That XCOM Baby!

I bought a PS3 when I was young and had disposable income, and the first game I bought for it was XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

I had tried the very first XCOM game back in the '90s. I didn't have the patience to even select my starting location, let alone actually play the game. For some reason, while standing in a GameStop in El Cajon, California, I decided to give the series another chance. What I found was more than just a game; I found a genre that would entertain me for years.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a near-future, sci-fi, turn-based tactics game focused on squad-based, position-driven combat. Your units move, shoot, and take cover from incoming attacks, and so does your opponent.

You control an elite, multinational paramilitary organization called XCOM, which is tasked with defending Earth from an alien invasion. The game has two primary gameplay modes that complement each other: base management and tactical combat.

The combat in XCOM: Enemy Unknown is turn-based. Your squad is deployed onto a map, and you move your soldiers across it to complete various objectives. Each unit is a soldier with a particular set of skills that complement those of the other members of your squad, so balancing your team is a major part of the experience.

Your squad engages alien enemies that move from cover to cover, suppress your soldiers, and use a variety of tools and abilities to defeat you. You have to use those same principles against them. Your squad are comprised of different types of soldiers, specializing in different skills. You have your Sniper and Heavy gunner which do what you think. There is an assault class which has a shotgun in combat and move quickly. Finally there is the Support class, my favorite, who have smoke grenades and medical supplies. Using your squad to the best of their abilities is critical to winning in any mission.

While this may sound simple, XCOM is known for being unforgiving. One wrong move can result in your entire team being wiped out by a grenade or stumbling into an ambush. Even when you make the tactically correct decision, you may be forced to sacrifice an experienced soldier in order to complete the mission.

The aliens are fun too. They are a mix of monsters, classic greys and "men in black" Each alien enemy has skills of their own and work well with their team to attack you.

In the base-management portion of the game, the player manages XCOM's available resources. You can research and develop new weapons, interrogate captured aliens, and monitor the entire globe while deciding when to shoot down UFOs and respond to emerging threats.

This is also where you interact with the nations of the world. They provide funding to XCOM, but if you fail to make meaningful progress or protect them from alien attacks, a nation can withdraw its support. That makes completing your mission even more difficult.

The base-management side of the game may sound like the boring part, but if you don't pay close attention to it, you will quickly find yourself overmatched in combat.

These two elements don't necessarily sound like they should work together, but they create an excellent feedback loop. As the game progresses, the aliens become more advanced, and you have to keep pace by researching better equipment and training new soldiers to replace the men and women lost in combat.

At the same time, combat provides you with resources and opportunities to capture alien enemies, allowing you to better understand your foe and defeat

This synergy makes for a fun and rewarding experience. The game punishes reckless tactics and rewards a methodical approach, but make no mistake: sometimes you simply get unlucky.

I can live with that because the enemy gets unlucky, too. They miss shots. You miss shots. And at least a few times during every mission, you may find yourself shouting:

"No way... I had a 95% chance to hit and a 50% chance to crit, and I missed!"

But, as they say on the XCOM subreddit:

"That's XCOM, baby!"

What I don't like is that the game doesn't scale properly with your growing abilities and resources. By the endgame, you have such advanced weapons and experienced soldiers that most alien squads pose very little threat. You know how they deploy and what they are likely to do, and despite increases to their health, a well-placed plasma shot tears through them the same way their weapons used to tear through you.

The graphics won't necessarily wow you but they also aged well. Everything has a stylized, slightly bulky, cartoonish 3D art direction that resembles a polished Saturday morning action cartoon. The maps can also become repetitive. Once you've played the game enough, you begin to recognize where enemies are likely to spawn, making the fog of war feel increasingly meaningless.

Despite those issues, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a great game and a genre-defining experience.