Chess with guns: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Sick 360 no scope headshots

In the last month or so I've been playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a turn-based squad strategy wargame from lead designer Jake Solomon of Firaxis, based on an old Microprose game. The concept is partly inspired by the old Gerry Anderson series UFO, in which a small international coalition assemble to fight off an alien invasion of the Earth. It plays very much like a tabletop wargame with all the set-up of fiddly pieces and number crunching handled smoothly and (mostly) invisibly by the computer.

I'd played the demo and enjoyed it despite it only comprising the first couple of tutorial missions. The full thing was... well, more of the same. It's presented well enough, with nice enough graphics (Unreal Engine 3, like so many games I've played recently), serviceable sound and a cool electronic ambient soundtrack by Michael McCann, distinctive and reminiscent of his work on Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

It's just the kind of game I enjoy, watching a couple of squads of wee soldiers all go from nervous, under-equipped rookies to battle-scarred superhero space marine veterans with a war story to accompany every new ability and fancier bit of kit. Just the kind of thing to keep me playing, coming back for more.

The mad squad fastroping into an alien base

It only hurts for a week

State of the bad-ass art

I don't know. Some lines.

The thing is, because it's just that kind of game, I honestly don't know if it's any good or if it merely triggers this addict impulse in me. I found myself developing tricks and strategies for battling the game itself, just in order to play it. The terrible UI is mercifully customisable, but you're still going to be somewhere on the spectrum from unhelpful to intrusive. It's incredibly easy to select the wrong thing on the game board, leaving you howling as one of your little guys leaps from a catwalk and trots out of cover into the sights of half a dozen enemies, or trying to target a grenade near the edge of range leads to the target reticule sliding around like a dog on a wet tiled floor.

Naw, YOU go first. I'll cover you.

I shamelessly save-scummed whenever someone died on that first game due to this kind of thing, so attached was I to my familiar little wrecking crew. Even with the increasingly insane numbers of mutons, robots and thin men the game was throwing at me towards the end, with squad sizes limited to six there was never quite enough killing to go around for the guys I had, let alone to train up any new blood. I became so attached to Mama Bear, Warlock, Gypsy, Smokes, Scarecrow et al that when I hit a glitch (Wildchild became permanently hospitalised. I suppose it was something to do with his hitpoints hanging when I swapped equipment around. The armour was the only thing holding him together) I replayed from an eight hour old save game, my most recent where he wasn't bugged into a permanent coma. I couldn't let him die like that, not to a bug.

Tactically laying out our approach using tactics

Despite this kind of thing, constantly battling a game that seems to be broken or cheating, I got into XCOM the way I used to get absorbed by games back in the day, sucked in like Bobby Patterson. I've always liked things like that, games like XCOM's distant ancestors Rebelstar's Raiders and Laser Squad, complicated boardgames and wargames, things with special cards and miniatures and funny dice. Science fiction and fantasy games where you win fights by solving problems, rather than vice-versa. (Which isn't to say I avoided the alternative- I was in the chess club at school, which was like Fight Club for people who think they're Napoleon Bonaparte rather than Napoleon Dynamite, and let me assure you that some of those geeks were every bit as keen on violence, with the added advantage of a strategic element and the patience to nurture a long grudge. You pull off a four move fool's Mate and think yourself pretty clever... then one day, BAM! You get hit in the eyesocket with a white bishop thrown with considerable accuracy and force from across the room. Masterstroke of lateral thinking. Well played.)

Those deaths were scripted ones, alright?

I finish up XCOM and find myself clicking around the internet looking for more information, sniffing around, trying to find out where else I can get more stuff like this. I find some pretty interesting and neat things that you might like to check out, but mostly I find out that Julian Gollop, the man behind all of these games, is back in the lab with the Heisenberg hat on again, working on a new version of Chaos. I'm already jonesing.