It has been a very long time since a game has stood up and got my attention enough that I want to write about how much of an engaging, thought dominating and expectation-changing experience it has been. The game isn’t new – it has been out since November 2013 (if we include the expansion, which we are, as that’s how I played it) – the game that has gotten me to this point about wanting to write words is XCOM: Enemy Within.
The game places you in the position of a commander that will oversee the defence of Earth during an alien invasion. The game opens up in the vein of a typical turn based strategy fair; move here, fire here, flank here, flank there; then it takes you completely by surprise (in a modern way!) by including all the base building, researching, resource management that made all the original XCOM titles so deeply engaging.
What Enemy Within pulls off however, is survival horror in a turn based strategy game. No matter what decision you make in battle, what research you choose to pursue, or engineering project you choose to build, every single action you take in the game is a meaningful choice that can come to either a) pay off in a big windfall, or b) make you think you are the most abject of failures to have ever been entrusted in the defence of the Earth.
I know that XCOM 2 is out now, and I feel very ashamed for not having played Enemy Within earlier as, I feel that if I had, games like Shadowrun (quite good in their own right) would have felt as though they were put together by infants, especially when it comes to the tactical and incredible strategic depth that is offered by Enemy Within’s combat.While I’ve only played through the campaign once – I will certainly be playing through Enemy Within again, and probably again (depending on how good XCOM 2 turns out) – because I did not feel as though I was able to fully explore the strategic depth of utilising mechanised units, gene-altered, augmented soldiers, and psionic troopers as much as I could have.
Enemy Within is a very special game, and a rare one in the gaming world of today. It is refreshing that the learning curve is so high and that the game keeps throwing new mechanics at you as you progress through the title. Most importantly, the game is incredibly stable and in the 50+ hours that I spent with it, the title did not crash once!There are slim negatives that the game has – time (even though it has only been two years since release) hasn’t been the kindest to the visuals; but they work well, performing without any stutter or lag even at 4K resolution.
The biggest complaint I have about the gameplay itself is soldier path-finding, in that if you set a soldier the task of moving from a to b, they will move from a to b, even if it means that they will run through a poison cloud when, if they were to move from a to b, via c, they would avoid the poison cloud completely.Enemy Within has made it to my ‘all time’ best games ever list and has reset my expectations for turned based strategy and tactics games. It is amazing.
This review originally appeared on my private blog.