As most of you all know, I have been looking forward to this
game since the day it was announced. I spent countless hours on X Com UFO
Defense and Terror From the Deep during high school and was really excited at
what was billed as a graphic and interface update to one of my favorite games.
In that sense, I am very disappointed in Enemy Unknown. I will do a quick
comparison and then try and judge the new game on its own merits.
UFO Defense was a real time management and tactical game
that placed you in the role of the head of the X Com project, which was a
multinational effort tasked with fighting off invading hordes of aliens. You
were in charge of researching alien technology, maintaining an air force that
would shoot down incoming UFOs, and managing the squads you sent to kill off
surviving aliens and salvage technology from their craft. Occasionally, the
aliens would launch terror campaigns that were basically invasions of different
cities, and you had to wipe out the aliens and protect the citizens.
Enemy Unknown is a turn based tactical roleplaying game.
Again, you are the head of the X Com project with similar duties as in the original. The word similar is very
important here, because in the original game, your only contact with the aliens
was shooting down craft and salvage, terror missions, the rare times when the
enemy would invade your base, and the final mission. Enemy Unknown is built in
a very different manner. All of your auxiliary resources (scientists,
engineers, and even some advanced units) are based off of your mission play. Thus,
instead of having to worry about balancing the number of scientists, soldiers,
aircraft, and engineers you hire and ensuring you stay within a monthly budget,
you just hire soldiers and go to town. The management side of the game is very
barebones, reduced to just a few maintenance costs for aircraft and parts of
your base. Base construction is also
changed and minimized, you have a set grid to work with and you get bonuses for
stringing similar rooms together (e.g. two Power Generators together get a
bonus, having The Foundry near Workshops gives a bonus) with really no thought
of a potential alien invasion of your base.
The mission types have changed greatly as well. In addition
to destroying incoming UFOs (which come up very infrequently) you now have
alien abductions, which always occur in a group of three sites. You can only
choose to defend one site, so from the start of the game you have to understand
and plan for the fact that you will
be losing council members, no matter how well you manage things. There are simply
too many countries and the game seems to enjoy having the same one pop up
multiple times in a row. There are also missions assigned to you by the council
(which was a non-factor in the original) including bomb disposal and rescuing
VIPs.
An additional change is that your soldiers now gain
abilities as they earn ranks, and are randomly assigned to one of four
specialties; support (medics and scouts), assault (fast moving point men),
snipers (primarily support, providing overwatch from high ground and laying
radar to help find aliens), and heavy (using rocket launchers and providing
support through suppressing fire). The biggest and best change to the game
however, is the combat itself. Movement is broken into two parts. On the map
you will have a blue outline and a dark yellow outline. Blue is the farthest
you can move and do something else, yellow is your maximum movement. Assault
units have an ability that allows them to move their full movement and still
fight, which allows them to seriously outpace the rest of your squad. Instead
of reserving movement points for defensive snap shots, after your first
movement you can place your unit on overwatch, giving them a shot as soon as an
enemy is within their field of vision. When you take your shot, the screen
zooms in for a small cutscene of you firing toward the alien. (One minor
complaint, if you kill an alien, you know before the enemy is hit or damaged
because the scene focuses on your unit. If you miss, it focuses on the alien.)
The best thing about this system, you no longer have to worry about firing a
fully automatic weapon into a squadmate standing twenty feet behind you for
some strange reason, or emptying and entire clip three inches away from your
own feet.
The most annoying thing in this game is that they added a
head scientist, engineer, and assistant who are fully voiced and have numerous
cutscenes which in my opinion disrupt the flow of the game in a clumsy attempt
to add to the storyline of the game. They also will pop up when you’re in
combat which slows down the pace of the fights. There are already cutscenes
when the aliens appear, and when it’s a new type of alien, the scientist jumps
in and tells you that you need to capture a live specimen. While that’s going
on, you can’t do anything except listen to her talk.
Overall, I give X Com Enemy Unknown 3/5
Good
- · New combat system improves on a comically bad one from the original game
- · Many engineering projects, such as making new weapons, armor, and medpacs, are instantaneous meaning that you don’t have to hope and pray your armor is done before the next mission
- · Having more engineers reduces the price of construction, giving you a real reason to stockpile them, especially since you don’t have to actually pay them anymore
- · Research projects have a timeline attached to them, so you know when it’s going to be done
Bad
- · RPG style elements don’t really have a ton of place in this game. It feels like they’re trying to set up a Call of Duty style first person shooter as a possible sequel
- · Cutscenes every single time a new group of aliens appears on the map, even if it’s an alien of the same type
- · Aliens get a free movement phase when you first discover them
- · The management side of the game is completely done away with and replaced with mission rewards
- · (This is the biggest negative of all, and is enough to make me regret purchase) You must have a Steam account active at all times, meaning that even for a single player game, you have to be online. This “anti-piracy” measure has really done nothing except for make me not want to play new PC games
