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122 Years of Extraterrestrial Combat

122 Years of
Extraterrestrial
Combat

W

ay back in 1961, President John F.
Kennedy made a galvanising speech
to congress regarding his ambitions of
sending an American safely to the moon by the
end of the decade. Little did he know that just one
year later beings from beyond the moon were to
land safely on Earth.
In 1962 and all its Cold War paranoia, JFK sets up the
eponymous Bureau of Operations and Command,
naturally based in a top secret bunker somewhere
in the USA. Constructed as a means to devise plans
to fend off a Russian invasion and to serve as an
epicentre of wartime command, The Bureau soon
came to be much more important than that, not
just to Americans, but to the entire planet as well.
CIA Agent William Carter, charged with delivering
a mysterious briefcase to fellow Agent Faulke,
suffers a fatal gunshot wound at the hands of an
infected military officer, infected with something...
alien. After opening the briefcase a blinding light is
emitted, and sets the room on fire. Carter awakens
from his supposed death with an inexplicable lack
of wounds. The military base is under attack, giving
Carter no time to assess this implausible situation,
he teams up with survivors and fights back.
Despite being the first game chronologically,

XCOM: Enemy Within Special Edition 2013

12 • GameOn Magazine