If you spend much time online you've probably heard of the original X-Com. You've probably heard about it at great length, whether you wanted to or not. Those of us who played it back in the early 90s remember a game of near-perfect. It's long been lauded as one of the best, if not the best, videogame ever made, and this is not a title that it has no claim to. So, when a remake was announced you could hear the despairing cry of the hardcore grognards all around the world - surely this would be a casual remake, a butchering of a beloved name, a horrible cash-in?
Well, turns out that wasn't the case. Actually it turned out that the new XCOM was a supremely accomplished game and even if it doesn't quite match up to the original, it comes a hell of a lot closer than anyone was expecting. XCOM realized what was most important about the series is, above all else, the atmosphere of tension and paranoia that pervades everything. A mission can go south in an instant, you can lose your best veteran with dozens of xenos killed, because you did something dumb. Heck sometimes you do everything right and still lose, and you just have to roll with it. And you're fighting a battle of attrition you can't win, so you're racing to figure out countermeasures to aliens and their skills, to understand their purpose and motives, and to take the fight to them. This tension is what XCOM aimed to reproduce and it did a truly admirable job of it.
From the base view, you can expand and enhance your headquarters in order to provide more advantages, from better satellite coverage of the Earth to more skills for your soldiers, and you make strategic decisions about which missions to undertake and which must be ignored. Once this decision is made your squad, ranging from four to six people, is deployed into a tactical, turn-based battle scene. Forests, farms, construction sites, highways, diners, gas stations - all kinds of locations are represented, and although it lacks the originals randomly generated maps these ones are crafted well enough, and exist in sufficient number, that this is only a small mark against the remake. As you win you'll upgrade your soldiers with new talents and skills, new armour, and new weapons, all of which will soon be put to the test as the aliens deploy ever-more-dangerous foes.
Very few games understand the importance of atmosphere and the creation of tension and paranoia. The original X-Com did, and that's why twenty years later it's still regarded as a timeless classic. The remake understands this as well, and though it's not quite up to those giddy heights of the Gollop Brothers' original, it comes wonderfully close. There's an expansion out a few days ago as well, adding more of everything, so you may want to check that out as well if a brilliant tactical game sounds like your thing!