Harry Situation Reviews: XCOM
Here’s one for the Gaming Portal and gamers everywhere. Before we begin, I just want to let everyone know that there is a challenge created by NamelessNaiad that is about aliens. So when you have the chance please check it out and enter, it’s a really interesting and fun challenge. I’ve provided a link so you can head over. Now onto the review.
Oh yeah, I’m definitely into video games. Believe it or not I actually briefly discussed this game in one of my posts called ‘Vigilo Confido’. This is the motto for the fictional special ops forces that you control in the video game franchise. The motto loosing translates as “I am watchful. I am necessary”, which is fitting for this game series. Just a heads up, I’m only going to be talking about the current XCOM games not the ones that came out in the 1990s because I never played those. This review is strictly about XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM: Enemy Within, and XCOM 2.
The story for the XCOM games is simple. Aliens have invaded the earth and you as the commander of this secret government defense network known only as XCOM must assemble its best soldiers to fight against the invaders. Unlike other games like Call of Duty, XCOM is a turn-based strategy game. The game operates like a chess board. You move your squad into position throughout a wide range of maps and wait for the enemy to make their move. Once you’ve eliminated all hostiles on the map, you win. But if the enemy eliminates all of your soldiers, you lose. You maybe thinking that’s not so bad. My soldiers will respawn next time. No. There is no next time. If your soldier dies in the game, they are dead throughout the whole game. You can potentially lose your best soldier just because you made a mistake by putting him in the wrong position.
One of the best features in the XCOM series is the soldier customization. You can create your ultimate badass however you’d like by customizing their hair style, race, facial features, hair color, armor color, gender, even their names if you really wanted to. There are four different soldier classes your soldier can become: Sniper, which focuses on long-range attacks with a sniper rifle, Heavy, which deals with demolition and explosives, Support, which provides medical care for wounded soldiers, and Assault, which is better suited for close-range attacks. With each successful mission, your soldiers will progress through the ranks and unlock new abilities that can aid you during missions.
Additionally, you can build XCOM headquarters however you’d like by excavating underground and building new research and development facilities. You can also build and experiment with new weapons and gear that will add more firepower to your soldiers.
The challenge of this game is how to handle the situation. Funding comes from 16 different countries that you’re trying to protect and the best way to protect them is by launching satellites. If a country does not have a satellite, they will be targets for alien abductions, which is where you can send your soldiers in to stop them. The catch is you can only help one country per abduction mission and each country will provide awards that can benefit your base. Once you pick a country to rescue the other two get screwed over which raises their panic levels. If the country reaches maximum panic levels and does not receive any aid by the end of the month, they will withdraw from XCOM and will not fund you any longer. If you lose more than 8 countries it’s an automatic game over.
That’s what I love about XCOM. This game series is so challenging and so difficult there is a chance you can lose unless you find some sort of balance and keep upgrading your technology. Eventually, you’ll be able to get a handle on the gameplay to a point it feels like your elite soldiers could literally walk through Hell and not be phased.
When I played XCOM: Enemy Unknown I fell in love with this game. It was something different compared to what I usually play and it has since become one of my all time favorite games. If I had to make one complaint about it is that the ending was very anticlimatic. I felt it was too easy. I didn’t get the sense of tension as I did in the other missions. XCOM: Enemy Within is the expansion to Enemy Unknown where nothing else is different except you can genetically modify your soldiers with alien DNA and it adds a new soldier class called the MEC Trooper.
XCOM 2 is a completely different story entirely. XCOM 2 is set twenty years after the first game where humanity is under the control of the aliens. So even if you beat the first game you still get your ass handed back to you. See, this is what happens if Trump is president. This time XCOM is serving as a resistance movement against the alien overlords, moving from country to country in their mobile headquarters, a stolen alien ship called the Avenger. The gameplay is still the same but with new added twists, and it involves your team trying to stop the aliens from completing something called the Avatar Project. New missions, new customization options, new weapons and skills, XCOM 2 has easily surpassed its predecessor. The one downside I do have is that the game does suffer from performance problems. I noticed that the game doesn’t run so well on a couple of maps, but that’s mostly due to my laptop not up to speed with the graphics.
I don’t know what more I can say other than I love the XCOM series. This series always offers something different unlike Call of Duty which is literally the same damn game every time you play it. I’ve become engaged into the game itself to a point I’ve actually grown attachments to my customized soldiers. One day, everyone will hear the Ballad of XCOM and Earth’s courageous heroes like heavy specialist Olufemi “Yeti” Luthuli, his wife Bunta “Android” Luthuli, the comrade Dmitriy “The Russian” Vasilyev, the medic Chloe “Kitty” Johnson, the deadeye marksman Riku “Zero” Goto, and the thunder from down under David “Dice” White. Their legacy with live on to the next generation of heroes like wild-child Brittney “Before Cataclysm” Campbell, the Mexican hellblazer Humberto “Hellfire” Martinez, and the gifted psionic Adrian “Jedi” Nyte.
It’s intense, it’s challenging, it’s beautifully made, hell you can even get so attached to the soldiers you made to a point you’re saddened if they get killed. XCOM is a fantastic game series and I highly recommend any gamers here to give it a try. This series gets an automatic A+ from me.
So that’s my review of XCOM. What did you think? Are you a gamer too? What’s your favorite video game? Be kind and comment below. And if you like what you’ve read be sure to check out my other reviews and stay tuned for more!
“Good luck, Commander.”