Whenever I get reminded this game came out in 2012 I'm always a little stunned. Stunned because the passage of time is terrifying, and because games have been ripping off XCOM EU's formula for ages. Shadowrun Returns dropped only a year later and pinched it wholesale, right down to having blue/orange movement. If I tried to rhyme off every game that borrowed from XCOM EU I'd be here until 2025's first review.
And, to be honest, why shouldn't they pinch mechanics from this game?
Gaming's history is littered with attempts to dredge ~the classics~ out from the murky waters of memory and doll them up for a brand new younger audience, whose attention spans are increasingly being fried each year. The majority of these attempts are abject failures, either not selling well or selling morbillions but discarding the franchise's identity like wet underwear and losing their soul alongside it. Hell, this game's developers have tried it ad nauseaum.
XCOM EU is the cake that Firaxis actually got to fucking eat. It is a remake of the original X-COM game but with the hyphen surgically removed (congrats on the bottom surgery) and a whole host of lipsticks and eyeshadows to pretty up the pig for a new audience. And I gotta tell you, the pig is gorgeous. I don't envy whoever pitched this to 2K, notoriously soulless goons that they are: "Hey man, let's take this influential but niche cult classic and remake it for a modern audience, it'll sell millions!".
It did.
This game's premise is extremely familiar to anyone still alive. You are in charge of an agency that has to simultaneously convince everyone on Earth that the deadly force lowering the population is a valid threat while also protecting them long enough to actually have a population left to sign the tax breaks. Yeah that's right, you're a COVID relief agency, welcome back to hell.
Jokes aside, the premise is simple. Aliens are invading, you need help from world governments to get money and staff, so go kill some aliens to make them like you. Also try not to cause the human race to go into a thanatophobic death spiral that ends with their surrender - which is the canon ending by the way.
There were a fuckton of games trying to hit that 'casual strategy' niche in the early 2010s, and I'd say the reason EU succeded and they didn't is... It manages to blend casual-friendly and accessible controls with both decent presentation and actual strategic depth. Your units start with an assault rifle, a pistol, two action points, a grenade and can spend two AP to move without taking an action. Later on you get more options, sure, but not many.
Where EU really shines is in how you can use those options, though. Take the humble grenade; kinda sucks, low damage, nukes all loot from an enemy, might set off environmental explosives and kill your Sergeant-rank medic. But it's guaranteed damage in a game where the dice are rolling every other action, and it can bust open firing lines that're blocked by the environment. The moment Young Mira realized this game was great? Realizing I could resolve what looked to be a Code Black (total party kill) by blowing a hole in a warehouse wall, which let my Heavy shoot a rocket in.
And sure, the pistol line of weapons seems utterly worthless given their low damage... Until you learn you can capture aliens for tasty buffs/rewards, and suddenly a way to do nonlethal damage even on a crit seems delicious. Echoing the famous comment from CoD4, switching to your pistol is faster than reload since the mere act of swapping consumes no AP but reloading does.
Really, compared to this game's infinite imitators and even its own sequel (which really doubles down on the RPG elements, the expansion triples down), EU is oddly reserved when it comes to actions. It becomes apparent when you compare the maps, for a lot of EU's maps are claustrophobi urban slug fights where it's difficult to outrange enemies and thus the need to take actions carefully is omnipresent. The only time the game ever goes a bit hard on giving you too many actions is if you train up a Support and give them Psionics.
And man, we need to talk about units. Each unit in EU spawns with a randomized nationality, voice, gender, and name. Simple, but due to the repetitive and stressful nature of the missions they undertake, it's really easy to form attachments to these compilations of random entries and be sad when they die, or relieved when they merely go into bleedout rather than instantly drop dead. It was a fantastic way to bridge the gap between casuals and oldheads by giving them something to discuss, a community builder that more than likely led to the still-blooming XCOM modding community.
You can even name them after your friends! Don't do it if you're really protective of them like me!
On the presentation front, too, this game looks fantastic despite the camera being WAY above ground. I only ever remember it's a 2012 title when I see the models up close, because the lightning and environments are exceptional. Even when- No, ESPECIALLY when they're being blown up, set aflame, and destroyed by 95% chance to hit shots that miss! Almost every mission occurs at night too, which makes this perhaps the only game to really flex UE3's great lighting capabilities - albeit, that made this and the sequel a nightmare to run on contemporary midrange hardware.
...
What, why are you looking at me? What have- Sigh.
Fine.
Alright. Enough praise. Let's talk about the three big issues. The three really big issues. They're bad. They're really bad. They're why I don't come back to this very often, but I do 2-3 playthroughs of the sequel every year.
First of all, there's what I call the Overwatch issue. No, it has nothing to do with the bad Blizzard shooter. 'Overwatch' in XCOM is an ability any unit can use that ends their turn and makes them take a free shot at anything that moves during the enemy turn. This seems innocent, right? And it is to most players, but... Look, the core loop of each mission is walking into fog of war (unrevealed areas) and dealing with what comes out. Equipment is expensive to replace, there's no monetary replacement for training, and units die permanently... So the ideal strategy for nearly every mission is to use blue movement and Overwatch. Over and over. Over and over.
This issue comes first because it's one both the wider community and the developers actually agreed on. This game's expansion takes baby steps to address it, and the entire core of the formula was reworked for 2 to encourage players to stop being timid. Overwatch only gets more effective as classes level up; especially Sniper and Support who get endless buffs to it, and even rookies can get some kills with it if they equip any Aim boosting items.
The second issue branches off from this: XCOM EU, even with the expansion, is a very rigid and formulaic game. Good for a first playthrough, but on subsequent playthroughs it's very easy to... Solve the game, for lack of better words. There is always an ideal order, there are always ideal tactics, there are always ideal levelup perks to take, etc etc. The one thing all of EU's imitators/followups did right that the game itself didn't is giving most things a use.
I gushed over all the options available earlier, right? But when you repeat this game, there's always a best choice, and not even situationally. Snipers are never going to take Snapshot and most of Assault's perks are useless, you can just hug one side and be perfect.
Again, XCOM 2 solved this by giving each of the 4 base classes what amounts to subclasses. Its progenitor has no such luck. There are, indeed, dump options.
This is really obvious with the research and facility build options, too. I can't be too harsh though, because this is Firaxis' biggest problem as a studio: Experimentation is pointless, for these games tend to be Rubik's Cubes meant to be solved and even now in 2023 I'm amazed War of the Chosen bucked the trend.
Lastly, a combination of these two issues, is something harder to articulate without first talking about the sequel. XCOM 2's approach to balance is more focused on components. Individual enemies aren't very threatening, but combined with other enemies there start to be major problems. ADVENT officers are pathetic by themselves, but if they mark one of your units and anyone else is nearby, kiss that fucking unit goodbye. Likewise, your soldiers complement each other really well but it is fantastically hard to solo with any one class because of this. There's an effort made to encourage the player to invest in a variety of units, not just their A Team.
XCOM EU/EW is more individualist in comparison. There are a lot of enemies on Legend that, by themselves, can be run enders like Chryssalids or Mutons or Sectopods. Likewise, your units will likely snowball into unkillable embodiments of death that can kill endless enemies by themselves while the rest of your team sponge XP and twiddle their thumbs. Snipers were notorious for this in EU and the EW nerf bat didn't do much. There's not much synergy going on across the board, which is best embodied by the Support class (Specialist in XCOM 2): In 2 it utterly excels at aiding the entire team via either direct buffs or by hacking enemy emplacements/machines to reduce the overall threat in a mission. In EU it's best used as a self sustaining Overwatch machine that very occasionally stabilizes a dying unit. You could spec into team buffs, but they're inferior to simply becoming a turret made of meat.
If you've never played Enemy Unknown before, don't let my griping dissuade you. It is absolutely worth a full playthrough or two. Even if you're not all that into it, it could be nice to see a bit of gaming history; as I've alluded to throughout this entire review, so many games ripped off Enemy Unknown. I literally just got done with a 2023 release that was basically a homage to it. There's a reason everyone rejoiced when Jake Solomon announced he was coming back for 2, after all.
And hey, Happy New Year, folks! Here's to more 5s and less 1s, you know? Have a good one.
And, to be honest, why shouldn't they pinch mechanics from this game?
Gaming's history is littered with attempts to dredge ~the classics~ out from the murky waters of memory and doll them up for a brand new younger audience, whose attention spans are increasingly being fried each year. The majority of these attempts are abject failures, either not selling well or selling morbillions but discarding the franchise's identity like wet underwear and losing their soul alongside it. Hell, this game's developers have tried it ad nauseaum.
XCOM EU is the cake that Firaxis actually got to fucking eat. It is a remake of the original X-COM game but with the hyphen surgically removed (congrats on the bottom surgery) and a whole host of lipsticks and eyeshadows to pretty up the pig for a new audience. And I gotta tell you, the pig is gorgeous. I don't envy whoever pitched this to 2K, notoriously soulless goons that they are: "Hey man, let's take this influential but niche cult classic and remake it for a modern audience, it'll sell millions!".
It did.
This game's premise is extremely familiar to anyone still alive. You are in charge of an agency that has to simultaneously convince everyone on Earth that the deadly force lowering the population is a valid threat while also protecting them long enough to actually have a population left to sign the tax breaks. Yeah that's right, you're a COVID relief agency, welcome back to hell.
Jokes aside, the premise is simple. Aliens are invading, you need help from world governments to get money and staff, so go kill some aliens to make them like you. Also try not to cause the human race to go into a thanatophobic death spiral that ends with their surrender - which is the canon ending by the way.
There were a fuckton of games trying to hit that 'casual strategy' niche in the early 2010s, and I'd say the reason EU succeded and they didn't is... It manages to blend casual-friendly and accessible controls with both decent presentation and actual strategic depth. Your units start with an assault rifle, a pistol, two action points, a grenade and can spend two AP to move without taking an action. Later on you get more options, sure, but not many.
Where EU really shines is in how you can use those options, though. Take the humble grenade; kinda sucks, low damage, nukes all loot from an enemy, might set off environmental explosives and kill your Sergeant-rank medic. But it's guaranteed damage in a game where the dice are rolling every other action, and it can bust open firing lines that're blocked by the environment. The moment Young Mira realized this game was great? Realizing I could resolve what looked to be a Code Black (total party kill) by blowing a hole in a warehouse wall, which let my Heavy shoot a rocket in.
And sure, the pistol line of weapons seems utterly worthless given their low damage... Until you learn you can capture aliens for tasty buffs/rewards, and suddenly a way to do nonlethal damage even on a crit seems delicious. Echoing the famous comment from CoD4, switching to your pistol is faster than reload since the mere act of swapping consumes no AP but reloading does.
Really, compared to this game's infinite imitators and even its own sequel (which really doubles down on the RPG elements, the expansion triples down), EU is oddly reserved when it comes to actions. It becomes apparent when you compare the maps, for a lot of EU's maps are claustrophobi urban slug fights where it's difficult to outrange enemies and thus the need to take actions carefully is omnipresent. The only time the game ever goes a bit hard on giving you too many actions is if you train up a Support and give them Psionics.
And man, we need to talk about units. Each unit in EU spawns with a randomized nationality, voice, gender, and name. Simple, but due to the repetitive and stressful nature of the missions they undertake, it's really easy to form attachments to these compilations of random entries and be sad when they die, or relieved when they merely go into bleedout rather than instantly drop dead. It was a fantastic way to bridge the gap between casuals and oldheads by giving them something to discuss, a community builder that more than likely led to the still-blooming XCOM modding community.
You can even name them after your friends! Don't do it if you're really protective of them like me!
On the presentation front, too, this game looks fantastic despite the camera being WAY above ground. I only ever remember it's a 2012 title when I see the models up close, because the lightning and environments are exceptional. Even when- No, ESPECIALLY when they're being blown up, set aflame, and destroyed by 95% chance to hit shots that miss! Almost every mission occurs at night too, which makes this perhaps the only game to really flex UE3's great lighting capabilities - albeit, that made this and the sequel a nightmare to run on contemporary midrange hardware.
...
What, why are you looking at me? What have- Sigh.
Fine.
Alright. Enough praise. Let's talk about the three big issues. The three really big issues. They're bad. They're really bad. They're why I don't come back to this very often, but I do 2-3 playthroughs of the sequel every year.
First of all, there's what I call the Overwatch issue. No, it has nothing to do with the bad Blizzard shooter. 'Overwatch' in XCOM is an ability any unit can use that ends their turn and makes them take a free shot at anything that moves during the enemy turn. This seems innocent, right? And it is to most players, but... Look, the core loop of each mission is walking into fog of war (unrevealed areas) and dealing with what comes out. Equipment is expensive to replace, there's no monetary replacement for training, and units die permanently... So the ideal strategy for nearly every mission is to use blue movement and Overwatch. Over and over. Over and over.
This issue comes first because it's one both the wider community and the developers actually agreed on. This game's expansion takes baby steps to address it, and the entire core of the formula was reworked for 2 to encourage players to stop being timid. Overwatch only gets more effective as classes level up; especially Sniper and Support who get endless buffs to it, and even rookies can get some kills with it if they equip any Aim boosting items.
The second issue branches off from this: XCOM EU, even with the expansion, is a very rigid and formulaic game. Good for a first playthrough, but on subsequent playthroughs it's very easy to... Solve the game, for lack of better words. There is always an ideal order, there are always ideal tactics, there are always ideal levelup perks to take, etc etc. The one thing all of EU's imitators/followups did right that the game itself didn't is giving most things a use.
I gushed over all the options available earlier, right? But when you repeat this game, there's always a best choice, and not even situationally. Snipers are never going to take Snapshot and most of Assault's perks are useless, you can just hug one side and be perfect.
Again, XCOM 2 solved this by giving each of the 4 base classes what amounts to subclasses. Its progenitor has no such luck. There are, indeed, dump options.
This is really obvious with the research and facility build options, too. I can't be too harsh though, because this is Firaxis' biggest problem as a studio: Experimentation is pointless, for these games tend to be Rubik's Cubes meant to be solved and even now in 2023 I'm amazed War of the Chosen bucked the trend.
Lastly, a combination of these two issues, is something harder to articulate without first talking about the sequel. XCOM 2's approach to balance is more focused on components. Individual enemies aren't very threatening, but combined with other enemies there start to be major problems. ADVENT officers are pathetic by themselves, but if they mark one of your units and anyone else is nearby, kiss that fucking unit goodbye. Likewise, your soldiers complement each other really well but it is fantastically hard to solo with any one class because of this. There's an effort made to encourage the player to invest in a variety of units, not just their A Team.
XCOM EU/EW is more individualist in comparison. There are a lot of enemies on Legend that, by themselves, can be run enders like Chryssalids or Mutons or Sectopods. Likewise, your units will likely snowball into unkillable embodiments of death that can kill endless enemies by themselves while the rest of your team sponge XP and twiddle their thumbs. Snipers were notorious for this in EU and the EW nerf bat didn't do much. There's not much synergy going on across the board, which is best embodied by the Support class (Specialist in XCOM 2): In 2 it utterly excels at aiding the entire team via either direct buffs or by hacking enemy emplacements/machines to reduce the overall threat in a mission. In EU it's best used as a self sustaining Overwatch machine that very occasionally stabilizes a dying unit. You could spec into team buffs, but they're inferior to simply becoming a turret made of meat.
If you've never played Enemy Unknown before, don't let my griping dissuade you. It is absolutely worth a full playthrough or two. Even if you're not all that into it, it could be nice to see a bit of gaming history; as I've alluded to throughout this entire review, so many games ripped off Enemy Unknown. I literally just got done with a 2023 release that was basically a homage to it. There's a reason everyone rejoiced when Jake Solomon announced he was coming back for 2, after all.
And hey, Happy New Year, folks! Here's to more 5s and less 1s, you know? Have a good one.
MiraMiraOTW
4 months ago