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XCOM: Enemy Unknown Review

enough) in which the balance of
power shifts and you move from
being constantly on the defensive
to actively attacking the aliens
wherever they are detected,
blasting their ships out of the sky
with your upgraded fighter craft
and aggressively exterminating
their ground forces with your most
advanced troops and technologies.

in a successful mission your science team can
research advanced weapons and capabilities and
your engineering team can begin constructing new
technologies. The new equipment available can
both dramatically increase both the quality of your
base facilities and the survivability of your troops.

This is what XCOM does best; it
starts you in a position of weakness
in which you feel helpless and
overpowered, forces you to defend yourself
against seemingly impossible odds. It allows you
to advance yourself, but gradually; so that you
don’t even realise things are improving until all of
a sudden you stop and think to yourself: “Hang on,
am I actually winning here?”

That’s not to imply that the game gets progressively
easier as you move forward, because that is simply
not the case. In the early game you will be pitched
against the weaker ‘Sectoid’ and ‘Thin Men’ enemies
who form the initial scouting phase of the alien
attack, but as you progress in your technological
advances the invasion will also be stepping-up in
force and you will continue to regularly encounter
new and terrifying enemies throughout the course
of the campaign. Usually they will kick your ass
when you first meet them.

If you feel like taking the action online there is
a multiplayer mode available where you and
an opponent duke it out for domination of the
battlefield. Each player gets a certain number
of points to spend on units and can even have
a mixed squad of XCOM troopers and aliens. As
each troop type comes with its own strengths and
weaknesses there is as much strategy in picking
your units as there is in the battle itself. Playing
with the alien forces also helps in gaining a better
understanding of their abilities for when fighting
them in the singleplayer mode. These matches are
For the majority of a game of XCOM you will feel short, brutal and tactical but ultimately serve as a
as though you are constantly on the defensive, as mere distraction from the single player campaign
you sit back waiting for the aliens to make their that forms the core of the XCOM experience.
next move so you can mount a frantic and hard
fought defensive action to push them back. As in Technically the game is very accomplished, with
the original game, late in the campaign there is excellent graphics throughout both general
a glorious moment (assuming you survive long gameplay and in cutscenes. Occasionally when
XCOM: Enemy Within Special Edition 2013

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