: That's a game I've never played even though I know it's well thought of. You
: mean the original or the new one? I think Enemy Unknown is in the Mac App
: Store.
: Sell me on it, we're building our list of games now :)
The original is only for PC, so quite sadly that one is not an option. However, even if the new one isn't quite as good as the original, it keeps the important stuff and is definitely more accessible.
So yes, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, or if you get the new DLC, XCOM: Enemy Within. It's 20 minutes into the future, and Earth has been attacked by extraterrestrials. Numerous nations have made an effort to combat these threats alone, but none have been successful. And thus, the nations of the world activate the XCOM project. An international organization of the world's best soldiers, scientists, pilots, engineers, and equipment. You respond to threats like abduction missions, landed UFO's, etcetera, and deploy your ground team to neutralize any threats. Your pilots can also shoot down UFO's, and your teams can also be deployed to the crash sites. Meanwhile, your science and engineering sections are working on closing the gap between our technology and that of the invaders.
When you deploy a strike team, gameplay switches to that of a turn-based strategy, which is where the real gameplay takes place. Both you and enemies can move into the pieces of half and full cover, go into overwatch, and hunker down. You have two turn units per soldier that decide what they may or may not have time for. Regular moving takes one turn unit, dashing takes two, and hunkering down and overwatch take one. Shooting simply uses however many turn units you have left, so if you fire at the start of a unit's turn, they won't be able to do anything else, yet they can still fire after moving. Overwatched units can take a single "reaction shot" with an aim penalty on the enemy's turn if one of them moves while in the unit's sight. Hunkering down doubles their defense and makes them immune to crits. You can only use one per unit at a time, and you can't move while they're active. You have a squad of four soldiers initially, but that can be upgraded later to five, and then six.
And those soldiers are going to die.
A lot.
Each unit is an individual, with a consistent name, appearance, and stats. And each one is very much mortal, and the former traits make it all the much harder when one demonstrates that fact. The best you can do is play smart and try to keep those deaths to a minimum, but even then some are still going to slip through the cracks.
And yet It's things like these that can make for some of the generally awesome moments in the game. Your sniper hitting that ridiculously low percentage shot, the squad of rookies that you had to send to a mission because there was noone else to send coming home unscathed, holding the line when you accidentally activate three groups at once.
If you'd like, I can send you a few links that really would give a much better idea of what it's like than this wall of text did.
