Last October, Firaxis and 2K Games released XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It was a reboot of a classic strategy game that was adored by many. Enemy Unknown kind of took the gaming world by surprise. It wasn’t your typical AAA game. It was punishing, it is not fast paced, and it didn’t have the marketing budget as most big games do. But it stood out on its own, ending up on multiple game of the year lists, and was one of my favorite games of 2012. A little over a year later, Enemy Within has its first major expansion, called XCOM: Enemy Within. And like all great expansions, it takes an already excellent game and makes it better.
Enemy Within plays very similarly to Enemy Unknown. You are in charge of a multinational military group that is given the task of repelling an alien invasion of Earth. There are many elements to the game. The majority of the game is fighting aliens using a turn-based combat system. As stated earlier, the game will punish you if you do not plan your tactics correctly. Even on the normal setting, there will be missions where you fail horribly. But as you continue to complete missions and learn how to effectively take on the enemies, the combat becomes very enjoyable.
The main focus of Enemy Within is the addition of the MEC unit. By acquiring a new element called “meld,” you can modify XCOM operatives to become mechs, which increases their health, gives them a better weapon, and a special attack to use on aliens. It is a really awesome addition to the game to see huge operatives in massive mech suits fighting along side normal operatives. In addition to the MEC class, you can modify operatives using the meld to have better eyesight, the ability to jump on top of buildings, and other augmentations. After playing with these modifications, it is hard to think about going back to Enemy Unknown.
Another big addition to the game is the EXALT enemy faction. These are humans that are trying to become friends with the aliens to take their technology to rule the world once the aliens leave. It is up to the XCOM operatives to stop EXALT from doing so. I like the addition of EXALT to the game. It allows for more mission types. If you uncover an EXALT base, you can send an operative to sabotage it, which then produces a special mission where you must rescue that operative. While the EXALT faction isn’t absolutely necessary, it helps break up the repetitive missions.
Like any good expansion, there are some new alien enemy types, new maps, and just more stuff to do. One addition to the game that I really enjoyed was the ability to earn medals. You can rename them, assign a perk to the medal, and award it to one of your operatives. It is a cool feature that is greatly missing from Enemy Unknown.
While Enemy Within takes a lot of the good stuff from Enemy Unknown and makes it better, it also brought over some of the glitches from Enemy Unknown. There are still many graphical glitches, and sometimes the enemy can shoot through walls and containers even though they don’t have a line of sight on you. The glitches can be pretty frustrating, but at the end of the day it isn’t a game breaker.
Overall Enemy Within is a fantastic expansion to an already stellar game. The addition of MECs is handled well, the EXALT faction allows for some variety in the mission types, and the little additions to the game makes XCOM: Enemy Within one excellent game. It has got me hooked on XCOM again, which is what all great expansions should do.
Score: 9.5/10
XCOM: Enemy Within was developed by Firaxis and published by 2K Games for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on November 11th. A copy of the game was provided to us by 2K Ganes for reviewing purposes.
