classic grey alien of the Sectoid to the hulking monstrosity of the Muton, or the parody of a human in the Thin Man. Equally cool is your Xcom team, covered in armor and hoisting weapons that look like they could do some damage.
You'll loose count of how many times your men fire into nothingness.
Audio wise Xcom is serviceable. There are enough voice actors for your Xcom team to make it feel varied, although consider it's supposed to be a multinational squad it's odd to hear American voices for everyone, regardless of background. The voice acting on the scripted characters is well done and manages to fit well, from the tottering old engineer to the science driven doctor and your no-nonsense commanding officer. The music is a great mix of eerie synth and rock, but nothing worth mentioning. Guns sound punchy enough, especially the heavy weapons, but explosions lack a certain punch to them.
The biggest problem with Xcom's presentation is that it's just buggy as hell. Not that the game will crash, in that regard it's stable, but just the way things work within the game seem off, like it's taking the most bizarre path available to it. I mean that literally, as the pathfinding can be downright hilarious at times, with soldiers going up to the roof of a building only to smash a window and drop to the ground floor, all to move, like 20 feet. Weapon fire will occasionally phase through solid walls, soldiers will shoot at nothing and the bullets bend to meet their target, corpses get stuck in the geography and stretch to horrible proportions, the list goes on. Again, it's never game breaking, but it's strange to say the least.
Overall, Xcom is an incredibly rare breed of game. It's a turn based tactical strategy that rewards good planning. It's a grand strategy that's approachable enough for normal people. It's a reboot of a long dead franchise that actually understands what the original games did right. Xcom isn't just a game worth playing, it's a game that any strategy fan owes it to themselves to play.
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