X-Com: Enemy Unknown

[Jobydrone]

I've been playing this AWESOME game on my Xbox 360 for the past three days or so and I am completely engrossed and addicted.  I'm sure most of you have heard of this franchise since it has been around for a long time now, primarily as a PC product.  The storied developer Firaxis, best known for Sid Meier's Civilization series, has picked up the reins of this franchise and really noone is better since the Civ games are the best, most accessible turn based strategy games out there.

Well until now, that is.

This game is absolutely incredible.  Everything awesome about turn based strategy is here, in a package that is beautiful to behold visually, easy to understand conceptually, but brutally difficult to master without ever feeling unfair or unreasonable.  If you die, and boy will you die, you always feel it's because you could or should have done something better or differently, not because the game threw something at you that it shouldnt have.

The world is under attack by evil, super powerful, killer aliens, and it is up to the secret X-Com program to save the planet. At its core, the new X-Com game is split between two modes.  The first is a really neat base building mechanic, during which you develop your facilities (workshops, foundries, power stations, satelite networks, alien containment systems, etc etc), build weapons and vehicles, train and outfit your soldiers, research new technologies, and monitor the state of panic going on all over the world.  All this costs money, which is extremely scarce, and you never have enough to do everything you want or need to, so prioritization is key. 

The second mode is the turn based game, where you send four to six of your soldiers in a squad to respond to some type of alien threat on the ground:  Alien abductions, escorting key personnel, terror missions, exploring downed UFOs.  There's a ton of variety in the ground missions but one thing is the same in every one...at any time, one wrong move could mean the gruesome death of a character you have built from raw recruit to seasoned veteran...and there ain't no coming back.  (well there is a generous "save anywhere" system that hopefully you will remember to take advantage of before your favorite guy dies).  Your soldiers are split into different classes with special abilities, like heavy weapons, Sniper, Support, and Assault, and who you bring means a great deal to how the mssions play out.  As squad members level up, new perks and abilities become available that make individual squad members much more valuable and you feel pretty bad when they die.

This game is so much fun, it's got a serious addictive "just one more turn" type of quality that has kept me up until the wee hours of the morning for the past few days now.  The story, while simple, is really well written and engaging.  There's mulltiplayer too, for those so inclined, but I don't see myself diving into that anytime soon, when there's so muchvariety in the single player campaign.  I can't wait to get home tonight and play...I need to see what hapens to my soldiers when I build the Psionic Research Facility in my base!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown: Giant Bomb Quick Look

[billybob476]

I've been talking about this game almost weekly on my podcast, I've only heard good things and rave reviews. It's number one on my to play list as soon as I get a bit more free time (which seems like it's gonna be after Christmas at this point)

[Rico]

Joby - with how much of a gamer you are I still find it amazing you play so many games on an XBOX 360.  You need a true gaming PC dude.  :)

[Jobydrone]

Joby - with how much of a gamer you are I still find it amazing you play so many games on an XBOX 360.  You need a true gaming PC dude.  :)

This game works great on the Xbox and with a controller, but I completely agree with you Rico, especially since it's so cheap now to set up a nice gaming rig.  Now that my gorgeous 27" iMac (only about two and a half years old, out of warranty of course) has a horrible flickering/mirroring across the entire bottom 1/4 of the screen which makes watching movies and playing games impossible, I am once again in the market for a new computer.  I'm so pissed, I really hate to bring it up here.  I researched the problem and it is apparently common flaw, and a hardware problem not a software one, which makes the fix too expensive (a new 27" LCD + installation) on a 3+ y/o computer.  Burns me up.  Definitely building my own PC this time, Apple can stick it where the sun don't shine.

[Rico]

Joby - does an iMac allow for an external monitor to be plugged into it?

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Joby - does an iMac allow for an external monitor to be plugged into it?

I know the newest models do via Thunderbolt...I don't know if the older ones did though.

[Jobydrone]

Joby - does an iMac allow for an external monitor to be plugged into it?

Yes, I am pretty sure there are myriad ways to set up more than one screen...that's a solution worth considering, that I didn't think of.