XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Been a franchise fan since day on, and this is a pretty good modernization of the classic.

Took me quite a while to finally getting around to playing XCOM, but I'm glad I did, as I had a pretty good time playing through it, even if it does have a few issues. The story felt a lot like the plot of a B movie (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). You're tasked with protecting the Earth from an alien invasion while trying to develop new technologies to fight against the alien's vastly superior technology and trying to understand what the aliens are after. It's definitely a bit shallow and predictable, but it still felt interesting enough to keep the experience enjoyable. I played through the game on the easiest difficulty and it didn't propose much of a challenge in terms of gameplay, although I still enjoyed it. You manage a military base, making choices on what things to spend money on (research, weapons, facilities, soldiers, reconnaissance, etc.), which is interrupted whenever an alien attack occurs. When this happens, you fly your soldiers out to the site of the conflict and the game transitions into turn-based combat between you and the aliens. The management of your base feels quite daunting at first, as it's hard to tell what you should prioritize, and making the wrong decisions early can cost you later, but once you learn how everything works, it gets a lot easier. The combat felt pretty easy for the most part (likely due to the difficulty I chose), although there were a few things I still found frustrating, and made me glad I didn't try to beat the game on a harder difficulty: [list] [*] You typically only learn where the enemies are by moving your soldiers close enough to them, and the aliens only attack you once you've discovered them on the map. However, this means accidentally discovering an alien when performing your last move on the turn can be extremely punishing, and can feel a bit unfair. [*] It isn't always clear how close you need to be to an alien to shoot them, or whether one position will provide a better shot than another. There were often times when I wasted moves because I thought I'd have a shot, but was actually too far away, or a shot that looked like it should be easy was only a very small chance to hit. [*] It's easy to click on the wrong square when moving your unit, either because there are multiple elevations and you clicked on the wrong one, or because it looked like you had cover somewhere when you actually didn't. [/list] The game certainly looks a little bit dated at this point, but it still looks alright. It also ran great, and I don't recall running into any bugs. [b]TL;DR[/b] This fun turn-based strategy game offers an enjoyable story, fun gameplay, and still runs great, even if the story can be a bit shallow and there are several things about the gameplay that can end up feeling a bit frustrating or unfair. I'd recommend getting it on sale if you enjoy tactical turn-based games, as long as you aren't looking for an amazing story or completely perfect gameplay.