XCOM: Enemy Unknown [PC, PS3, Xbox 360]

Why have friends when you could have XCOM: Enemy Unknown? Your squadmates will become your friends, every time one dies, you will die a little too, when they wipe an alien of the face of the planet you will cheer with them. This game has great gameplay though it's not as fluid as it should be let's find out why.

In XCOM you play as the commander of an elite force of alien exterminators. Your goal is to find out what the aliens are up to and put a stop to it. Part of the game is spent in turn based battles, blasting alien scum and the other part is establishing your base, researching tech and other mission critical things. It makes for a good mix, though I found the turn based missions a little bit repetitive towards the end. There is a lot going on in terms of strategy and you will need to balance your tactics and play style within the turn based components with your broader strategy of the base.

There are many exciting moments during the turn based battles of the game. You might stumble across a new type of enemy or succeed in beating the odds and making a great shot. You'll start off with a four man squad but you can upgrade this later on. Each member of your team gains experience and if you can keep them alive they become very powerful. The graphics look great and the sounds and music are extremely chilling.

When you are back at the base there are still plenty of things to do. You will be updated on story progression, there is research to be undertaken and troops to be outfitted.There is even a sort of mini-game in which you launch interceptors to take out alien space ships. I found myself at the mission control centre hoping I could watch another spin of the Earth go by so I could research that latest piece of kit before my next battle.

It truly is a terrific game but there are a few issues that bring it down.When you are moving your characters to squares of different heights you need to fight with the camera to get them exactly where you want them.. The returning to base loading screen often flashed violently between an image of the battle and the actual loading screen.Finally the game crashed right on the last mission and this is a known issue. Despite 3 patches these problems still persist.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown includes so much variety that it kept me wanting for more, except for by the end, where it had become a little tedious to do the random missions, as there are not as many variations on them as there could be.That being said up until that moment every time I got bored of something, the game added something new. There are a lot of twists and turns in XCOM and I honestly wanted to give it a higher score. However the bugs took away a few decimal points, 9/10.