
This must be what an ideologically entrenched politician like Mitt Romney feels like when he tries to find words that will somehow appeal to two groups of people with fundamentally different attitudes towards society.

I'm acutely aware of the need to balance any commentary on XCOM between addressing the questions and concerns of long-time X-COM fans and treating it as a brand new 2012 videogame aimed at at least as many people who don't know the original well or at all. This statement is probably a little too navel-gazing, but right now I'm circling around this write-up trying to find a way in. I imagine you have three questions right now:ġ) How faithful is Firaxis' remake to the original X-COM?Ģ) Does it work as its own game, not just piece of nostalgia?ġ) It's complicated 2) Yes indeed 3) I'm afraid you'll need to battle footballer Gerard Piqué for her affections. Thoughts on multiplayer will follow at a later date). (Note - this write-up covers singleplayer only. I've waited 15 years for this, and now I can wait no more. This remake, until fairly recently, seemed like an impossibility - large publishers had lost faith that big-budget strategy games could pay for their yachts, iPads and watches heavy enough to beat a donkey to death with, and the X-COM name was sullied by spin-offs that had about as much in common with it as Hulk Hogan has with Stephen Hawking. No, no, rest assured Firaxis' XCOM: Enemy Unknown is, like its 1993 predecessor X-COM: UFO Defense aka UFO: Enemy Unknown, a rich brew of turn-based strategy, base management, a sort of roleplaying and the sudden, frequent, horrible death of people you've developed an unhealthy fixation with, as you and your changing squad of soldiers struggle to save the Earth from alien invasion.


Oh dear, it turns out it's a first-person shooter with quick-time events and checkpoints after all.
