I normally start a Verdict like this by saying something along the lines of “I’ve never played a game in this series before, but this really surprised me.” Or I might write “I don’t usually play games on my tablet, but my eyes have been opened by this game.”
Today, those phrases can be applied to XCOM: Enemey Unknown, but not the PC or even the console version as I have been busy playing the turn-based alien hunter on my Google Nexus 7 tablet.
I was saved from scrambling to come up with an introduction with the announcement of Civilization: Beyond Earth which is coming this ‘Fall’ according to the American terminology. The spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, perhaps the most highly praised 4X game is sure to attract a lot of attention before release, and fortunately PC Gamer have a massive interview with the team covering factions, the planet and more. Well worth a read while the first trailer can be found after the break along with our team’s contributions for Our Week in Games.
Let’s recap. Everyones dead. They’re all dead. They’re dead. NO ones alive, they’re all dead Dave. I mean Steph. If you want the full tale of how we ended up in this sorry predicament, I kindly advise you to read these posts.
An Abduction mission pops up and I load Steph, alone, into the VTOL to face her destiny.
To recap from part two… Steph is on the floor of a railcar bleeding out. Jordan has a hole in his chest, slightly dead, and Chris has also bought the farm. Which is a shame as he was due to get a promotion soon…This leaves Nick, a 25% chance shot, 2 rather unhappy Thin men and two turns to save Steph.
Does Steph survive? Can Nick score with the 25% shot? Hit the break to find out.
This is part two of my adventures with XCOM: Enemy Within. You can see the first part here.
Ok, so Ed’s dead, but otherwise I’m in good shape for mission six, First things first though; I start all the researching I think I’ll need in later missions – alien materials are the first order of business. Without better armour my squad won’t live to level up.
Given that XCOM is pretty much nothing more than a fantastic story-generator tagged on to a superlative game, I decided not to ‘review’ the title.
Rather I’m going to play the expansion, Enemy Within, using The Reticule writers as cannonfod… I mean as my heroic squaddies. I’ll detail each mission and their heroic (yet probably pointless) deaths. Apart from commonly known features such as mechs and genetics, I’m going into Enemy Within virtually blind. My tales are sure to be hilarious, even if only to witness tales of the team getting wiped out. I’ll be playing in Classic-Ironman mode and once I run out of writers, I’ll consider the game a ‘wipe’.
It has been a hectic weekend finally actually moving my PC and starting to live in my flat. Not a long intro at all this Week, so let us see what Our Week in Games has been…
Before the recent explosion in turn-based strategies, people would have laughed at the idea of releasing a game in which people take turns at moving. Asynchronous movement was a dated idea, back from when computers couldn’t cope with large scale AI calculations, having no place in modern gaming.
This is a pleasant surprise. Far more present than ending a turn with no action points left only for a posse of extra-terrestrials to step around the corner with plasma rifles blasting. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen to you. In a rare event for the medium these days, but which appropriately reminds us of what was common place back in 1994, Firaxis Games has released a demo of XCOM, their upcoming remake X-COM: Enemy Unknown. The demo can be acquired from…
I’ve got a confession. For my turn in the warm yet comfortable leathery goodness of the swivel chair in the Editor’s Blog this week, I was originally going to write a comedic piece about the upcoming Doctor Who game. Then today, 2K Australia announced they were reviving the much loved X-COM franchise with a brand new FPS entitled XCOM. Of course, other than a singular screenshot, the press release didn’t contain an awful amount of explanation, yet cue the screaming…