PR: Imagine the world was suddenly overrun by aliens, and we're talking big aliens, not that avatar BS. People dying everywhere, alien abductions, anal probing (temptive assumption), etc. The goverments from all across the world come to a determination, "we must fight off this invation" and they form this special ops, anti alien (as indicated by the little alien picture with a red cross on top, painted in the troop carrier plane) counting with the poooled resources from EVERY NATION, which is...
-Five scientists
-Five engineers
-Ten soldiers (rookies)
-One underground base counting five rooms plus the barracks (extentions have to be payed for)
-Two basic interceptors
-Two satelites.
For clarification, you're expected to operate all around the globe with those meager resources. To put things in perspective...
-The US air force ALONE has 86 satellites, as of currently. DirecTV, the streaming service for tele has ELEVEN. Xcom gets two
-Countries around the world have a minimum of 200 aircraft (fighters) with US standing at the very top with over five thousand
-US alone has 1.3 MILLION soldiers.
I don't even have to point the absurdity of the the five engineers and five scientists. I'm sure that a friggin' macdonals have more scientists flipping burgers than XCOM does fighting aliens.
In defense of XCOM, none of the numbers add up. You're given a certain number of "credits" whose symbol looks a lot like simoleons, and interceptors/satellites are leaning on the cheap side, while building a workshop costs a fortune and tiny things like medpacks or scopes also costs a ton. No matter what equivalency I made, these things remained inconsistent. The most I could close was 1 credit 1 million dollars, which means that each medpack costed twenty million dollars and that the soldiers had a life so lavish that among the twenty of them (I hired an extra ten for one hundred million) spend about twenty five million dollars each month in... supplies? I imagine them snorting drugs and doing hookers day in day out.
Leaving the numbers aside, let's move unto the gameplay inconsistencies that partly make the game both fun and extremely hard...
You move with your four man squad through an obscure, unknown map facing an unknown amount of unknown aliens. Imagine having, like, satellites or some kind of technology that allowed you to know what are you walking into, right? What little you know isn't good, you're probably outnumbered, they fall from the skies and have the seeming ability to shoot through walls. When I was new to the game, I commited what I know is a grave mistake of thinking that low cover is cover at all, and had this incident when these two little sectoids uplinked (what I for some time called "the shoot-through-the-walls bullshit") and literally killed one of my dudes from the corner of a restorant counter, through the walls (blasting them to pieces) and through my stone low cover. Bam, insta-popped, realm of the mad god all over again.
Anyways... the tactical part (battle) is partly moving slowly, trying to not activate too many aliens at the time (they activate when you see them), using only high covers, lots of explosives, etceteras, whatevers, and whatnots, you know. If you want a more detailed experience feel free to get your anus probed at XCOM. Anyways, even if you do all things correctly as the shots have a chance to miss even if the target is literally in front of you, or even more likely to miss in the case of the most bullshit class to ever exist (the sniper) which is particularly bad if you have one of this insect monsters that deal eight damage + poison aka instapop rushing towards you with their super speed and their huge hp bar that, while not as huge as the mecha alien, isn't that far off... I'm ranting.
Once you get used to this shit, you got the other shit to get used to, also known as the "strategic" part of the game, as opposed to the "tactical" part, which is arguably easier as you can reload the latter but not the former. In the strategic scenario you have to administer your meager resources to prioritize certain research (out of which you don't know what you're getting) over the others, progressing with the plot, which brings more and deadlier aliens, or stalling which also brings more and deadlier aliens, build this workshop to have more engineers to build the uplink thing to have more satellites, before realizing you don't have enough engineers to build the workshop, the building that gives engineers. You know, usual catch-22. Eventually, you realize you screw up and have to re-start the whole game, this time with some degree of knowledge until you finally beat it (this was all easy mode, BTW)
I would like to highlight that story-wise your team is wholly incompetent, like "yes, we have brought this alien beacon which transmits straight to the alien base here, to our SECRET headquaters!", or "We have determined that whilst clearly alien, the physiollogy of the sectoids seems to be vulnerable to the same type of wounds human's do"
All that said, I firmly think that while highly demanding XCOM is that which all tactical turn-based games should aspire, the game provides all sorts of options to the player and allows almost full freedom, which normally leads to mayor screw-ups. It feels challenging, but possible, unfair but to both sides. Almost alive. 7/10
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