By now, you all know the drill. This isn't a "review" of XCOM. It's just me talking about the game and letting you all know what I think of it after about 12 hours of play. If you want a review, there are plenty of other places where you can get one. If you want to know what I think, proceed. :)
The original X-COM ("UFO: Enemy Unknown" as it was called when I bought it back in the day) is one of the best games and quite possibly the best turn-based tactical/strategy game ever made. If I were to make a personal Top 10 list from the thousands of games I've played over the years, it would very likely make the cut.
It was a difficult, often brutal game that at times felt outright unfair but that was part of what made it so compelling. Winning in X-COM was never assumed. No matter how well you played or how sound your strategies and tactics, there was always the chance that you'd get screwed by some terrifying event that you never saw coming and the loss you'd feel as a result was integral to the experience.
No manufactured story beat, no scripted sequence could ever match the gut-wrenching feeling of having one of your soldiers blown away by E.T. just as they rounded a corner.
The problem with X-COM is that it hasn't aged particularly well. It was never a great looking game, even by the standards of its time. The most you could say is that it had a cool style to it. Beyond that, the interface was clunky, the sound effects, while memorable, were pretty basic and the overall presentation of the game made it the sort of thing most would only bother with today out of pure nostalgia.
Thankfully, Firaxis has come to the rescue with XCOM, which could well be the best re-make of a game that I've ever seen.
I said recently that there's no such thing as a perfect game and that still holds true with XCOM; however, it is easily one of very few games in the history of gaming to even approach perfection based on what I've experienced so far.
Sure, the tutorial at the beginning is a bit hand-holdy but it can be skipped. And yes, the camera can get a little unwieldy when you get to the edges of the tactical map or venture inside buildings and ships. And yes, sometimes you get blindsided by things that the game didn't warn you about ahead of time. Whatever. Suck it up. :)
The bottom line is that XCOM is a great game. I don't need to finish it (though I will be) to tell you that because the first 12 hours are better than 90% of the other games out there. If you loved the original and have been hoping for a modern game to live up to your memories of it, this is that game. If you never played the original, go and buy XCOM right now. Install it. Play it. Love it. Thank me later. :)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (via Steam)
No comments:
Post a Comment