XCOM Enemy Unknown Angry Review
Release Date: October 9th, 2012
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, Windows PC
Developer: Firaxis Games
Publisher: 2k Games
Genre: Turn Based Strategy
Players: 1 Offline Player, 2 Players Online
Aliens Invade Earth and Angry Joe is forced to bring back the legendary XCOM project! Can it live up to the original? Find out!
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163 thoughts on “XCOM Enemy Unknown Angry Review”
The deaths are very sad. I felt like crying after my Rambo died. 69 missions, 109 kills and THEN she fucking dies >_<
after the blood bowl tourney is over, how about some x-com tourney?
Have you ever cryed during this game
because if the deaths are not sad I will not get the game
It’s a real shame that I never played the original game, it must have been complex and time consuming. Just the way I like it. But seriously, this game is great, though I tend to be so meticulous that it starts to work against me in the long run. And because of this, I have yet to actually beat the game. Sadness.
still saving up a budget. but i’m about to buy this next and 2 more games.
me and a friend keep playing this game he controls half the squad i get the other half its quite fun great game
I LOVE Turn Based XCOM !!
I definately agree with you. I am glad to see that strategic games are still valued and loved by others than myself, but i have known that for a long time.
Would you recommend this game if someone couldnt play this game on pc so they wanted to get it for console
Oh its still very much worth it. I dont think theres anything left out.
base defence is left out
I play for the console and it seems to be just as good as pc version. Totally worth buying on either
The X-COM music feels even more rich and epic with your introduction. I love this f-ng game. I’m on my third playthrough.
sorry i put this in the wrong column previously.
Probably my favourite game of 2012. The ending was a let down, and I hope it is expanded on in a follow up (perhaps earth set in the future?)
Would also love more variation in the maps to make every play thorugh more unique. Is random map generating possible? :S
Joe sold me on this game and I’m glad he did because I wouldn’t have even heard of it otherwise. It’s really fun, while the main story is short you can certainly get a lot of hours out of this game if you don’t rush in on priority missions. He is right about the ending, It could use some expansion on the cinematic, I’d like to at least celebrate my victory and view the memorial wall to commemorate the soldiers who died on the final mission (my entire squad got massacred). The Final battle is, ok, could be better could be worse, still I barely beat it myself (on easy -_-). Still my favorite part of this game is the story in my head between my characters. Overall it’s a really fun game thank you Joe for introducing it to me :]
This game really brings the nostalgic part of my life back to life. My only gripe is the game is lacking of base defence mechanics from alien invasion. I do hope XCOM will pave the way to allow developers or publishers to look back and rejuvenate some of the old but extreme fun games in the sci fi sphere. For example like Alien Legacy.
oh yeah that was a good one! I think maybe with adding a little action and story. But having those different crew members as council was fun huh?
I wasn’t really expecting much from this game. I thought it will never ever be as good as the original. However, after watching your review I decided to give it a go. So based on your review I bought this game and man. You’re absolutely right! This game is beyond awesome. It is fantastic, BRUTALLY punishing and frustratingly awesome. This is something I really miss in modern too easy games. Thank you very much Joe for all the effort you put into your reviews and for your advice.
Dude, sweet vid!
When this came out i swear I was jizzin my pant to get my hands on it.
And boy, was I excited when i actually did.
BUT with huge excitement came adequate depression.
Even tho I agree with you on vast majority, I dont think it wasnt dumbed. For example the research? Damn, theres like 20% research options. Another thing – the objectives. While in the original UFO you had to find out what to do on your own (the tough way), now everything is so narrowly lined up for you – it made me feel like kind of a slave behind the keyboard.
Also its no way near as scary as the oldskool one.
And the ending was a HUGE letdown. I friggin killed that boss with a single sniper! Two shots, one round, game over!!! WTF???
I would really expect a game I anticipated for 15 or so years to deliver more than 7 hours of feverish fun ended by a lame boss of no importance to the whole invasion :///
Sure I had massive expectations but in the end, they screwd what mattered higly to me – the spookiness, variability of locations and !FOES!, many research options, hours of depression while figuring out how to stop them and the epicness and difficulty of laying siege to that fuckin Mars base plus that feeling your really earned your victory!
Generally, very good job but to screw games ending is to screw the memory you have of playing it – 6/10…
u said Jizzin.
This game is just awsome. I got the same chill and unforgetable excitment as I had when i was playing UFO Defence and Terror from the Deep. Developer changed few things but beside no Xcom base raids i think all alterations added tension and climat of impending doom. You really get to feel the hopelessness of global ufo invasion – and through choices u must take during the game u get sucked into the game even more than in the original.
I get how Joe graded this game 9 – He has to take multiple things into consideration – for me its simpler – for my taste its solid 10, and so far the best game i played this year.
Cheers
this game is truely one of the best games of the year i like the third person shooter aspect also i like the fact its not easy cause it makes you i dont know actual try in a video game so games to me seem so dull wth the theres an enemy shoot it until it dies mentality the fact you have to actually think in combat is great enough only think holding it back is constant glitches but besides that it is an awesome game one of my favorite games its on my never sell shelf along wth mass effect trilogy game ps# owners like myself is a must buy you can play mass effect 1 now
Just got through the game on classic for first time gonna try classic Iron man next love this game
i love this game, not because of the gameplay, not because of the graphic, not because of the things you can do……but because being from argentina, i like to think the one that survives the tutorial as the protagonist!!!
you know he is not always from argentina… or a man. But hey, mine was too on the first run.
Love this game. i know people feel its “watered down” but i really enjoy this new take on xcom. Had to play it on normal for a full play through because classic was brutal. after that normal run i started a classic run again and while it did start out brutal again…and in one mission i lost all of my top ranked troops…i carried on and was able to recover…….albiet losing at least 1-2 people almost every mission until i was finally able to get plasma weapons and at least one sniper up to the rank of COL. even with all the good games out this year so far this one has kept my attention.
I must admit that I’ve had a difficult time whether I should buy this or not.
Well with the available demo to download on the 360, I had the first time experience of what this series has to offer.
And do I have to make my self clear. It blew my mind away, so interesting that I’d ended up picking up the PC version, mainly because I have an feeling quality might even surpass that of the xbox.
Thanks again for the review Joe. I wouldn’t have considered it, if I hadn’t heard so much good things about this.
Now just have to wait for it to download from Stream and I can’t wait to get my hands on the full version.
MY TYPE OF GAME!!!!!!!
Hey Joe,
I never played the original XCOM, but I was a big-big fan of Fallout: Tactics. Would you recommend this game for me?
hey man, just wanna say thanx for doing a GREAT job reviewing games as you do it. keep it up and please dont sell your soul if you still own it. this dark age of market gaming definitely needs a Spanish Inquisition or soon anything that will be produced would have the complexity of tetris with only squares to stack up. i know we are already there but im in denial. i love games. thought they will evolve through time, that creativity would explode and feed my always hungry imagination. instead i got eyecandy and the most atrociously dumb stories and scenarios to go with it written by slavetraders on crystalmeth. its like receiving for your birthday a fully mature and perfectly rendered, pixelshaded and tesselated freshly shat SHIT instead of an 16colour 320×200 cake. i have stopped buying games around y 2000. whatever came after and would pass as “games” made me retch because my intelligence was repeatedly insulted by every means and in all the ways possible using a cartesian product set. after all these years this is the first game i bought. (ofc i tried a cracked version of it for some time to get to actually see what im gonna pay for and not to get driven to buy it by my wishes and awakened memories of the first 3 games of the xcom series). i endorse your review of this game as being true and accurate.
to everyone: plz dont buy games as preorders or anyhow without TRYING THE GAME FIRST FOR SOME TIME. play it then pay for it. IF ITS WORTH IT. if you dont do that you encourage the industrial production of crap games as in a true communist era economy. a game should be produced as a work of art made by artisans not as fodder for cattle.
I played the original game on a PC emulator a couple years ago. I loved this game so much and I remember how shocked I was when I discovered that they were remaking the game into an FPS. Really? I only realized that it was actually a faithful remake of the original when I walked into EB Games one day and saw it laying on a shelf. You can imagine how surprised I was. If the ending was more climactic and they extended the actual base-building aspect of the game (because you end up building nothing but workshops and laboratorys near the end), it would’ve been my favorite game of the year. Well… What can you do besides enjoy what you got eh?
I love strategy games! Especialy ones that needs thinking to Black and White 2 was fun and Halo Wars was good when i get the money this game is next! Muhaha!
I had never heard of this game before this review, and now i am glad that i know of it! I absolutely adore this game, THANK YOU JOE! Ive had sooooo much fun, the best feeling is to have your ”veteran” which is named after your best friend or yourself make it through the game, im going to replay this game until i beat the impossible difficulty, which i probably never will… But thank you for opening my eyes for such a wonderful game!
Reviewed the game a few time ago too, loved it, it’s realy a great game and I agree with your review. The motivations of the aliens are kind of explained in the final mission with a mighty psycher ! But only kind of.
On PC there are some bugs on the GUI though, some things that are not working as good as you would wish them to. Like the camera unmovable with the arrow keys when launching a rocket or a grenade because it switch to the following or previous action :/
About a sequel, I deeply hope they will skip Terror of the deep which was the commercial Micropose sequel and maybe do something new or directly go to X-Com Apocalypse, the Gillop brother’s sequel, were you had a more complex and political gameplay since the XCOM fundings came from various corporations and not from the UN!
You have to play this game on high end pc to truly appreciate the graphics this game offers.
After playing this game almost none stop for two weeks, I can honestly say this is one of the best, if not the best game on the xbox360 at the moment. It was a brave move to re-make a turn-based strategy game for which the market fizzeled out in the mid/late 90s, and one that its fanbased loved so much that any attempt at a remake would come with criticism. Firaxis have managed both, releasing a game that really does bring the genre into this generation of gaming and has enough of the drama of the previous version to keep at least some of the original fans happy…
I am a huge fan of turn based strategy. just installed the game from steam gonna play it now