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XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Xcom: Enemy Unknown

(2K Games)
Ship Date: 
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Grade:
B-
Players: 
1
Time To Finish: 
21+ Hours
Bonus Content

Code included for Elite Soldier Pack

Aliens have come to Earth and they do not come in peace! Panic spreads around the world as these unknown aliens wreck pain and death upon anyone they see. In this time of disaster the nations of the world have banned together under the one command to fight this common enemy. The XCOM is an elite team of military soldiers that you will command as you hunt down and take out any and all aliens.

GAME PLAY:
XCOM is a turnbased game that has the player controlling up to 6 characters at one time. It’s not like the typical combat based game where you take control of your character, send him/her off to fight the aliens, and after killing them moving on to the next level. In this game you also have to slowly build your team in skills, weapons, gear, all while also building up your base and helping the other nations of the world. While you are actually playing the game you get 2 moves per character, depending on the move however, such as choosing to be the overwatch on your first move will only allow you one move, and the enemies also get 2 moves.


There’s a lot going on in this game, a little too much for me at first where I wasn’t liking the game at all. With having to make decisions that will affect your game later on, which I believe I’ve made the wrong choices because I’m now getting to the point where I need more and have no resources to get it. During the game play each character is only allowed 2 weapons at a time, the weapons vary but depending on which one you pick/use you will get from weak results to strong, the shotgun by the way sucks, at least it did for me. While not in the mission you have to have research the aliens, weapons, and other items to gain knowledge, as well as having engineers build the tools and labs, and even build planes and satellites.

 

MY THOUGHTS:
Ok, like I said, there’s a whole lot going on with this game, even after playing it for a while, I still think there’s too much going on. On my first few hours of playing I didn’t like how I had only 2 moves per character before the enemy got to do the same. As the game progressed it felt like the enemies were growing in skill and numbers but I was still only going around with 6 people, who over half was new cause the last mission killed most of my team forcing me to start with new recruits. The game is slow moving, between having to wait for days to pass to gain any money, experience, and build anything, I was waiting for the game to load between missions. That plane that was always shown while going to and coming from missions got old really fast.


Though what I disliked the most about the game was all the reading I had to do. Along with already having to wait for anything to happen, when the research was actually over with I had to read this small print to see what was discovered from the research. Then when I thought that was all there was more reading on the items that could be built from the knowledge, the reading of figuring out what it does, and just more and more reading. I wouldn’t have minded this as much if it was between missions that happened like typical games and only a few times. However, with there being so much of it and with the waiting and time that this game takes to play I was finding myself skipping reading it and not caring.
Now for what I actally like about the game, which by the time I sat down to write this review I had been playing the game for a full day and found it hard to turn it off (which I did only because I had to let my PS3 cool off). Even though the game is slow, there’s so much going on in it as for what I have to do, I found myself liking how the game is a turn-based game. I quickly learned that if I used my team in certain ways and moved them just right I could wreck some death upon those aliens, though there was enough times that I was being killed. XCOM became a intense game where I was yelling at my characters because they were missing shots that shouldn’t have been missed or when I was being killed over and over again. There’s a lot of slow paced building of the characters but there’s a lot of action also. The graphics are nice, I’ve seen some better cut scenes but for what is used in this game it looks sharp. XCOM: Enemy Unknown started off being a game that I didn’t like to one that I found that I didn’t want to stop playing.  Now to play it a little more before bed. 

Lee Roberts
Review by Lee Roberts
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