Highlights - XCOM

Lately I’ve been playing a hell of a lot of XCOM: Enemy Within. And I’ve noticed I didn’t have content planned for most of this week partly because of that. So for today’s Highlights, let’s talk about the planetary defense turn-based strategy game known as XCOM and why we love it so much. 

Bureau

Let’s not mince words here. The biggest reason why XCOM: Enemy Unknown was a big hit was largely because it wasn’t the XCOM: The Bureau we had been shown for a little over a year at the point of release. Bureau was set to turn a beautiful turn-based strategy game into a third-person cover-based shooter. It’d be like turning StarFox from a rail-shooter game in space to a third-person action adventure with Zelda-like combat and puzzles… OH WAIT.

This isn’t to say that changing up a formula is bad. But one should needless change things unless things need changing. With so few turn-based combat franchises out there and so many third-person cover-based shooter games out there, it doesn’t make sense to aim for a market that’s already oversaturated with crap we didn’t ask for. It’s better to do something that is a bit more unique to help it stand out. I know this highlight is about something that isn’t directly in the game, but this is all something worth mentioning when talking about the most recent XCOM games.

Sniper Team Elite

There are four classes in this game (Sniper, Heavy, Assault, and Support). In my most recent run, I had roughly 10 support units before I got a second sniper and I only use about three of them regularly in a rotation so I don’t have just a team of support units. It was a really aggravating first few hours of gameplay when I really didn’t have any useful combat units. But that’s a different story for a different day.

On a different play through, I actually managed to get a handful of snipers early on and raise them up quickly to be my elite assassination squad, eliminating waves of units with almost no issue. Between having squad sight, abilities to increase their accuracy, and being on overwatch to eliminate newly spawning threats immediately, a team of snipers is an amazing thing to have as early as possible.

The downside to snipers is the most reliable build for accuracy and range prevents them from moving and shooting/overwatching in the same turn. This does slow down progress a little bit and makes early turns in a given mission tough to set up because you always have to have a guinea pig to activate enemy units for the snipers to shoot at. Ideally, you want to have one heavy and one assault (at LEAST) with your sniper team to awaken enemies and knock-down walls for better shots. But snipers? Valuable asset that makes the game way better to get through.

Base Management

Wow, this sounds like fun. In truth, managing your base of operations can be a bit stressful when you manage to blow through money quickly just setting up shop and buying new troops because you seem to get yours killed a lot. But if you can manage funds wisely and still maintain decent global panic levels, your base will function quite well and be a joy to utilize on a regular basis.

What about managing the base is fun? I’m quite partial to constructing new rooms for the base and getting things set up in the most efficient way possible. Namely, getting your satellite uplinks and power generators set up quickly and near one another. With the expansion pack that added new lab and workshop add-ons, it makes it a little tougher to organize the base in a cost effective manner, but it’s still doable.

Another aspect of the base, while not technically management, would be the memorial of fallen soldiers. In my current game I’ve only lost two (and one was bullshit). Playing Fire Emblem (another turn-based strategy game) has taught me how to be careful with units. But due to a few freezing issues, or completely destruction of a team, I’ve had to reset a few times and redo a mission. I don’t like doing that, but if my team is literally overwhelmed, I redo a mission because, again, for the longest time, I only had one of each non-support class and losing them early on would have basically ruined the game long-run.

Character Customization

In the default game, this isn’t as diverse and fun. But with DLC to add armor, colors, and new hats this game can take all new levels of fun and quirkiness. In most games, I try to make the characters from Red Vs. Blue and see how long they can possibly last. And I even have specific classes for most of them and have made fun stories for each as I’ve played through the games.

For example, my snipers are Church, the Freelancer Twins, and Wyoming. My assaults are Tex, Tucker, Sarge, Donut, Carolina, and Washington. My heavies are Simmons, Grif, Caboose, and The Meta. Lastly, my supports are Doc, Lopez (sometimes), and Agent York. I know I might have missed a few, but that’s how I generally do it. Then I try to enhance the Freelancer units with either the genetic splicing or the psionic soldier upgrades if they’re able. This is a reference to the fact they had the AI units that made them better soldiers in general.

In my most recent game, an extra support by the name of Gareth Gobblecoque (points if you get the reference) died at the hands of a swarm of Chyssalid. So the team ran to the extraction point. All the other units (Carolina, Church, Doc, Tucker, and Jack) made it to the extraction point and I felt confident in my ability to keep cool under a crisis (after restarting about five times). It was at the very end when a loading screen was popping up that Tucker died off-screen somehow. When I told this to a mate of mine, he said that this is something that would happen in old XCOM games back when it was truly hardcore and you’d have your ass handed to you on a bloody silver platter. So thanks, XCOM. Now go fuck yourself.

New Enemy Types

The best part of the game is when a new enemy type is introduced for the first time and you have to deduce the best way to deal with it. The sectoids, thin men, and whatever the flying guys were called are all very basic and easy to dispatch so long as you are cautious and prepared. And if you play the game enough times, you’ll get bored of these enemies really quickly.

The first time I met the stronger sectoid who could control my units was scary. I felt horrible that I had another sniper kill said unit because I didn’t have disabling shot available at the time and I couldn’t reach the mind-control sectoid. But it was a cool experience to see that happen and I wish I could relive that moment a little bit because it was shocking when it happened.

Taking it a bit farther, the first time I encountered the flying-disc unit was surreal. With the amount of health and evasion, it becomes a really tough unit to pin down. Even snipers with 100% hit rate will miss at times, which sucks because that just means the game is lying to you. But it makes the unit all the more challenging. Even though I’m aware of it and have beaten it reliably a few times, taking it on still makes me nervous because of just how damn overpowered it is.

There are plenty of other great units too, but I don’t want to spend all day going on about them. Needless to say, the expansion pack adds even more and it’s definitely worth a look if you haven’t tried it already.

That’s all for this week’s Highlights. Sorry if it feels rushed (it kinda was). Next week we’ll be taking a small break to get caught up and figured out what we’re going to do with some of our content moving forward. But the podcast will be back and possible some other surprises along the way. We’re still getting all that sorted out. Please be sure to like, share, subscribe, and comment as that always helps. Until next time, this is AJ signing off.