XCOM: Enemy Unknown places you in control of a secret paramilitary organization.

As the XCOM commander, you will defend against a terrifying global alien invasion by managing resources, advancing technologies, and overseeing combat strategies and individual unit tactics.

The original X-COM is widely regarded as one of the best games ever made and has now been re-imagined by the strategy experts at Firaxis Games. XCOM: Enemy Unknown will expand on that legacy with an entirely new invasion story, enemies and technologies to fight aliens and defend Earth. You will control the fate of the human race through researching alien technologies, creating and managing a fully operational base, planning combat missions and controlling soldier movement in battle.

Super keen for the game as I loved the classic XCOM games back in the 90's, and have always been a fan of Firaxis' games. This 'reimagining' looks to be really, really good and the reviews thus far have been very positive. It launches Friday here on the following platforms:

* PlayStation 3
* Xbox 360
* PC

Here are some screen-shots from the game:

@Trevor

I couldn't make out from the video if this game plays like a 3rd person shooter or like Civilizations? If it plays like Civ, I'm buying this game for sure!!!

NVM - Just watched a gameplay vid, I want this...SOLD!!! This game is going to be AWESOME!!!

The aliens in Xcom: Enemy Unknown definitely don't come in peace.


When Mythos Games and MicroProse released UFO: Enemy Unknown back in 1994, they couldn't have had any clue as to just how popular the game would go on to be. It's a title that has been lavished with more than its fair share of "best of" awards over the years, and it's a game that, for many, has never been bettered, even by later iterations from the same stable.

Fast-forward to 2012, and Xcom: Enemy Unknown (named after the Playstation port of the original game, which fused UFO: Enemy Unknown with the same game's American title, X-COM: UFO Defense) is being unleashed on a modern market with modern sensibilities.

Firaxis announced they were working on the game at the beginning of the year, and skepticism soon dissolved into anticipation. The studio behind Civilization has a rich pedigree, and fans quickly warmed to the notion that Xcom was in the best possible hands, all things considered. The stage was set, and all that was left to do was eagerly await the results.




Like its forbear, Xcom is a mixture of real-time base management, and turn-based combat. You're put in command of XCOM, an organisation funded by 16 countries seeking to repel the increasing number of alien incursions taking place across the planet. Whilst growing your (literally) underground operation, researching technology, building a fleet of Interceptor jet planes, and upgrading your facilities, you are tasked with directly dealing with the alien threat via a series of tense turn-based engagements.

The first thing that really grabs us are the visuals. There's so much to admire, from the styling of the units under your command, to the environments that you send them into. The soldiers are well animated, their equipment and weapons easy to identify from your perch on high. Each of the alien species on show is distinctive and menacing. Grotesque genetically mutated flesh fused with harsh metallic advanced technology. The maps where combat takes place are varied. A series of well designed and geographically distinctive locations are decorated with all the appropriate furnishings, and paying close attention to your environment means finding life-saving cover.




Your base of operations is a thing of simplistic beauty. Presented as a cross-section, the "ant farm," you can take in all of the different arms of your operation. The Situation Room reveals the state of panic in different parts of the world; let things get too bad in any one country and you might just lose their support, and with that their funding. There's also a market where you can recycle any acquired and unwanted assets into cold, hard cash. The other function served by this room is satellite placement.

Dr Vahlen and her team work out of the Research Laboratory, and it's here that alien autopsies take place, as well as investigations into the foreign technology acquired in battle. Dr Shen awaits your orders in Engineering. Here you can extend your base, and build the technology prototyped by the scientists under your employ. The Mission room allows you to see what's going on across the globe, and here real-time can be fast-forwarded, advancing the campaign along. We see satellites patroling the sky, Interceptors jets are sent to hunt down detected UFOs.




The Barracks is where soldier load-outs can be tinkered with, and characters can be customised. You can't change the gender and nationality of the soldiers assigned to you, and you can't pick their specialisation either, but apart from those prescribed details, you can tinker with your troopers as much as you want. Colour schemes and physical attributes can be altered, and load-outs can be adjusted, thus creating unique and distinctive soldiers, and you can name them.

Xcom is a game that embraces permadeath; when one of your soldiers dies, they're gone. Dead. Deceased. Kaput. No more. They are an ex-soldier. During a career, stats and skills are added to regularly, and so each character develops a singular purpose within a game plan, becoming essential to your tactics, and ever increasingly effective on the battlefield. That means, when one of your carefully constructed troops bites the proverbial bullet, you'll be losing out on all his/her accumulated experience and skills, as well as leaving a gap on your team sheet.




It's a system that brings a thick layer of tension to every combat scenario, as one duff decision can easily see one of your favourite units retired to the Memorial Room. Going with the original names, or assigning your own, means browsing a memorial wall full of fallen heroes and old favourites. Each a lesson learned, hopefully not be repeated.

Whilst the real-time base building and management elements form the outer-shell of the game, it's the turn-based battles that provide the game's body and soul. Pleasingly, Firaxis has absolutely nailed it: the combat in Xcom is outstanding in every respect.

Starting off with teams of four (this can be expanded to six later), soldiers drop into one of several different scenarios, and literally square off against a selection different alien species in a fight to the death.

9/10 Game Reactor

I like how soldiers can panick and do random crap which can get them killed lol!!! This game will sure test ones patience, but it's going to be one of the best games EVER!!!! Another 9/10 Eurogamer

Version tested: PC



Buy XCOM, it's a belter. I know it's Big Game season, but this is so good I've chalked up 43 hours in four days and want more in the near future. XCOM absorbs you into a universe of Tonka toy soldiers and B-movie science-fiction, a rich and smartly streamlined strategy experience that's a hell of a credit to the design of the 1994 original. Re-imagining? Remake? Whatever it is, XCOM brings back and revitalises a classic.

You play as the Commander of the eponymous task force set up to defend Earth from a new extraterrestrial threat, responsible for both the organisation's overall management and directing the ground battles. This combination of genres is unusual even 18 years later, but works because of the multiple ways the two worlds intersect - the most obvious and irresistible through-line being how the XCOM troops evolve over time, from standard-issue grunts to plasma-wielding psychic warriors in cloaking suits, depending on how research and manufacturing are juggled.

The base management owes much to the original X-Com, but also to Kojima Productions' masterful Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and its Mother Base. The surface sheen is a gorgeous, zoomable 3D map of the facilities you've built, which whooshes into and out of rooms as you burrow into the nested menus - studying recovered alien technology, expanding XCOM's global coverage and training up an army. There are always new things to fiddle with and read and choices to be made.

Particularly when there's contact. Running XCOM is about balancing budgets, but also nations; if there are three attacks in different parts of the globe, you can only respond to one. Successfully completing missions lowers the panic level, but only in that country. The ones left to fend for themselves move closer to mass panic, and if a threshold is reached will permanently abandon XCOM. It's relatively easy to keep nations happy on Normal difficulty, unless you fail missions repeatedly, but on Classic it's a whole other matter. Which nations can XCOM not afford to lose? With 'Ironman' mode activated, which ties a game to a single autosave, I guarantee you'll find out.


"Re-imagining? Remake? Whatever it is, XCOM brings back and revitalises a classic."


This is your typical viewpoint during battle, here giving a great view of a Cyberdisc that's flown in behind my position and started a merry massacre of the poor troops.

The campaign is structured around responding to semi-random alien alerts - which may involve countering an abduction attempt, investigating a crash site, disarming bombs or rescuing VIPs. But the general rule is kill the aliens. The turn-based battles are XCOM's real meat, its 3D environments viewed primarily from an isometric perspective but jazzed up considerably by zoomed-in combat targeting reminiscent of Fallout 3's VATS mode. The drama cam also toggles when troops are dashing to cover or a new cluster of enemies is spotted, and even though it's an illusion, it gives a coat of dynamism to the piecemeal strategising.

Levels draw from a fixed map pool, with plenty of variation in the layouts and cover opportunities, but what keeps them fresh is the randomised enemy placement. The invasion force can be anywhere, on any mission.

XCOM's aliens are an ever-expanding grotesquerie of bulbous heads and B-movie nightmares and operate in groups with particular styles of combat. Sectoids, the earliest opponents, are pathetic individually but in large clusters can buff each other and overwhelm standoffish assaults. The Berserkers will charge straight for anyone shooting them, breaking out of the turn-based pattern and forcing an immediate takedown (or messy consequences). Others will flank you by air, unleash devastating one-shot laser barrages or eviscerate a squad member and implant their still-twitching corpse with an egg.


"Capable of annihilating lone units and pouncing on bad positions, the aliens are at their most terrifying when you can't see them."


The XCOM base is really just a tremendously slick interface, with everything you need to do only a click or two away. Advice: don't underestimate the importance of satellite coverage.

The characteristic they share, in other words, is an ability to kill XCOM operatives very quickly. Taking fire of any kind is always a bad thing, and what makes the aliens so scary is how effectively they identify exposed units - or that one super-unit your entire strategy depends upon. What gets you killed in XCOM is failing to check a corner, or moving too far forwards, or taking a risk and failing to make the shot. The fog of war shows general shapes like cars or walls, but mistaking that for a licence to move in is a sure way to the grave. Movement has to be slow, measured, covering every angle with the 'Overwatch' ability to catch enemies bursting from cover. Capable of annihilating lone units and pouncing on bad positions, the aliens are at their most terrifying when you can't see them.

This sense of tension is manifested in the fact that troops can panic; a 'Will' stat shows how strong-minded each individual is and under extreme pressure anyone can crack. When a soldier panics, he or she performs a random action (which may include shooting an enemy or team-mate) and misses a turn.

I was once assaulting the control room of a crashed UFO. Two assault troopers, two snipers covering the door, one support class. I open the door and the support goes down under a barrage of laser fire - one of the assault troops panics, runs into the room, and is easily picked off. His mate panics at seeing this, and then he runs into the room. He promptly dies, one of my snipers gets mind-controlled, and the last sniper finally snaps and just hunkers down, gibbering. No-one came home. Having troops panic isn't always quite so dramatic, but boy does it have its moments.


"Multiplayer... feels a little lightweight, because despite ranked matches there's no real long-term structure, but that shouldn't overshadow the fact that it allows for fantastic matches."


Ever since Perfect Dark, I've despised 'greys'. In XCOM these are Sectoids - low health, but capable of a dastardly 'mind-merge' with allied troops that ups their health and crit rate.

Not least because death is an inconvenience. Soldiers level up over time, as they did in the original, along a neatly worked out set of classes with branching ability paths. Abilities work on cooldowns and range from letting Assault troops shoot after dashing to giving snipers grenade-like scanners or multiple shots in a turn. The little boosts pile up with rank, meaning experienced squad members are so much more capable than new recruits that losing them - or anyone, really - weakens XCOM for much more than one mission. Later in the game, barracks upgrades plus generally better equipment can soften the blow of losing a veteran, but it always hurts. God speed Marco 'D.O.A.' Bettini and your 71 kills.

These abilities are perfectly pitched against the innate skills of the aliens, a pack of situational gambits seen at their fullest in multiplayer. Both players get the same amount of credits to spend on a team, and then buy and customise pre-packaged versions of the campaign units. You can go in with one Ethereal and a couple of heavies, running distraction while turning the other team against itself, or go in with three Sectoids mind-merged with three snipers for a crit-heavy glass cannon. The psychic abilities in particular, which only appear near the end of the solo campaign, find their true home here: making a buddy's grunts panic never gets old. The mode feels a little lightweight, because despite ranked matches there's no real long-term structure, but that shouldn't overshadow the fact that it allows for fantastic matches.

XCOM's focus is on single-player, though, and rightly so. One of the best surprises is the scriptwriting (by one Scott Wittbecker): a snappy mixture of military designations, sci-fi jargon and salty battle dialogue. The substantial campaign is challenging enough on Normal, with a big leap in enemy threat and movement on Classic - both of which are enhanced immeasurably by Ironman mode, which removes the temptation to save-cheat. The last difficulty level, Impossible, is aptly named.


"This game is a winner. So much craft has gone into its atmosphere, into innumerable small details that together add enormous depth and flavour to the world."


The music, I almost forgot the music! XCOM's main battle theme is an incredible piece of work, an urgent military drumbeat battering up and against heavy electronic waves. Five stars would listen again.

This game is a winner. So much craft has gone into its atmosphere, into innumerable small details that together add enormous depth and flavour to the world: the occasional conversations overheard while fiddling around in the base; the mission loading screen, which gives you a view of the troops inside the carrier, fidgeting and tapping their feet in transit; the ridiculously cute touch of soldiers acquiring nicknames like 'Longshot' or 'Odin' after a few missions; the memorial room for fallen warriors, with a cork board of photos on the wall, which records their names - and the fact that visiting it triggers, after a few seconds, the sound of a bagpipe march.

Near the campaign's end, there's a direct tribute to the original game's designers, the Gollop brothers, accompanied by an achievement called 'On the Shoulders of Giants'. It's a beautiful touch, a nod from one development team to another across the generations. They have something in common now. In their own time and place, each made a fantastic game called XCOM.


9 / 10

@Morshcee
You never played the originals?

Unfortunately not Teb These scores speak for them selves

Eurogamer – 9/10
CVG – 9.2/10
Videogamer – 9/10
OXM – 9/10
Game Informer – 95/100
Destructoid – 9/10
NowGamer – 9/10
OPM – 9/10
Kotaku – ‘Yes’
Gamers.at – 92/100
Joystiq – 4.5/5
Strategy Informer – 9/10
Lazygamer – 9/10
Polygon – 8.5/10
Machinima – 9/10
The Average Gamer – ‘Great’
PC Gamer – 87/100
Gram.Pl – 9.5/10

Xcom 1 was awesome. Shooting down ufos, killing aliens and harvesting their bodies for tech.

Xcom 2 (terror from the deep) was also good, but very very difficult.

All the ones after them just sort of... tanked.

This one looks like they got back teh aw3some though!

Tebulot said ...


This one looks like they got back teh aw3some though!

It sure does look awesome. I love these types of games, having to look after your resources, gathering intel/technology, having budgets to look after, planning attacks and strategize your groups way forward etc, it's just so cool. Games like Civilization, Dune etc. are all awesome and have these elements in them, but I rate this will be even better, as I've said probably a 100 times before, I SUPER, UBER excited to play this game

PS: I wonder if there's any Pre Order goodness?

@ Morschee - There seems to be a "pre-order" / "day 1" edition with extra content - just confirming and will post the information for you when I get it

XCOM: Enemy Unknown - seven essential tips you'll need to save the Earth

http://www.oxm.co.uk/46438/features/xcom-enemy-unknown-seven-essential-tips-youll-need-to-save-the-earth/?page=1

@ Tea - Awesome, will wait for your update

@ Scottie - Nice find...I've been reading as much as I can about this game, all 7 those tips come up quiet frequent, but not all in one review/wright up, your link is exactly what I was looking for

Hey Guys - All pre-orders automatically get the following Pack:

Elite Soldier Pack includes:
•Classic X-COM Soldier: Instantly unlock a new recruit in your barracks inspired by the original X-COM: UFO Defense. The blonde, flattop hairstyle will return in its full glory, modernized with the rest of the XCOM universe.
•Soldier Deco Packs: Customize your soldiers with several aesthetic upgrades to armour suits including the new Hyperion and Reaper soldier armour kits.
•Complete Colour Customization: A variety of colours and tints for all armour sets provides complete customization of your squad’s appearance.

Tea said ...

Hey Guys - All pre-order automatically get the following Pack:

Elite Soldier Pack includes:
•Classic X-COM Soldier: Instantly unlock a new recruit in your barracks inspired by the original X-COM: UFO Defense. The blonde, flattop hairstyle will return in its full glory, modernized with the rest of the XCOM universe.
•Soldier Deco Packs: Customize your soldiers with several aesthetic upgrades to armour suits including the new Hyperion and Reaper soldier armour kits.
•Complete Colour Customization: A variety of colours and tints for all armour sets provides complete customization of your squad’s appearance.

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!

Its not much...but it's something I need to drink a[censored] load of sleeping tablets so I can sleep until Friday

Oooo, i'm intrigued... Never played a turn-based game... but i'm guessing it helps with the strategy side more than anything... might give it a shot!

Nagool said ...

might

Excuse me SIR!!!! The word "might" may not be used when talking about playing this game...REPHRASE NOW!!!!!!!!! Wait...let me help you:

Nagool Said:

I WILL definitely play this game, I WILL play it because it's awesome, and I WILL apologise for using the word "might"

HAhahahhahaha!!! Bro, this game is going to be SUPER cool, GET IT!!!

Right then, some thoughts on the game. Just to make Morschees day go slower.

First of, play the tutorial. It has story based elements, and it helps introduce you to the mechanics (even if you have played x-com before)

Your first squadmembers are likely to meet a sticky end (or become a sticky patch) so be prepared to lose a few guys. have back-ups.

Move slow. If you accidently trigger two or three enemy squads your in for a bad time. Enemies are mostly stationary until you see them the first time.

Spend carefully. You dont need 4 of every tool. Each squad memebr can only carry one, so make 2 at the most to start.

Remember which squad members can fire, then move; move then guard or have to stay still.

I would actually suggest you play for about an hour, then restart with some better ideas.

Def making my day go slower...I might not have to work this weekend anymore, that means some serious hrs to play this game

There's an Ironman setting...

One save file.

Autosaves.

No second chances.

DAMN.

The single most frustating thing about this game is the tempramental aiming. Had an alien in the open, all my guys have 90-95% hit chance and they all miss.
Then I pull of a series of headshots with 25-30% hit chance.

The tide can turn so quickly it's insane.
You have wiped out almost the whole map, your team closes in to the last little room, then three Muton b@astards calmy step out and pull out grenades... FfFFFFfffffUUUUuuuuuUUUUuuUUuU

LOVING IT!!!