Developer: Firaxis Games
Publisher: 2K Games
Released: October, 2012
Platforms: PC, XBox 360, PlayStation 3
Genre: Strategy/RPG
Remake is always a special case in terms of reviewing; while you have to look at it by the standards of the release date you can't just neglect the original game and not compare the two of them. And, like in case of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, if the original game is considered a cult classic that was released over eighteen years before the remake, the comparison is more difficult to do. I was, in some way still am, a fan of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, so I try to take both sides in account.
This review is based on the PC version of the game and there may be some differences to console versions. From now on I'm going to use the term XCOM when talking the remake and UFO when original game.
The Story
The premise of the game is rather interesting; aliens have waged a war against humans, a war without any mercy. The first phase of invasion is successful and the humanity is already crumbling against the overwhelming enemy. To change the course of war eighteen countries have established a special army unity, which is called Extraterrestrial Combat Unit or XCOM in short. The player takes the position of the XCOM commander. The XCOM unit is independent in the sense that only The Council, a group of anonymous leaders, is above them, and even The Council has no power over the decisions of the commander. Sounds familiar? It's more or less exact copy of the beginning situation of UFO.
Even though the premise is interesting and perhaps a bit promising, it becomes obvious almost immediately that the story is not what XCOM is about. While always being there, the story is only a background thing to explain why certain type of missions appear or why the player should do the given quest. And while not being a too complicated, the story is well made and written, with short but detailed explanations of the changes without getting too complicated. In XCOM you don't see situations like "We want alive aliens for study. Go capture one!" style of situations, but instead the player is given a explanation why the studying of live aliens would benefit the fight.
The story progress of the game progress during cutscenes and short monologues of the important characters. None of these are actually quite short, which is good since the attention of actual game is not taken away from player. And every time the story advances the dialogue is well done and voice acted. To me it seems like the developers made a good decision when the included only a handful of characters related to the story. In fact, I can't remember any game that has so few important characters while still having a story that advances throughout the game. Besides the cutscenes there are also some random comments the NPCs make through the radio during missions; the head engineer may warn you of using guns near alien power technology or the head scientist may remind you that you were supposed to capture the specific type of alien, not to kill one. There are few different versions of these random comments, though only limited amount and those get repetitive quickly. Still, all those comments make the game feel a bit more interactive and alive.
So, how does the story of XCOM compare to UFO? To be honest, I didn't notice many differences. Some exists and the representation is better in XCOM, but that's all. And I wouldn't be too concerned of the representation differences since the computer technology was way worse back in 1994 when the original game was released.
Graphics
I don't think it would make sense to compare the graphics of UFO and XCOM. After all, like I already stated earlier, the capabilities of computers were way worse when the original game was released compared today. If I make the comparison, the remake would definitely beat the original game.
So, how does the XCOM look like? In my opinion the game is beautiful. It doesn't achieve the same level as some of the recent FPS or sport games do but perhaps it doesn't even need to. It looks good and, what's more important in my books, it runs well even in laptop was bought a bit over a year ago. Of course, one reason why the game runs so well is because there is not much action taking place at the same time due the nature of the game. On the other hand there are those small details that enhance the visual appearance quite much; well animated water flow, rain or flames.
While the game looks beautiful in general, there is a huge problem as well; the short cinematic events (shooting or detecting a group of aliens) include a heavy clipping of objects. I think this is because these cinematics are made from two parts; the actual animation and the background. In case of shooting the animation usually takes the background into account well enough, but at times the mistake is made and the creature (human or alien) partially clips with the background objects. And then there is those situation when the character shoots the wrong way, which makes the cinematic laughable. Or perhaps my soldiers posses some strange abilities to change path of bullets drastically, being able to shoot an alien behind them while facing the other direction?
While the cinematic problems in shooting happens somewhat rarely, the alien detection cinematic is almost always broken. This is because there is one animation part for each type of alien, which is used every time. And this animation was made without taking the possibilities of background into account. When the aliens are in open and flat section, the animation works properly, but as soon as there is a single object, like wall or table, near, the clipping occurs. If I had to make an estimation, I would say that around 85% of the alien detection cinematics had the clipping problem, and most of the time the problem was severe enough to really annoy me. There was a option in settings to turn the cinematics off but I didn't try that since the detection cinematic may be a valuable clue to determine if the aliens saw your soldiers or not. I really hope this problem gets fixed soon.
Audio
I already mentioned that the voice acting is good, but how about the rest of the audio? The same adjective applies, the developers really polished the audio section. The background music is good and fits to the game, small sound effects are played constantly and some cases those effects can even be helpful to player. You see, each type of alien have their distinctive sound effect, which is played at least when one of your soldiers hears something, but also in random situations. And these sound effects are distinctive enough that, after a short time, I was able to determine the nearby alien type just by listening the sound. Few times I was able to save my rookies neck when I realized that the nearby enemy wasn't lowly sectoid but something far nastier.
Gameplay
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is divided in two different parts; strategical part and tactical part. Strategical is basically everything you do between missions, which includes scanning alien activity, base management, researching, squad management and equipment handling. Tactical part takes place when the squad reaches the mission location and in this part all the fighting against aliens take place.
Except graphical and interface updates the veterans of the original game should find the strategical part familiar. Perhaps the biggest change in this part is the removal of additional bases since in XCOM you have only one base you develop. This change does limit the possibilities you have, especially since the size of the base is rather small. Of course, this means the player must make decision of what is needed and what is not. Unfortunately this means that some facilities, like research labs, becomes more or less useless since those don't provide enough bonuses compared to other buildings. On the other hand it's possible to destroy facilities already built, which means that once certain facilities aren't needed anymore for any reasons, the player can replace them with ones that are needed more.
Almost everything that happens in strategic part requires time to take place. Constructing facilities, scanning aliens, upgrading equipment or even the construction of new equipment takes time. Strange thing is that, while certain equipment have construction time, most of them don't. Basically anything that can be equipped by soldiers are made instantly, which doesn't make too sense to me. But this is only a small complain. Another problem that occurs with item creation is that the player is unable to see the stats of the weapons and armors is not shown in construction screen. Minor annoyance and after playing the game more it gets pretty obvious which weapons are better than others. On the other hand, it's not always too obvious which soldier class can use which new items, which means that, in case of new weapon the player has never seen before, it comes to trial and error.
At first the item upgrading system sounds a good feature. Unfortunately the options are too limited; about 25 of the upgrades becomes instantly useless if the player is not going to use S.H.I.V, like me. After those upgrades are taken out almost half of the remaining options are pistol upgrades. Now, pistol is a handy weapon, but I usually used those rarely, mostly when I wanted to capture a alien and thus wanted to lower the enemy health just a bit more. So, to summary, upgrade system is good but it feels like the developers just didn't bother to finish it up. Why there is no upgrades to main weapons? Despite one upgrade, which increases the ammo capacity of all weapons, there is none.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Scientific research system is quite good, there are lots of options to choose from and the player must really consider the order of reasearches. And since all research options require specific objects or alien bodies, the actions player takes during missions does reflect on research possibilities.
There is also a feature called Officer Training School. In there the player can purchase some general upgrades to the squad, like increasement of squad size or recovery speed of wounded soldiers. Each new upgrade requires at least one soldier in specific rank or higher, which means the upgrades become gradually available. There aren't too many upgrades, though all of them are usefull, some being nearly important to purchase as soon as possible. Perhaps there could have been few options more, though that's a matter of opinion.
There is also a facility called Psi Labs. When this facility is unlocked and constructed, the player can order up to three soldiers to testing at a time. If the soldier has the mental ability to use psi powers, the ability is unlocked in there. The problem is that the facility becomes available rather late and the test takes ten days to complete. This means that it's usually quite annoying to find out if your best soldiers have the psi abilities, unless you have managed to develop a army with enough spare soldiers good enough to survive the more difficult missions. I usually just skipped my best soldiers and tested out the worse ones.
In strategic part the player can also keep up with the current threat situation of the world as well as manage the squad, but I will talk those two in separate sections.
Next, the tactical phase. As I already mentioned earlier, tactical phase is playing the missions. There are several different kinds, though those can be divided into abductions, terror missions, bomb runs, escort missions and landing missions. There are some special missions related to the story though only few. Abduction missions, despite the name, is basically a fight against aliens and doesn't contain any civilians. Eliminate all the hostiles and you have completed the missions. Terror missions include civilians and in those you compete against the aliens for the lives of civilians. The aliens are trying to kill them while you try to rescue them, either by getting next to them, which triggers the rescue, or killing all the aliens. Terror missions are perhaps the most difficult ones to do and it's nearly impossible to save everybody. In bomb runs you have specific amount of turns available to find and disarm a bomb, guarded by aliens of course. The player can increase the amount of turns by disabling certain power nodes, though that is optional. In escort missions you literally have to escort specific civilian from point A to point B. Most of the time the player also needs to locate the civilian first, though not always. The landing missions comes in two forms; crashing and landing. The difference is that landing missions are more difficult as there are more aliens around. In landing missions the space ship is also completely intact at the beginning, unlike in crashing missions, which means more objects can be salvaged intact.
The maps used in missions are randomly decided and partially generated as well. There is a certain rule of thumb though; landing missions take place in forrests while every other missions take place in civilized areas. This means that, except landing missions, each map contains buildings and/or other objects constructed by humans. The main features of each map stays the same. In landing missions the interior of the ship is always the same, though it's affected by the ship type and size. In other missions the placement of cars, buildings and other objects are always the same. What is randomly generated are, for landing missions, the location of ship and the placement of minor land feature. In case of other missions, basically only the locations of aliens are randomly generated. What this means is that, while having some random variances, the player usually have a good idea of how to proceed the mission. Fortunately the variance is good enough to not make things boring, though that applies only to first time the game is played through. After that ti becomes more like grinding the same maps over and over again.
One of the biggest changes in the game can be found in tactical phase; the old action point system has been removed completely and replaced by two actions per soldier, called move points. Each action, be it moving or shooting, requires one move point. This is basic rule, some actions require two move points, like using a grenade launcher or shooting with sniper rifle (if certain ability hasn't been chosen for that character). It's also good to realize that each action, that is not movement, ends the character turn. This means that the soldier must move before shooting since shooting ends the turn. There are some abilities that remove this rule and even one ability that allows the soldier to shoot after using both move points to movement.
The problem of above system is that moving distance of the soldier is divided in two; closer distance require one move point and longer distance require two move points. What makes this system bad is that the move point or points are depleted even if the distance is shorter than maximum. For example, lets say the soldier can move ten tiles with one move point and twenty tiles with two move points. If soldier moves only two tiles the first move point is depleted, meaning the it can move only ten tiles with second movement. This becomes especially annoying if the player accidentaly moves the soldier in wrong tile, which has happened to me several times. And since the interface is not the best in this aspect, it's quite easy to actually choose a target tile which is different than what the player wanted, it's quite easy to get the soldier killed because of this.
It's always recommended to move slowly in tactical combat, staying behind covers and ensuring the enemy can't flank. The cover system is really the crucial aspect of the combat since it allows lower change of being hit. While it's a good system there are some realy annoyances in it as well. First of all, the possibilty to crouch was removed from the original game. Crouching would have provided more tactical elements to the game, like being able to hide completely behind certain land features. This is not possible in XCOM, which is a bit strange in my opinion. Why remove a good system if the change doesn't provide anything? Secondly, while covers provide bonus to avoiding shots, the damage is never altered. What is the chance of hitting with every bullet from the distance of 300 meters when using a weapon like machine gun? Very slim, that's what it is. But XCOM does assume that, if you hit the target, you do so with every bullet. Secondly, while I haven't been able to confirm this, it seems like the cover only counts as partial or whole. In both cases there is no effect from the type or size of the cover, if it counts as partial it provides the same coverage bonus. How is it possible that a trash can provides the same coverage bonus that fallen tree? In fact, how is it even possible to effectively use trash can as cover? Another strange thing related to this is that the player can't shoot through the cover. Sure, the damage would be somewhat less if the bullets go through table or trash can, but it's completely possible to hit.
There is also a feature called Officer Training School. In there the player can purchase some general upgrades to the squad, like increasement of squad size or recovery speed of wounded soldiers. Each new upgrade requires at least one soldier in specific rank or higher, which means the upgrades become gradually available. There aren't too many upgrades, though all of them are usefull, some being nearly important to purchase as soon as possible. Perhaps there could have been few options more, though that's a matter of opinion.
There is also a facility called Psi Labs. When this facility is unlocked and constructed, the player can order up to three soldiers to testing at a time. If the soldier has the mental ability to use psi powers, the ability is unlocked in there. The problem is that the facility becomes available rather late and the test takes ten days to complete. This means that it's usually quite annoying to find out if your best soldiers have the psi abilities, unless you have managed to develop a army with enough spare soldiers good enough to survive the more difficult missions. I usually just skipped my best soldiers and tested out the worse ones.
In strategic part the player can also keep up with the current threat situation of the world as well as manage the squad, but I will talk those two in separate sections.
Next, the tactical phase. As I already mentioned earlier, tactical phase is playing the missions. There are several different kinds, though those can be divided into abductions, terror missions, bomb runs, escort missions and landing missions. There are some special missions related to the story though only few. Abduction missions, despite the name, is basically a fight against aliens and doesn't contain any civilians. Eliminate all the hostiles and you have completed the missions. Terror missions include civilians and in those you compete against the aliens for the lives of civilians. The aliens are trying to kill them while you try to rescue them, either by getting next to them, which triggers the rescue, or killing all the aliens. Terror missions are perhaps the most difficult ones to do and it's nearly impossible to save everybody. In bomb runs you have specific amount of turns available to find and disarm a bomb, guarded by aliens of course. The player can increase the amount of turns by disabling certain power nodes, though that is optional. In escort missions you literally have to escort specific civilian from point A to point B. Most of the time the player also needs to locate the civilian first, though not always. The landing missions comes in two forms; crashing and landing. The difference is that landing missions are more difficult as there are more aliens around. In landing missions the space ship is also completely intact at the beginning, unlike in crashing missions, which means more objects can be salvaged intact.
The maps used in missions are randomly decided and partially generated as well. There is a certain rule of thumb though; landing missions take place in forrests while every other missions take place in civilized areas. This means that, except landing missions, each map contains buildings and/or other objects constructed by humans. The main features of each map stays the same. In landing missions the interior of the ship is always the same, though it's affected by the ship type and size. In other missions the placement of cars, buildings and other objects are always the same. What is randomly generated are, for landing missions, the location of ship and the placement of minor land feature. In case of other missions, basically only the locations of aliens are randomly generated. What this means is that, while having some random variances, the player usually have a good idea of how to proceed the mission. Fortunately the variance is good enough to not make things boring, though that applies only to first time the game is played through. After that ti becomes more like grinding the same maps over and over again.
One of the biggest changes in the game can be found in tactical phase; the old action point system has been removed completely and replaced by two actions per soldier, called move points. Each action, be it moving or shooting, requires one move point. This is basic rule, some actions require two move points, like using a grenade launcher or shooting with sniper rifle (if certain ability hasn't been chosen for that character). It's also good to realize that each action, that is not movement, ends the character turn. This means that the soldier must move before shooting since shooting ends the turn. There are some abilities that remove this rule and even one ability that allows the soldier to shoot after using both move points to movement.
The problem of above system is that moving distance of the soldier is divided in two; closer distance require one move point and longer distance require two move points. What makes this system bad is that the move point or points are depleted even if the distance is shorter than maximum. For example, lets say the soldier can move ten tiles with one move point and twenty tiles with two move points. If soldier moves only two tiles the first move point is depleted, meaning the it can move only ten tiles with second movement. This becomes especially annoying if the player accidentaly moves the soldier in wrong tile, which has happened to me several times. And since the interface is not the best in this aspect, it's quite easy to actually choose a target tile which is different than what the player wanted, it's quite easy to get the soldier killed because of this.
It's always recommended to move slowly in tactical combat, staying behind covers and ensuring the enemy can't flank. The cover system is really the crucial aspect of the combat since it allows lower change of being hit. While it's a good system there are some realy annoyances in it as well. First of all, the possibilty to crouch was removed from the original game. Crouching would have provided more tactical elements to the game, like being able to hide completely behind certain land features. This is not possible in XCOM, which is a bit strange in my opinion. Why remove a good system if the change doesn't provide anything? Secondly, while covers provide bonus to avoiding shots, the damage is never altered. What is the chance of hitting with every bullet from the distance of 300 meters when using a weapon like machine gun? Very slim, that's what it is. But XCOM does assume that, if you hit the target, you do so with every bullet. Secondly, while I haven't been able to confirm this, it seems like the cover only counts as partial or whole. In both cases there is no effect from the type or size of the cover, if it counts as partial it provides the same coverage bonus. How is it possible that a trash can provides the same coverage bonus that fallen tree? In fact, how is it even possible to effectively use trash can as cover? Another strange thing related to this is that the player can't shoot through the cover. Sure, the damage would be somewhat less if the bullets go through table or trash can, but it's completely possible to hit.
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
What is good feature in cover system is that almost everything can be destroyed. The alien is standing behind a wall? Blow that section of wall away with your rocket launcher or granage! Even guns can achieve this, though since there is no way to aim anywhere else than the aliens with normal guns, it's only a matter of luck and requires the soldier to miss the alien.
Another thing the player must take into account is the flanking. Both the aliens and the humans can do so, which means that there is no cover protecting the target from the direction of shooting. Unfortunately the system that determines if the target is flanked or not is flawed. At times I would have sworn my soldier was flanking the alien but wasn't, even when there wasn't any apparent cover and the attack was made from behind. Apparently the game thought something was there to protect the alien, though I wasn't able to figure out what it was.
Finally, we have the line of sight to consider. You can't shoot something if you don't see it, though snipers can take the ability to allow them to shoot anything that is seen by other squad members. Basically this works well enough though few times I could have sworn my soldier shouldn't be able to see the alien whle they were, or vice versa. And the sniper's ability is somewhat broken, many times one or more aliens weren't listed as possible targets even though, in my opinion, those should.
So far I have been mentioning only the bad things of the tactical combat. But there are so many good things in there as well. Destroyable map is one, panic system is another. One or more soldiers can panic if they have been shot, the chance increasing if the shot connects, if another squad member dies and even if there is just so too many aliens incoming. Panic always lasts one complete turn, during which the player has no control over the soldier. During panic the soldier can do completely anything, even shoot own squad members. I once even saw one of my soldiers to toss a grenade while in panic, killing half of my squad while doing so.
Basically, after the complains I mentioned above, the tactical combat is very entertaining and the player needs to carefully weight the possibilities. There is a certain alien in one room you want to capture? And it appears only when the tile in which it appears has been seen by your soldiers? You can try to just rush inside or you can use some cunning. In this example is completely possible to use the sniper's ability Battle Scanner, a object that is thrown like a grenade and acts like another soldier in terms of line of sight, order one of your soldiers to run inside the room and out, triggering the alien appearance, the use the knowledge provided by the Battle Scanner to weaken the alien and finally capture it. The missions also don't take much time to complete, though it depends on the playing style and mission, usually ranging between 10 and 25 minutes per mission. Too many times I have had the feeling "Just one more mission before I quit" while playing.
Finally, couple words of the most important feature of combat, one you use very frequently; the ovewatch mode. If you put the soldier in overwatch mode he will get a reaction shot to first alien that moves into line of sight. This feature allows lots of tactical decisions and should be used always at the end othe soldier's turn, unless unavailable due other actions made. The reaction shot is made with penalty in accuracy, though the penalty is so small it hardly matters. And it's always a free shot, though you may have to reload the weapon in next turn if you weren't careful. Unfortunately, even this feature has problems. The soldier in overwatch shoots the first alien that comes into line of sight. You can't restrict this in anyway. You know there is one of those chryssalids heading your way and you place your soldiers in overwatch? Pray that there is no sectoid around you didn't notice and it doesn't move to the line of sight before the sectoid. This kind of things do happen all the time, which is annoying. Your soldier just wasted a good reaction shot to kill a sectoid which wasn't able to kill him, after which the chryssalid comes, kills the soldier (the reaction shot would have killed the chryssalid), half of the remaining soldiers panic, kill the remaining soldiers, after which more aliens arrive and slaughter the remaining soldiers. All of this happening in one turn and because the reaction shot was made against sectoid that was less dangerous.
There is another problem in overwatch. All of your six soldiers are ordered to overwatch mode and you know that there are several enemies approaching. First alien arrives and it just happens to be in line of sight of every soldier. What happens? All six soldiers waste their reaction shot to same target! Killing a sectoid, which has three points of health, with six shots each dealing six points of damage is not fun, especially when this sectoid is followed by muttons or other, more dangerous creatures.
Third problem with overwatch is that the reaction shot is made instantly the alien appears in line of sight. The soldier has 5% chance to hit it? Sure, shoot anyway! The alien is chryssalid that can't attack from distance, forcing it to get near of your soldiers? No matter, let's shoot it immediately instead of waiting for it to get close enough to have better chance of actually hitting! What I would have wanted is the possibility to at least determine the minimum chance for the reaction shot. With such possibility the player could only blame himself if the chance was set too high and the alien manages to flank since no reaction shot took place.
World Threat
This feature could be covered in gameplay section as well but I thought it deserves separate section. After all, it's the driving force of the game and works like in the original game. The world is divided in five continents and eighteen countries. Each continent has fixed number of countries, ranging from two to four countries. Each country has a special "threat" value, which indicates the panic level in that country. If the threat level is at maximum at the end of the month, the country leaves The Council, making the game a bit more difficult. If too many countries leave The Council, the game ends.
The threat can increase for three reasons; the player neglected any mission for that country, the player didn't choose a abduction mission located to other country of the same continent or the player failed to intercept alien ship. Especially the abduction missions provide certain element of urgency, since there is usually three countries to choose from and only one country can be chosen. The remaining two countries get a major hit in threat level while rest of the countries in the same continents as those two have a minor hit.
While the threat can increase the player can also lower it as well, which is the only way to try to prevent the country from leaving. This can be done by completing a mission that lowers the panic, some missions lower the threat only in one country while some missions have wider impact, or by building satellites. Each satellite lowers the threat quite much, though this can be done only once per country. Of course, if aliens manage to destroy one of your satellites, you can always relaunch it and get the bonus again. But since destroyed satellite actually increases the threat level, this is not a sound tactic and can't be controlled by player.
Another thing the player must take into account is the flanking. Both the aliens and the humans can do so, which means that there is no cover protecting the target from the direction of shooting. Unfortunately the system that determines if the target is flanked or not is flawed. At times I would have sworn my soldier was flanking the alien but wasn't, even when there wasn't any apparent cover and the attack was made from behind. Apparently the game thought something was there to protect the alien, though I wasn't able to figure out what it was.
Finally, we have the line of sight to consider. You can't shoot something if you don't see it, though snipers can take the ability to allow them to shoot anything that is seen by other squad members. Basically this works well enough though few times I could have sworn my soldier shouldn't be able to see the alien whle they were, or vice versa. And the sniper's ability is somewhat broken, many times one or more aliens weren't listed as possible targets even though, in my opinion, those should.
So far I have been mentioning only the bad things of the tactical combat. But there are so many good things in there as well. Destroyable map is one, panic system is another. One or more soldiers can panic if they have been shot, the chance increasing if the shot connects, if another squad member dies and even if there is just so too many aliens incoming. Panic always lasts one complete turn, during which the player has no control over the soldier. During panic the soldier can do completely anything, even shoot own squad members. I once even saw one of my soldiers to toss a grenade while in panic, killing half of my squad while doing so.
Basically, after the complains I mentioned above, the tactical combat is very entertaining and the player needs to carefully weight the possibilities. There is a certain alien in one room you want to capture? And it appears only when the tile in which it appears has been seen by your soldiers? You can try to just rush inside or you can use some cunning. In this example is completely possible to use the sniper's ability Battle Scanner, a object that is thrown like a grenade and acts like another soldier in terms of line of sight, order one of your soldiers to run inside the room and out, triggering the alien appearance, the use the knowledge provided by the Battle Scanner to weaken the alien and finally capture it. The missions also don't take much time to complete, though it depends on the playing style and mission, usually ranging between 10 and 25 minutes per mission. Too many times I have had the feeling "Just one more mission before I quit" while playing.
Finally, couple words of the most important feature of combat, one you use very frequently; the ovewatch mode. If you put the soldier in overwatch mode he will get a reaction shot to first alien that moves into line of sight. This feature allows lots of tactical decisions and should be used always at the end othe soldier's turn, unless unavailable due other actions made. The reaction shot is made with penalty in accuracy, though the penalty is so small it hardly matters. And it's always a free shot, though you may have to reload the weapon in next turn if you weren't careful. Unfortunately, even this feature has problems. The soldier in overwatch shoots the first alien that comes into line of sight. You can't restrict this in anyway. You know there is one of those chryssalids heading your way and you place your soldiers in overwatch? Pray that there is no sectoid around you didn't notice and it doesn't move to the line of sight before the sectoid. This kind of things do happen all the time, which is annoying. Your soldier just wasted a good reaction shot to kill a sectoid which wasn't able to kill him, after which the chryssalid comes, kills the soldier (the reaction shot would have killed the chryssalid), half of the remaining soldiers panic, kill the remaining soldiers, after which more aliens arrive and slaughter the remaining soldiers. All of this happening in one turn and because the reaction shot was made against sectoid that was less dangerous.
There is another problem in overwatch. All of your six soldiers are ordered to overwatch mode and you know that there are several enemies approaching. First alien arrives and it just happens to be in line of sight of every soldier. What happens? All six soldiers waste their reaction shot to same target! Killing a sectoid, which has three points of health, with six shots each dealing six points of damage is not fun, especially when this sectoid is followed by muttons or other, more dangerous creatures.
Third problem with overwatch is that the reaction shot is made instantly the alien appears in line of sight. The soldier has 5% chance to hit it? Sure, shoot anyway! The alien is chryssalid that can't attack from distance, forcing it to get near of your soldiers? No matter, let's shoot it immediately instead of waiting for it to get close enough to have better chance of actually hitting! What I would have wanted is the possibility to at least determine the minimum chance for the reaction shot. With such possibility the player could only blame himself if the chance was set too high and the alien manages to flank since no reaction shot took place.
World Threat
This feature could be covered in gameplay section as well but I thought it deserves separate section. After all, it's the driving force of the game and works like in the original game. The world is divided in five continents and eighteen countries. Each continent has fixed number of countries, ranging from two to four countries. Each country has a special "threat" value, which indicates the panic level in that country. If the threat level is at maximum at the end of the month, the country leaves The Council, making the game a bit more difficult. If too many countries leave The Council, the game ends.
The threat can increase for three reasons; the player neglected any mission for that country, the player didn't choose a abduction mission located to other country of the same continent or the player failed to intercept alien ship. Especially the abduction missions provide certain element of urgency, since there is usually three countries to choose from and only one country can be chosen. The remaining two countries get a major hit in threat level while rest of the countries in the same continents as those two have a minor hit.
While the threat can increase the player can also lower it as well, which is the only way to try to prevent the country from leaving. This can be done by completing a mission that lowers the panic, some missions lower the threat only in one country while some missions have wider impact, or by building satellites. Each satellite lowers the threat quite much, though this can be done only once per country. Of course, if aliens manage to destroy one of your satellites, you can always relaunch it and get the bonus again. But since destroyed satellite actually increases the threat level, this is not a sound tactic and can't be controlled by player.
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Now, besides loosing the game if too many countries leave, what other effects takes place when country leaves? First of all, the country that leaves can't be covered by satellite anymore. Since the continent bonus requires every country of that continent to have a satellite (except the continent where the base is), if even one country leaves The Council then that continent bonus is lost. Each satellite also provides more monthly funding, the amount depending on the country, and more scientists and/or engineers, which is based on the continent and the number of satellites in that continent. Loosing a country means lower maximum bonuses, the satellite of that country (if exists) is not calculated anymore and the basic monthly funding also decreases. This is why it's always a good idea to try to keep as many countries in The Council as possible.
It's very difficult to keep all the countries, in higher difficulties basically impossible. Because of this the player is forced tho choose between countries; which countries and continents have higher priority? It's all about decisions, creating the feeling of urgency to player. And this is what the XCOM is about, in my opinion. You can't save everybody so sacrifices must be made to reach the goal. Not many games today dare to force this kind of decision to player.
There are two things I would like to mention relating to threat level and missions that annoys me. First of all, the mission selection only lists the threat level of the specific country. You want to take the continental situation into account? You jump between the mission selection and The Situation Room. A small thing but gets quite annoying. Fortunately this problem occurs only with abduction missions since those are the only ones that have more than one country to choose from. And I have noticed that, when the game progress past certain point, the abduction missions become less frequent. Perhaps this is affected by the satellite coverage, I'm not certain.
Another thing I wanted to mention is the fact that only one squad can be deployed at the time. While I really understand this, and it does force the player to choose, wouldn't it be nice to be able to deploy for example two squads? After all, one squad has maximum size of six soldiers and the base can hold almost over ninety soldiers. Perhaps it could have implemented in the way that the player has to build another squad carrier, which would be very expensive? It's not a big problem but I think there could have been some room of improvement.
The Squad
Soldiers are the meat of the XCOM. Without soldiers you can't complete missions. In XCOM there are four types of soldiers; support, assault, heavy and sniper. Support class is your basic medic (though, unlike in other games, they are very effective in combat) and those are usually keep behind. After all, it's not fun to see your only medic die and realize you can't heal your other soldiers in that mission anymore. Assault class is more or less the recon soldier class. Their abilities allow them to, for example, shoot or go overwatch mode even if two movement actions have been done. They are also able to avoid the reaction shot, which makes it handy when you want to capture the alien alive. Heavy soldiers carry the big guns, though they don't do as much damage as assault soldiers. What makes them useful is the ability to use rocket lanchers. A well placed rocket can really turn the tide of fight. Snipers are just that, snipers. Lots of damage over long range is compensated by the fact that shooting (and going overwatch mode) requires two move points, unless the specific skill is taken. They also suffer penalty in accuracy if the enemy is too close.
Each soldier receive experience after the missions they take part in. The amount of experience is determined by the number of kills. Each level a new ability (or two abilities) becomes available, and in case when there are two abilities for that level the player must choose which ability is chosen. Nice and clear system with abilities that actually are useful through the game. Which abilities should be chosen depends the playing style, though each ability has it's uses and are worth to consider.
Now, I'm not 100% sure of this, but I have noticed that taking part in the mission doesn't warrant experience. In fact, I have noticed that few of my rookies didn't gain any levels even after several missions, even though they managed to injure aliens. It seems like only the kills count, which makes the leveling of rookies quite difficult in later parts of the game.
The player can also equip the soldiers, giving them better weapons, armor or even special items. Each soldier can carry one piece of armor, main weapon, secondary weapon and one piece of special equipment, though support class soldier can carry two special items. What weapons the soldier can equip depends on the class, so a support soldier can't carry a sniper riffle. What I don't understand is why the game lists all the weapons for each class even if they can't use those? Fortunately the weapons that can be equipped (available for that class and enabled by research) are listed at the top of the list, but still this seems a bit strange. Another strange thing is that, while other classes have two different pistols available that are better than the initial one, the heavy class only has one additional rocket launcher, which unlocks quite late in the game (or at least did to me, it depends on the research order).
So, soldiers level up through the game. The problem is, each soldier starts as rookie and has no class determined. When they level the first time the class is randomly determined, without any possibility for player to affect this. Only the soldier that have survived from the first mission are assigned the class in balance, meaning if all four soldiers survive you have one soldier of each class. After the first missions it's random. This means, with a streak of bad luck, you could end up having fifteen snipers and only one of other classes. I haven't experienced the problem this dramatically but in one game I had one sniper, one assault, seventeen heavy soldiers and ten support soldiers. Now, there is the upgrade in Officer Training School that imediatey promotes the rookies to first class level, which does eliminate the frustration of running rookies in missions just to discard them immediately since the you don't need more soldiers of that class.
The classes are very well balanced. What I mean by this is that, except support class which is always useful to have around, the effective squad combination is different basing on the map type. And since the map type is directly linked to mission type, the player is able to know which soldiers bring to each mission. For example, abduction missions are good for heavy soldiers since you don't have to worry about civilians or salvages. Terror missions are especially good for snipers since it matters if you kill the alien in one turn (or shot) than in other mission types. Assault class is useful in any mission, though their main weapon type favors interiors. Fortunately you can replace the shotguns with rifles, which makes the assault soldier perhaps the best soldier in the game.
Another big change from the original game is the size of squad. In UFO you could deploy many, many soldiers, though most weren't usually leaving the ship. In XCOM you start with squad size of four, which can be increased to six from Officer Training School. And here we get back to the basic principle; decisions. How many soldiers of each class do you deploy? Or do you replace one or more of your seasoned veterans by rookies in hopes to level those up to become emergency backup? It's up to player.
It's very difficult to keep all the countries, in higher difficulties basically impossible. Because of this the player is forced tho choose between countries; which countries and continents have higher priority? It's all about decisions, creating the feeling of urgency to player. And this is what the XCOM is about, in my opinion. You can't save everybody so sacrifices must be made to reach the goal. Not many games today dare to force this kind of decision to player.
There are two things I would like to mention relating to threat level and missions that annoys me. First of all, the mission selection only lists the threat level of the specific country. You want to take the continental situation into account? You jump between the mission selection and The Situation Room. A small thing but gets quite annoying. Fortunately this problem occurs only with abduction missions since those are the only ones that have more than one country to choose from. And I have noticed that, when the game progress past certain point, the abduction missions become less frequent. Perhaps this is affected by the satellite coverage, I'm not certain.
Another thing I wanted to mention is the fact that only one squad can be deployed at the time. While I really understand this, and it does force the player to choose, wouldn't it be nice to be able to deploy for example two squads? After all, one squad has maximum size of six soldiers and the base can hold almost over ninety soldiers. Perhaps it could have implemented in the way that the player has to build another squad carrier, which would be very expensive? It's not a big problem but I think there could have been some room of improvement.
The Squad
Soldiers are the meat of the XCOM. Without soldiers you can't complete missions. In XCOM there are four types of soldiers; support, assault, heavy and sniper. Support class is your basic medic (though, unlike in other games, they are very effective in combat) and those are usually keep behind. After all, it's not fun to see your only medic die and realize you can't heal your other soldiers in that mission anymore. Assault class is more or less the recon soldier class. Their abilities allow them to, for example, shoot or go overwatch mode even if two movement actions have been done. They are also able to avoid the reaction shot, which makes it handy when you want to capture the alien alive. Heavy soldiers carry the big guns, though they don't do as much damage as assault soldiers. What makes them useful is the ability to use rocket lanchers. A well placed rocket can really turn the tide of fight. Snipers are just that, snipers. Lots of damage over long range is compensated by the fact that shooting (and going overwatch mode) requires two move points, unless the specific skill is taken. They also suffer penalty in accuracy if the enemy is too close.
Each soldier receive experience after the missions they take part in. The amount of experience is determined by the number of kills. Each level a new ability (or two abilities) becomes available, and in case when there are two abilities for that level the player must choose which ability is chosen. Nice and clear system with abilities that actually are useful through the game. Which abilities should be chosen depends the playing style, though each ability has it's uses and are worth to consider.
Now, I'm not 100% sure of this, but I have noticed that taking part in the mission doesn't warrant experience. In fact, I have noticed that few of my rookies didn't gain any levels even after several missions, even though they managed to injure aliens. It seems like only the kills count, which makes the leveling of rookies quite difficult in later parts of the game.
The player can also equip the soldiers, giving them better weapons, armor or even special items. Each soldier can carry one piece of armor, main weapon, secondary weapon and one piece of special equipment, though support class soldier can carry two special items. What weapons the soldier can equip depends on the class, so a support soldier can't carry a sniper riffle. What I don't understand is why the game lists all the weapons for each class even if they can't use those? Fortunately the weapons that can be equipped (available for that class and enabled by research) are listed at the top of the list, but still this seems a bit strange. Another strange thing is that, while other classes have two different pistols available that are better than the initial one, the heavy class only has one additional rocket launcher, which unlocks quite late in the game (or at least did to me, it depends on the research order).
So, soldiers level up through the game. The problem is, each soldier starts as rookie and has no class determined. When they level the first time the class is randomly determined, without any possibility for player to affect this. Only the soldier that have survived from the first mission are assigned the class in balance, meaning if all four soldiers survive you have one soldier of each class. After the first missions it's random. This means, with a streak of bad luck, you could end up having fifteen snipers and only one of other classes. I haven't experienced the problem this dramatically but in one game I had one sniper, one assault, seventeen heavy soldiers and ten support soldiers. Now, there is the upgrade in Officer Training School that imediatey promotes the rookies to first class level, which does eliminate the frustration of running rookies in missions just to discard them immediately since the you don't need more soldiers of that class.
The classes are very well balanced. What I mean by this is that, except support class which is always useful to have around, the effective squad combination is different basing on the map type. And since the map type is directly linked to mission type, the player is able to know which soldiers bring to each mission. For example, abduction missions are good for heavy soldiers since you don't have to worry about civilians or salvages. Terror missions are especially good for snipers since it matters if you kill the alien in one turn (or shot) than in other mission types. Assault class is useful in any mission, though their main weapon type favors interiors. Fortunately you can replace the shotguns with rifles, which makes the assault soldier perhaps the best soldier in the game.
Another big change from the original game is the size of squad. In UFO you could deploy many, many soldiers, though most weren't usually leaving the ship. In XCOM you start with squad size of four, which can be increased to six from Officer Training School. And here we get back to the basic principle; decisions. How many soldiers of each class do you deploy? Or do you replace one or more of your seasoned veterans by rookies in hopes to level those up to become emergency backup? It's up to player.
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Is it RPG?
Some sites and media claim XCOM: Enemy Unknown to be RPG/Strategy hybrid. Honestly, I can't understand how the letters RPG can be linked to this game. The only features that remotely links to RPG is inventories and levels of soldiers and nothing more. If those two features were enough to make the game RPG then around 80-90 (no, those numbers aren't based on any statistics) of modern games could be claimed as RPGs. In my opinion, even a game like NHL 2013 is closer of being RPG than XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Why? Because in NHL you can actually create your own avatar, which you use to play and develop.
Anything Else?
There is also the possibility to play multiplayer matches against other players. In those you create your squad of six soldiers with predetermined funding and then you fight against each other in tactical combat. I did try it few times but, since there were so few players around those times I tried, not many matches were played. It's fun, though I experienced few quitters (person who doesn't finish the match, especially if badly loosing).
There are four types of difficulty levels in the game. Easy and normal are somewhat easy and I recommend them to those who are playing the game the first time. Classic and Impossible are much harder, in Impossible level only one soldiers of my squad usually returned after mission. There is also the Ironman mode, which means only one save is used, saved after each action done in strategic section or after each completed turn in tactical combat. I usually don't play Ironman mode before I finish the game at least once, but somehow it felt like the game should be played in that mode. After all, in normal mode, you always have the temptation of reloading if something doesn't go as planned. The difficulty level affects numerous things, like health and accuracy (human and alien), threat changes, funding and number of aliens in maps. You can always tweak some of this values in setting files, which handy if you want to have a difficult level that walls between any given two.
Scoring
So, it's time to finally rate this game. As you may have noticed, I have given lots of complains in this review. This doesn't mean the game is bad, not at all. After playing it over forty hours, finishing it once and several restarts in different difficulty modes, I still feel the urge to play one more mission. Despite the flaws, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is very addicting game, especially if you like tactical games and aren't scared away by turn based game. It's also refreshing to have a game that actually forces you to think and make decisions, even if there are no good options available to choose from.
How about being a remake, how does this game compare to the original one? To be honest, some fans of the old game will be disappointed. Some of the core elements were removed or changed, like additional bases and action point system. What this game does manage to do is to capture the essence and feeling of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, while still being accessible to modern audience.
I can't give this game highest score due the amount of flaws and annoyances. What I do hope is that the developers release expansions (patches could do as well for certain problems) which addresses some of the problems. Of course, some of the complains are about things that were changed from the original game and, without the comparison, wouldn't have affected the score in any way. But since this has been advertised as remaking (or re-imaging) of the original game, I can't just neglect those complains. Do I recommend this game? Yes, I really do. It's very good game on it's own. Do I recommend this game to veterans of UFO? Yes, though you should note down all the changes before buying this game. If you don't do that, then there is a high chance you will be disappointed because of the changes.
My Scoresystem: 8/10
GB Scoresystem: 4/5
Some sites and media claim XCOM: Enemy Unknown to be RPG/Strategy hybrid. Honestly, I can't understand how the letters RPG can be linked to this game. The only features that remotely links to RPG is inventories and levels of soldiers and nothing more. If those two features were enough to make the game RPG then around 80-90 (no, those numbers aren't based on any statistics) of modern games could be claimed as RPGs. In my opinion, even a game like NHL 2013 is closer of being RPG than XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Why? Because in NHL you can actually create your own avatar, which you use to play and develop.
Anything Else?
There is also the possibility to play multiplayer matches against other players. In those you create your squad of six soldiers with predetermined funding and then you fight against each other in tactical combat. I did try it few times but, since there were so few players around those times I tried, not many matches were played. It's fun, though I experienced few quitters (person who doesn't finish the match, especially if badly loosing).
There are four types of difficulty levels in the game. Easy and normal are somewhat easy and I recommend them to those who are playing the game the first time. Classic and Impossible are much harder, in Impossible level only one soldiers of my squad usually returned after mission. There is also the Ironman mode, which means only one save is used, saved after each action done in strategic section or after each completed turn in tactical combat. I usually don't play Ironman mode before I finish the game at least once, but somehow it felt like the game should be played in that mode. After all, in normal mode, you always have the temptation of reloading if something doesn't go as planned. The difficulty level affects numerous things, like health and accuracy (human and alien), threat changes, funding and number of aliens in maps. You can always tweak some of this values in setting files, which handy if you want to have a difficult level that walls between any given two.
Scoring
So, it's time to finally rate this game. As you may have noticed, I have given lots of complains in this review. This doesn't mean the game is bad, not at all. After playing it over forty hours, finishing it once and several restarts in different difficulty modes, I still feel the urge to play one more mission. Despite the flaws, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is very addicting game, especially if you like tactical games and aren't scared away by turn based game. It's also refreshing to have a game that actually forces you to think and make decisions, even if there are no good options available to choose from.
How about being a remake, how does this game compare to the original one? To be honest, some fans of the old game will be disappointed. Some of the core elements were removed or changed, like additional bases and action point system. What this game does manage to do is to capture the essence and feeling of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, while still being accessible to modern audience.
I can't give this game highest score due the amount of flaws and annoyances. What I do hope is that the developers release expansions (patches could do as well for certain problems) which addresses some of the problems. Of course, some of the complains are about things that were changed from the original game and, without the comparison, wouldn't have affected the score in any way. But since this has been advertised as remaking (or re-imaging) of the original game, I can't just neglect those complains. Do I recommend this game? Yes, I really do. It's very good game on it's own. Do I recommend this game to veterans of UFO? Yes, though you should note down all the changes before buying this game. If you don't do that, then there is a high chance you will be disappointed because of the changes.
My Scoresystem: 8/10
GB Scoresystem: 4/5
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish