Quick Look: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (iOS)

Have to disagree with the guys on this one: I've been happily playing this on my phone with no control grievances. Once you've played it for 20 mins or so the navigation / movement becomes second nature.

It's amazing how much more patient Brad is when he's critiquing a platform he's spoken so highly of in the past

Jesus, this was frustrating to watch.

I thought the majority of their Game of Year deliberations were way off base from what I'm accustomed to from Giant Bomb. They seemed to be into a lot of smaller pick up and play games. I play games for the emersion, not to accomplish small arbitrary goals of "mini-games". To each there own though I guess.

Why is this not on the 3DS? Hello, Nintendo? Is anyone home? *Sigh*

Plenty of others have said this, but why would you play this on an iPhone over an iPad, especially for the Quick Look? It's definitely begin sold as an iPad game from a marketing standpoint.

My personal opinion: If you don't play this in Ironman mode, what is the point?

Being able to reload a save when things go bad just seems like a cop out. I played this game to completion on Ironman and had numerous occasions where I would have a real bad mission, but it was all about how I came back from that mission that made the game for me. Again, it could just be me, but playing this game that way they played it (being able to reload saves) is like playing Fire Emblem without permadeath.

To +1 what other folks have been saying, I play this on my iPad and love it. PC version is still great as well, but $20 is absolutely worth it to be able to take it out at almost any opportunity.

It's not perfect--it'd be great to have skippable cutscenes and either options to reduce the number of videos/graphics or just remove them entirely (the download size is pretty large)--but I don't regret my purchase at all nor do I hesitate to recommend it.

Textures are definitely downrezed, but this is the real deal on my iPad 3. I'm impressed.

Thank you for showing the iphone version so I knew not to buy it.

Would love a vita version.

I still think XCOM's tutorial is about a thousand times more hand-holdy than it needs to be. Like, if you're going to painstakingly force the player to move to very particular spots and take one particular action (like the first mission and a half do), then you may as well go all the way and actually teach them properly.

For example, since they're already wasting a bunch of your time, they might as well teach you that grenades are best used for eroding enemy cover, since 3 damage is kinda bad even early in the game.

Painful on the phone. Prob ok on iPad.

@bisonhero: I completely agree with you. I thought it was pretty crazy that they literately make you move to different points on the map and have you do exactly what they say. They could have easily used that time to teach you to play properly.

XCOM would be great on a device you could pull out at any time but I can't imagine playing this on a iPhone.

Thanks Jeff. You help show my frustration when Jeff doesn't read the prompts.

Would have been nice if they showed both phone and tablet versions.

Crazy they got this on a phone.