XCOM: Enemy Unknown Preview

Eurogamer is offering a preview for Firaxis’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown based on a hands-off presentation of the ‘reimagining’ of the PC turn-based strategy title X-COM: UFO Defense. Here’s an excerpt:

Your team of soldiers disembark from their landing craft, and visibly belong to different classes. Support soldier, heavy weapons, assault, sniper: again, this departs from X-Com, which saw soldiers organically specialise over time. The point, it appears, is that more clearly defined roles entail more forward planning about how you can tackle both the level as a whole and each conflict within it. Each soldier in each turn gets to move and take an action. That action might be taking a shot, it might be going into Overwatch so he or she will auto-shoot if an alien strays into their line of sight, it might be hunkering down to defend themselves, or it might be one of the various special abilities which are defined by class and gear.

A Sniper, clad in a Skeleton Suit, chooses one of said abilities – firing a grappling hook to mantle onto the roof of the petrol station in order to have a clear line of sight. Sectoids are weak alone, but can use psychic powers to become a severe threat en masse, so a quick headshot reduces their number by one. More importantly, it gets rid of an alien on Overwatch, which would have meant semi-certain semi-doom for any soldiers that strayed into its path. It’s a special ability rather than the purist guns, grenades and crouching of the original X-Com, but it is a highly tactical special ability, one which rewards smart use of terrain rather than being a gimmicky super-power.

And tactical thinking is definitely required. With a safe line of sight thanks to the sniper, a rocket launcher guy lets off at a round at the front of a service station. One of X-Com’s most prized features proves itself all present and correct as pretty much the entire wall explodes and crumbles, opening up the buildings’ gently burning innards to your squad. Destructible environments aren’t just cool power fantasies: they’re a way to get at hidden enemies in a rather safer way than wandering down a cramped corridor or politely opening a door.

Unfortunately, inside the building lurk a few Mutons, a race of alien super-soldiers have ditched the lime green jumpsuit they wore back in 1993 (didn’t we all?) for a rather more 21st century suit of power armour. They’re a more direct and solid threat than the skittering Sectoids, but on top of that they’ve turned up to this suburban hell-party with a brand new alien in tow – a hulking Beserker, who’s basically a wall of meat with a metal mask and massive claws. Any soldier that gets too close to him gets essentially beaten to death, accompanied by some of the more gruesome sound effects I’ve heard in a while. That soldier, or more accurately that slumped pile of blood and snapped bones, is now dead. Permanently dead. You’ll need a new recruit. And a way to take down Beserkers safely. How? Well, guns, obviously. But better guns.