For those of you who aren’t familiar with this type of game, XCOM is played out in on an isometric tile set. While the game features missions and maps much like most other battle games, it plays of the formula that was laid out in classic strategic board games.
The game utilizes a mixture or management and turn based strategy moves. It’s down to you as the commander to use various resources to research technology, build facilities and give orders to a strike team of soldiers. Which in many ways sounds like command and conquer which in some ways is true, but it’s also got more in common with a game of Chess than the point and click warfare of C&C.
Gameplay starts easy enough as you take command of four soldiers, working towards completing a set of objectives, firing upon enemies and trying to at all times keep a strategic couple of steps ahead of your enemies, remain in cover and within weapons range. This is something I found to be a lot harder than it sounded, but like I said, I suck at strategic games.
Make a wrong move in battle and things can quickly spiral out of control as enemies one by one pick off your squad. It can be quite punishing at the best of times but it’s just a case of try and try again till you work out a good strategic solution to the problem. Although just as you would expect from areal battlefield, if a soldier dies, he is gone. You can customise and train your soldiers up to be fantastic, but if they snuff the big one, he’s not going to be around for the next attempt at the mission.
It really boils down to balance you have to think about which missions to take, which resources to use, keep an eye on your budget, all sounds a bit much really but the game does walk you through the basics well enough and it doesn’t take long get up to speed (didn’t stop me being rubbish at it though).
That was a good review, and you have an interesting take
that I haven’t read from other reviewers. You’ve actually given me a bit of
pause to run out and buy it, which is good because I’ve been tempted to break
my game-buying rule and pick it up. But with Christmas just around the corner,
that’s probably not the best idea, and I should just stick to my game buying
rule. I actually got the game-buying rule from one of my coworkers at DISH
after Deus Ex: Human Revolution turned out to be a big let down. Now I don’t
buy a game without first thoroughly play-testing it. I rent them through DISH’s
Blockbuster @Home before I consider buying them, and not only does that
eliminate the risk of dropping sixty bucks on a game that’s not worth it, but
since it’s a pay-by-the-month service, I don’t even feel like I’m wasting a few
bucks renting a game that lets me down. From the sounds of it I’ll probably end
up buying XCOM though, but for now I’m putting it in my Blockbuster @Home queue
now so at least I’ll get to play it before I can actually afford to grab a copy
in the store.