XCOM: Enemy Unknown Review

The reboot's central decision was to replace a fiddly time unit economy with two actions per soldier, and that single change is what let a niche 1994 game reach a console audience without losing its teeth. Every turn is now a readable question about cover, flanking and overwatch, and because soldiers are permanently dead when they die, and because you named them after your friends, a bad flank costs something the numbers cannot express. The strategic layer squeezes hard from the other side: satellites, panic and a council of nations mean you are always choosing which continent to abandon this month, and the difficulty spike when the aliens field their mid game units punishes anyone who spent the first two months comfortable.

The streamlining did take things. The base is a cutaway with no real spatial decisions, squads are smaller, and inventory management barely exists. The tactical camera also loves to hide the enemy that is about to kill you. Still the most successful revival of a strategy classic anyone has managed.