XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)

This game just didn't click for me. I'm usually one who enjoys turn-based tactical games but for some reason, I just couldn't get into this game. At first I was really enjoying it, but after about 6-7 hours in, I just grew completely bored of it. Maybe the gameplay was a bit too repetitive for my taste, I'm not really sure. I didn't end up getting attached to any of my characters because there's no interaction with them outside of combat. I also didn't enjoy the research and base-building aspect of the game. The game just felt too grindy and maybe I would have powered through it if I was interested in the story.

With all of that said, I would most likely recommend this game to someone looking for a turn-based tactical game. I recognize that this is a good game and the flaws are just nitpicks because I can't really put my finger on why I don't like it. Not my cup of tea, but that's okay, it doesn't have to be.

Wew, I just finished a classic campaign. That was a scumfest, at least until I got a full squad levelled-up. Anyway I got my precious epic achievement for that:

THIS FUCKING MISSION

Goddamn, must've restarted it like 20 times. But after this point things got better, and I didn't need to redo any missions more than maybe 3 times. Slingshot gives you a bunch of stuff at the end which helps out a bit. Also the dude was pretty cool, gets his own voice actor and everything.

Anyways this was the original campaign, now I want to try the Enemy Within campaign. After that probably will play some XCOM 2, or maybe I will finally finish the originals lol.

This was my final team, and the dude with the most kills. I went with double medics this time around, which I ended up needing. I played very conservatively, keeping people back and sending one guy out as a scout to trigger the encounters, which is kinda gamey but oh well. The problem was that the train mission requires you to rush, and the aliens can 1-hit you early in the game. Maybe I should've beelined for the new armour or something. Anyway it's all done now.

Endgame was fairly easy, which makes me think I could try an ironman run in the future. However campaigns are a large investment of time. A single campaign takes something like 20 hours. Also the game is buggy. There are no game-ending bugs, but I did encounter 1 or 2 bugs that required me to reload a save to fix it. One time a civilian was unable to extract, and another time a Sectoid seemed to disappear, and when I reloaded he was floating above a car.

Anyway it was a fun time. I don't like Sid Meier's storywriting style, but the game and the mechanics itself was good. I dunno, Sid Meiers always comes across to me like the Discovery Channel or something. Always covering subjects on a fundamental level, never really delving much deeper beyond popular understanding. For example, when you see an alien for the first time, the science German will say "Alien life on earth! We are witnessing something never seen before in recorded history." I'm all like "yes, thankyou for interrupting my gameplay for that nugget of information". Speaking of which, I nearly snapped my keyboard in half when I wanted to reload a save but the gameplay doesn't let you access the menu while stuff is moving around.

Oh well, it's a good game, and yeah I'll be doing more XCOMs in the future.

Okay I'm playing on classic difficulty and goddamn I'm having trouble with that. The aliens seem to be a lot more accurate. The Thin Men will often poison you as soon as they see you. I'm going to need to do a lot of messing around to figure this out. I'm also doing the Slingshot missions which are enjoyable. I'm up to the one where you have to hit 6 power cores or whatever and I'm realising I'm going to need to go back to a save which has a good medic, because not getting hit is a lot more difficult on classic. I'm not sure how well I'm doing on the campaign yet, but I've won all the missions I've been able to do, so I should be okay.

The interface upsets me on a spiritual level. On some menus, the clicks don't always register. Also I have the cosmetics DLC. I assumed I would be able to use a colour picker to pick the colour of my dudes. Nooooo, you get to increment through 32 options, one at a time. I wanted to make it so that new guys would get a particular colour, and then experienced guys would get another colour. But now I gotta remember the numbers associated with each pallete. Terrible implementation. However the game is enjoyable despite these issues.

Anyways here's the bois from the first game, who somehow managed to all get fitting nicknames:

This dude has the most kills I think

This guy was one of the originals I think, and he somehow survived to the end as a shotgun specialist

I played a base campaign on normal difficulty. I have to say I enjoyed it through to the end. I just recently picked up the whole bundle on GOG (it's 80% off right now on GOG), so I want to have another go of the base campaign on classic difficulty, and then I'll have a go of Enemy Within.

I played the original XCOM but haven't finished a campaign of that yet. I do think this one has a similar feel to the original... They removed a lot of the micromanagement of the original, which I don't mind. However in doing so I feel like they took a bit too much away from it, and the game feels slightly oversimplified as a result.

The game was still fun to play, but there were some features from the original that I was missing in this game. For example custom loadouts. Also the fact that aliens were stationary until you discovered them was too exploitable. You could never get ambushed or caught in a bad situation if you were careful with your movement. Also the infamous dice-roll shooting wasn't so great...

Still a good game though. I'll have another go of it with the DLC and share my thoughts.