For PC gamers, 2012 has been the year of big name sequels: Diablo
3, Borderlands 2, and a little game called X-Com Enemy Unknown. To say
that anticipation for EU was high would be an understatement: a
revival of one of the most prominent PC brands by one of the most highly rated
studio around. This left Firaxis in a position as crazy as defending Earth from
aliens: Reviving a brand for both newcomers and those that have been there
since day one. And leaving me with the question: Did they succeed?
This is going to
be a tricky analysis as I know that I have people who have never played X-Com
reading this, and probably a few people who beat the original, ironman style.
For me, my exposure to the original was getting as far as fighting ethereals
and calling it quits. Having kicked alien ass, and gotten my own ass kicked
plenty of times this week, EU is a great game, but has a few sticking points.
The story of EU is
basically a retelling of the original: Aliens have made first contact and not
in a good way; leaving you in charge of the X-Com organization to defend Earth
from invasion. For those of you who have never played X-Com, you can read my retrospective piece on it to get a cliffs notes version of the gameplay.
As in the original
X-Com, EU has the player managing their base, shooting down aliens and taking
soldiers out to fight. But Firaxis has made numerous changes to
the formula, some good and some not so well to bring X-Com back for today's
audience.
Let's start with
the difficulty, one of the best decisions Firaxis has made to EU was how they
set up the different difficulty settings to appeal to different groups of
people. In the original X-Com, the game's settings were different shades of
hard and the player was just picking their poison. In EU however, the
developer's wisely split the game's four difficulty settings for newcomers and
expert players.
The four settings are:
easy, normal, classic and impossible. The former two are meant for people
learning the game or who want an easy time. And the latter are when the gloves
come off. The jump between normal and classic is huge thanks to enemies getting
more health and you have to both unlock and pay for troop upgrades among other
things.
All four settings
can also be played in ironman mode: where you only have one save meaning no
reloading a failed mission. Ironman mode provides some of the best tension in
the game as you never know when your favorite squaddie is about to die.
Moving on the
first thing that all players will experience are the troop battles. In terms of
design, this is where the most mechanic affecting changes were made to the
formula. First off is that you are now limited to an initial cap of 4
soldiers which can over time be raised to 6. This change makes battles a lot
more dangerous as after the first month you'll be easily outnumbered
in each mission.
To compensate,
soldiers are more defined this time around. Anyone who survives to their first
promotion will be put into one of four classes: heavy, assault, support and
sniper. This determines what weapons they can use and what potential upgrades
you can assign them as they get promoted further. You can't give someone
everything and you'll start to notice just how effective some of the late
promotion bonuses are for evening out the odds.
In the original
X-Com, the tactical gameplay was heavily influenced by CRPG and Pen and Paper
design with how all the attributes factored into success. With EU, the
designers took influenced from board game design which is similar to what they
did in Civilization 5. All units by default can perform two actions per turn,
with attacking immediately ending their turn. The name of the game is cover,
and how it factors into surviving.
Cover doesn't work
in EU as it does in real life. Here, based on whether the unit is behind low cover or full cover (represented by a half or full shield icon respectively),
gives all attacking units an accuracy penalty on that unit. The only ways
to get around that is to either destroy the cover with explosives or missed shots,
or attack the enemy from their flank which is represented by a yellow shield
icon.
As you'll play and
promote your units, you'll unlock upgrades that can circumvent or
change the initial rules. Such as being able to attack twice per
turn, or perform automatic counterattacks on enemies in close range. Personally
while I like the concept of cover, it is part of my main complaint about EU
which I'll be coming back to further down.
Ant Farm Alien
Busting:
For those hoping
to continue their base building from the original X-Com, Firaxis has changed
how you go about building your organization. Instead of building bases
around the world, you only have one base this time around, but there is a lot
more depth to managing it.
Your base is
viewed for the side or like staring at an ant farm, at the start, the first
layer of the base is available to build structures. You can expand your base
deeper into the ground by constructing access lifts, but this will cut into
your monthly profit. Besides money, you are limited by
power, requiring you to continue expanding your power supply as you
build.
Scientist and
engineers are back with engineers a lot more important this time around. The #
of scientist working for you affects research time as before. But engineers now
affect how much manufacturing things cost and act as a gating
mechanic behind building more advanced items. Laser rifles for example require
at least 12 engineers before you can make them.
Satellites replace
the need to build bases around the world for detecting aliens. You have a
choice as to what countries to watch, which for each satellite will
increase the funding and bonuses received from that nation. More importantly
satellites will lower the panic rating for that nation. If a nation is in full
panic at the end of the month, they will drop out of the X-Com project and take
their funding with them. If 8 of the 16 nations leave the council, that is
considered a game over.
Intercepting UFOs
is a little more complex this time around thanks to the satellite mechanic. In
order to defend a country that is being monitored, you need to have
interceptors (X-Com's name for attack ships) stationed in the country to go
after UFOs. As in the original, upgrades and research will unlock better
weapons and stronger aircraft. Attacking UFOs is still basic, as you monitor
the fight from a view screen and give basic orders. The twist is that you can
now equip interceptors with one time buffs that can be used during a fight.
What really made
both the original X-Com and now EU stand out is the # of choices that are
forced on the player. You never have the time or resources to handle everything
and some part of your strategy is going to be left behind. Whether that is not
properly equipping your troops in the field, developing your base, or keeping
the nations of the world happy is up to you. This forces the player to make
difficult decisions that can come back to haunt them, and hopefully using what
they have done to turn the tide.
The Story Behind
the Strategy:
In my
retrospective piece I went over X-Com's narrative and described it as nonlinear-
linear with how the player progresses through the campaign. EU follows a
similar pattern but with some major differences to the mission structure.
As in the
original, besides surviving missions and keeping the nations happy, you also
need to perform specific actions to progress the story, which are kept on the
base screen as your current objective. Each month that goes by the enemies do
get progressively more challenging but hopefully you are improving your base
and resources to match.
One area that has
been under scrutiny is having set maps as opposed to randomized. In EU,
Firaxis has developed around 80 different maps and have said that you shouldn't
see the same ones in a single play through. I and many other people disagree
with that having played the same map several times. The reason is pretty
obvious: EU's cover system would fall apart on randomized maps both for the player
and for the AI.
EU does feature
more variety compared to X-Com, besides terror missions you'll sometimes get
requests from the council to perform special missions for rewards. These
missions are designed to break up the pace from the regular missions and I'm
not going to spoil them here.
Overall I like EU,
but there are a few design considerations that besmirch the
game a little bit.
X-Com the Board
Game:
The problems that
I have with EU stem from the designers' overall philosophy for the
game. EU isn't really a tactical strategy game like the original, but is more
of a board game. If you've been reading forums or are on my Google + feed, you
may have heard the description of EU as "gamey".
What we mean is
that there are several decisions and mechanics that remove the tactical and
strategic nature of the game for more of a board game like experience. Firstly,
how equipment works with how you have different slots on a character. In the
original you were free to mix and match a character's equipment to your
heart's content. In EU however items are limited by some illogical
decisions.
An example of how accuracy is
factored
For instance: Why
can my solider carry an infinite amount of ammo clips, but can only fit
one grenade on their belt? Or why a med kit takes up as much space as wearing a
vest under their armor?
Base building also
has some weird issues. As mentioned above, it seems like the game wants you to
amass as many engineers as possible to have any hope of keeping pace
with satellite coverage. This effectively forces you down one path as
without coverage; you won't be able to keep panic levels from reaching
critical.
One solution would
have been to allow you to move satellites to troubled areas but once again the
rules of the game prevent it.
Money is also a
major pain as it doesn't feel like you're getting as much as you should for
completing missions without blowing up any aliens. I know that the game is
supposed to force you to make tough choices, but when you're only options are
to lose now, or lose later due to the council is just a pain in the ass.
But where I have
to draw the line of letting things slide is the cover mechanic. I have several
problems with the mechanic and how it commits one of the biggest sins in my
opinion of strategy design: it makes the player and the AI play two different
games.
Cover seems to
grant the AI a greater advantage than the player thanks to the to-hit penalty it
provides. You could have an alien surrounded on three sides at close range, but
still completely miss due to the rules in effect. Not helping matters is that
you can't easily see which sides the alien is covered from and with only two
movement actions per turn can leave you screwed.
Speaking about
movement, what has to be the worst part of the tactical gameplay would have to
be giving the aliens a movement turn upon detection. Even if the alien is
already moving towards you they still receive a free turn. The reason of course
is that the designers had to give the AI a way not to walk into traps and get
behind cover. However, by having no recourse but to give the AI such an advantage
is a blatant sign of designing a poor AI to begin with. If the player
manages to get the drop on the aliens, then why shouldn't they have an
advantage?
What happens is
that the player and the AI are playing two different games which is not the
point of a tactical game. The player can't close the gap to flank enemies
because the enemies have a higher to-hit chance, meaning that they will take
out most soldiers before they get a chance to fire. Or worse, the enemy
will move on their turn and flank the attacking solider which is nine times out of ten
lethal.
Then you have the moments
when you do actually pull off a flank and still miss which happen far too often
when you have an 80% chance to hit. I can't count the # of times when I was
killed from 40 feet away in full cover by a critical shot from an alien. Cover
works too well for the enemy but the same can't be said for the player.
There should be
ways to either reduce the effectiveness of cover or target it directly without
having to resort to one time skills. It's just too much of a one way advantage
for the AI without providing the same benefits to the player.
A bug or something up with the cover system. Enemy was
not standing in any cover but my sniper was dinged with a low cover penalty
when making this shot.
I have two
solutions that would change things dramatically. A simple solution would be to
have a cumulative bonus to accuracy for anyone who fires from the
same position without moving. In terms of tactical logic it would be someone
steadying their aim to fire more accurately.
The other idea
would be to add the following abilities for both the player and the AI:
Covering
Fire: Guaranteed to
hit for no damage, but will counter overwatch.
Keep Your
Head Down: Only works
in full cover makes the next projectile based attack on the character miss. But
will either damage the cover or outright destroy it in the process.
Suppressing Fire: Requires two characters. Locks
down the enemy preventing them from moving, firing or going into overwatch for
their turn phase.
These abilities
would add another dynamic to cover and prevent one unit from effectively
stopping a group from advancing thanks to staying in full cover. More
importantly they would be shared with the AI requiring the player to
adapt the same way and allow both sides to play the same game. And that last
sentence is an important part of what made the original X-Com so popular.
In the original,
you were of course at a huge disadvantage at the start due to the difference in
attributes between your squaddies and the aliens. However your troops improved
over time as they continue shooting and eventually high ranked and better
equipped troops would close the stat gap. That doesn't happen in EU: a sniper
still has just as much of a poor chance hitting an enemy in full cover as
someone with a laser rifle. Losing a complete squad of your best guys is pretty
much a game over as you can't recoup the money and time easily.
I know that I'm
coming down hard on EU and contrary to what I've written I really enjoyed the
game. Firaxis has done a lot to capture the multi-system progression from the original
and adapt it to today's audience. But when you have a game that is really
good, the remaining problems with the design stick out that much more because
of it.
At the end of the
day X-Com Enemy Unknown compares to the original in my opinion, like Deus Ex:
Human Revolution to the first Deus Ex: It's a game that managed to revitalized
a brand by capturing what made the original great in the first place. But it
doesn't invalidate the original which is still amazing on its own.
Josh Bycer
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