Having spent significant time playing UFO: Alien Unknown and its subsequent unofficial remakes, I feel I can give a reasonable view of the new Xcom: Enemy Unknown game. First off, I will admit, I was a huge fan of the original game. It was incredibly sophisticated and in-depth for the time, requiring planning and attention to the most minute detail to succeed. This was the era of the ‘spreadsheet game’ with titles like Simcity and Civilisation (made by Triarch, the makers of the new Xcom game co-incidentally) enjoying their heyday. Even in this, Xcom stood out; marrying complex resource-management challenge with intricate and rewarding squad tactical combat. Along with this it managed a level of immersion unusual for games that basically looked like their art was drawn with a dot matrix printer.

Now the main question is: does the new game live up to the original’s high standard? In one word, yes… in two words, hell yes! At its basic level, it’s the same game I loved back in the day but with new bodywork and added polish. It’s clear the developers were fans of the original and have taken care to maintain the intangible ‘feel’ of the old game. Combat is brutal and the base management aspect, though stripped back and somewhat simplified, is as challenging as ever. You have to bring your A-game to every encounter to emerge unscathed, with enough variety to keep you interested long past the 30 hour mark. Not many games make you puzzle over what to research next, as you scratch your chin and consider the impacts of each option. That’s the thing too, there’s always a consequence of every choice, always so many variables to be considered, the need to balance the more mundane base and team infrastructure with the super deathray arsenal research. One of the achievements of the developers is to make all these aspects feel as important as the others; not an easy trick especially in this shooter-focussed age.

 

Where Triarch have made changes, it is clear it is done purely to improve the experience and, generally, does. One of the great aspects of the original game, naming your soldiers and customising them, makes a welcome return and it’s amazing how much this helps make you care about your soldiers. They aren’t just some random meatheads, they’re YOUR meatheads and you genuinely don’t want them to die. And they WILL die. A lot. Usually quite painfully. Because you were an idiot or didn’t think it through. But you’ll never hold it against the game, because it doesn’t hit you with cheap shots or blindside you. If you fail, you know it’s your fault and you grit your teeth and try again. That’s the sign of a good game, like the old coin-munchers of the arcade era needing ‘just one more go!’.

 

The game does have its down sides, though they are minor. The base section for example, as I detailed before, is much simpler than before and you don’t have the option to open multiple bases. This limits the feeling of expansion and the scale, but that’s a minor issue. Less minor is the absence of base assaults, a key part of the original, where if you were doing too well the game put you in your place by invading your home base. Think you care about your squaddies now, imagine seeing the base you spent so much time lovingly crafted being shot up and overrun, while you fight a desperate rear-guard action. That, my friends, is immersion and the feature’s absence is a significant one for Xcom. Oh, and the voice acting accents are awful. AWFUL! Side-splittingly, hilariously awful!

 

In addition, the character editing options are pretty limited, with haircuts being about the only things that significantly change the appearance of you characters. These changes are also rather shoddy too, with most characters ending up looking pretty much the same, other than some generic hair or different coloured armour. This means it can, at times, feel like adding pretty colours to your generic slab of miscellaneous muscular space marine du jour, but again, this is minor and hopefully will be something to expand on in the sequel (which will be developed if there is any justice in the world). I will, however, give them credit for paying homage to the original by including the ridiculous Guile-from-Streetfighter plateaued haircut. That thing is comedy gold.

All in all, though, this game is a fantastic example of what is becoming something of a bygone genre. If you loved the old UFO and Xcom games, you owe it to yourself to get this game. In a world where most games prize speed and don’t give you time to breathe, Xcom rewards careful and thought out planning, somehow investing you in a story in which there is the barest bones of a narrative.

If you haven’t tried this sort of game before, I urge you to give it a try. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you give it a chance, it might hook you and never let you go.

 

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