The Return of a PC Classic: XCOM Enemy Unknown Review

Julio Franco

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I played the demo last night. I am just not sure about the whole turn based strategy anymore. I mean... I really just can't convince myself to do it anymore. it's 2012..... there were countless times I was dying to do something.. and yet I had to wait. it's just frustrating.
 
Im a monster huge fan of the original xcom, I logged over 4000hrs total on it!! Im now playing the new one and I have to agree that it is a incredible remake. The little things that made the first one so addictive are still there. You have your favorite soilders. You get to deck them out with cool weapons and you can pitt yourself against an AI that can not only be vicious, but down right cruel. All in all im loving this game. I really hope we get some DLC for this!!!
 
After making the step from a PC gamer only to a PS3 player, I was overwhelmed with the speed and capacity for fun that the PS3 seemed to have, the likes of MW2 and MW3 ruled my evenings, killing endless people online. I then made the move to RPGs and being an old player of the Fallout series, fell madly deeply in love with FO3 and New Vegas, as well as Skyrim, all being incredible games on both scale and playability.
However, as time ticked, the glossy games and repetitive nature of most curved my love of the PS3 altogether, I longed for strategy and ended up exploring the PS3 strategy market, 'From Dust' and other titles had some fun for a while, but I wanted a full on spend 60 hours on one campaign 'Civilisation' hit that I got from PC titles, such as Civ4 (last version I owned) ... everthing came up short, Civ Rev is an insult to the original and unplayable for fans of the original.
Then out of the blue, Xcom was said to be revamped for all systems, my nostalgia kicked in and I made a purchase on that Friday, a friday that is now indented in my memory as a very good day.

Xcom IS the best strategy game I've played in years. It's hugely addictive and I've racked up 60+ hours already to my GFs dismay since its release.

I totally disagree with the 'turn based' being dated, strategy games should allow the player to make decisions in their own time, and not panic your way through an entire game. You will find within the first few months in Xcom-time, your play won't be so slow and turns will be seconds apart.

The RPG element of building up your base and Soldiers is slightly limited in that you can't send more than single satelites over any given country and you seem to 'limit' out on easier levels,but playing on the harder levels makes the game a struggle to survive, the importance of SHIVs and using the right people with right equipment for the task in hand gives so much more depth to the game.

This is THE best strategy I've played on the PS3, and would rank just under CIV as the 2nd best of all time. While Black Ops 2 will outsell this by a longshot, millions will overlook a pure gem of a game and that's because many gamers are really sucked into branding, whereby their main purchases in a year will be the new versions of the games they already own.

A perfect game in my opinion
 
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