Review: X-Com, Enemy Unknown
Jan. 19th, 2013 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhal"Some nut calling himself Commander Straker has been all over the news talking about 'SHADO agents'."
-The X-Com development team shows they know their roots.
Summary: In this remake of the classic 90's era turn-based tactical game, only the multi-national forces of X-Com are able to match the threat and try to thwart the evil schemes of a group of mysterious aliens bent on spreading terror across the globe.
Review: When it was announced last year that the venerable X-Com (originally released as UFO: Enemy Unknownin the UK) franchise would be revived by 2K Games and Irrational Games, fans rejoiced. They were considerably less joyful when it was revealed that the original near-future setting would be dumped for a retro-50's and 60's era setting, and worse, be made as a 1st person shooter.
In response, Fireaxis was called in to create a turn-based, 3/4 perspective tactical game, similar to the original franchise. This had every chance to be a cheap throw-together to settle the unpleaseable fanbase, but it turned out to be far better than anyone could expect, and is well on its way to earning several Game of the Year awards.
Essentially, everything that made the game fun originally, from building up your base, to shooting down UFO's, to making tight tactical decisions to keep your team alive while under fire, has been kept and streamlined down to their essentials, while dumping all the cruft.
Instead of building several bases around the globe, you get one, with the option to watch over other continents with satellite and interceptor coverage. Instead of a team of twelve or more individuals, you max out at six, but they're a damned well-equipped six, and slightly less vulnerable to the infuriating one-shot, one-kill madness of the original. You still have to build up your tech tree to match the UFO threat, but you don't have to worry quite as much about gathering salvage to equip your units. In particular, once you research a weapon you can build it immediately, and in combat your ammo is essentially unlimited (though you do have to reload periodically).
The complex AP system of the original tactical combat has also been simplified to a move/move, move/shoot system, with additional tactical options opening up as your soldiers gain experience. The most important change however, is the new emphasis on finding cover. A soldier out in the open, as in real life, is pretty much dead meat. Under cover though, he's got a chance to survive even if he isn't wearing the beset armor. Fortunately, the wide variety of maps in the game offer a lot of cover.
Down points in the game are few. Despite the world wide setting, urban areas are very Western looking (at least they had euro license plates in the Hamburg tutorial). Likewise, the voice actors sound universally American in the tactical segments, though a scientist with zee bad German aczent is around for the cut scenes at base. But if you can live with that, you've got a damned fine tactical combat game to play, the likes of which are rare to find these days.
Highly recommended.
-The X-Com development team shows they know their roots.
Summary: In this remake of the classic 90's era turn-based tactical game, only the multi-national forces of X-Com are able to match the threat and try to thwart the evil schemes of a group of mysterious aliens bent on spreading terror across the globe.
Review: When it was announced last year that the venerable X-Com (originally released as UFO: Enemy Unknownin the UK) franchise would be revived by 2K Games and Irrational Games, fans rejoiced. They were considerably less joyful when it was revealed that the original near-future setting would be dumped for a retro-50's and 60's era setting, and worse, be made as a 1st person shooter.
In response, Fireaxis was called in to create a turn-based, 3/4 perspective tactical game, similar to the original franchise. This had every chance to be a cheap throw-together to settle the unpleaseable fanbase, but it turned out to be far better than anyone could expect, and is well on its way to earning several Game of the Year awards.
Essentially, everything that made the game fun originally, from building up your base, to shooting down UFO's, to making tight tactical decisions to keep your team alive while under fire, has been kept and streamlined down to their essentials, while dumping all the cruft.
Instead of building several bases around the globe, you get one, with the option to watch over other continents with satellite and interceptor coverage. Instead of a team of twelve or more individuals, you max out at six, but they're a damned well-equipped six, and slightly less vulnerable to the infuriating one-shot, one-kill madness of the original. You still have to build up your tech tree to match the UFO threat, but you don't have to worry quite as much about gathering salvage to equip your units. In particular, once you research a weapon you can build it immediately, and in combat your ammo is essentially unlimited (though you do have to reload periodically).
The complex AP system of the original tactical combat has also been simplified to a move/move, move/shoot system, with additional tactical options opening up as your soldiers gain experience. The most important change however, is the new emphasis on finding cover. A soldier out in the open, as in real life, is pretty much dead meat. Under cover though, he's got a chance to survive even if he isn't wearing the beset armor. Fortunately, the wide variety of maps in the game offer a lot of cover.
Down points in the game are few. Despite the world wide setting, urban areas are very Western looking (at least they had euro license plates in the Hamburg tutorial). Likewise, the voice actors sound universally American in the tactical segments, though a scientist with zee bad German aczent is around for the cut scenes at base. But if you can live with that, you've got a damned fine tactical combat game to play, the likes of which are rare to find these days.
Highly recommended.
