XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Demo) (PC)

Today I'm having a go at the demo of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the remake of classic 1994 turn based tactics game UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense. I guess they took the bits they liked most from each title and combined them.

This is the tactical XCOM game by Firaxis by the way, not the first person shooter one by the Bioshock 2 developers. I don't know why publishers keep getting the idea that what classic strategy game fans would really like to play is a fast paced shoot 'em up. Fortunately this time there's a game for everyone.

Click the pics for a slightly better resolution.

The game begins with a quote from sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke:

Two possibilities exist:

Either we are alone in the Universe
or we are not.

Both are equally terrifying.

Well I'm not going to argue with the guy who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it sure seems like a strange way to start a game about an alien invasion. Put it this way, imagine the same game, except it turns out we are alone in the universe. XCOM: Enemy Unavailable.

Anyway, that meteor from the last screenshot turned out to be... actually, you already know exactly how this all goes down if you've ever seen War of the Worlds, or anything remotely inspired by it. Weird alien thing crashes down, dumb humans investigate. Surprise, it's not the last son of Krypton in there!

Look at these two watching it all on the security feed. I bet they're doing their own Mystery Science Theatre commentary over it. Oh by the way XCOM is one of those cool government agencies that can tap into any security feed on Earth apparently. It's Big Brother versus the Space Mutants.

Hey, I recognise that street from the title screen. Poor folks were doomed before the game even started.

The demo (and perhaps the game) skips all that base building and Geoscape business and gets straight down to brass tacks. I've got a four man squad, and I'm being sent to assess the situation at the impact site and locate a missing recon team. I'm sure those guys will be fine.

Okay, I want one.

Also it looks like we're in one of those shiny 'lens flare' sci-fi universes, like modern Star Trek and Mass Effect. Works for me.

It seems that the first level's a tutorial, and they're going to take things step by step. I'm being told to move my group up the street, sticking to the cover if possible. It's turn based, and the tutorial is adamant that I must move each character to a specific piece of cover each turn.

That half-shield icon below the orange arrow means that this particular piece cover is only half effective. If I was hiding behind something more substantial I'd get a full shield. Seems like a reasonable way of handling it.

UFO: Enemy Unknown (Amiga AGA)

Here's the original game to compare it against. So many cryptic buttons, who knows what they all do. It's wise to run for cover in this one as well, though there's no cover system. If I wanted to duck behind that wall I'd have to be careful not to use up all my time units on movement, so I have a couple left over to crouch when I get there.

In the remake all you do is click next to cover, and they'll handle the rest themselves.


SOME STRICTLY PRE-DETERMINED TROOP MANOEUVRING LATER.

Well we've found the missing team. Turns out... the aliens got them.

The graphics aren't quite AAA quality perhaps, but they're not bad considering they're meant to be viewed from a distance most of the time, and the game probably didn't have a great deal of cash thrown its way. It's not like they were expecting to make Call of Duty sales figures with this one.

I'm a bit surprised I'm getting mid-mission cutscenes at all in an XCOM game to be honest. It's not traditionally how they operate.

That's cool, I moved my men up to a building at the end of the street, then clicked to send this guy inside, and he automatically found his way to a door and smashed through in little cutscene. It wasn't my idea of course though, I'm still following strict instructions that I must not deviate from.

I'm not complaining about that by the way. I'd rather an indepth tutorial, than being dumped right into my first battle with 30 buttons on screen and left to figure it all out myself.

My soldier finds a member of the lost recon team standing there with a grenade in his hand and 'I've been possessed by an alien' eyes, and his first instinct is to walk up close and shine a light in his face? The guy deserves to get blown up. Which he does.

And then the aliens came out.

My team is getting taken apart here, and shit is officially going down! But yeah I'm still following instructions so my input here is minimal. The tutorial's playing the game, I'm just sitting here clicking the mouse for it and taking notes.

I can use a character's skills (like shooting guns and throwing grenades) by clicking the icons at the bottom of the screen and using hotkeys, or I can go into CONSOLE MODE (they probably gave a different name for it). This brings the camera down near my current character, and lets me use the left and right arrow keys to chose my skill instead. Handy for people using game controllers I expect.

There's no snapshot/autoshot/aimed shot options here for my assault rifle, all I've got is 'fire'. But with 84% chance of a hit, I can live with that.

Anyway the tutorial got most of my team killed for me, and the sole survivor flew back to base for tea and medals.

Wow, they've painted an anti-alien logo on the side of their troop transport. 50 years from now people in the XCOM universe are going to look back and laugh at how racist that is.

Right, this is the XCOM base screen. I tried zooming right in to spy on each of the departments, but pretty as they were, there's nothing at all to do with them. Clicking on things had zero effect, and after 10 seconds I was bored of it.

It seems that getting around the base is actually done via those tabs at the top of the screen, and everything else is just there to look at. Not that the original X-Com game was much different.

The hero from the last mission has earned a promotion, probably because everyone with a higher rank just got killed, and with it comes the privilege of being able to carry... the rocket launcher. And that's it for this tier, there's only one ability to choose from.

Actually that's it for the entire barracks, in this demo anyway. Doesn't seem like there's anything else I can do here.

Onto the science department. I have two areas of research open to me, neither of which will probably be completed in the time this demo gives me. Nice to know this aspect of the series is still in here though.

There's no equipment or soldier management in this demo, so I went to mission control where a job was already waiting for me.

Well it looks like occasional glances of this globe hologram is the closest I'm going to get to the Geoscape screen from the original game.

It seems the aliens have cunningly attacked two places at once this time, knowing that there's only one group on Earth who can be bothered to stop them, and we've only got the one transport. I can choose between helping out the US and getting 4 scientists for the cause, or helping out China and getting 200 bucks. Well science is all well and good, I'm a big fan of science, but I could buy a new TV with that cash so we're flying to China!

Oh no, another tutorial? The last tutorial got all my men killed, so I think I'd actually stand more of a chance here if I was allowed to move them myself.

This time it's explaining how I can move quietly through doors, and climb up onto a roof for a better view. The trouble with these tutorial messages, is that the keys they've chosen for moves are often strange (V for open door?) and once the message box has gone that's the last you'll ever see of it. There's no way to redefine controls, or even look at list of keys either. So there might well be a way to rotate this camera, I can't figure it out.

Oh crap, I think the aliens noticed me running around on the roof. Hey I've just noticed, they've got no mouths. I guess they can probably use telepathy to communicate, that's a pretty common alien trick, but do they eat telepathically as well?

Well the tutorial's ran off and left me to it, so it's all up to me now. I'm going to try to move my team to surround the aliens, while keeping them safely behind cover.

They've stripped out the time units that powered the original game, and now each character can move a short distance (within the blue lines), then take an action (like shooting, or moving again). Or they burn up both their moves by dashing a bit further (within the yellow lines). If I can keep a move spare, I can use it to put the character on overwatch, ready to automatically shoot the first alien he lays eyes on if they're stupid enough to walk into his line of fire on their turn.

Once I moved my guys, it was the aliens' turn. And I soon found out how good half-cover was, when an alien managed to take off half my health in one shot.

Fortunately my guys are smart enough to shoot out of windows and around corners, then dive back behind cover without me having to do it all manually and waste my precious turns. We outnumber them and we're in a better position, so I should be able to beat them in a good old fashioned firefight.

Uh... didn't mean to do that. I'm sure I pressed a different button. Well that's my one and only shot with the rocket launcher used up. Still, it got the job done. The alien squad is dead, and I'm free to move on. Very carefully.

The path seems clear so far, so I'll take the opportunity to use up one of my medikits and heal up my wounded soldier. I've only got the one medic though, and limited supplies, so I really don't want to get shot again if I can help it.

Oh hang on, this is new. Flying enemies? I've only got a 48% chance to hit and no way to improve those odds, so I don't know what to do here.

Doesn't seem like I've got any abilities that can help me here. Unless I use Run & Gun to run away and hide.

He flew right around and landed behind me! The cheeky bastard. Fortunately I still had grenades left, so that's one crisis over. Aliens don't generally survive one hit in this so far, and he's definitely not walking away from that.

Flying away. Whatever.

The rest of this level seems deserted. I can't find those sneaky bastards anywhere, and I'm probably walking straight into an ambush.

Nowhere else left to go but this building, so either they're in here, or they're all chilling out back in my troop transport, watching the security feed and laughing at me. Telepathically.

I'm going to move my team to cover all exits, then send one around the back to look in through a window. That way I can identify their positions, then storm the building from all sides, giving them no place to hide.

Well there's no one in here but these two perfectly average looking businessmen. Oh well, better shoot them anyway just to be sure.

My clever plan to peek in through the windows kind of backfired on me when I discovered they were peeking out at me. Now they're no longer contained and I've lose the element of surprise.

Okay I'll leave these soldiers outside on overwatch to keep the aliens distracted, while I move the guy at the front door through the house to flank them.

Oh shit, they can shoot through walls? He just blasted my cover away!

Wait... if he can do it, then I can do it. Probably. This thing ain't no ray gun, but I'm sure it can mess up some wood panels.

The voice on the radio said to capture the aliens, so I crept up right behind one of them and... well, I have no idea how to capture aliens so I just shot him at point blank range, blasting him into coloured smoke. Hope this stuff isn't poisonous.

And that's it, mission complete! Six enemies down, no operatives lost. Now I get to feel smug that I did a better job than the tutorial did.

Our victorious heroes ride off into the moonlit skies, travelling back across half the world to return home.

They just went and stuck jet engines all over this thing didn't they? Though I guess that would explain why we're the only military team on Earth fast enough to deal with the aliens.

Oh no, China gave XCOM 200 dollars? PANIC ACROSS AMERICA!


And that's the end of the demo. Maybe some of the interface problems I've been having will be sorted out in the final game, I don't know. It's hard to judge how much depth the final game will have, but I get the feeling X-Com fans might find the game to be a bit watered down without time-units or crouching or a thousand buttons on screen. But its heart seems to be in the right place, the gameplay appears to be solid, and for all my complaints the controls are far less awkward than in the original game.

Oh and apparently you CAN rotate the camera, using the Q and E buttons. I still haven't gotten my head around how to move up and down between floors yet though. Though I suppose it might make more sense if I plugged in a gamepad...

By the way I'm not hating on it because it's been developed with consoles in mind, I mean even the original game had a PlayStation release. But it does seem a bit like mouse and keyboard control wasn't their primary focus. Though hey I could be wrong. Plus it's probably something you'd get used to after a few missions anyway.

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