XCOM: Enemy Unknown Review
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After obtaining the rights and dabbling with yet another shooter which has yet to see the light of day, 2K Games handed the franchise off to Firaxis, the developers of the Civilization series of strategy games, and the result has been a remake of the 1994 classic, XCOM: Enemy Unknown. In this day and age, this is about as close to a match made in heaven as you could realistically expect - a premier turn-based strategy developer being called up to recreate the magic of a beloved franchise, working in their element to revisit both the strategic base management and tactical turn-based combat the original game is remembered for. But the question every X-COM fan is asking is, does it live up to the legacy? And can it even improve upon the original game?
Firaxis' XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a solidly-built, tense, addictive and enjoyable strategy game which recalls the best of the original game - if not in direct practice, then in spirit. Many of the core tenets, such as high difficulty and a focus on replaying to learn and master the game, have been left intact. However, when it comes to answer that question of "is it as good as the original", my answer simply has to be "no." While I've enjoyed my time with the new XCOM, I do not think it will be an enduring classic of the genre in the same way Firaxis' own Civilization IV has been, and certainly not MicroProse's 1994 original.
Story & Setting (Or Lack Thereof)
I tend to open my reviews by talking about the story and setting a game has to offer, but truth be told, XCOM doesn't have much to discuss. Simply put, aliens have invaded our present (or perhaps near-future) Earth, and are doing all sorts of bad things, starting with alien abductions, but shortly escalating to all-out slaughter of urban centers. The XCOM Project is an independent, international organization started to counter the alien threat, receiving funding and support from dozens of countries around the world. You take the role of the unnamed Commander responsible for the strategic and tactical decisions of XCOM, and answer to a shadowy Committee in order to take on special objectives and report your successes (or failures). Beyond that, there is very little plot - refreshingly, XCOM is squarely focused on the gameplay.
However, even this scant amount of storytelling is still different from the abstract simplicity of the original game. Where the narrative side of things used to only be hinted at in the game's manual and comic book-style intro sequence, now there are semi-frequent cutscenes featuring a few recurring characters. These characters aren't really active players in the story, but rather simply human faces to different arms of your operation - science, engineering and tactics. XCOM still has no delusions of telling an interesting story, and in fact, much of the dialogue and cause-and-effect in your primary objectives leaves a lot to be desired, but because it's 2012 and the game has a sizeable budget, this is Firaxis' way of justifying the game's triple-A status. I'm neutral on the matter - while I appreciate the attempts to add some extra character to a game that was previously firmly centered on the mechanics, after a while I just started skipping past most of the cutscenes and occasional snippets of dialogue. The fact is that this sort of thing really wasn't needed and doesn't add a whole lot to the game, but it doesn't take away much either.
Despite being minimalist, the story does infringe on the gameplay a little bit from time to time. While the original X-COM had the same sorts of primary objectives that needed to be completed in working towards finding and capturing the aliens' headquarters, in XCOM they are presented much more directly and in a slightly more linear fashion. Panic levels around the world are tied, to a degree, to completion of story objectives, which means that there is limited time for forward progress as the "story" needs to be advanced at an almost pre-determined rate before the game simply becomes unwinnable. It's not really a bad thing, but it can occasionally reduce your strategic options available and make the game feel a bit less random and unpredictable.
Strategic Gameplay
As mentioned already, XCOM is divided into two modes - strategic decision-making that takes place inside your underground base, and tactical turn-based combat that plays out in isometric, grid-based, semi-random mission areas. The strategy mode is perhaps less involving, but just as critical. All of the actions you take need time to complete, and as you scan for UFO activity around the world, events will occur, ranging from completion of your research projects and construction, to requests for help from various nations, to all out alien invasion. Though it's deceptively simplistic on the surface, the cumulative effect of your decisions is very real and the consequences of them can often be felt hours in advance, making careful planning essential.
You primarily expand your operations by building new structures. Though not as involved as base management in some strategy games, once again the simplicity is deceptive. This is primarily due to the adjacency bonuses you receive for placing certain structures near each other, and the time and money it takes not only to build your base, but to dig the spaces needed to house them. You will need to constantly trade off whether you want to get something immediately, or wait a little while for a better benefit. The same applies to upgraded versions of existing facilities - while you can build a structure that can handle deployment of four satellites instead of one, waiting to get to the point you can actually build it might not be worthwhile.
Beyond building structures, most of the game's strategy is a balancing act of keeping your soldiers well-equipped and well-trained, improving your existing capabilities, and keeping the XCOM nations happy. This is always easier said than done, as you have very limited funds at your disposal. While early in the game time and money aren't very pressing concerns, after an hour or two you will find yourself having to answer questions like "which nation do I save, and which ones do I leave to the aliens?", or "should I risk sending in a squad of rookies while my better soldiers recover from their wounds, or sit the mission out?"
The nations under your wing will respond to your actions or inaction through increasing or decreasing panic levels. Spread your resources too thin, and you won't get the better bonuses that come from pleasing specific nations; focus too much on a single nation or continent, meanwhile, and others will abandon XCOM, taking their resources with them. Everything eventually comes down to keeping the world, as well as your mysterious superiors happy, and the way that every decision you make directly or indirectly ties into that is just as compelling as it was in the original game. Eventually, something's got to give, and making sacrifices, especially on the harder difficulty levels, is critical to winning - playing "perfectly" is basically an impossibility. In this respect, XCOM is one of few modern games where failure is not a result of obvious mistakes or inaction, but something unavoidable that must be dealt with effectively to succeed.
Combat Gameplay
Once you have finished up with your base management for the moment, or have had a mission thrust upon you, you will find yourself deploying a squad of soldiers to fight aliens on the ground. Missions take a few basic forms. Alien abductions are simple "kill all the bad guys" affairs; bomb missions require you infiltrate an area, locate and shut down an explosive before the ticking clock runs out; VIP missions see you escorting a civilian from point A to B; and terror missions require you save as many civilians as possible from an alien attack. Mission variety is solid, as the terrain you will play on is built up of semi-random "chunks" stitched together seamlessly. This is one place where the remake genuinely improves on the old, as the varied objectives make you change up your play-style and enforce different constraints on you.
The tactical battles still make up the meat of XCOM, and this is where the game most significantly deviates from the original, beyond aspects of presentation. The mechanics of combat, while still turn-based, have been completely overhauled and redesigned, generally for the simpler. This isn't to say that combat is simplistic per se, or devoid of tactical considerations, but some of the nuances in the original mechanics have been removed to make the game more accessible, which is something older fans might not appreciate.
The first way this has been done is through the importance of cover. While cover was obviously an important part of the original game, in XCOM it is a formalized mechanic - high and low cover give your soldiers different levels of protection when pressed up against it, elevation confers accuracy bonuses or penalties, and it can be destroyed by gunfire or explosions. If you have ever played Relic Entertainment's Company of Heroes or Dawn of War II, you have an idea of what to expect.
The cover mechanic works well. Much like the original game, destructible terrain means that the battlefield will change over time and you can't ever stay in one place for too long. Your soldiers are basically sitting ducks without cover, which stresses the importance of caution, and also makes flanking all the more important to think about. It is also very clear that the cover system was made this way to help take some of the guesswork out of gameplay. If your soldiers are marked as being in cover, then they get their defense bonus. If they are flanked, the game will tell you by putting an icon over them. Although this reassurance might sound like a good thing, it can also feel limiting because you are so dependent on it. The question "in cover or not" also matters far more than, say, distance, such that you can have a far better chance of hitting an enemy that is just barely in range, than one who is standing two tiles away but is behind cover. It's a little more gamey and artificial than the mechanics in the original game.
The second major change to combat is that time units have been replaced with a much simpler "two moves per turn" system. This is one of the less successful elements in the game, and at times borders on oversimplification to the detriment of gameplay. For example, different soldiers have different movement speeds, which translates into how far they can move in a single turn. However, as you can only make two moves per turn, this makes it difficult to move your soldiers carefully. You can't creep along one tile at a time, slowly revealing the battle map; without precise movement available, you are forced into a sort of "all or nothing" scenario every turn, and as a result your soldiers will often take unintended routes to their destinations, alerting more enemies in the process.
Using items or weapons, in most cases, also uses up all your current unit's moves, which means that you will always need to move before shooting, or reloading, or using a medkit. My guess is that this was done to avoid players abusing hit-and-run tactics, but overall it decreases the number of options you have available. Specific skills that your troops can unlock will help mitigate these limitations, but it kind of comes across as gaining access to options you should already have by default. Time units are generally more convincing as a simulation element, and give many more options in combat, so it's sad to see them go.
Third, a class system has been implemented. While leveling up your troops was a feature of the first X-COM, it's been significantly expanded upon by Firaxis. Upon gaining the first promotion (level), a soldier is randomly assigned one class - Assault, Heavy, Support or Sniper - each with specific weapons and abilities. There are limited skill trees available for every promotion a soldier gains, and their benefits range from the more passive to game-changing activated abilities. For example, a Heavy can learn to lay down suppressing fire with his/her machine gun, conferring accuracy bonuses to friendly troops who fire on the same target. Many of these skills complement one another, as well, which makes their selection crucial not just for the individual soldier, but for the entire squad. While you have fewer troops overall than in the first game (you start with four and can upgrade that to six total), individually units are more valuable and meaningful than the veterans and meat shield rookies in the original game. The class system overall works excellently, and makes it all the more painful when your soldiers are blown up, melted or ripped apart in battle.
Nitpicks & Issues
XCOM certainly isn't the red-headed stepchild of the X-COM franchise, then - on the contrary, it's very good, well-balanced and compelling whether you are playing on the easier difficulty, or impossible with ironman mode turned on. The unfortunate truth, though, is that it's also underwhelming next to the original game. Features have been removed, or streamlined, and there just is not the same amount of depth or replayability to be had as the original. While the game is undoubtedly a success at what it attempts, it feels simplistic next to the dozens of other hardcore strategy titles available on PC, including the original game.
It's the little details that are gone that you really notice. For instance, alien attacks are no longer determined by UFO interception. In the original game, if you missed shooting down a UFO, it would cause a mission to begin as a result; in the new XCOM, missions simply happen no matter what you do, and are unconnected to interceptions (unless you shoot a UFO down successfully). It's a subtle difference on paper, but very significant in practice as it means you have less influence on the events taking place in the game than before. There are also no more base defense missions, so one of the coolest features of the original 1994 title - fighting off enemies in a level layout determined by how you arranged your own headquarters - no longer exists in the 2012 remake, which significantly reduces the considerations you need to make in building your base. Neither can you build multiple bases anymore - you just have one, and instead you deploy satellites, interceptors or troops anywhere in the world from a central location, which simplifies the strategy side of the game in yet another way.
Additionally, inventory management for your troops has been reduced - instead of a set amount of backpack space, now soldiers have a preset number of slots, meaning you can't micro-manage them nearly as much, or make the same sorts of trade-offs (like giving up a primary weapon for more grenades), something that new players won't mind but older players will. Enemies always receive a free move when you spot them, making it impossible to perform surprise attacks, and also removing the classic X-COM moment of coming back from an enemy turn and finding half your squad wiped out by unseen attackers. Ammo management is no longer a concern, as you can reload as much as you want and never run out of bullets. As fun as the remake is, and even in spite of the improvements, it's simply not on par with the original X-COM when judged as a strategy title.
Last, I hate to say it, but XCOM is rather unpolished. I encountered numerous glitches almost every single time I started the game up. Some, like soldiers firing their guns the wrong way, are cosmetic, but others, like very picky line of sight calculations, have a more significant effect on gameplay, and you will likely lose at least one or two soldiers over these problems. The Steam Cloud save system that is supposed to upload save files to the Internet for later use also simply does not work, judging by other comments I've seen from players. Even more serious bugs I encountered were pretty much game-breaking - one time, the game got permanently stuck while processing an enemy's turn, and another, I ended up in a menu where all the options were greyed out; in both cases I had to shut the game down using Task Manager. Firaxis have a track record of putting out buggy games, and XCOM really feels like it could have used another few months in quality control.
Presentation & Technical
The original X-COM is well known for its comic book-like visual style and B-movie leanings. Firaxis' XCOM remake is a bit different, instead evoking the look and feel of action figures, with soldiers sporting exaggerated proportions and a plasticy look. Running on Unreal Engine 3, the game plays very smoothly and is technically accomplished enough, featuring detailed and highly destructible environments, but it can be hard to appreciate the detail from a zoomed-out perspective, and low-resolution textures make appearances when the camera comes in close. Visibility of units can also be a little poor - it would have been nice if the lighting was tweaked a bit to help your soldiers stick out from the environment more. The game looks alright, no question, but it's definitely a lot blander than Firaxis' recent Civilization V, and doesn't have much personality as either that game or the original X-COM.
Sound effects, music and voice acting are all in a similar vein - decent, but nothing to write home about. Deus Ex: Human Revolution composer Michael McCann appears to have used a lot of leftover tracks from that game, as the similarity between the two is uncanny to say the least, but even so, the electronic score infused with hints of orchestral flair is still the highlight of the aural experience. Sound effects for gunshots, explosions, environmental ambiance, and of course, the aliens, are all effective, but voice acting is a mixed bag, with some uninspired performances and a few rather obvious fake accents. Oddly, despite there being many voices to choose from for your soldiers, they almost all sound identical and everyone speaks perfect American English, even though the game goes out of its way to include nations and people from all over the world.
The PC version of the game, unfortunately, also could have used a bit more work with regards to the user interface. It's clear the game was designed with a controller in mind, and as such there's no customizable quick slots for commands, point-and-click functionality is reduced in some situations over what you would expect from a native PC game, and the inclusion of an over-the-shoulder "firing mode" adds an extra step every time you want to take a shot at an enemy. The camera can also be a bit finicky about displaying the insides of a building or the roof, and it always feels like you're never able to zoom out quite as much as you'd like to. It's certainly a playable PC port, but you won't confuse this for a native PC game. Last, XCOM requires Steam to play, and features all the usual stuff that comes along with it, both positive (Steam Achievements) and negative (DRM).
Conclusion
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a frustrating game to review, because there are a lot of very good, very smart design choices in it, but it's impossible not to compare it to its forefather. It's clearly a love letter to the franchise, but it's also one that hasn't been afraid to make changes. Unfortunately, in my opinion, not all these changes have been for the better, and I think that they strip out layers of complexity in favor of accessibility. While the original game was very much targeted towards hardcore strategy fans, this new one is geared towards more casual, pick-up-and-play audiences, and that's why I question its longevity - will people really still be singing this game's praises and debating the finer points of its gameplay 15 years later? I can't see that happening.
There are two ways you can look at XCOM: Enemy Unknown - either as a brand-new game made in the spirit of the original, intending to evoke the feel but not the particulars, or, as a pale imitation of a classic PC game that has suffered from the many compromises made to make the game work for consoles and the triple-A industry. Both perspectives are valid, and I agree with both. If you are looking for a solid strategy game with fun tactical combat, but one that doesn't require months to appreciate, then X-COM: Enemy Unknown is the game for you. But, if you've grown up with the original and have just got done playing the latest Crusader Kings expansion or Jagged Alliance 2 mod, you might want to ignore those UFOs on the horizon.
