Strategy & Sport Games PC

Tag: xcom enemy unknown guide

OFFICER TRAINING SCHOOL: Operation 100 Part V

Welcome to the latest chapter in my ongoing quest/self-help guide to unlock 100% of achievements in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Between a full-time job, part-time writing career and a range of domestic commitments – is it possible for an average, grown-up gamer to max-out a modern title? As I post my progress, I’ll be discussing hints and tips; discussing the game’s design; and poking fun anything that comes within range. Catch the start of the journey here.

My campaign to achieve 100% of XCOM:EU’s achievements had been going so badly that during my last update I decided to swallow my pride and try to get a little help. Co-incidentally, I also lost that campaign, number 19, under less-than-heroic circumstances shortly after posting the journal.

The funny thing is, even before reading my first strategy guide, campaign number 20 has been a revelation. Right from the first mission, progress has been smoother, easier, and more assured. I’ve unlocked three (admittedly fairly easy) achievements and waltzed my way to the mid-game – which means that one of the hardest achievements I called out in Part 2 (No Looking Back – beat the game on Classic-Ironman difficulty) is on-track for completion.

So what’s been the difference – the guides I’ve read over past fortnight improving my game, or a change of my luck?

Another Fast Food Chain Caught Employing Illegal
Aliens

Officer Training School

First off, now that I feel like I’ve finally got to grips with both the Classic difficulty setting and the community’s preferred strategies, I’d like to share some of the most useful tips I’ve found. This isn’t a bricks-and-mortar guide for new players – it’s an intermediate-plus guide to those familiar with the game who can’t quite get a grip on the higher difficulties.

For me, the most important thing has been getting the macro-level strategy right – the base management, panic management and research side of the game. Nail that and you have both more leeway and more power on the battlefield, as a result of better gear and more soldiers, and thus each fight becomes a little bit more manageable.

Campaign Strategies

Have a plan. Decide before you start the campaign where you want to focus your satellites and what your research priorities are – then make sure that every decision you take aligns with that strategy. This is vital for the first three months or so of the game. In campaign 20, I started in Europe and focused on getting three satellites in the skies above Africa by the end of April, giving me a juicy +30% income bonus early on. I also focused on getting laser rifles and carapace armour as quickly as possible.

Manage panic effectively, making sure that you can achieve your plan without losing too many countries along the way. This means being very careful about abduction missions. Ignore the short-term rewards and focus on the panic impact. Remember that for each continent you ignore, every country’s panic increases by one, while any countries you ignore have their panic raised by two. If panic is high across a continent, you might want to prioritise keeping their panic down without having to resort to satellites – even if the country being attacked has low panic levels.

This is what happens when you don’t pick your battles

As a side-note on this, be careful about how you spread your satellites around. The more continents you have a foothold in, the more Interceptors you’ll need to build, maintain and upgrade – that’s a strain on your finances you don’t need in the first two months. So if, like me, you’re focusing on Africa and your home continent, you might want to prioritize Abduction missions elsewhere, knowing that your satellites will reduce Africa’s panic at the end of the month anyway.

There’s no hard-and-fast rule here: it’s all about weighing up the pros and cons and making a judgement about how you can best deal with the ensuing rise in panic. The point is to think it through – don’t just grab the money each time.

There are two more tips for the campaign – and luckily, these ones are a lot easier to follow. Firstly, getting an Officer Training School and investing in a five and six-soldier squad is crucial. Nothing trims down the difficulty on the battle-map like an extra couple of shots per turn.

Secondly, forget about building Laboratories – at least until you’re drowning in money. This is an oft-repeated maxim across the guides, because research tends to work itself out pretty quickly. Besides, researching the entire tech-tree is no use if you lack the cash to buy new equipment. Workshops and engineers help you get satellites in the air, plus get you a refund on construction (hey, every little bit helps – particularly with Alloys and Elerium).

Battle Strategies

Understand line of sight and cover rules. LoS can be unintuitive – but to succeed, you need to predict whether you’ll be able to see an opponent from a certain position. Here’s a link to help you understand LoS. Sometimes it’s hard to guess (especially when elevation comes into account), but it’s crucial – especially when you consider that the best defense is to be completely out of an enemy’s line of sight.

You also need to have a good understanding of cover, and what affects hit rates. It’s dead simple really: the enemy gets 20% defense bonus if they have half cover, 40% if they have full cover. Full cover in-between a soldier and an alien will block line-of-sight, half cover will not. Unless you’re flanking, neither the angle at which you attack, nor the amount of intermediate pieces of half-cover, will make any difference to your hit chance. Switch off your human brain and active your XCOM one.

A great way to learn what affects your chances to hit is to use the “More Info” screen. Get into the habit of checking this regularly, because it will show you the practical upshot of cover, poison, buffs and elevation. You’ll also start to see just how debilitating things like a low Aim stat are for your soldiers.

Apart from understanding the map and the game mechanics, the most important thing to remember on the battlefield is to choose your battles. Never fight from a weak position, and don’t count on half-cover (especially on Classic or Impossible). If the terrain doesn’t offer you heavy cover to attack from, back off and try to find a new way to approach. If there’s a dangerous unit in your line of sight and you can’t guarantee a kill in your turn, get out of its line of sight. If you’re outnumbered, try to retreat to a safer position.

Never break these rules, and always play it safe. As a bonus, remember that the aliens are as thick as a Chrysalid’s abdominal carapace. When they’ve seen you, they’re likely to go on the offensive once you’re out of line of sight. They love nothing more than to charge into the fog-of-war, often in single-file. Backing off and setting your soldiers on Overwatch is a far more effective tactic than it probably ought to be.

Finally, be extremely careful about the fog-of-war. You only have to uncover a single tile to activate a squad of aliens. When you’re in combat, you should do everything you can not to risk pulling more aliens into the fray. This often means you have to avoid the temptation to flank, and will often encourage you to step backwards more than you step forwards.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from playing XCOM, it’s that taking risks gets your soldiers killed. ALWAYS play it safe.

Progress Report

These past two weeks have been amazing: I’ve gone from struggling to get beyond June to absolutely owning the campaign; from wondering if I was ever going to get anywhere with this stupid quest, to being hopelessly addicted to XCOM all over again. As I write, I’m preparing to board the Overseer ship (the second of three major milestones in the game), I have almost a full tech-tree at my disposal, plus all sixteen council countries under my control, and absolutely no panic.

The most exciting bit is that I’ve unlocked three extra achievements. All quite simple ones (shoot down 40 UFOs, kill an alien while flying, and deploy a SHIV) – but they’re helping to raise my percentage (as well as my morale). Things are looking up. I think even Officer Bradford has started treating my with a little more respect – that old sparkle is dancing behind his eyes.

So what’s changed? Well, I’ve had a macro strategy in place for three campaigns now, but I keep messing it up. The plan is this: start in Europe for cheap workshops (hence more engineers), then rush Africa with satellites to secure the income bonus (a whopping +30% income per month). You only need three satellites in the air for this, so on a decent campaign you can achieve it by the end of April.

As my earlier tip says, sticking to this strategy, and controlling panic to maximize its chances of success, is critical. By securing Africa early, I had a ton more money to spend. That meant I could buy better gear, purchase upgrades from the Officer Training school, which gave me more chance on the battlefield. Suddenly I have more money than I know what to do with, and I’m walking my way across the alien base to close out the first third of the campaign. Once I’d got through those first couple of months successfully, the rest of the game just fell into place.

Plus, something seems to have clicked on the battle-map. I’ve been reading guides, but they haven’t taught me anything I didn’t know. Maybe they reinforced some things I didn’t make the most of – like Squadsight snipers. But more than anything, its a strict enforcement of a few key rules which have got me through the battles: don’t fight from a bad position, don’t expose the fog-of-war until you HAVE to, start operations slowly in case the aliens rush you (and they will rush you), and put your soldiers’ safety first.

But there’s also another thing I’ve noticed about XCOM, both from my experience, and from the dozens of forum posts and Let’s Play videos I’ve seen. Sometimes it rolls your way, and sometimes it doesn’t; either the game’s on your side, or it’s not. When my Classic campaign is going well, it’s actually pretty easy: even if I get a couple of bad turns, things seems to work themselves out and missions are stress-free. You begin to wonder “how did I ever find this so difficult?”. But then again, when XCOM goes badly, it goes REALLY badly. Aliens patrol out of no-where, critical hits single-shot soldiers at the wrong times, sure-things turn into frustrating failures. Sometimes you can feel a squad-wipe coming a mile off – you just know the wind isn’t blowing your way.

So I’m still not sure as to whether I’ve magically become a better player over the last fortnight, or whether my luck has just changed for the duration of this campaign. Perhaps in my next update I’ll be able to offer some more thoughts on the matter.

Until then, Commanders.

[color-box]

Stats:
Hours Played:   25.5
Operations Completed: 45
Aliens Killed:   430
Soldiers Lost: 34
Flawless Victories: 4
Total Wipeouts: 1
Achievements Unlocked: 3
Strategy Guides Read: 12 (the In-Depth Class Guide is the best)

Global Progress:
Achievements Unlocked:   44% (38/85)
Hours Played: 45
Operations Completed: 73
Confirmed Kills: 1180
Campaigns Started: 20
Campaigns Won:   1
[/color-box]

October 1, 2013
THE MAN BEHIND THE GLASS: Operation 100 Part IV

Welcome to the latest chapter in my ongoing quest/self-help guide to unlock 100% of achievements in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Between a full-time job, part-time writing career and a range of domestic commitments – is it possible for an average, grown-up gamer to max-out a modern title? As I post my progress, I’ll be discussing hints and tips; discussing the game’s design; and poking fun anything that comes within range. Catch the start of the journey here.

Time trundles on, seconds vanishing into an eternity of infinite possibility, never to be realised into any reality other than this one. And with each second goes another chance to unlock another of XCOM:Enemy Unknown’s achievements (and at the moment, most seconds pass by with the loss of another Soldier).

Join me this week as I pay homage to XCOM’s least celebrated hero.

The Man Behind The Glass

I’ve now sat through a great many hours being mercilessly ravaged at the hands of XCOM: Enemy Unknown’s Classic Ironman mode. The varied emotions of euphoria, anger, frustration and relief dovetail erratically, but at the end of each peak of pique there is one constant; a stationary reference point in the whirling maelstrom of war; a cool hand to soothe my fevered brow.

Win or lose, step forward or step back: one man is there by my side, whispering comfort and sage advice in my ear. That man is XCOM’s uncelebrated hero, the man behind the glass – always watching, listening and speaking, but never touching the chaos unfurling around him – Central Officer Bradford.

Central Officer Bradford – in all his glory

You’ll spend a lot of in-game time with Officer Bradford. He’s the voice on the radio guiding you through every mission; the firm handshake waiting in your underground base when you return from the field; the objective, patient debrief through each twist of the rabbit warren. He’s the man who greets you when you first arrive at XCOM HQ – playing the benign mother role within a faceless military patriarchy – treading a perfect line between comforting warmth and official competence.

For the first few play-throughs of the game, he’s a likeable-if-forgettable character. Blandly efficient, optimally neutral (warming to cagily protective where your soldiers are concerned). He’s ordinary in his appearance: his tall, stocky frame is obviously built to last, and, I like to think, impeccably well-maintained beneath those thick layers of official uniform. Any rough edges in his manner or personality are rounded-off by submissive conformance. As the single-player campaign wears on and you are subjected/treated to increasing exposure to Doctor Valen and Engineer Wotsit – characters who both play safe stereotypes to the letter – it’s easy to think that Officer Bradford has no personality at all.

But when you play as badly as I do for as long as I do, you start to see Officer Bradford in a very different light. You start to see the man behind the generic authority figure. You begin to yearn for his calm, commanding tone. You crave his respect and admiration, you notice his facade crumbling, you see the man beneath the well-oiled machine. His voice cracks ever-so-slightly when you lose a soldier; a barely-perceptible undertone of disappointment carried on his sigh. His crew-cut brow hangs, to better control the great surges of emotion coursing through his veins.

Sooner or later you find yourself craving his approval: an ugly perversion of Stockholm Syndrome in which the master desires to please the servant. You yearn for him to clap you on the back and say “Good job, commander”. You shake yourself off, raise your game, focus your mind – just to please Officer Bradford.

In between howls of frustration and burly hi-fives with friends who have long-ceased to pay attention, I find myself imagining what Officer Bradford does at the end of a 14-hour shift. I expect he returns to his small home, located just off the base, and wakes his sleeping wife. I imagine he makes love to her in his capable, dependable way: not too quickly, not too slowly, just a patient, controlled build up of passion. A restrained landslide, an unstoppable glacier of burning iron. He silently completes his final objective with a minimal of fuss, leaving his beloved gasping for air, completing one last debrief with silence and sweat.

As he strides around the base like a keen-eyed admiral aboard an ancient pan-Atlantic galleon, I find myself pondering strange questions. What’s in his wardrobe? I’m sure he has an immaculate, well-organised collection of dark green jumpers and white shirts for the working week; plus a couple of short-sleeved cream shirts and a navy blue jumper for his off-duty weekends. I imagine him fishing on his rare weekends off (probably while reading some kind of practical military magazine, like Modern Communications or Oil Monthly).

There’s just something so confident about Officer Bradford – even in defeat, he’s magnanimous and commanding. Sure, he’s not the most senior man on the base. Yes, he does have an ambiguous rank and uncertain official duties. No, he doesn’t openly appear to be the most explosive torpedo in the bay. But is there any other man, woman, alien or digital/spiritual/psychological entity from the whole spectrum of games that I’d rather have whispering into my ear as the Skyranger touches down onto the tarmac of yet another dangerous operation?

Probably not.

Central Officer Bradford – throwing shapes in Mission Control

Progress Report

Oh man, what a pitiful couple of weeks it’s been.

Between overtime in the office, a little too much time in the pub, and preparations for an upcoming holiday – my commitment to XCOM:EU has taken a beating. Just 7.5 hours over two weeks. Time enough to start and abandon a couple of doomed campaigns, but no time to make meaningful progress.

I’m sure I’m getting better – both at the macro-game strategy, when I’ve got a plan of how to develop both satellite coverage and scientific development – but I constantly find myself getting burned. Soldiers get hit while hunkered down in heavy cover; easy (but important) shots miss; hordes of aliens get pulled out of the fog-of war within a tiny mis-step.

Mutons have proved the greatest problem. Each one presents an epic battle: they tear through heavy cover like its paper, and their bonus to defense makes them really hard to hit.

But it’s clear I’m doing something wrong. I need to swallow my pride and get a little help. It’s time to hit Google, rinse out YouTube, ask the Russians and memorise the Wiki. The war against Classic Ironman is going to heat up as I hungrily begin to devour every tip, strategy and catechism I can to crack this beastly game.

I just hope that doing so doesn’t strip all the fun out of the experience. Over the next few articles, I’ll start to report back on what I find.

[color-box]

This Week’s Stats:
Hours Played: 10
Operations Completed: 14
Aliens Killed: 177
Soldiers Lost: 51
Flawless Victories: 3
Total Wipeouts: 5
Achievements Unlocked: 0
Hours spent in the pub (and not actually playing XCOM): 14.5

Global Progress:
Achievements Unlocked: 41% (35/85)
Hours Played: 33
Operations Completed: 55
Confirmed Kills: 960
Campaigns Started: 18
Campaigns Won: 1
[/color-box]

September 16, 2013
COMBAT STIMS: Operation 100 Part III

Injecting new blood into XCOM – but at what cost?

Welcome to the latest chapter in my ongoing quest/self-help guide to unlock 100% of achievements in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Between a full-time job, part-time writing career and a range of domestic commitments – is it possible for an average, grown-up gamer to max-out a modern title? As I post my progress, I’ll be discussing hints and tips; discussing the game’s design; and poking fun anything that comes within range. Catch the start of the journey here and the middle here.

The XCOM community is positively ablaze with excitement at the moment. From the release of sort-of prequel The Bureau (a lackluster and controversial entry to the series, but it at least created a talking point), to the very exciting announcement of an expansion pack entitled XCOM: Enemy Within – giving the game a very welcome adrenaline boost.

But for all the excitement coming out of the games press, I’ve been a little worried about the cynical side of Achievements. Are they just a marketing con, or do they genuinely enhance the game experience?

Perhaps my cynicism comes from a weakened emotional state. Friends, hold onto your butts: for I must announce the untimely and ultimately apocalyptic death of Thomas ‘Wardog’ Thomas.

The last five things Wardog ever saw.

New Horizons

I’ll start this Journal with my impressions of Enemy Within. In case you’ve been hiding under a Muton these past two weeks, you’ll be aware that Firaxis have announced an expansion pack (sort of a semi-sequel, really) to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It presents an alternative campaign, letting us enjoy a new story-line. The hook lies in the changes Enemy Within makes to your barracks: introducing two rivaling tech-trees / pseudo-classes which enable you to further customize your soldiers – turning them into cybernetic chimeras. And there’s just the hint of a wider conspiracy story creeping in: could there be an element of human subversion, too?

A far wider range of maps is promised (thank goodness), as well as some minor gameplay tweaks and a new currency: Meld. This alien substance finances the new soldier tech trees, but it can only be collected from operation maps, and self-destructs after a few turns. I’m particularly pleased that the new soldier upgrades won’t stretch your finances any further – Solomon knows its hard enough managing air defense, satellites, base management, soldier recruitment AND great construction on a single (pretty meager) income. Giving us a new currency to let us play with the new toys without incurring a mental breakdown is a great idea.

I do retain some reservations, though. Meld promises/threatens to pick up the pace of XCOM by forcing the player to rush, introducing a time constraint to encourage more aggressive strategies. I totally agree that XCOM: EU is too biased towards defensive strategies, rewarding rise-averse play and slower expansion across the map. But I don’t think Meld is the answer to opening up new play-styles. If the aliens continue to regularly score unlikely – or even impossible – hits against soldiers in high cover, then players will continue to adopt a defensive approach. XCOM is really punishing to soldiers caught in bad (or even pretty good) positions. The risks are so high and hard to manage that I don’t think we’re going to be keen to gamble our soldier’s lives like that – not without ruining the fun of the game.

No, it seems to me like Firaxis should offer more defensive skills for soldiers, or perhaps just a fairer (perceived) difficulty model. Perhaps heavy cover should offer a stronger advantage – both to players and aliens. It can still be blown away, after all, plus it would encourage flanking strategies and diverse movement. Perhaps some hits could be “glancing blows”, dealing far less damage (but still risking panic). Maybe there could be more skills to enable soldiers to last longer under fire, or have a percent chance to dodge things like grenade attacks.

I love my XCOM, and I like it to be difficult (natch). But I’d prefer for it to feel a little more fair than it does currently – too often I lose a soldier under circumstances which make me angry at the game. I’m concerned that by encouraging players to play more riskily, Meld will only increase the feeling of unfairness which players so often experience.

Capitalism: Enemy Within

But what do I know? I’ve yet to try the new content and there’s every chance it will knock my space-socks off. I’m only a part-time cynic after all, and there’s another issue here which is more worthy of my ire. Are 2K Games using achievements to manipulate me into buying the expansion?

XCOM: Enemy Unknown comes with sixty-odd achievements built into the core game. The single piece of DLC, Slingshot, adds an extra five. Enemy Within introduces some thirty more. The difficulty here is that achievements aren’t bound to the DLC or the extension itself, they’re tied to the main game – and more to the point, the main game’s achievement list is expanded regardless of whether or not I own the expansion content.

So I can buy and complete the base game – but I’ll never be able to unlock 100% of its achievements unless I’ve bought the extra content. Does that matter? Does it seem fair?

It’s not, perhaps, a major problem – but it does show what achievements are intended for. Like bundling football cards in sweets, or little collectible toys in fast food packages, they incentivise the purchase of goodies (and bind the consumer to a particular retailer). Would you buy the extension from a different shop if it didn’t contribute to your achievement progress? Would you buy sub-standard DLC or an extension package you don’t really want just to unlock all the achievements? While there are a few die-hard completionists out there, I know that a most of my readers will instantly answer “no, don’t be silly”. But I’d argue the strength of achievements goes beyond conscious motivation, striking something deep in our psyche and compelling us to make one more purchase.

Publishers and marketeers know that putting a scorecard or completion rating next to each title in a gamer’s library is like waving a flanking position at a Thin Man. There’s at least a bit of a kleptomaniac in all of us: that’s why virtual commodities like trading cards are selling like hot cakes on Steam. We like to see “100%”, we like to do everything there is to do and have that accomplishment acknowledged. We like the numerical roundness, the bragging rights, the challenge. And my gosh don’t the shop owners know it.

The way we buy play and games is changing. Every few months there’s some new outrage, instigated by publishing houses and vociferously rejected by gamers. Using achievements or bundled incentives to sell products isn’t new; but perhaps we should be a little bit worried about the extent to which our playing and purchasing habits are being manipulated.

RIP Even the gingerest Wardog can be killed. RIP Thomas Thomas.

Progress Report

Alright, soapbox over. When not whining about achievements, I’m supposed to be unlocking them. So how’s that going?

Er, badly. When XCOM: Enemy Unknown is going well, it’s amazing. You feel on top of the world when your strategies go to plan, when enemies miss the shots they’re supposed to miss and you hit the shots you’re supposed to hit. Victory may be smooth as silk or hard-fought and bitter, but on Classic difficulty, each one is euphoric. And credit to the game – coming up to 100 hours hours played and I still fist-pump like an 80’s action hero every time I kill an alien.

But when it’s going badly – my giddy aunt, it’s a trial. Odd things can happen on the battlefield – rage-inducing, maddening moments. You feel like the game’s against you, like you’re climbing a mountain without a summit, like nothing you could have done would have saved that soldier. As a Terror mission plummeted into the depths of abject failure last night, I honestly just wanted to burst into tears.

So it goes just about every battlefield operation. It’s a bi-polar experience: the highest highs and the lowest lows. You lose a mission and face complete disaster – only to miraculously recover the next and hang into the campaign for another month, inching closer to the next milestone.

The headline news has been, of course, the sad death of Wardog. Yes, Thomas Thomas bought it on a doomed mission, pinned down against five Mutons, closing in on him from all sides. He went down in a blaze of fire and took two Mutons with him: but even he couldn’t do much against the cluster-fuck of Operation Red Shroud. Game 14 didn’t last long after: I limped into June with a handful of soldiers, no money and a Situation Room which looked like a communist’s wet dream.

Game 15 has been better – but at the time of writing, it looks like it’ll be over before July. The aforementioned terror mission has left me in a bad state, with few trained soldiers and an almost empty armory. I’ve got a Firestorm on order to help turn the tide – but when my problems are on the ground more than in the skies, will one shiny ship be enough to convince the Council keep my campaign alive beyond August?

[color-box]
Hours Played: 14
Operations Completed: 25
Aliens Killed: 199
Soldiers Lost: 46
Soldiers Lost in Final Five Operations Game 15: 20
Flawless Victories: 4
Total Wipeouts: 6
Achievements Unlocked: 0
Thomas Thomas’s Killed: 1

Global Progress
Achievements Unlocked: 41% (35/85)
Hours Played: 14
Operations Completed: 25
Confirmed Kills: 783
Campaigns Started: 15
Campaigns Won: 1
[/color-box]

September 2, 2013
BEGINNINGS: Operation 100 Part II

A Working Man’s Guide to XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Part 1:Beginnings

Welcome to the first update in my quest/self-help guide to unlock 100% of XCOM:Enemy Unknown’s achievements. I’ve set myself the task of doing it all (the hard way) and posting regular journals with my progress. At the same time, I’ll be discussing hints and tips to guide others through this oft-torturous game; discussing the good, the bad and the ugly of its design; and poking fun at myself and the game in general.

It’s been a good/bad week. On the one hand, I’ve fallen in love with a flame-haired wonderbeast and unlocked two whole achievements. On the downside, though, my task just got a LOT harder: my completion percentage actually went DOWN.

Thomas Thomas

Thomas Thomas is sad because, in the genial surroundings of the XCOM barracks, he has 0% chance to kill

Sometimes, there’s a man. I won’t say a hero – ‘cause what’s a hero? But sometimes, there’s a man. A man who-

Aw, hell. Like The Big Lebowski’s mysterious, omnipresent cowboy narrator, I’ve rather lost my chain of thought. I have become infatuated with a single man, a man who bucks the tide of convention, hurdles the, erm, hurdle of destiny, and laughs in the face of flying plasma bolts.

The man is Thomas Thomas, AKA “Wardog”. As of this moment, he has completed four missions and recorded eighteen kills.

He’s an assault-class killing machine, tearing around the battlefield with his shotgun in a crazed hunt for fresh blood. His hair may be as orange as carrots, but his armour (and heart) is black as betrayal. He alone, of all of my unfortunate, loyal soldiers, has had the gumption, the bravado and (admittedly) the fortune to face up to the invading alien scum.

Everyone who plays XCOM: Enemy Unknown ends up with a favourite soldier; everyone discovers a hero at some point in the campaign. Wardog has been mine for the previous half-dozen missions. May the dice always be kind to you, Thomas Thomas!

Thomas Thomas lines up for a medium-range kill with his prized shotgun, who is probably called Martha.

The Achievements

I’ve decided that a sort of primer would be an appropriate way to start this journal: something to help those who either haven’t played XCOM, or who just don’t obsess over its achievements. Like most modern games, XCOM comes bundled with a set of so-called ‘achievements’, which are rewardless objectives you can complete for prestige. They are at once a ubiquitous marketing gimmick and an essential mod-con of modern gaming. And, occasionally, they can be the worst nightmare for the many obsessive gamers who see a rating and just have to max it out. I’ll talk more about achievements, about what they add and remove from modern games, in a later article.

Most of XCOM’s achievements are pretty straight-forward: playing through the single player campaign on normal difficulty should bag you around 50% of them. Given a decent run of the main storyline, most of them are outright inevitable. Indeed, with my single campaign victory I managed to unlock 60% without evening thinking about it (although the many restarts and mishaps on the way will have added a nice chunk to that total).

To really make this journal interesting, I’m going to proceed with Classic difficulty as my standard for the remaining achievements. Anyone with sense would try to unlock as many achievements as possible on the lower difficulties – for example, I have yet to complete the achievement for completing the game from each of the five continents, or to research the entire technology tree. These are trifling matters on Normal, requiring little more than a time commitment. But that’s not my style: I’m in this for a challenge and to hopefully produce some interesting stories. This is XCOM, the hard way!

Here’s a rundown of some of the more difficult tasks I’ll be trying to achieve:

No Looking Back

I know I’ll be able to crack this one: beating the game on Classic (or impossible) Ironman difficulty. This is my current short-term goal, completed by just 1.5% of players. It’s worth noting that beating this should bag me the Earth First achievement for free, for completing Classic without Iron Man (also working noting that just 5.22% have got this far. Ouch)

Xavier

This is an example of how achievements can actually tangibly change a gameplay experience. The goal is to mind-control one of the game’s toughest aliens: the psionically gifted Ethereals. These spooky, graceful creatures are the masterminds of the alien invasion, and have very high psi-defence. This is a challenging achievement on normal difficulty – but on classic? Sheesh, it’s going to stretch me.

Our Final Hour

This is one of the least-obtained achievements: complete the game on Impossible difficulty, unlocked by just 0.7% of players. I’ll permit myself to disable Ironman for this one (I may repeat the occasional important mission, but I’ll take care not to abuse it and avoid the dreaded ‘save-scumming’).

Ain’t No Cavalry Comin’

The final achievement which gives me cold sweats is to keep a soldier alive through every mission in a full game. EVERY MISSION? That’s a huge ask on Classic difficulty. Not only does my chosen soldier need to survive each mission he plays – they also can’t afford to miss one due to injury.

The Other Achievements

In exciting news for most XCOM fans (but rather daunting for myself), rumours are swirling about the imminent announcement for a new expansion (or possibly DLC) for XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Various leaks have been cropping up of late, but none more conclusive than the addition of (a frankly terrifying) 30 new achievements. Precisely what these achievements are, or how they can be unlocked, remains a mystery. I’ve got quite a bit of work to do before these extra mysteries become a problem – but I think it’s fair to assume that my road just got longer.
[Update: as of today, 21st August 2013, XCOM: Enemy Within has been officially revealed. Stay tuned for next week’s Journal, where I’ll share my thoughts]
[color-box]

Progress Report

I’m only a week into a very long road, but with each update I want to post a set of stats which show how I’m getting along. These may or may not be interesting, but might provide some interesting analysis for regular readers.

In this first report, I’ll explain what I mean by each stat, and link back to this section in future journals for the sake of clarity.

Almost immediately after last week’s success, I blew my way through several single-player campaigns with a notable lack of dignity. I did manage to make a breakthrough in the multi-player game, however, unlocking two new achievements in the process.

Hours Played: 9
This is the approximate amount of time I’ve played the game, judged crudely against the clock and usually totalled up in half-hour intervals. I did consider using Steam’s “hours played” statistics – but that’s even cruder, counting time idling in menus and not including play while offline (which is surprisingly often at the moment, given a spate of connectivity issues).

Operations: 16
By “operations” I mean any time spent on the single-player battlefield. These include abduction missions, hostage rescue/escort, terror missions and UFO raids.

Aliens Killed: 84
Simple as: the total number of individual aliens (including robots) that I’ve killed. Aliens killed on a failed mission still count. As I’m playing ironman, there are no re-loads, so there’s no chance that any of these count twice. It’s worth adding that Thomas Thomas has accounted for 21% of these kills.

Soldiers Lost: 31
The shocking truth of how many XCOM soldiers are killed during operations. Thomas Thomas has yet to be counted among these statistics.

Flawless Victories: 3
These are are, despite last week’s success. I count a flawless victory as a mission where no soldier is killed or wounded. If a soldier is hit but only takes a single point of damage and is not wounded after the mission (ie, has to take time out to recover), I’ll count that as a flawless victory, thankyouverymuch

Total Wipeouts: 5
When things go wrong, they really go wrong. A total wipeout is a mission which I not only fail, but from which no soldier comes home alive.

Achievements Unlocked: 2
This is why we’re all here, right?

Overall Progress

Achievements Unlocked: 41% (35 /85)
Confirmed Kills: (500*) + 84
Campaigns Started: 13
Campaigns Won: 1
Hours Played: 79

* As I suggested last week, I’ve unlocked an achievement for killing 500 aliens – but beyond that, I have no way of knowing how many hostiles I’ve killed. I’ll assume 500 as my base for statistical analysis, though.

[/color-box]

August 21, 2013