XCOM: Enemy Unknown Previews

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Written by BuckGB on May 22nd, 2012

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The best hybrid games maintain a good balance between the action and the strategy, especially with titles that involve management elements like XCOM. We were allowed to play the first couple of hours of XCOM's campaign, including the tutorial, and from what we've seen so far has impressed. There seems to be just enough 'micro' in Enemy Unknown to keep you interested and to give you stuff to do without getting you too bogged down in details or statistics. The development of your base and armed forces also holds just enough customization to make the choices meaningful and to help you specialise when it comes to fighting the ever increasing alien incursions.

Even customizing and developing your individual troopers is oddly compelling from a simple recruit to the various Assault, Support, Sniper etc. specialisations, as well as customizing their character backgrounds and '˜nicknames' a little bit, you do end up creating a narrative in your head and form an odd attachment to them. We ended up restarting a level a couple of times just because we didn't want to lose anyone, and the further you take them the harder it will be to suffer losses. Of course, as your technology develops, you'll end up outfitting your troopers in gear even we didn't see coming. We're not going to spoil it now as you'll be able to see this stuff at E3, but in terms of .nd-game' tech and content for your troops, let's just say you won't be able to wait until you can develop your own guys that far.

You control a team of four to six soldiers in turn-based battles, moving and attacking aliens using action points to dictate what you can do. Rather than a grid-based movement system there's a floaty line that stretches between each character and the cursor as you slide it around potential destinations on the map. It's an elegant system making it easy and clear to manoeuvre units and showing the amount of cover they can expect from various locations.

That last bit's important because cover is king in Enemy Unknown battles are won by flanking aliens to get a clear shot while trying to stay behind things yourself. It's a pretty clear and easy rule to grasp, and it means being cautious as you move about because charging off half cocked is a guaranteed way to end up exposed to enemy fire. A couple of squelchy green plasma blasts and it's all over.

The control system here is a lot simpler than the one found in 1994 original. Broadly speaking, each turn allows you to give your troopers two commands. You can either move and then act (shoot at an enemy, duck into cover), or you can spend both commands on a single extended dash; while performing one of these mad sprints you're slightly harder for the enemy to hit, so they're quite useful for getting your chaps into more useful positions.

From the looks of things, positioning is key. Later stages of the game open up toys like grappling hooks and flying suits, but even in the early assaults there's a lot to consider: directional cover, elevated lines of sight, and the seemingly endless number of places that could be housing a threat. With the reduced headcount and streamlined command setup, missions progress at a far quicker rate than the original, but the overall tactics feel very similar - and when, at the end of your turn, the game announces the unseen movement of your alien foes, there's a familiar spike in tension. Clearly, this is A Good Thing.

As you may have gathered, XCOM begins with a (skippable) tutorial and as I started playing it, I was imagining the cries of '˜Judas' and the waving of the pitchforks, for not only was I being taught how to survive rather than learning for myself, I was also learning how to use the controller interface. That's controller as in Xbox controller, as in moulded plastic device with buttons and sticks marking its surface as craters mark the moon or the hollow cheek of a pox victim.

The fact that I'm going to argue that it was a smooth, friendly method of administering my tactical desires a controller for a Goddamn XCOM game for crying out loud has me preparing for a Molotov cocktail bursting through my window at any moment. The joypad is the only system in place for external use at the moment though and it does everything that it needs to do, although the mouse and keyboard option is, I was assured, having effort lavished upon it. Shouting about the controller isn't interesting, although it may be cathartic for a while, but what is interesting is looking at what inputs it was responsible for and picking apart the overall flow of a turn.

Things were going poorly for XCOM, so Firaxis brought in reinforcements: three soldiers with advanced technology. There's the Archangel trooper, who used a jetpack to fly out of reach of the Chryssalids' claws and then picked them off with a plasma sniper rifle; the Psi trooper, who mind-controlled the Floater and made him grenade himself; and the Ghost, who used his stealth suit and grappling hook to get behind the Berzerker and blast him in the back with the Alloy Cannon (basically a plasma shotgun).

Most of this tech is derived from researching captured aliens. Plasma weaponry, for example, comes from researching alien weapon fragments, and that jetpack probably comes from examining how Floaters work. Psi technology will almost certainly come from capturing a live psi-capable enemy like a Sectoid Commander and picking apart it's brain. But not all humans will be able to use the psi armor (which replaces the psi amp from the original) -- only a small percentage of XCOM soldiers will have "the gift."

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