I meant for this follow-up article to
follow within a few days of my profile on the 1994 original. However,
when I got the new XCOM on launch, I realized something. There would
be dozens of articles within days of launch written by foks who had
put a handful of hours into the game and written to hit a deadline. I
knew after a few minutes playing that I was going to be into XCOM for
some time to come, and the best way to talk about it would be from
someone who had sunk enough hours into the game to consider
themselves a veteran. In the last two weeks, I've sunk nearly 85
hours into this game, making it the second-longest played game on my
Steam account, beating out Borderlands which I played weekly with
friends for months, sometimes staying up all night. Early this
morning, I finished the game in the manner it is intended to be
played: Classic Difficulty, Ironman mode. I now feel qualified to
talk about it.
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| XCOM has the guts to do something new. Instead of eventually beating the game being a matter of persistence, you can sink dozens of hours into a game of XCOM, and lose. Planet is taken by the aliens, Game Over. |
So many of the reviews I read and
listened to did the same thing. Spent a few sentences talking about
what a good game XCOM is, and then the rest of the review talking
about flaws, many of which were just design decisions they didn't
personally understand. Make no mistake, there are a few bugs here,
and they frustrate, especially in a game with permadeath and a mode
which does not allow you to reload saves when something unfortunate
happens. However, even in its current state, XCOM is a triumph.
Turn-based strategy is a genre that is mostly found in niche titles
or older games, with the notable exception of the Civilization
series. XCOM has the potential to change all that, with a
big-budget, slickly produced title that modernizes the gameplay and
provides modern polish.
The game is, like the original title,
about running a global organization to combat an alien invasion
against a foe that outnumbers, outguns, and strikes without warning
anywhere in the world. They start with weaponry that can kill a human
or destroy a building, while the best soldiers in the world with our
finest technology can only kill one of their weakest number with
concentrated fire, assuming they don't panic before doing so. What
provides hope is the strategic and tactical command of the leader of
XCOM (you) and the researchers and engineers who take bits of alien
technology and study and replicate it in order to develop new
weapons, armor, ships and techniques for turning a bunch of scared
rookies into a force capable of striking fear into alien hearts.
Turn by bloody turn, difficult choices are made, and the tide slowly
turns from barely surviving to kicking the aliens the hell off our
planet.
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| You can customize everything about a soldier except their assigned class, Country of Origin, and gender. I named this squad after characters played by myself, my wife and friends in tabletop RPGs over the years. |
In the strategic layer, you need to
manage limited resources to build up the base, get satellites
covering most of the globe, research and develop the tech for the
soldiers on the ground, build and arm craft to shoot down UFOs and
manage global panic to keep your funding in place. The game is played
through the tactical missions, but won or lost based on the strategic
layer. The missions are usually "find and kill all the aliens,"
but sometimes there will be a VIP to escort or locate and protect,
bombs to defuse or civilians to protect. The pace of the game is
careful and deliberate, with risky play resulting in failed missions,
wasted resources and dead soldiers who need to be replaced with raw
recruits. The best and worst turns of the game are when you make a
minor mistake, exposing a new group of aliens to your squad's
position, and your soldiers are at risk, even if they have advanced
equipment and abilities.
Every soldier is assigned a class on
promotion from being raw recruits, and as they participate in
missions and kill aliens, they level up, gaining more powerul
abilities. You can customize the soldiers, they gain nicknames
automatically, and it hurts to lose a leveled-up soldier knowing it
was your fault. That's going to happen. I lost surprisingly few
soldiers in my successful Classic Ironman game, but two of them were
Colonels (the highest rank) with dozens of kills each, and they died
in the same mission on two subsequent turns. Each soldier can move
twice, move and fire, or just fire their weapon without moving.
Certain special class abilities or weapons require you to stay still,
and others end your turn as though you had fired a weapon. You make
hard choices. Save India, Canada, or Russia? Reload now, not knowing
if you should instead get that soldier ready to fire on an alien you
can't see? Try to outflank the enemy and risk alerting more to your
position, or take a risky 35% shot and feel maybe like you wasted a
precious action?
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| The result of poor planning, squad panic, rushing forward too quickly, or just plain bad luck. |
Having played a bit with the
multiplayer (point-based, competitive mixed squads of humans and
aliens on static maps) and beaten the game on Normal and Classic
Ironman, albeit with two wins out of thirty games attempted, I don't
think XCOM is quite done with me yet. I might not take on Impossible
difficulty with any degree of seriousness, but Firaxis is committed
to long-term support, especially with a game that has done so well.
Reviews have been nearly universally rave, and DLC is planned, with
the first post-release content announced yesterday. A subplot
focusing on China with custom maps and new missions will be the focus
of "Slingshot," with a Chinese gangster available as a hero
character, and the possibility of early access to a powerful endgame
weapon as the reward. With more DLC planned, and the inevitable
expansions and sequels, I feel bad. So much death is coming. Aliens,
poor squaddies, and a whole lot more of my free time.
