You can make your very own story with your soldiers...

Some may have a legacy...

Some may die horribly...

Some may sacrifice themselves for others...

Some may even be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and miss a 90% flank shot...

Either way, its a great game. 10/10

I have always been a big fan of the XCOM franchise since the very first game all those years ago and I have to say that XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a worthy 'reboot' of the series.

The game is an odd mix of strategic base building/management and turn based tactical combat. You will research new weapons, armor and even technologies such as genetic engineering and mech warrior (half man, half machine ... although more like 5% man 95% machine). You will have to capture and interogate the aliens, perform autopsies, and try to understand why the Aliens are here, and how you can stop them.

The visuals are great, although they are a little over the top. You can field warriors clad in pink with bright blue big hair, or you can choose dark comoflaged spec ops type soldiers. It is up to you and has no effect on the game other than to meet your own preferences. You can name you soldiers to make it more personal, and more dramatic when they die.

All round this is a fun game, and with DLC such as the Enemy Within and mods such as Long War this game has a lot of replay value, and potentially could be something you sink hundreds of hours into.

You know this game did something right when characters that have no backstories and barely even talk die and your first reaction is to feel deep pain. Not because of the gruesome death that a wild Chryssalid can make, not because of the large grenade explosions or the laser beams of a Sectopod, but because an XCom Operative, a squadmate, a friend, will not see the end of the war that got us all together.

Feels/10

I managed to make it to 2/3 of the way through this war without losing a single soldier. I was riding high, getting win after win and promoting my soldiers by the Skyranger load. We were cleaning the streets, cleaning house, cleaning Earth.

And then it happened... It was supposed to be a standard op, man. It was supposed to be easy. That's what Xcom command said. "Just a downed UFO" they said, "standard sweep and clear."

We were deployed in Western Canada. The target was a UFO a little larger than what we'd encountered before, but we were big boys and girls. We were ready...

We engaged a couple of X-Rays outside the front of the downed ship. Nothing we couldn't handle, a couple of Mutons that Sophie 'Baroness' Mercier put down. We were all ready to send the MEC in when it happened.

Kate... she was taking cover to the front, but her right side was exposed.

A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Sectopod came out of nowhere, man. It just walked right in, man... Tore her apart...

We beat the thing, we "won" the mission. We even saved mankind a few months later. But nothing was ever really the same after that day.

God bless you, Kate 'Doc' O'Connell

I could tell you about the many times I played through this game's campaign. About Enemy Within, and the chances it brought. About the mod Long War and how it turns this great game into an epic marathon.
But you don't want to hear that. You want to know if this particular game is worth your money and your time.

In short: It is.

This is game about adaptation. About turning the weapons and technologies of the invaders against them, about choosing where to pool your limited resources, or where to send your troopers to fight, knowing some may not return.
And boy, does it hurt when your beloved sniper, the one you've been watching over from the start, that guy that could always be counted to nail a crit at extreme distances. He has just died because you send your fire team ahead and he was left behind to offer support... until a flanking alien killed him in cold blood. That's X-COM. Those memorable moments that happen amidst the familiar landscapes. You'll also offer silent prayer to that unfortunate civilian that had to die so that you could hit that alien cluster arround him with a rocket.

In terms of crunch, the tactical aspect is very solid. A large part of the battlefield can be brought down, and so can your cover, making each battle less about hunkering down and dealing and taken fire and more about manuevering. A flanking, agile soldier can become just as deadly as the one hunkered down behind a wall with the giant machine gun.

A very enjoyable game, with engaging mechanics and a smart AI that makes for very emotional, un-scripted moments.

great game, i come back every year or so just to replay this. but whatever the hell the last update was made the game cannot be launched for some reason. PLEASE FIX IT

edit: somehow it is working now, but i have to disable enemy within. if i don't, it will 'start' and then just close immediately.

This review is totally superfluous. Don't bother reading it. Anything I can say has been said by others before me. Well, if you must read on:

XCOM Enemy Unknown/Enemy Within is one of the very best games I have played. And replayed. And replayed. At the time of writing, I am replaying it now on Impossible difficulty, in fact.

You will lose countries to panic. Your best friends will die horrible deaths over and over again (so don't name your soldiers after your friends, eh). Your interceptors will be shot down. Your base will be destroyed shortly after your last soldier falls. Dozens and dozens of civilians will be slaughtered by aliens or turned into zombies. Whales will hold nasty surprises....

Yes, XCOM hits all the right buttons for an amazingly tension filled turn based adventure into the terror of an alien invasion. In the beginning you will be playing catch up, very badly and will wonder why cover is so useless. Just useless.

And then, you figure it out. And the game becomes so addictive that you will be grumpy at work the next day. Your grades will suffer. Your spouse will commit adultery. The world will end due to alien attack. But you won't realise it because you just know there is some way to get to that next MELD cannister before it expires next turn.

If you just move your assault trooper after your sniper has taken out that floater, and you have supressed the overwatch from that muton by blowing it up with a rocket from your heavy trooper, and the MEC has blown a hole in the wall with an alien grenade, but oh, hell, "run and gun" is on cool down, so your support soldier is gonna have to make the run instead of reloading.

But can she cover the distance and activate the cannister? Who knows? The world ends. Stop reading. Just play.

This gon' be a lengthy one. If you're too lazy to read, buy the game instead and go play it. At the end of this waits an unconditional wholehearted recommendation.

XCOM is a tactical turn-based strategy game. Those used to exist in plenty supply, in the prehistoric ancient times of video gaming, also known as the 90s. It seems to me that by the year 2012 they had died a quiet and slow death, however. And then this thing comes and turns out to be the pinnacle of human achievement!

XCOM is the name of the Defense Initiative you're being put in charge of, cobbled together to combat an alien invasion of Earth. In the beginning you're dangerously underfunded and you are only given the nation's last-picks-of-the-schoolyard in terms of personnel. It's the fate of the planet after all, so why bother?

Once deployed to a mission, you and the aliens take turns in moving your soldiers around and, once visible, start massacring each other in a gripping spectacle that traditional chess has always been severly lacking. As you combat the odds of the aim percentage system, as much as the actual enemy, you lose. Soldiers, Airplanes, supporting nations, funds, faith, your will to live, the rest of your privat life ... you lose it all. This game, in its first in-game months, is nothing short of frustrating. You'll be ranting about the promissing chances the game dangled in front you, only to make you miss anyway and not follow up on 'em. If nothing else, XCOM teaches you empathy for the cat you've been tormenting with the laser pointer!

But overall, the game always stays fair. Every mishap seems to be rooted in your decisions. A soldier's (permanent) death is a result of your failed planning. And that's where they get you. As you start wondering about the 'what-if's?' and the 'why's?', you don't realise that at this moment, the drug has kicked in. From this moment on, you send your squad into the next mission, always with an additional goal in mind: Save Earth and be as efficient as possible about it. How do you mop the floor with these 1950 B-movie aliens AND don't lose a man or woman in the process this time around?

The game has flaws for sure: After the first third of the game, for instance, your soldiers will have gained enough experience and fairly rad abilities, tailored to their respective classes, to floor every level with alien corpses by the truckload. In addition, your progression through the tech research will put any military industrial complex to shame. Thus, the game loses much of its edge as time passes, ultimately disappointing at the final boss fight. Also, the levels are predesigned so if you play long enough, you'll work from memory more than strategy. Lastly, soldier customization doesn't go as far as one would wish for a game this willing to set up moments of utter heroism (or soul crushing incompetence).

All these issues were fixed in Firaxis' follow up, XCOM 2. However, out of the two titles, I'd recommend this one as the more balanced, and therefore more enjoyable, version of Awesome-Anti-Alien-Chess-5000! Pick it up. Even at full price, it's worth its salt. And if you got even more money to dole out, pick up the expansions 'enemy within' and 'slingshot' for some really weird, but profoundly enjoyable additions to the formula described above.

actually the enemy is an alien

You've used up every soldier's turn except for one. You need to take the shot otherwise a gigantic UFO will steamroll several of your hardened veterans.

You move him right into the open to take the shot. This is it, this 40 minute brawl will come to an end one way or the other after this turn. 65% hit accuracy, in the end it has to be this way.

Do you feel lucky, Commander?