IT'S XCOM BABY!
When the news of a XCOM remake, a FPS no less, reached the gamer-verse, there was a collective gasp of shock, followed by much gnashing of teeth and hand wringing. IS NOTHING SACRED?? Another beloved and vaunted franchise of PC game franchise fallen by the wayside where C&C and Ultima went, and molested by grubby console interests and God forbid, XBOX controllers, surely brought a tear to any self-respecting aficionado (elitists) of the franchise.
Then slightly more encouraging news of Firaxis involvement broke, with proper respects paid to the original story and setting, as well as the most important TURN BASED gameplay, the golden standard of strategy, and there was a sigh of cautious relief. Before it was later revealed that it was, yes, still a multi-platform release, inciting another bout of epileptic fetal curls all over, but with a twinge of hope against hope that the team responsible for Civilization 4 could pull it off. SID MEIER might dare not put his name on it but put HIMSELF IN THE GAME.
The final product, after all is said and done, is a decent entertainment, in which the most important aspect of gameplay, the TURN BASED gameplay, is wrapped in a very attractive and well-paced presentation. Story, as usual, remains the perfunctory aspect of the game, aliens invade, and puny humans decide, not unexpectedly at the last critical moment, to fund a paramilitary entity called XCOM in response to kick some Xeno ass.
The game is divided largely into two segments, a strategy phase and tactical phase. Strategy mission involves overseeing the XCOM HQ, in which you, the commander, is tasked in improving both the finances of your operation and equipment for your squad. The simplest way to understand this is perhaps describing the resources or constraints aspect of the game. They are namely scientists, engineers, money, alien loot, time, and space and all remain concrete obstacles preventing you to completely manhandle the X-Rays (as aliens are fondly referred to in game).
The scientists and engineers allow you to build stuff, and their abilities are constrained by the rest of available resources. There are separate and interconnected ways to increase and regulate all resources and the sweet spot between them is a happy XCOM base and the ultimate deterrent to ever-increasing alien threat. The involved meta-gameplay seems complicated at first and presents a learning curve, but before long, you will find the first few opening moves most amenable to your style of play and can build on, not unlike a game of chess. Such is the elegance of strategy layer in XCOM. Is there the absolute best way to manage it? Yes, I believe so. But the system is such that it can accommodate other playing styles and maintain a good sense of choice and consequence. And it telegraphs clearly of conditions that would comprise a point of no return necessitating a begrudging restart well before the inevitable ‘Game Over’ screen. That is no small feat, and development acumen honed in the Civilization series shines through here.
I’m running the risk of repeating myself, but it is a huge credit to developers at Firaxis to present these various elements in anything resembling cohesion, reaching a balance of progress in a snug feedback loop and micro-management, which many claim the original suffered. There are a few rough edges around this portion, such as the separation between weapons upgrades and weapons research that could be better delineated, and the sore absence of UFOPAEDIA. But overall the strategy remains riveting and focused.
The tactical gameplay where you get down and dirty with the X-Rays is enjoyable but fraught with some technical and design shortcomings. The turn based progression is brisk and often results in brutal outcomes of chance and perma-death. Certainly, there is plenty depth in how to coordinate and prepare for all foreseeable outcomes, and the intervening turn of ‘Alien Activity’ can be one of the tensest experiences in recent memory. Some factors that affect the course of isometric action, to name a few, include elevation, line of sight, cover strength, weapon type, target distance, flanking, alien type, and more. These and other elements combine to present an engrossing challenge that is as addictive as nicely appointed in competent Unreal 3 engine visuals.
That is not to mention underneath the convention of turn based gameplay are certainly questionable trappings that somewhat eschew its foundation for the worse. The maximum number of squad could certainly have been bigger to mitigate the ravages of chance, for example. Owning to how interconnected and intimately associated these elements are, this limitation of squad size is related to map size, which feels cramped despite lovingly hand crafted and bordering on almost ninety maps in rotation, and AI pattern that always gets a free reactionary turn upon discovery. The latter, particularly egregious, means in the manual of XCOM tactics, surprise attack really do not exist, which is disappointing and eliminates a whole dimension of tactical edge. It also implies that while normal difficulty progression would simply introduce more enemies in numbers and variety, XCOM instead resorts to bloat enemy stats and artificial to hit and critical ratios, exacerbating the seeming randomness of setback.
But Nomin, getting your entire team wiped out, plasma pistol crit kills from thirty paces out, IT’S XCOM BABY! No, no. It’s not. Maybe an XCOM baby in the shadow of its now illustrious 18 year old XCOM adult…but I digress.
Also found mystifying and again reeking of curtailment is the absence of more flexible and elaborate action point system that allows more diverse degree of movement, such that allows prone and crouch positions, alleviating an over reliance on covers devolving some portions of this game into a Turn Based Gears of War. Streamlining of this mechanic has another notable casualty, namely the tactical layer of various types of shots with respective to hit percentage attached that provide deeper dynamics of choice for each shot made.
It is not as if Firaxis wasn’t aware of the shortcomings of their design based on limitation and not come up with any solution. Each and every member of an XCOM squad now benefits from skill progression fitted unto a class system that allows various shot types and useful abilities in an attempt to address many issues at hand. However, I feel it comes up just short, whilst presenting some inconsistencies of its own.
How would they possibly justify within the context of game proper that there needs to be a promotion before a squaddie learns to fire twice a turn? Why can’t they dash and shoot just the same, albeit with lower hit percentages? Why can’t XCOM train recruits to befit a certain class rather than arbitrarily designating them one, and only after grinding them through trial by fire to earn their first promotion? All these conspire to bring a strict artificiality to the proceedings at the expense of any pleasant emergent experience, save for a panic attack or two, while the terms of progression and success are bound to a set of quite transparent rules, again, not unlike chess.
Then there is a slew of other issues that remain to be just either annoying or questionable in XCOM’s tactical layer, such as its difficulty to navigate multiple story indoor environments, wonky camera clipping, and an absolute DREG of an ending sequence. But to say more would not deter the fact that this is a turn based strategy that does decently for what it is and exceeds my expectations for what it might’ve been. It is not so often that we see such game to capture mainstream collective fancy and we remain ever hopeful that this effort is only a mere gateway device to the true return of turn based strategy, with a XBOX controller or not.
