XCOM: Enemy Unknown Review
Firaxis Games successfully revives yet another classic franchise
When you actually respond to cries for help from nations is when the second type of gameplay kicks in for Enemy Unknown. Actual gameplay battles play out as turn-based strategy encounters from a third person isometric camera. You control a squad of soldiers, between four and six, getting deployed on one of the game’s maps. You’ll notice right away that the maps are disappointingly generic. A couple of urban environments and a couple of wilderness sections are about all the variety you get. The game always proclaims of your globe-trotting adventures, but there is zero difference between how a forest level in Canada and a forest level in Africa looks; same with the urban settings. It’d be nice if any effort at all was put into distinguishing the areas, otherwise for all we know, XCOM could have been deploying its soldiers in and around one small town somewhere.
The levels themselves are decently vast, and are designed to provide cover opportunities anywhere. Fog of war hides the aliens and their actions from view until the player's soldiers are in range and have line of sight. So, upon deployment you throw the men and women into cover, and begin your advance. After each soldier has moved, the turn changes to the aliens, and then back to the player. Until you see an enemy, the aliens are actually not moving, simply spawned somewhere on the map, and give you directional audio signals to help you find them faster. Once discovered (and this is a bit of an annoyance) the aliens engage in combat and actually get one free turn, so hopefully none of your soldiers were exposed.
All maps provide lots of opportunity for cover, which is very important in Enemy Unknown. Or at least, it should be by design, but doesn’t really have much effect – more on this later. So once the aliens used their freebie move, it’s time for your squad to engage. The game has various tactical options that your soldiers can perform. Basic movement allows you to advance a certain distance and then still fire off a shot – or you can spend all your action points and get your soldier to sprint a farther distance. At that point, you can take a shot, use a special ability, or put the soldier into an overwatch or defensive mode. As overwatch, you’ll get a free shot for any alien that moves in your line of sight in the next turn, and while defensive you get a bonus against incoming damage.
Once a firefight breaks out, the game’s further design missteps come into the light. This isn’t a shooter where you directly control the aim of your soldiers. Instead, you’ve got a percentile probability to hit, and a separate chance to inflict a critical shot. The first number is obviously more important, and is affected by how far and at what angle the enemy is. Sadly, the numbers just don’t work a lot of the time, and have little regard for the environment. Your soldier could be in full standing cover, while an enemy is quite a few paces in front and has about a 20 degree angle from where you are. No matter, they will get a one-shot kill on your soldier (which happen infuriatingly frequently by the way), as you helplessly watch their laser fire simply pass through a solid wall. Whether that’s a design issue or a visual issue, it is frustrating regardless. Another annoyance is that the keybindings change – it would have made much more sense to keep the universal actions (shoot, overwatch, etc) on the same keys for all soldiers, but instead they get shifted around as you unlock new abilities.