It’s a lot to fit onto the Vita, especially considering Enemy Unknown and Within both wheezed a fair bit on PS3. It makes a great game even better, addressing some of the late game issues whilst unfortunately adding a couple of new ones of a lesser consequence.
Enemy Within inserts a new secondary story into the campaign, with new enemy types, plus a bigger selection of maps, customization options and some lovely new toys for your team to try out including cybernetic implants, mech suits and gene therapy. The ‘Plus’ part of XCOM: Enemy Unknown Plus simply means this is EU with all of the huge expansion pack of Enemy Within built into it as well. You always pay in blood in the end, one way or another. Nothing quite beats the feeling of pulling it off though, living another day because you built that satellite in time, or got your boys and girls home safe and successfully pushed back against the alien menace.That said, you’ll still be incredibly fortunate if they don’t come back severely injured in the process. The early months of any XCOM campaign are chaotic and stressful, as potential disasters pile up on your doorstep at an alarming rate. When panic reaches its crescendo, that country leaves the XCOM program, and the war gets that little bit harder to fight. You help one country, another will suffer, and panic will rise there.
A misstep can see your pro group of super soldiers torn to ribbons in the space of just two turns.Įverything balances on that knife edge, even back at base the pressure to please the different nations funding you by bailing them out of trouble when it crops up becomes a heavy burden. XCOM never leaves you certain of anything like it does about the demise of your squad. The hook of XCOM is that when your soldiers are killed on the battlefield, there is little to no chance of bringing them back, and as a result, you get attached to long-serving soldiers as they rank up and gain you abilities and equipment, but you end up terrified that one lucky shot could end them for good, and to be honest, it probably will. Your squad is filled out with four regular ‘classes’ in the Assault, Sniper, Medic and Heavy types, but you do get the chance to differentiate what they can do for you thanks to a branching skill tree. It’s a delightfully cheesy and melodramatic backdrop for the nervy chess game you’re actually playing. In these, and the subsequent reboot, you are tasked with controlling the actions of a squad of elite soldiers sent out to take on the threat of alien invasion with a healthy dollop of backup from H.Q.
For the uninitiated, XCOM EU is a 2012 reboot of the classic 90’s Julian Gollop series of turn-based strategy titles of the (sort of) same name (X-COM rather than XCOM).