 We are not alone. The alien invasion has begun. You have been tasked with leading the ultimate force to repel the invasion. You will have access to the best scientists, engineers, and soldiers from across the globe. You are the last, best hope for humanity. This will not be easy, but failure is not an option.
1. Gameplay
I was skeptical about XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I had heard of the original XCOM’s punishing level of difficulty. I don’t mind a challenge, but I’m not the kind of guy that goes out looking for tortuous frustration. So it was with trepidation that I picked up this game and gave it a try. I am extremely glad I did.  It's all about strategy. XCOM: Enemy Unknown has a very basic, easy to understand story. Aliens are invading Earth, so the “XCOM Project” is formed and tasked with repelling the invasion. The player will lead troops into battle, order research into new weapons and technologies, build and maintain a base, and try to keep the world panic levels from spiraling out of control. It’s an extremely difficult task to undertake, especially early in the game.  Where's Will Smith when I need him? Without going into too much detail, the game can be divided into two sections. Most of the time will be spent in turn-based combat against alien forces. This will involve picking a specific team, carefully planning their movements in battle, and trying to keep everyone alive while completing the required objectives.  It's a lot harder than you'd think. Strategy isn’t just an option, it’s an absolute necessity. Each time the player finds a new door, he must take the time to stack up his forces before breaching and clearing the room. When an enemy is discovered, the player must have his units in cover to keep them safe. The end of each turn results in a series of nervous questions like “Are all of my units in enough cover?” and “What if the enemy flanks me?”.  No one is safe from grenades. This game is difficult. I managed to go through without losing a single unit (excluding those the game forces you to lose in the tutorial), but I lost three countries to unchecked panic. And this was on “normal” difficulty. The game has a lot of options to make things much more difficult for those that want a seemingly impossible challenge. I could not stop playing this game for a while. Even after completing the campaign, I still wanted to go back and pit my team against the aliens. I want to be able to go and capture all of the alien types that I missed. This game is definitely worth another playthrough despite its difficulty.  The best and brightest. Oh, and if you want extra incentive to keep your people alive, name them after you and your friends. Definitely worth the effort!
I spent 27 hours completing the campaign. No, really, I actually spent 27 hours. There aren’t that many main missions, but I found it valuable to spend that much time earning money, building up my forces, developing strategies, and completing missions. Eventually I found a squad that worked extremely well and could be adapted to the changing landscape. But all of that took time. The campaign does have a good amount of replayability. There are a lot of maps and a number of mission types. The overall gameplay is going to be the same, but the variety posed by the different maps and enemy times encourages playing this game for hours and hours. The player can go through the campaign again on higher difficulty levels (if they are a glutton for punishment). There are also multiplayer modes which allow the player to take control of the alien species. I’m not sure how much time I’d spend with the multiplayer, but it’s there if players want to test their skills against human opponents.
This game is designed to be difficult. Very difficult. The original XCOM was unbelievably difficult. XCOM: Enemy Unknown isn’t nearly as hard as that game, but is still going to give most players a serious challenge. Failure isn’t simply an option, it’s an eventual inevitability. Enemies will always have a tactical advantage over you. While your units should be stronger and better equipped, you will always be outnumbered by your opponents. Panic control in the nations will be a serious chore to manage until the player builds enough satellites to cover the world. After that, panic management is very easy.  You'll lose countries until you can get your satellites up. Basically, players are going to have to be patient. You can’t keep every country and you likely won’t save every one of your troops. Eventually, with enough time and strategy, players will be able to beat the game. But it will take a seriously healthy amount of skill and luck. 2. Parental Notices
The violence in XCOM: Enemy Unknown is extremely mild. Excluding some of the early cutscenes, almost all of the violence will boil down to projectile and energy-based attacks. These attacks can result in blood, but it’s often lost in the huge bursts of light. This is especially true after the player begins to upgrade his weapons from basic projectiles to lasers and eventually plasma.  This was easily the most blood I saw. As the player kills enemies (and if enemies kill the player’s characters) the camera will go into a cinematic mode that can focus more on the violence. This allows for more blood to be seen. However, I never saw any gore in the actual gameplay.  If you look hard enough, you can actually see the blood. That would have been it if it weren’t for a few specific events during the opening cutscene of the campaign. The game will highlight a few battle scarred corpses with pretty open wounds.  Probably not a good sign. There’s one guy that even has hits insides literally fallen out.  Not sure what did this. But that’s the only time I ever saw content like that. The entire rest of the violence only looks like this.
Sexuality is not a factor in this game.
“Substances” are extremely rare in this game. There are really only three types that the player can use with any regularity. The first is the medkit, which allows a unit to revive a fallen comrade or heal any damaged squad member. There are also stimkits which give a temporary boost to a unit’s stats. Using these simply results in a small cloud in front of the targeted unit.  Who knew Lysol was a healing agent? Support units also have the ability to throw smoke grenades. As the support unit levels up, the player can choose to enhance these smoke grenades with some sort of substance that increases the stats of the units inside of the smoke. As a result, the smoke turns slightly purple and glittery.  Doesn't seem to be a very effective smoke grenade...
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
Anti-law is not a factor in this game.
XCOM’s online community seems extremely friendly. There are some who will play with their food (aka me) before eating it, but my first online match was against someone who knew that I was new to the multiplayer and was definitely patient with me. It was an excellent experience for what I was expecting.  I'm surprised I had fun. That said, I probably won’t be playing the multiplayer much. The matches can be pretty stressful (there’s no autosave to fall back on if you screw up), and the amount of customization you’re going to have to do will be pretty crazy. Not only do players have access to every human soldier type with every armor and weapon type but they also have access to almost all of the alien types as well.  You can cut the tension with a knife... The multiplayer includes a point-based system to keep players from maxing out their team, but it’s still a bit crazy. Since I was never able to use any of the aliens in the campaign, I wasn’t sure which aliens to pick for my team. Were drones ever useful? What was a sectoid again? Should I really front the over 10,000 points just to get the “best” alien? The game never really answered any of this stuff. So I would recommend first playing against a friend who is equally as inexperienced or looking up a guide online (which is what I ended up doing).
Extreme sports are a very rare occurrence in this game. While all units can climb pipes and ladders to quickly access upper floors, some armor types allow units to use a grappling hook or jump jets to reach higher levels of elevation as well. I hardly ever used these, though, since it would often involve going up to locations where enemies could be potentially waiting, leaving the unit completely exposed.  Rocketmaaaaaaaan!
Some of the events or abilities in this game will seem borderline magical. For example, a number of the enemies (and even some of the units that the player can control) will have psychic abilities that can manipulate enemies. Frequently the player will run into enemies that have the ability to mind control enemies via some sort of swirling purple energy. While this process is explained as biological in origin, the details are left fairly vague.  Beware of my purplish swirly lights!
Interrogation Early in the game the player will develop and be able to use a stun gun which can be used to capture enemies alive. It can be extremely difficult to use, especially since the unit that stuns an enemy has to be right next to the target, but the game will require the player to stun at least two enemies. The reason why the game requires the player to stun two enemies is because he will have to interrogate these enemies for information about the aliens’ plans and location of their base. The interrogation scenes aren’t really shown. They just show a metal blast shield closing over the prison with the enemy behind the glass.  You have no idea how much of a pain it was to capture one of these guys alive. The player can capture and interrogate one of each species of enemy. Outside of the two necessary for the main story, the interrogations can lead to research credits in different areas. Eventually I found that trying to capture enemies was a bit too difficult to justify the reward, so after capturing half of the species I stopped completely. Human Disfigurement There are a few missions that will involve rescuing civilians from aliens. If the civilians are killed by one particular enemy type, the humans will resurrect as zombies and attack the player. They just look like slightly darker shades of their normal selves, though.  This is the only time you see one up close. There are also enemies called “Thin Men” that look like skinny MIB-types. However, they’re not actually human.  Not human.
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