{"id":4131,"date":"2012-10-12T17:53:39","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T21:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=4131"},"modified":"2012-10-12T18:20:39","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T22:20:39","slug":"xcom-enemy-unknown-some-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2012\/10\/12\/xcom-enemy-unknown-some-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"XCom: Enemy Unknown – Some Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

XCom: Enemy Unknown<\/em> has taken over my Steam friends list in the same way that FTL: Faster Than Light<\/em> did a few weeks ago. XCom<\/em> is bigger, flashier and, I think, more important than FTL – largely connected to the reasons that Ben Kuchera laid out earlier this week in his essay at Penny Arcade Report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In short, this is a game that could determine the future of Firaxis as a studio. It is undoubtedly their most expensive game, it is quite unlike anything that team has made before – both in appearance and underlying technology – and if it’s as big a sales success as 2K hopes then it will free the studio from the Civilization<\/em> Forever graveyard (though if they ever get to work on their own new, original IP is an open question.) I don’t think that Hartman’s comments about the pointlessness of strategy games were some long con or trolling; I honestly think he had zero expectations for the strategy XCom having any legs at all. I hope that the gaming population proves him wrong.<\/p>\n

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This is not a game that will change the fortune of AAA caliber strategy games, however. We may see more tactical games like this in other settings, games that will crib heavily from XCom<\/em> and similar titles. But most people who play it will see it as an alien shooting game with a neat RPG mechanic; even if they love it, many will not make the connection between the planning, resource hoarding & tough decision making and the wider world of strategy games, including smaller similarly awesome games like Frozen Synapse<\/em>. Strategy gaming is a huge genre and squad-based tactical games like this are a tiny part of that.<\/p>\n

XCom<\/em> is, as many have noted, almost the ideal remake. It captures what much of what made the first XCom<\/em> so appealing but updates it for a newer multi-platform audience. It is probably one of the first strategy games to get the cinematic aspect of gaming right; the cutscenes are terrible of course, but seeing your squaddie dash for cover or sniper make that headshot brings the conflict and tension home in a way that simple flashing icons would not. XCom<\/em> has a freshness to it even as the basics have changed only a little bit.<\/p>\n

There are some big changes from the original, of course. The squads are a lot smaller, which means that your soldiers are both less brittle than they used to be (though not bulletproof) and that you get to know them better. I miss the terror of landing your aircraft and trying to get everyone off before they are taken out by alien snipers; now you start with boots on the ground so there is no D-Day landing chaos. Civilians are few and far between except for specific rescue missions. The game is harder on Classic mode than on Normal, but Normal is plenty tough for those of us that haven’t touched the original XCom<\/em> in years.<\/p>\n

But XCom: Enemy Unknown<\/em> is a great remake because it fits the strategic and tactical levels so neatly together, just as its predecessors did. Choosing when and where to allocate your resources will have dramatic consequences for every mission. Once you upgrade your armor, your forces become so much more durable that you will remember to prioritize that the next time around. And the tough calls about which nation to save from alien incursions remind you of the best sorts of strategic decision making; there is no right answer, you can’t save everyone, pain builds strength.<\/p>\n

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If you play the tutorial mission, you will be immediately exposed to the price you have to pay. It’s not a great tutorial for the game, because there is a lot of stuff that is left out on the strategic side for one thing. But the opening tactical mission will cost you soldiers – it is built in and there is nothing you can do about it. Say what you like about including an Iron Man mode, but the first mission teaches you that there will be death so there is no point in crying over losing people every time the E.T.s get lucky. (First soldier of mine killed outside the tutorial, btw? Rookie Tom Chick. I wish I could say he did not die a coward’s death.)<\/p>\n

By the time you are thrown into the deep end of the strategic decisions (what to research, where to build, how to expand) you realize that keeping your missions funded is almost more important than keeping your troops alive. You want to have veterans out there, but with the right equipment you can send some rookies out there on moderate difficulty missions to get some experience for when you need to fill in those holes caused by casualties. It will take you some time, though, to figure out what equipment is best, what combination of labs and foundries is most efficient and what the right ratio of interceptors to bases is All of this feeds perfectly into the tactical level, because if you wait too long to figure out what your soldiers need and how much it will cost then they will be, like my most recent mission, outgunned and almost taken out by the arrival of tougher alien units at the worst possible time.<\/p>\n

Thank heavens for rocket launchers.<\/p>\n

You could make the criticism that XCom: Enemy Unknown<\/em> relies too heavily on running from cover to cover, like some sort of X-Files Gears of War<\/em> game. There are a lot of conveniently placed bits of rubble and logs at alien crash sites. And it’s a great thing that the Nagoya Train Station is so well covered with advertising stands and flower planters.<\/p>\n

But it never gets so repetitive that it loses its sense of ‘tactical realism’ – you would want cover in a situation like this. The alien weapons can blast that cover away, though. So you can’t just sit and wait for the perfect shot. The various soldier abilities, most dependent on class, have an impact on how you use that cover and when you want to take a chance to run a bit further out for a flanking shot. There is still that old XCom<\/em> tension when you find a new batch of aliens that you didn’t know was there, or when you think you have killed the final one but the mission keeps going and Cpt. Tom Ohle ends up bleeding to death outside an alien craft.<\/p>\n

Polygon’s Phil Kollar and Chris Plante have noted that XCom<\/em> has something in common with survival horror games<\/a>, and there is something to that, I guess. XCom: Enemy Unknown<\/em> doesn’t make you as terrified of what you can’t see as its predecessors did, but there is still the lingering sense that, no matter how well prepared your squad is, this next mission could be the one that gets everyone killed because you can’t prepare for what you don’t know. This fear makes every against-the-odds triumph that much more satisfying – and remember that this is a game that will give you a “Good” rating if one third of your people don’t come back alive.<\/p>\n

It is also a beautifully paced game, and I’ll have much, much more to say about it when we do our ‘review’ podcast on it this coming week, but for now I have to say that it is seriously giving Crusader Kings II<\/em> a run for its money for strategy game of the year. And a lot of that has to do with its style, its energy and how well Firaxis has made concessions to the present expectations for video games without betraying an understanding that what made the first X-Com<\/em>s special was the feeling of fear, hopelessness and even anger at the invaders that it was able to impart. All of that remains in a remake that is most valuable insofar as it points out how you can update a franchise, make it more welcoming to newcomers and still give grognards like myself something to chew on.<\/p>\n

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It is not a perfect game by any means, and many oldtimers might come away from it a little sad that it isn’t as cruel or random as the original unless you play on Classic mode. Nor does it require the old juggling of different bases. This is not a matter of ‘dumbing down’, in my opinion, as much as it is getting the essence of the game design right while adding those elements that will draw in a larger audience, like cinematic dashes, smaller teams and a single base to manage.<\/p>\n

XCom: Enemy Unknown<\/em> will only convert a small number of people to the wider world of what we call ‘strategy games’ but we need all the allies we can get. We are fortunate to have such an eloquent and articulate ambassador for what makes the genre special and exciting. Firaxis has made a forward looking game, that never loses sight of the legacy it represents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

XCom: Enemy Unknown has taken over my Steam friends list in the same way that FTL: Faster Than Light did a few weeks ago. XCom is bigger, flashier and, I think, more important than FTL – largely connected to the reasons that Ben Kuchera laid out earlier this week in his essay at Penny Arcade […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-14D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4131"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4140,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4131\/revisions\/4140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}