XCOM: A lesson In Damage Control‏

So I'm not finished with XCOM: Enemy Unknown yet, but I have put in about 15 hours so far. I've progressed pretty far and right now I find myself filled with anxiety with just the thought of playing it!

Fear Factor

I'm only playing XCOM on the normal difficulty, but my anxiety stems from the fact that I turned on Ironman mode. What's that you ask? Well Ironman mode just means that it saves after every single decision you make. The reason this is so substantial is because when one of your units dies in XCOM...that bitch is dead forever. Add the fact that I've named all my units after people I know in real life and now not only do I not want to lose an experienced soldier, but I also don't want my friends to die!

De Angelis and Labancz were kill in action following this picture

Soldiers are a perpetual cog in your war machine. They have random classes, and level up as they down enemies. So it's extra brutal when you lose one. Fortunately you can add passive buffs to all your units through the Academy. Increasing your squad size is great and all, but my favourite makes it so that if one of your allies loses all their health, instead of dying instantly, they have a chance of bleeding out first. If that's the case you can attempt to save them: A must-have skill indeed.

I'm All About That Base

Outside of combat, you have your main base of operations, known as your war room. Here you can set out to do research to better understand your enemies, create stronger weapons/armor, and even help out different nations around the world with their infestation problem.

The main flow of the game involves you speeding up time waiting for things to happen—be that completed research, a finished structure, a spotted UFO, or any number of hostile actions by the aliens you must attempt to stop—and the story progresses as you complete objectives. Objectives usually consist of you building structures, or researching some alien artifact you found while raiding an enemy vessel or facility. In theory the game could actually last forever if you never complete these objectives to move the story along.

Waiting too long might have some adverse effects though. There is something called a Terror Meter. This meter basically measures when the shit will hit the fan and if you ignore certain nations for too long, they will up and abandon the XCOM project all together...which is bad because they help fund you. I haven't lost any nation yet, although a few have gone full panic mode. Fortunately they give you a last chance to make things right, but if you ignore their plea for help, they will leave. If too many nations quit, then you lose and it's game over.

Strategy Or Damage Control?

I wouldn't consider XCOM to be a particularly hard game, but there are a few things about the enemy's behavior that are pretty annoying to say the least. My biggest pet peeve is that the enemies don't actually move if they've never been spotted. Every map has a massive amount of Fog of War and while that is normal for a strategy game to have, it's annoying that all the enemies are holed up in different areas forcing you to go find them. The best practice is to move slow as fuck and not reveal too much of the map at once—or you risk being overwhelmed...and trust me, you don't want that. This routine is necessary from a player's point of view, but with a single design choice by the developers, it could have been avoided.

Right now the game is set up like a big game of ambush. Who would want to go in guns blazing when you have no clue where anyone is? You can hardly even make a strategy until you see something to fight. Going in slow is necessary but boring. If it was set up more like a tradition turn based strategy game, i.e. Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem, XCOM would be way more about the strategy than just about damage control; because that's all it is: Damage control.

In a sense, I understand where they are coming from. Developer Firaxis’ design philosophy is even in the title: Enemy Unknown. I guess the whole point is to be a little helpless and lost. Of course this entire feeling only exists because I am playing on Ironman. If I was just playing regularly all I would have to do is reload when a mistake was made. It might lose most of the "fun" but at least I wouldn't have that lump in my stomach every time I'm about to start playing.

Final Thoughts

Despite the anxiety, I am enjoying my time with XCOM and I hope to finish it before too long. It's regularly on sale on Steam so if you haven't tried it yet, and you are a fan of strategy games, I would go for it! Ironman mode makes things a lot harder, but I don't regret my decision. Slow and steady wins the race after all, right?