XCOM: Enemy Unknown [Special Edition]

by 2K Games

• Global Threat: Lead your squad in fierce battles to defeat the alien threat, and rescue civilians in crowded cities and desolate outlands around the world.
• Strategic Base of Operations: Build and expand your XCOM headquarters, recruit and develop unique soldiers to take into battle, and research alien technology to expand your weapons and capabilities.
• Tactical Multiplayer: Mix and match aliens and soldiers and combine abilities to outsmart and overpower your opponent.
• Requires internet connection and free Steam account to activate
• Special Edition Features include a fold out poster of the XCOM base- An art book detailing the conceptual journey of re-imagining the classic, a patch of the XCOM Viglio/Confido insignia and digital bonus items including multi-monitor desktops, soundrack and more.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B006WQR3OM
• Item Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: October 9, 2012
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (396 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,746 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Platform: PC

Amazon.com

Threatened by an unknown enemy, the Earth's governments unite to form a secret paramilitary organization, known as XCOM, to combat this extraterrestrial attack. As the commander of XCOM, you control the global defense team and its resources in a battle against the terrifying alien invasion.

Re-imagining of X-COM

Worldwide Threat

Control the fate of the human race

Synopsis

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a re-imagining of X-COM, the classic strategy game from 1993, and developed by the award-winning creators of Civilization. You will control the fate of the human race by creating and managing a fully operational base, researching alien technologies, planning combat missions and controlling soldier movement in battle.

Key Features:

• Worldwide Threat: Combat spans the globe as the XCOM team engages in more than 70 unique missions, interacting and negotiating with governments around the world
  
• Strategic Base: Recruit, customize and grow unique soldiers and manage your personnel. Detect and intercept the alien threat as you build and expand your XCOM headquarters
  
• Strategy Evolved: XCOM: Enemy Unknown couples tactical turn-based gameplay with incredible action sequences and on-the-ground combat
  
• Tactical Combat: Direct soldier squads in turn-based ground battles and deploy air units such as the Interceptor and Skyranger
  
• Instantly receive a new recruit to your barracks, inspired by the original XCOM: UFO DEFENSE. The khaki jumpsuit and flattop hairstyle return in full glory, modernized with the rest of the XCOM universe in the form of a Classic XCOM Soldier
  
• Customize your soldier with several armor suit aesthetic upgrades, including the new Hyperion and Reaper soldier armor kits with the Soldier Deco Packs
  
• Customize your squad's look with a variety of colors and tints for all the armor sets in the game with Complete Color Customization

Product Description

Threatened by an unknown enemy, the Earth's governments unite to form a secret paramilitary organization, known as XCOM, to combat this extraterrestrial attack. As the commander of XCOM, you control the global defense team and its resources in a battle against the terrifying alien invasion. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a reimagining of X-COM, the classic strategy game from 1993, and developed by the award-winning creators of Civilization. You will control the fate of the human race by creating and managing a fully operational base, researching alien technologies, planning combat missions, and controlling soldier movement in battle.

See all Product Description

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

99 of 107 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars It's a fun game, but often frustrating October 17, 2012

By Raoul Ortega

Platform for Display:PC Download

I pre-ordered this game on the strength of its demo, and I have not played the first game. So I'm approaching it from scratch. As a fan of strategy games, I like the idea a lot, and it's a fairly elegant combination of base management and tactical turn-based combat. Here's some pros and cons from my point of view:

Pro's:

- Customization: Of course lots of games have character creators these days to let you customize, but it's nice to scale that up to allow customization to every one of your soldiers. You can name your soldiers after your friends, celebrities, historical figures... whatever you want. Then you can do your best to make them look the part, probably not something everyone does, but I find I'm more attached to soldiers I've customized and thus more careful with them. (Though I still don't get why character creators have about 30 facial hair options without a single handle-bar mustache option, what gives?)

- Balance: Squad balance becomes very important as the game goes on. I generally end up with a sniper, a medic, a heavy and three assault troops. But playing with other configurations can be fun. My all sniper missions generally met with less success than my all drone missions, but there was fun to be had.

- Panic!!: This is the main strategic factor that helps you determine where to put your satellites, and which missions to do when there's a choice. I like this a lot, and really it's the only thing that gives the game replay value.... The way panic situation plays out will determine which countries fund you as the game goes on, this determines how large a welfare check you get at the start of the month (You are given money once per month, based on which countries are actively funding you), how many scientists and engineers you have, etc. I also like that the choices aren't always easy. Say you've got very high panic level in South Africa, then they give you a mission where you get to choose to help France, China or Nigeria. France and China may be higher panic than Nigeria, and none of these choices are going to help South Africa directly, but if you don't pick Nigeria then panic goes up in EVERY African country... which may push South Africa over the edge.

Cons:

- Bugs: I hate docking for bugs because there's every possibility that these will be fixed by the time you're considering buying the game, but for now there are some bugs. I'm not talking about RNG-rage where you sit there and say "oh that is BS!" as one of your soldiers dies (though that definitely does happen). As other reviewers have noted, cover is sometimes bugged at this time. A perfect example is a situation where you have a soldier in cover, and across from you there is an enemy in cover, with no-man's-land between. The helpful icon on the screen shows a solid red alien face icon, which means you can shoot at an alien but they are in cover (reducing your chance to hit and crit). So, to make your attack more effective, you charge the alien, get behind his cover and wait to see that alien icon turn yellow (indicating you can shoot an alien who is not behind cover from your angle of attack) Well sometimes that just doesn't happen, there's nothing covering the alien, but he still gets the defensive bonus, your attack maybe hits him but he lives, next turn he shoots your now exposed soldier, crits and you're writing a letter home to explain to Mrs. Dash that aunt Jemima was killed in combat (Sometimes i named soldiers while hungry)... it's frustrating. There are other bugs that don't let you click on mission devices to use them. I've only had one crash, not a huge deal as it autosaves each turn.

- Repetition: In terms of mission type, we've only got 5: 1)Kill all aliens, 2)Extract VIP, 3)Defuse bomb, 4)Rescue Civilians, 5)Clear UFO/Base (Which is really a glorified 'kill all aliens' but 5 sounds a lot better than 4. Nothing really wrong with that, and arguably there's just not a way to make more creative mission type. First playthrough, I ended up doing about 60 missions, that got pretty tedious.

- Inventory System: I know, anytime someone starts griping about inventory it just seems whiny, but there are legitimate issues here, especially late game. By the end of the game you will probably have a lot of soldiers you use. By this point you will have ranked up a lot of soldiers and you may rotate some in/out of the squad based on the mission and their individual specialties. But high end equipment gets expensive, so you'll want to share armor and such. You may find yourself in a situation where you have to play a game called find-the-titan-armor. This is where you have to clear a soldier from your squad, add another soldier in his or her place, and see if they're wearing your very expensive late game armor (so you can have them take it off and put it instead on whoever you wanted to bring along). It shouldn't work like this, it should just be that all of your equipment across all of your soldiers is selectable when equipping a squad. Captain Crunch isn't coming on the mission, so I don't need him wandering around the base with my plasma rifle that could be used by Colonel Sanders on this mission.

- Panic!!!: I'm not talking about the country panic level described above, I'm talking about panic within the tactical-turn-based part of the game. Sometimes, when fighting horrible alien things that shake your faith in everything you've been raised to believe, you get a little scared... this is understandable. But I just think this mechanic is poorly executed, basically, when things go wrong in the game, sometimes your soldiers will panic. When panicked, they will perform a random action and be useless for a turn. That random action may be a harmless 'hunker down', it may be a friendly-fire incident that crits and kills your sniper named Wesley Snipes, or it may even be a random lucky shot that kills the alien that made your soldier panic in the first place. I just think the idea of a super-elite-multi-national-fighting-squad is inconsistent with someone panicking at the first appearance of zerglings... I mean, really? I know it's terrifying... but we all played starcraft, time to man up

Thus we have my review. I do enjoy the game, and I've put 70ish hours into it already, but the flaws are enough to make it a frustrating experience sometimes. Read more ›

123 of 137 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great game -- hopefully won't go the way of the original... October 9, 2012

By Quentin Gerlach

Platform for Display:PC|Amazon Verified Purchase

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

The X-Com series dates back to the early 90's -- I still remember the hours I spent on X-COM: UFO Defense... In fact, the game is considered by many to be one of the greatest (if not the greatest) strategy games ever developed. With the randomly generated maps -- concept of fog of war and line of sight -- getting shot at from nowhere -- permanent death -- and that fantastically good music that so fit the mood of the game, it's no wonder many still play it, almost 20 years after it was released.

There's been many efforts to remake/redo the game, with how far computers have come since then, but no big game companies decided to take it on, until now, and I do believe I'm in good company when I say that Firaxis really have a winner on their hands...

First the box -- this is the special edition version, so you get the artwork book and a nice insignia thing. I appreciated the artwork book, especially when they showed some of the original designs and the updated ones -- it's really amazing to see how far things have come from the early 90s, in terms of the capabilities of computers. Poster was nice too - but that's all just fluff to me. If you're downloading it, be prepared to wait: there's 2 DVDs in the box, so that's around 13-14 GBs of data. Well worth it.

There's already tons of reviews and videos out there about the gameplay, so I'll stick with some lesser known ones, for some pros and cons:

PROS:
- I really like the addition of new mission types -- the original only had terror, crashed UFOs, landed UFOs, and alien bases.... The new ones adds VIP retrieval, bomb disarming, and I believe one other one (turns out its target extraction - there's a difference between it and VIP -- usually, in target extraction, whoever you save actually joins your team). This helps to shake things up, as the old one tended to get repetitive, especially once you researched heavy plasma. Shoot down UFO, send in soldiers, blast away those pathetic alien scum with some heavy plasma, clean up: wash, rinse, repeat. Now, things can still get tense -- even late in the game.
- The soundtrack really stands out to me. Music really has an ability to heighten moments and situations, if done correctly. The original did an amazing job of capturing the creepiness and emotion that danger really could be behind every corner -- and they did it again. Major props to whoever did the sound/music on this one.
- Multiplayer: this one your mileage may vary with. Me personally - it's nice to sometimes play as the aliens. It's also pretty interesting to see how others react in a given situation (some choose to barge, some choose to flank, some choose a decoy, some choose stealth) -- everyone reacts differently. It's also nice to know I'm not the only one who accidentally dashes instead of just moving to get a better shot.
- Medikit: thank you for allowing me to heal the soldier who carries the medkit. If anyone remembers the original, it was a PAIN to have to heal your guys. Had to be facing them -- couldn't heal yourself (had to drop it (throw it) - have someone else pick it up, then use it. Make sure you don't run out of time units. Ridiculous) It gets a whole lot simpler now. Thank you 2K.

CONS:
- They took out base defense. This really annoyed me. In the original, depending on the difficulty and how well you were doing, the aliens would send ships to take out your base(s). It was a cool way to see your base from the battle mode, and it was an interesting way of keeping you on your toes. They took it out in this one, which disappoints me somewhat. Hopefully they might bring it back...
- Soldiers can't kneel (goin prone would've nice to add). This sucks. Cover is a big part of the game - don't use cover, and you're pretty much goin to die. In the original however, you could also kneel (while not in cover), which not only made it harder for you to hit, but increased your own soldier's accuracy. They got rid of that ability in this game, which really bugs me. Why can't I kneel while not in cover? Why can't I go prone -- that would've been nice to add... Maybe it's just me though.
- Stunning: this wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't critical to the game. But it is. In the original, eventually you would research Stun Bomb/Stun Launcher, which made stunning the required aliens a whole lot easier. They took that away. The ONLY weapon to stun with is a close ranged one. You can research to increase its range - but it only goes from like 2 to 4. Plus its a hefty cost. This makes stunning a heck of a lot harder. Plus a bunch of the aliens you have to stun have to be injured before they can even GET stunned. What the heck?? Basically -- it becomes impossible. Be prepared to lose a bunch of guys just because of stunning.

Those are really the two biggest gripes I have -- pretty amazing, considering the game they remade. Guaranteed game of the year right here -- this game will certainly be responsible for me not getting sleep, and that not just becau... you hear that??

Someone there???...

UPDATE (10/12/2012) -- finished the game, and it really is quite good. I can definitely see indicators of a sequel coming out... I edited my list above, most good, a few bad. But it really is quite an excellent game. And challenging - dang Impossible mode... Read more ›

62 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This will suck your life away October 10, 2012

By Geomancer

Platform for Display:PC Download|Amazon Verified Purchase

Hello Commander, and welcome to XCOM: Enemy Unknown

This is a game I have been following very closely for months after I learned of its development. I have very fond memories of the original game which I had until now still pulled out and played every couple of years for old times sake.

So how is this newest iteration? In short, it's pretty good and a lot of fun. Easily the best turn-based game of the year.

Now, I'm going to write this review in comparison to the original game that any 'old time' gamer has likely played as it was massively popular during its prime. The biggest mistake people who have not followed the development of the game make is assuming this is just an HD remake of the original. It isn't. It's a re-imaging, which means they took the concept and made their own game around it. Same world, most of the same aliens, a lot of the same weapons, but implemented in a new way.

All of the old mission types are still in this game, with the exception of one which is base defense. In its place there are a few new mission types: Bomb Disposal, VIP Escort, and Abduction. The ending is also different, there is no Cydonia, but I won't spoil it for you.

Bomb Disposal you have 3 turns to reach the bomb and disarm it before it blows, but there are power nodes scattered on the map that each one you reach will give you an extra turn.

VIP Escort you either have to find the VIP, then bring them back to the Skyranger or you start at the VIP and must fight your way back. As the VIP moves across the field, new aliens will jump in and must be killed immediately or there is a good chance the VIP will die.

Abduction missions are a simple deathmatch (kill all aliens) but ...... they come at you three at once and you can only choose one to complete. This game is all about forcing you to make hard decisions. Each mission offers a different reward (§200, 4 Engineers, 4 Scientists, or a veteran soldier). Another factor is world wide panic, completing an abduction mission will reduce panic in that country, while the other two will increase in panic (along with the continents they are on). More on panic later, and also decisions.

Combat:

The 'Battlescape' is where combat takes place, you field a squad of 4-6 troops for each mission. Fans of the old game may cringe that this is half, or less than half, but they make up for it in that each troop has a class. Assault (up close and personal), Heavy (rockets and machine gun), Support (medic/buffer), and Sniper (Long Range). Every class has a skill tree so you can customize how they specialize. The trees are not all that deep, only two choices at most ranks, with Squaddie and Major only offering one choice (their signature abilities).

So does that mean your guys are super soldiers instead of easily one shot killed fodder? Nope... While they can do far more than the original game soldiers, they will still die fairly easily to mistakes. Combat in this game is heavily cover based, while the original game had no cover. No cover? None at all, it had concealment and there is a difference.

Geoscape:

This is now referred to by the developers and the community as the ant farm, and is a cross section view of your base as the main screen, while in the original game the main screen was the globe. Here you manage your base, manage your soldiers, manage aircraft, manage research, and manage manufacturing.

While you only have one base, you do have 4 other interceptor bases that you need to station fighters in to protect your satellites. Satellites are your radar, they are needed to detect UFOs. So, in the old game you build new bases to expand radar coverage and get interceptors in range. In the new game you build satellites to expand coverage and assign interceptors to continents to protect them as the aliens can, and will, attempt to destroy your satellites. Satellites are VERY expensive and take a long time to build, protect them with your life. The loss of a satellite will instantly max out panic for that country, and increase panic for the entire continent. It is VERY bad news.

Intercepting UFOs is a little different, instead of choosing how close you want to get you instead can use one time use items to boost your aim, dodge, or time to intercept. You will not get these immediately but must research and build them. You can only send a single interceptor at a time, unlike the original game which let you send multiple ships for larger UFOs. Honestly, this part of the game feels under developed, they could have done a lot more with this.

Money is extremely tight in this game, and there is no way to 'game' the system like in the old game and build up a manufacturing powerhouse that can fund itself even if the funding nations pull out. You will need every funding country you can get! This forces you to make a choice of what to build because you will never have enough money for it all until late game. And you are so limited you pretty much only get a single choice per game month in the early stages. Choose well!

The ant farm is also where you manage panic levels. Each country has a panic meter, and if it is full at the end of a game month that country will leave the council. Loose 8 countries and it is game over, this is the only way to lose the game. There are many ways panic can rise or fall. I'll talk a little more on this in the next section on difficulty. In short though, panic will rise faster than it falls and satellites are necessary to have any sort of control.

Difficulty:

The game comes with 4 modes: Easy, Normal, Classic, and Impossible. In addition you can enable an optional setting called "Ironman" which will not allow you to make custom save files, you only get a single auto-save. In Ironman Mode there is no undo button when you make a mistake, you must live with your choices good or bad. You can still quit the game and load up your save, you just can't hit the reload button if you get your squad killed.

Easy and Normal are both frankly fairly easy. You'll be punished for mistakes in Normal, but the game scales itself back big time with a dumber AI and limiting the number of aliens you will fight at any give time. If you stumble upon too many, it will have a group fall back into the fog of war.

Classic however is a real kick in the pants. It was played up as for experts of the original game ... but even so you will get dominated most likely. The difference between Normal and Classic is massive. Not only do enemies have a little more health (you would be surprised how much a single hit point can change things), but the AI is fully unlocked, there is no limit to the number of aliens that will attack you, and they have better aim and critical chance. You may very well learn to fear the simple Thin Man alien that has insane aim and crit chance. Your troops are more likely to panic as well. The loss of a veteran squad of troops can very well mean the loss of the entire game as your rookies will be hard pressed to survive without anyone to support them. Honestly, this game is far harder than the original game.

The other challenge with Classic/Impossible is managing panic. On these upper difficulty settings panic rises faster from failed missions and abduction missions. You will likely lose some, probably a lot of them, and the best you can hope for is not losing more than 7 before you finish the game. That said, on Classic it is possible to save them all, but this partially depends on luck for where Abduction missions occur. It is speculated that on Impossible it literally is not possible to keep panic low enough to play forever, the only way to win is to finish the games objectives before too many countries bail on you. The 'strategy layer' (Geoscape/ant farm) may very well prove to be far more difficult for you than the tactical game.

For you X-COM vets out there, swallow your pride if Classic kicks your butt, and give Normal a go until you learn the new games mechanics. I know I had to.

Graphics and Sound:

The game uses the Unreal engine, so graphics are on par with that. I think they're pretty decent, but they will not blow you away. The music and sound effects are both good, you still get that creepy feeling as you hear aliens moving around in the dark wondering if they'll wander onto your guys while they're all out of ammo or if you have another turn to reload before you find them.

PC requirements for the game are fairly low so most should be able to play it if they have anything about the integrated HD graphics that comes with the intel i series (i3, i5, i7).

Controls:

This may be the only sore spot for PC players, the interface isn't the best and clearly was designed around console controllers. You can change key bindings, but until you learn the interface it can be a little frustrating. The use of a gamepad is fully supported (and probably easier to play with).

Multiplayer:

I can't speak on this as I have not played it. What I know though is there is only a Deathmatch mode, no co-op or objective based multiplayer. A game is set up with a set 'point' pool and a time limit for turns. You then 'buy' units with your points. If you would rather, you can set points to be unlimited and make the best squad possible (of course your opponent will do the same). You can use both humans and aliens in a mixed squad, or go all human or all alien. For humans you can customize their gear and select a perk package. The perks are not individually selectable.

Play Time:

The play time for this game is fairly short for a strategy game. Around 15-20 hours of so for an Easy/Normal playthrough if you keep trucking along and don't reload your game every time something bad happens. For Classic, add 5-10 hours. You may say this is short in relation to the old game, but keep in mind that people have beat the old game in under 10 minutes. The times I give are for a fairly complete game, it's possible to finish it faster, and it is also possible to keep playing for as long as you like (provided you can keep panic under control).

Conclusion:

The game is pretty solid. The game does have its fair share of bugs. There has been one patch so far, but it only fixed a few issues known before the game came out. I have in my 52 hours of playtime encountered one game stopping bug. I was able to recover from it, but not without some cost to my game. The bug involved my interceptors and I was forced to dismiss all of mine from one of my bases which resulted in a UFO getting missed and a satellite destroyed, ouch! You may or may not want to hold off doing Ironman (mine was) until some patches if you want to play it safe.

Be careful of a lot of false rumors out there, for example IGN was unhappy that aliens were all static and didn't patrol around. Well, I can account personally on how false that statement is. They can and do patrol! Depends a lot on the mission type you are one. Some groups are static (don't move) while others are dynamic (they patrol). The council missions are all static (VIP and Bomb), while Terror missions are all dynamic. The others are a mix of the two.

The game is highly rated, and it deserves it in my opinion. This is a game I will continue to play many times as I try to at least beat Classic Ironman, if not Impossible.

Steam is required no matter what PC version you get (digital or physical) so be aware of that. It employs a one time online activation, after which you can put steam into offline mode and continue to play. You may install it as many times as you want, on as many computers as you want. Of course, you can only play on one at a time.

Good Luck Commander! Read more ›