9 Reasons To Get Excited About XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Let's put it simply: This game has people more excited than any other turn-based strategy title in recent memory. Via GamesRadar

We Get To Take Back Earth One Territory At A Time

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When those no-good aliens invade the entire planet, you’ve got to fight back with attrition. The lengthy single-player campaign lets you plot out your tactical advance around the globe, offering up the choice of mission selection with a wide variety of objectives and complexities. That means that the battleground settings, enemy types, and goals will constantly keep you on your toes. On top of the calculated reclamation of humanity's turf, you’ll be treated to various in- and out-of-match cutscenes, giving the ruthless alien aggression real context.

Customization Lets Us Get Attached To Our Personalized Squads

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Tactical strategy games are at their best when you really care, from a self-invented narrative standpoint, whether your soldiers live or die. What better way to do that than having full control over their specialties, appearances, and names? The names part is key: Christening your squadmates after family and friends will have you screaming in agony over their untimely (and nigh inevitable) deaths, while keeping the labels within a theme will spice up each round with some unintentional humor, thanks to randomly generated nicknames. The best thing to come from our elite team of presidentially named warriors says it all: The valiant deeds of Thomas “Werewolf” Jefferson will forever be remembered in our hearts.

The One-On-One Multiplayer Is Seriously Tense

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Head-to-head strategic multiplayer makes you think, but rarely will it make you this anxious. At the beginning of each round of multiplayer XCOM, your squad of humans (or aliens, but more on that in a moment) will be plunked down into a totally fog-of-warred territory, with no idea which direction the enemy will come bearing down on you. Funnily enough, some of the best multiplayer moments happen before you’ve even engaged the enemy, when you're nervously bolting from cover to cover in the hopes that you get the jump on your foe before they spot you.

We Get To Take A Walk In The Space Invaders' Shoes

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Multiplayer also opens up the floor to those extraterrestrial buggers, letting you combine humans and aliens into any configuration that the adjustable point tally will allow. Getting to play as the story mode’s sworn enemies is a hoot--you haven’t lived until you’ve battered in a Sectoid’s face with the mauling fists of a Muton, or zipped around the map as the unfortunately named, jetpack-toting Floater. The pièce de résistance: Impregnating a hapless, near-death soldier with Chryssalid larvae, then cringing in horrified delight as he bursts into a spiny, alien newborn.

We'll Be Melting Minds Thanks To Our Psychic Powers

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Mind over matter, as they say--or in this case, psyche-severing brain powers over ordinary bullets. As previous XCOM: Enemy Unknown Trailers have so gloriously demonstrated, psionic soldiers will be a huge boon to the human forces over the course of XCOM’s campaign (and multiplayer modes, at that). Hypnotizing an alien into stunned shock, taking over the feeble intellect of a Sectoid, or using mind control to force a high-ranking officer to idiotically drop a grenade at his feet--all of these wonderful, wonderful things are possible (and probable) when you’ve got psychic powers on your side.

Overwatch Makes The Game Infinitely More Accessible

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It's been said before in a previous XCOM: Enemy Unknown hands-on preview, but it bears repeating: Overwatch stands to change tiled, turn-based strategy games as we now know them. If you’re unsure of what to do next, or you want to prepare for whatever comes your way without going on the complete defensive, simply activate Overwatch. This tells your soldier to sit tight; if they see any movement from their current position, they’ll automatically blast the enemy moving target with reduced accuracy. It’s the perfect way to hedge your strategic bets, and when you want to hunker down without wasting a turn, Overwatch will be your best friend.

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