Imagine that aliens are invading the Earth and you’ve been put in charge of the defense of the entire planet. That daunting proposition is at the heart of XCOM: Enemy Unknown

The absolute best aspect of XCOM is the sense that there’s never enough time or resources to do everything that needs to be done. Do you pull a trooper off of active duty to undergo psionic training or do you keep him out in the field where he can get better at his core skills? Do you spend your budget producing satellites to help locate UFOs or do you spend that same money producing interceptors to be sure you can shoot down the few UFOs you do locate? Every moment of XCOM is defined by these either/or decisions where every move involves some sort of sacrifice or compromise. When you combine that with the overall tone of the game, which emphasizes a DEFCON style countdown to a complete alien takeover, the whole experience is fantastically tense and engaging.Unfortunately, in order to create that tension XCOM ramps up the difficulty and leaves you in the dark about some pretty important goals. That doesn’t necessarily count that as a criticism, because the pressure of having to keep pace with the escalating threat and learning from your catastrophic mistakes is part of the game’s charm. Still, a few of the essential choices are presented in an either/or format and you may not realize the choice you ought to have made until it’s too late to do anything about it. Even your basic goals are largely open-ended at the beginning of the game, despite the presence of key research and infrastructure decisions that are vital to your early success. It’s best to think of your first game as a learning experience.You want to make the right decisions because that’s what’s going to keep your soldiers alive. In between the strategic management phases, you’ll lead small squads of XCOM soldiers in turn-based tactical battles in a variety of locations – from cities to fields to highways to alien bases. As your soldiers gain experience, they also unlock valuable promotions that open up new abilities. It’s a great system, not only because it gives you a constant sense of progression as you open up new powers, but also because it allows you to tailor each soldier’s abilities to your own playstyle. For the ultimate in personal attachment, you can even rename your soldiers and change their appearance to match your friends or co-workers. There’s nothing worse than seeing your best friend fall under a hail of plasma fire.The missions are challenging, primarily because of the enemy AI and the way the individual enemies are designed. The thick-skinned Mutons, for instance, not only have thick armor, but can even become enraged and interrupt your turn with powerful cries that make your weaker-willed soldiers panic. The emaciated Ethereals can use psionic powers to shield themselves and even take control of your own units, forcing you into the terrible position of having to take down one of your own soldiers. Since each type of enemy has different abilities, you really have to adapt to each and every encounter, which is made even more challenging when more than one type of enemy gets involved in the battle. Choose poorly and you could be bringing home your soldiers in body bags.Death is a big deal in XCOM and, by midway through the game, your Memorial to fallen soldiers, complete with bagpipe music, should have plenty of names on it. At harder difficulty levels, it can be tough to recover from the death of an experienced officer, but the tactical game virtually requires that death be a real and, more importantly, a recoverable error for you. It’s all part of that feeling of being two steps behind the aliens and frantically trying to catch up. Thankfully, later in the game, your new advancements and high-level recruiting options mean the project can still live on even if two of your best Majors suddenly die in the field.Within the framework of what XCOM is trying to do, there are really only two serious missteps in the tactical game. The first is that the enemies don’t seem very mobile until they see or hear you, meaning they won’t ever really surprise you. They simply sit and wait for you to get into their line of sight before moving to attack. This makes most of the levels in the game feel a bit like haunted houses, where the scares just sit and wait for you to come by. You’re generally free to reload and heal up in between taking on these small groups, which lessens the mission’s tension. To cheat around the possible exploitation of the aliens’ immobility, XCOM actually gives them a free move phase the first time they’re discovered. It’s an inelegant solution to the problem of predictable enemy placement.The lack of elbow room compounds that problem. Instead of letting players exercise their tactical muscle through maneuver and exploration, here the tactical decisions are heavily weighted towards just picking the right abilities and managing your cover. This tendency leaves you essentially playing an RPG that feels more like a cover-based shooter than a strategy game. To be fair, position matters and you can flank enemies and destroy their cover, but there’s never enough room to really get inventive with your tactical positioning.That said, the sheer destructibility of those environments is phenomenal. By the time you and the aliens have finished shooting it out you’ll have set cars on fire with your laser fire, blown walls out of supermarkets with rockets, and exploded rows of gas pumps with an errant grenade. It really sells the power and intensity of the battle to see these buildings reduced to flaming rubble. Better still, the cover created or destroyed during the battle can quickly change the tactical situation, which adds a much needed unpredictability to the battlefield and slightly alleviates the predictability of the enemy placement and lack of maneuver space.So far, this review has avoided direct comparisons between this game and the original 1994 Microprose classic, partly because the expectations of today’s gamers are slightly different, but mostly because this title deserves to be judged on its own merits. But for those of you who were fans of the original, you should know the remake shares many of the themes and mechanics of the original but it’s still not as deep, tactically speaking. The streamlining certainly makes for a more convenient overall experience, but some of the finer details and sense of control have been lost.Recently Firaxis has been very willing to try new things with its franchises, and it’s great to see both the revival of the XCOM franchise and the extension of strategy games on the consoles. You’re still likely to want a bit more depth and surprise in the tactical game, but the campaign is full of tense moments that are sure to keep you coming back for more.