Aliens have landed and nations of the world have gathered to start a new organization to stop the alien threat. They have decided and your lack of army knowledge and tactical expertise means nothing to them, YOU, are the commander. Do what you can to stop the alien invasion by sending your troops out to fight and capture these aliens. Many will die under your control and nations will be taken over but hey, you tried right?
Ok, so my opening for this review was a little dark but the first time I sat down to play this game that is exactly what happened. I was overwhelmed with what was going on and I didn't understand that half the cover wasn't good enough as the game went on and the aliens got tougher but I didn't seem to get any stronger and was out classed in seconds. But, with my second gameplay I learned a bit more and continued to grow knowing what technologies to develop. It is a game that now that I have gone through twice (still not beating it) will go through and try to win in my third gameplay.
With all that said above, lets get into the meat of the game. Like I said earlier the game starts out with an alien invasion. The council has elected you the commander of the "XCOM" force and given you advisers to help with research and engineering. The game has two distinct styles, the first is base building and researching and even though this may not seem like an important part of the game and just fodder for between missions but, IT IS EXTREMELY important! Without a solid home base your soldiers would die almost instantly during their missions. The second part is the actual missions themselves which are turn based. Early on you have a squad of 4 men and women that go out to missions to hunt down aliens or escort a VIP depending on your missions and there are parameters that you must follow. When it comes to the actual battles I highly recommend that you try your best to keep all of your soldiers in full cover as much as you can because it will help keep them from getting wounded or even killed. If a soldier is wounded in battle it will take anywhere from 8 to 15 days to recover and if they die, they are dead for good.
There is a bit of customization in the game, pending on if you purchased the DLC for it that is, this includes renaming your soldiers to anything that you want as well as their armor and armor color. This is a great addition to the game because you can feel more connected to the people you are sending out to their death and makes it so when someone dies you feel worse about them being killed off, to a certain degree.
The graphics and soundtrack keep you engaged on top of all of this as well. It has been a long time since I have played a Turn Based Strategy game that I actually said, "Wow, these graphics are great," since most of the time TBS have had sub par 16 bit graphics due to the fact that you don't need to see all that much in terms of gameplay. All of the soundtracks are pleasant to play along with too and will keep you engaged in missions as the music changes when you find your enemy.
The downfall to the game though is the difficulty settings. Enemy Unknown comes with four difficulty settings Easy, Normal, Classic and Insane which you would think that Easy and Normal would be easy to handle but you would be dead wrong. Normal will keep you on your toes begging for a break. I have not had the chance to move on to higher difficulties because I am still struggling to get by on Normal difficulty.
All in all the game is great, the story is immersive, the gameplay is fun and challenging which is something that I myself have not had in a long time. The little customizations in the game keeps me happy and makes me more diligent when sending my best friends on a mission plus the ranking system works well as your men get higher ranks they learn a new skills. The difficulty settings can get annoying as you try to beat the game without too much of a challenge but where is the fun in a cake walk game? All in all, I highly recommend you consider buying the game as it will keep you busy for hours on end.
Good:
- Customization
- Soundtrack and Graphics
- Story
- Difficulty
Bad:
- Difficult settings
Scully Rating: 9.0 out of 10
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