Review: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PS3)

So, I finished the game in just over a week. Partly that's because it's of moderate length, and partly it's because I played it a lot.

 

Story

Aliens have invaded and are killing people, the extra-terrestrial scum. You are the commander of XCOM, which is basically an elite global army. Supported by a German scientist, a Chinese engineer, an American military adviser and soldiers from around the world (who all have American accents) you must defend Earth, defeat the aliens and try and keep all your financially supportive nations onboard.

Gameplay

The game has a strategic aspect, which takes part in the XCOM base, and a tactical aspect, which happens on the various battlefields.

The base has lots of scope of development. It's subterranean, but slightly less than a quarter of it has actually been excavated and built upon at the start of a game. Adjacent facilities of identical/similar function (power generation, for example) confer bonuses, so if you plan ahead you get essentially free stuff. However, the costs of excavation increase as you dig further down.

Just about every sort of facility is useful in one way or another, making it tricky to decide what to build, and as space is strictly limited (as are funds) these decisions will drastically affect your style of play.

The player also has to decide what to research, build and improve using the labs, workshops and foundry. This will affect how well equipped your soldiers and fighters are, and could make the difference between success and failure. Losing battles and having your planes/satellites shot down will only increase panic and could prompt your financial backers to pull out of the XCOM project.

There's a real sense of crisis management, as you'll often be presented with difficult choices. Keeping all the nations together can be hard when you're offered a choice of three countries, each verging on terminal levels of panic, to rescue from alien incursion. Even on normal difficulty this isn't straightforward.

The tactical battles are usually challenging and almost always great fun. After graduating from rookie status soldiers are randomly assigned one of four classes. Heavies have machine guns and rocket launchers, and support units are ideal (once they get some promotions and corresponding perks) for healing your soldiers. Assault units are frontline fighters and the sniper, perhaps my favourite class, can wreak carnage over long distances.

Each class has a secondary weapon (pistol for all save the heavies, who get a rocket launcher) and can be outfitted with an optional fourth accessory-type item, a main weapon and armour. This, coupled with the variable perks picked upon promotion, mean that units of the same class can vary somewhat.

Sound

The music of the game does a perfectly decent job without being especially outstanding. However, as its job is strictly to provide a backdrop that's not too bad.

Voice acting is generally good. The three individuals (scientist, engineer and military) you see back at base are pretty well-voiced, and the soldiers likewise. However, some more variable accents for the soldiers would have been welcome.

Sounds effects are good, and some are excellent. I love the sizzle of lasers as they cook aliens, and even the bog-standard assault rifles have a nice thumping bass as they rattle off bullets.

Graphics

There could be a little more variety in battlefields, such as having desert, semi-arid, mountainous or snowy places to play Kill The Alien in. However, there's a decent mix, and they're all graphically sound. The graphics of characters, weapons, armour and so on is solid or good, particularly given that most of the time on the battlefield you're presented with an isometric view rather than close-ups. When you do get a close-up (when a soldier kills or dies) then the graphics are sharp enough without being spectacular.

Sometimes there are issues with loading in textures, particularly noticeable for the Skyranger (transport plane) and the distant background as the Skyranger lands.

Bugs and Other Issues

In addition to the sometimes slow or absent texture loading, the game could run more smoothly. Especially on battlefields with many aliens the picture sometimes became jerky and delayed.

It's also the case that the game (out of a single playthrough) froze on me perhaps half a dozen times. Certainly not game-breaking, but definitely a pain in the arse.

SHIVs seem slightly bugged. Most of the time they work fine, but if you put one in your squad for a mission and it doesn't show up, don't take it along. This happened to me once and on the battlefield it was a motionless humanoid shape. The game then froze. If the SHIV (or SHIVs) appear as normal they should work fine.

Longevity and replayability

A playthrough will only take something like 20 hours (it varies a bit because you can delay doing priority tasks). However, there is a constant feeling of progress during this time.

Replayability is very high, because the battlefields, even for key tactical missions, are randomised. So, no two battles are the same, and the difficulty is hard enough to be challenging but not so hard it's frustrating.

Conclusion

XCOM is a great game which offers good gameplay at the base and on missions, a strong challenge and the possibility of defeat (something often absent from modern games). It does have some bugs but these are relatively small and don't seriously detract from an addictive, entertaining and very well-designed game.

I don't usually give scores, but XCOM: Enemy Unknown would get 9/10 from me.

Thaddeus

Review: The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer

The book takes the unorthodox approach of writing in the present tense about Medieval England (which, for the purposes of this book, means the 14th century). As the writer states he intended, this helps to make the description of the past more immersive and sympathetic.

Mr. Mortimer writes of a wide range of areas and whilst there's enough depth to give a good feel for a certain topic (travelling, for example) the book is not burdened with excessive detail and is easy to read throughout.

The writing style is light and straightforward, and, despite not knowing much of this period, I never felt lost with strange technical terms. Whenever an odd term or one which has a different meaning in the modern world crops up it's explained simply and concisely.

The only slight issue I had in terms of information was that there was very little about the armour of knights, or suchlike. The book is about life in England rather than war overseas (or at home), but it still felt like a small missed opportunity.

As might be expected I found some chapters more interesting than others. Travel was not my favourite, but the description of the physical and wider social/psychological impact of plague was absolutely fascinating. At its best the book was absolutely enthralling, and the chapters (including law) that I found less appealing were nevertheless well-written.

Overall, the book paints an intriguing and enjoyable picture of what life was like about seven centuries ago. I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to read about life in the Middle Ages, regardless of whether they know any history beforehand.

Thaddeus

First Impressions: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PS3)

I didn't plan on buying this, but many people said it was fantastic and I happened to spy a copy for just £20, so buy it I did.

Even more surprisingly, it had the colour pack, or whatever it's called, in, which enables greater customisation of soldiers. Because of a wonky internet connection I played initially without that DLC, and can report that it's as DLC should be: it adds a little, but only superficially. To be honest, the colour and styles of hair don't add much, although it'd nice being able to colour co-ordinate snipers, heavies and so on.

So, in the four hours or so I've played XCOM, has it met those lofty expectations?

Yes, in a word.

Unlike some strategy games there is actual strategy as well as a tactical level of gameplay. XCOM is split between the base and the various battlefields you visit. Both aspects of the game are great, in very different ways.

Story

The story is about as old school as they come. Aliens are invading, the swine, and the world has united to kill them. They've found a handsome devil (the player) to lead the charge and… that's about it as far as story goes. However, this isn't an RPG and the premise of the game works very well.

Gameplay - Base

The base is underground, and features a range of basic starting facilities (a lab, barracks etc). The base operates on a grid basis, with excavation and access lifts required to free up more space for brand new facilities or copies of existing ones (to speed up research or provide sufficient power for the base).

The base is the strategic part of the game. There's never quite enough resources to get everything you want, whether it's making new weapons, buying new fighters for the hangar or expanding the base itself.

In addition, the base is where you get given missions, when they crop up. Each country has a certain threat/panic level, and when this reaches the maximum they pull out of the XCOM project and stop supplying funds. So, when you have a choice of missions, as often happens, and can only attend one you need to consider the difficulty, the potential reward and the threat level of the country in question. Rewards vary, including scientist/engineers, a veteran soldier or money.

The base is extremely well-balanced. Almost every facility seems useful in and of itself and it can be very hard to decide just what should be bought. Keeping all the plates spinning regarding the threat level of the various countries is challenging too.

Gameplay - Battlefield

This is the tactical part of the game. A squad of 4 (initially) soldiers go on a mission to a specific battlefield. Most of the time the mission is basically kill everything alien, but occasionally you have to rescue civilians or a VIP, stop a bomb going off, or find an alien craft your fighters shot down.

The battlefields are quite small but this works well. Difficulty, on normal, is higher than might be expected and presents a challenge (although I must admit I had to replay one mission after my best soldiers got absolutely slaughtered).

Initially the aliens are pretty soft, but before long they start unleashing rather more fearsome units and the difficulty rises as the game progresses. I'm playing on normal and it's a nice challenge.

Units begin as rookies, but after their first promotion they get a specialisation (sniper, heavy etc). After each promotion, of which there are several, they get a new perk (most of the time you get to choose from two options) most of which seem useful and some of which are great. A small downside is that the specialisation is random, so if you've got a dozen heavies and would love a sniper, you might end up with heavy number 13.

The differing unit types seem well-balanced, and each soldier can be individually outfitted with four varying items (armour, main weapon, sidearm and an auxiliary item such as a grenade or medical kit). It's a very simple but very good way of making soldiers slightly different.

The tactical gameplay works brilliantly. The only minor downside is that if your best soldiers get obliterated bouncing back with rookies would seem to be very hard, as the difficulty of missions can often be Difficult, Difficult and Very Difficult.

Graphics

Not the core of a game like this, but the graphics are mostly good and occasionally very good. The globe/hologlobe in Mission Control looks great and all the items, soldiers, aliens and characters (whilst not rivalling a Final Fantasy cutscene) look distinctive and good.

Textures can sometimes take a while to load, but I think that's the only graphical issue.

Sound

There are a handful of characters in the base (engineer, scientist and military chap) who are well-acted, but the range of voices elsewhere is limited to American accents. It seems a bit odd that the game goes out of its way to include countries from every inhabited continent as members of XCOM but then has just US accents. However, the soldiers' voices tend to be good or at least passable. Sound effects are very good, and it's always fun listening to a laser beam terminate an alien.

Bugs and Other Issues

Sometimes on the battlefield the game can run a little slowly. There's also a persistent issue with soldiers/aliens being able to shoot through walls, which is a little weird.

I've read reviews of the game freezing (either for a short term or permanently) but this never happened to me (for reference, I'm using a 40GB fat PS3) and it seems to be a minority issue.

Rebuilding a squad if your A team get slaughtered is perhaps harder than it should be. Apart from that, the game seems extremely well-balanced.

The only way to get resources is when aliens attack, which makes proactively getting alien alloys and other stuff impossible. It'd be nice if there were an alternative way to get resources or lure aliens down somehow.

Conclusion (after a few days)

In a world swimming in shooters and games so easy a health and safety executive could've designed them to ensure nobody failed and suffers hurt feelings XCOM: Enemy Unknown is both a welcome change and a cracking game in its own right. I'm really looking forward to see how the rest of the game goes and then playing it a second time without making so many schoolboy errors.

I'll write a proper review after I've completed my first playthrough.

Thaddeus

Beta Readers, Alpha Writers

A beta reader is someone whom an author sends writing to be critiqued. The basis for doing this is pretty simple: someone else can look at the writing with fresh eyes and pick up things that the writer might miss, and it can be useful to have another perspective.

Very many authors, including top writers, make use of beta readers. I don't (or, at least, not yet), but might change my mind in the future. The potential downside is that a beta reader has to be critical enough to pick up mistakes, from straightforward typos to problems with tone or continuity, without being hyper-critical. There's also the need for the author to be able to take criticism and to have confidence in their beta reader.

Note that a beta reader is not an editor or proof-reader, although their suggestions and comments might include thoughts on editing and the spotting of typos. It's not a paid job, it's a helping hand from someone who loves to read for someone who wants some (hopefully objective) feedback. Authors, perhaps obviously, sometimes do it for one another.

I recently did some beta reading for someone (for the first time), and found it quite a refreshing experience. It probably helped that the writing was easy to read and good, but it was far more relaxing and enjoyable than critiquing my own stuff (I managed to read 16,000 words on the day I got the file and sent back my thoughts the following day). The hardest problem I faced was that when critiquing my own writing I'm relentlessly negative (because good stuff can be left as is whereas bad stuff must be identified and changed/deleted) and it was a bit odd trying to remember to say nice things as well.

So, if you're a new author why not consider beta readers? At worst you can ignore silly suggestions, and at best they can offer great insight.

Thaddeus