Xcom articles

So what counts as a strategy game? Here are the best games to play if you feel like taking charge of something, ruining an economy and/or driving an army across the fields of your enemies.

While not all the games on this list are exclusive to the PC, it's the place where they truly shine. If you haven't tried some of these titles, know that you're missing out. In our opinion, these are the best PC games you should be playing right now, so what are you waiting for?

There's just something about video games with an isometric viewpoint, isn't there? Something...cute about them. No matter how dark and brutal a game's setting and art may be, tilting a camera up and around makes everything look like an action figure.

If you want to understand Massive Chalice, you need to understand XCOM. Double Fine's Massive Chalice has been hugely influenced by Julian Gallop's seminal 1994 strategy game. Massive Chalice focuses on up-close tactical gameplay and big-picture strategy. It handles the former exceptionally well, far better than it handles the latter.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown should have been a disaster. It's a turn-based strategy title, a style of game its publisher said only last year was "just not contemporary". It's also a remake of a cult classic 1990's PC game, beloved by an audience so fickle that a modern version should be the most offensive entertainment product of the year. Yet it is not. XCOM is, against the odds, a little bit special.

XCOM is about as perfect a remake of an old game as I could have hoped for, in that while changes have inevitably been made, they're mostly for the better, and anything genuinely new introduced is only there to improve things.