Beer Byte - XCOM Enemy Unknown

At the time of writing this I am pretty late to the party in terms of reviewing this game, by the time of you reading this you'll be pretty late to the party, period. When I say 'party', I mean alien invasion, and all your friends are dead or abducted.  This, you will have to deal with a lot in XCOM, all I can say is be prepared for a rocket load of aliens, and a lot of squad mates dying. 

So does XCOM Enemy Unknown live up to it's 90s PC predecessors? 



I have no idea because I never played them, I was well aware of them at the time but never got my hands on a copy, I was too busy playing Syndicate and things like System Shock. So let's just focus on how it stacks up today. 

XCOM is a turn based strategy game with base and resource management as you take on an alien invasion hell bent on making your day difficult.  The XCOM project is funded by council nations of the globe whose sole task is to stop the alien forces and protect the said nations funding you. A turned based strategy game you say? What the hell is that? Well yes this quite the unusual genre to be brought to the masses but not a poor genre to to be brought back and introduced back into AAA games.  It's like a game of Monopoly, but chance cards are aliens that will kill you, and hotels you build are satellites over council nations which give you money, and the dog is the...um...a plasma minigun let's say. 

Ignore the cute ET glowing hearts, these xenos will cause you tears of pain.

The game is not at all fast paced and as action heavy as current game releases, and this brings a great bit of fresh air to the marketplace. You assemble a crack squad team on various random occurring missions. You've got varying different squad classes which are randomly populated when they are first promoted and from then on there are different skills you can choose as they manage to survive the alien onslaught. There are also basic appearance customisation options  and you can rename your characters to what you wish, something you may regret in the future, which I'll explain later.

Then there are the missions. These will pop up at random occurrences and can involve capturing certain aliens, saving a council member VIP, or the main staple of land and kill the bejesus out of anything that moves. There are also terror missions which is when all goes tits up in a country and you have to save as many civilians and clear out all enemy forces.  As I mentioned this is not a fast paced game; you move your squad around the map and have limited turns per squad member, once you've moved all your plucky soldiers it's time for the aliens to move and rain plasma bursts into your favourite squad member you've just named after your dog. The great thing about XCOM is the tense and harrowing nature of the mission layouts- they are all randomly generated and you never know where the aliens are to start with. Think you've just dashed your squadmate to some nice bit of cover? Nope you've just been spotted by a floater (laugh it up) and he's going to lob a grenade at you.  The adrenaline you would normally get from other games while the running and gunning round is replaced with a tense feeling of constant terror, and it's great.

Between missions you will spend time managing your base from researching new items/facilities, building said items/facilities, and general management of your squads. The resource management on this side of the game is tough. You are awarded cash from the council members you have placed satellites over, you spend that money on new equipment and facilities but the running of your base costs money the more you have in it. It's a difficult balance to get equipment and satellites up and a key thing is to keep panic down in council nations. You can choose to ignore missions or alien attacks if you wish but this means the panic will increase in the affected nation- too much panic and the nation will pull out of the project along with it's funding. It's a tough choice when you may choose to avoid a mission because your squad's not well equipped or you forgot to hire more and all your others are still in hospital. All this adds to the fuuuuuucck, I'm doomed element to game. 

The difficulty of this game is unforgiving, as referenced earlier you can name your squadmates and this can add a sense of connection with them as they complete missions. But this is something to understand, they WILL die.  Odds are never in your favour  and in my playthroughs I've never really felt like I was doing a good job, my memorial wall was looking like Russell Brand's headboard and I even occasionally switched to easy on some missions and still got slaughtered. My conclusion to this is there is no easy mode in this game. 

I wouldn't look now, but you're dead

Graphically this game isn't going to win any awards, but that's not to say it's bad. The character models and terrain are quite well put together, but simplistic. In a nutshell, it's inoffensive and in no way detracting from the gameplay.

Overall this game is a great break from the main genres that are released currently. Its ability to instill fear and dread into what essentially is a slow paced game, is a great feat and it's random playout and various difficulty settings means this game has tonnes of replay value. As long as you can get over getting all your family members killed by floaters.

As no doubt you guessed, there is a lot of death, impending doom, and lot's of fuuuuckk moments with XCOM so you are going to want a beer right? Course you are. And you're going to need something strong.
Well I've mentioned Brewdog beers before and they have just opened a bar in Bristol which I didn't get to on my birthday because they were so busy. But kudos to them getting people away from mainstream beer and trying something with a bit more substance. So I give you Tokyo,a 18.2% oak aged stout. Not one to be taken lightly but packed full of cranberries, jasmine and bucketloads of speciality hops, this will definitely get you over your fallen comrades.