XCOM: Enemy Within

XCOM: Enemy Within is a standalone expansion which improves the core experience of the original with new missions, maps and alien types. Including new unit types for your squad, from deadly mech warriors, to genetically modified super soldiers (GMO!), using the new powers of "meld", a new resource which appears in all maps, and the Enemy Within is literally a group of traitorous people who are ready to sell the human race to your foe, the aliens, and stop you from succeeding.


If you haven't tried the original, it's a turn based, shooter, about eliminating all enemies from the map or completing an objective. Your main task is to stop the alien invasion, set out to enslave the human race. You do so by capturing alien UFOs and later interrogating captured aliens. The invasion grows stronger as time goes on. If you are ineffective to stop the threat, your funding nations will stop your operations and you'll soon lose the game. Sometimes a bad run can cripple your game and cause the dreaded "you lost ten saves ago".

At the beginning of the game you are the commander of a newly established organization up set to stop the alien invasion. You manage the base by constructing facilities and hiring specialists. You manage research and the engineering department, and a fleet of fighter jets to take down UFOs. Soldiers are your most valuable resource, if you end up careless and lose your veterans, the fight for victory will become much tougher.

Soldiers have ranks and skills that levels up as you use them out in the field. Each solider has a certain class, which makes them better at a certain task with specialised abilities for them. Later you can make these soldier into mechanised warriors or even genetically modified super soldiers, which further increases abilities. Your soldiers truly become the best in the world to fight aliens.

They may start off squishy, but get much better, faster and undertake the most impossible shots with ease. During the endgame, you achieve such technological superiority against the aliens that you can even develop PSY active soldiers, which totally wipe the field of the alien scum, you can even mind control them, but then again, so can they.

UFOs come as single craft from space to do a set task. Your job is to stop them, you send a fighter to shoot it down in a little minigame. A successful encounter will net you a crash site. At first you can only send in 4 soldiers, upgraded to 6 later. You fight the aliens turn by turn, to take over the crash site and if successful, will give you new research potential and valuable elerium and alien alloys, both used to make new weapons and armor for your soldiers.

Later you face choices, the aliens launch attacks on three locations at once, but you only get to save one. This causes a panic increase in the two you didn't save. You have to juggle these missions to not max out panic, and keep your nations happy. Satellites can be launched above panicking countries to reduce panic. These missions reduce panic in the one you pick and provide a reward which can be anything from a new solider to cash.

Then come the Terror missions, basically, a large attack on a major population centre to massively increase panic and cause them to leave the funding nations. You must stop these attacks or risk a premature loss in your game. But stopping the aliens will reduce panic in the whole continent it took place in, making it a make or break situation.

As you gain momentum, then you learn that an enemy faction of people are beginning operations to disrupt you and help the aliens. They cause research loss, funding loss and even increase panic if you don't stop them. They are much easier to fight then aliens with your advanced technology, but they come in numbers.

I've had a great experience with my game, I had this soldier from the start nicknamed "Cyclops" a badass sniper who never missed and took map wide shots and killed. This solider personally killed almost every single alien from crazy distances. He won my game and in the end he even turned out to be PSY active. He was the chosen one and personally defeated the invasion. Including the ending which he basically soloed, but I won't tell you about that.

Conclusion:

It does well trying to bring the original X-Com into the present. It simplifies a few aspects but in the end does a great job at making an entertaining game to save the planet from aliens. The ending isn't as cool as the originals, but still makes a great attempt.

XCOM: Enemy Within

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