Written by Julian Murdoch

Most board/videogame crossovers are terrible, so it was with a healthy amount of skepticism that I sat down at GenCon 2014 in Indianapolis this weekend to play XCOM: The Board Game, a coop strategy game due later this year from Fantasy Flight Games.

Fantasy Flight has a small pocket industry making these crossover attempts: several runs at the World of Warcraft license, A Gears of War game, even a game based on the world of Doom. Most of the time, the theme of the videogame seems like a weird bolt-on to the cardboard version, both watering down what might be good gameplay mechanics and failing to create a meaningful connection to original game. XCOM: The Board Game avoids both of these traps, both delivering a new, fun coop experience and conjuring up the XCOM world in interesting ways.

It s worth noting that when XCOM: Enemy Unknown hit the PC in 2012, many reviews pointed out that core tactical gameplay was actually prototyped as a boardgame before being brought digital. XCOM: The Boardgame has nothing to do with that tactical miniatures (video)game we all lost countless hours too.



That s good news. Eric Lang, the designer of the upcoming digital/boardgame hybrid, put it this way: Why would we try to replicate that exact experience, he said, sitting across the plastic counters and cardboard chits that define the boardgame experience. It already exists. We all played it. So we pulled the camera way back and put you in charge.

The core conceit of XCOM: The Board Game is precisely that. In the video game version, most of the gameplay happens at the ground level, occasionally pulling out for a brief geoscape perspective. In the board game, you sit above the geoscape level, the big-boss of all. Each player assumes one or more key roles: Commander, Squad Leader, Chief Scientist, and Central Officer. Each role has its own tasks to accomplish, working together to defeat an incoming alien invasion: assigning ground troops, interceptors, and satellites to defend planet earth, researching technologies, salvaging wreckage, and completing critical missions to repel the invading sectoids, floaters, and the rest of the XCOM menagerie.

As a cooperative boardgame, it shares much in common from games like Z-Man Games Pandemic, which assigns each player at the table a critical role in achieving a common objective against the game itself.

The Commander sends interceptors to shoot down incoming UFOs and manages the budget, allocating cash to all of the other players. Everything in the game costs money, and money is always scarce. The commander will never be able to give everyone all the money they need.
The Chief Scientist researches new technologies that act as buffs for other members of the team using card game mechanics. Each other player has buffs that can provide enormous benefits, but she only has so many scientists to deploy, and more scientists cost more money.
The Squad Leader assigns specialist troops (assault, sniper, special ops) to both defend XCOM home base and achieve the missions required to actually win the game. But troops get killed in combat, and recruiting new ones or leveling them up costs money too.
The Central Officer manages satellites and communications infrastructure. But the enemy is always targeting satellites, and new ones are expensive.



Each turn, each member has critical tasks to accomplish, and as a team, there are limited resources available to tackle the ever-changing crises which spread panic to the continents of the world. Too much panic, and the game is lost. Successful resource allocation requires real team communication and collective decision making.

But it s the Central Officer that sets the game apart. Instead of a traditional fixed turn order (I go, you go, the game goes), the Central Officer uses an app (iOS, or browser-based) to tell each team member what to do, when, and to relay the new information that comes in from the computer controlled AI. She also manages the satellite network to make sure that the best possible information is coming into the team. And it all happens on a timer.

Here s how it worked in practice, in my demo game:

Commander, assign your interceptors. You have 15 seconds.

Africa s about to fall into panic. Europe s no better. I have six inbound UFOs, and six interceptors, but I m short on cash. If I move to defend, I ll have nothing to give my ground troops, who are repelling a base-invasion at XCOM HQ. And the Science Officer won t shut up about wanting to get more salvage.

Five seconds! screams my Central Officer.

I let Africa fall, assigning three interceptors to Europe.

Done! I cry. He presses a button on the iPad next to me. Squad Leader, Defend the Base! You have 13 seconds.



Time itself is the most critical resource. If the Commander (me, in our demo) takes too long, there are consequences. If anything goes wrong like losing satellites or letting a continent fall into chaos there are consequences. Sometimes the consequences are traditional boardgame consequences fail a few dice rolls when trying to defend XCOM base, and your soldiers die. Fail to research a new technology often enough and your scientists have to take a turn off and think about what they ve done.

But because the AI for the game is in the App, both time and information are part of those consequences too. After our failure in Africa, the next round had us assigning resources before we even knew where the UFOs were going to land. After running over time last turn, the Squad Leader, forced to decide between three missions to pursue, only gets 10 seconds to read the mission cards and decide, instead of 25 seconds.

And just like that, the game goes from strategic allocation and resource management to real time panic. The irony here is that this is unique in the XCOM universe. XCOM, after all, is a turn-based strategy game. A safe haven for people who don t like the stress of managing a build order in StarCraft 2 or getting a skillshot just right in League of Legends.



This is the genius of XCOM: The Board Game. It uses an app to change the very structure of the game (Do well, and you ll get critical information before you have to act. Do poorly, and you re flying blind), and it adds an element of real-time panic to what would otherwise be a fairly staid resource and strategy design.

This, it turns out, was the entire point: to stress you the heck out while you re trying to save the world. Making decisions with limited information and limited time is what brings out stress, explains Lang. Real time is the best way to do that. But using a sand-timer just doesn t cut it. An App feels really impersonal, it actually feels actually sinister. When the app pings you, that sound effect starts stressing you out.

By turn three of our demo, I d failed to allocate resources effectively with time being our most critical resource of all. And the earth was lost.



XCOM: The Board Game works as a boardgame for two reasons. The first, obviously, is it s connection to a beloved strategy videogaming franchise. The second is it s integration of a digital component. It will be easy for crufty grognards to immediately dismiss that as a gimmick designed to appeal to people who aren t real boardgamers a comment I heard more than once on the floor of GenCon.

But XCOM: The Board Game is doing something that happens all too rarely in board games it s actually innovating. I only got to play once the line for demos ran around the Fantasy Flight Games booth all weekend long but I will for sure be playing many, many times again, when it s out later this year for $60.

Xenonauts began life as a reimagining of the classic turn-based strategy game X-COM: UFO Defense. But where 2012 s excellent XCOM: Enemy Unknown modernized the setting and recreated the franchise s systems in broad, easy-to-read strokes, Xenonauts threw itself headlong into the details. From individual, grid-based inventories to a line-of-sight cover system and destructible environments, every mechanic from the classic has been reimagined, rebuilt, and given an extra layer. The result is a deeply engaging, indie version of an alien invasion that stands toe-to-toe with X-COM the classic and the reboots.
Colder war
The year is 1979. An alien invasion has interrupted the apocalyptic bickering of the USA and the USSR, and the international forces of the Xenonaut project are Earth s only organized defense. The first thing you ll see in-game is the Geoscape, the world map. Placing a base and building a radar station allow you to track and intercept UFOs across a continent. Unlike in Enemy Unknown, satellites and sci-fi won t help you intercept UFOs on the other side of the planet. Here in 1979, you ll need to build and manage supplementary bases to protect everyone.

Building a second base as soon as you can is imperative.

It s frustrating to watch abductions and other alien activity happen beyond your reach, but it s part of some excellent world-building. The world in X-COM is also at war, but Xenonauts makes me feel besieged and horrified in a way that X-COM never did. From my base in Florida, I can track UFOs across North and Central America, but reports of alien attacks across Europe and Asia continue to rattle in. A passenger airliner has been shot down; 128 dead. A military helicopter disappeared; 11 dead. A boat drifted to shore with no one on it; 14 missing. By the end of my first month, over 1,000 casualties have been reported in the areas that my radar doesn t cover.

As time goes on, the many nations of the Xenonaut project start to complain. Too many of their citizens are dying, and you re not everywhere at once. It s a constant balancing act that is familiar to X-COM players, but Xenonauts represents this tension with a fantastically granular system using dollar figures instead of star-based panic metrics. As a country loses faith in you, they decrease their funding $5,000 or $10,000 at a time. Every time a crop circle goes unanswered, for example, that might be one less jet fighter you can put in the air.
Taking turns
Once you spot a UFO, you scramble your nearest jets to go meet it. This second phase of the game is Xenonauts largest single addition to the classic formula: an overhead, strategic air combat map that plays out in real time. The on-rails button-pushing of Enemy Unknown s air combat mode is more fully realized in Xenonauts. Each fighter can be individually ordered to move, use evasive maneuvers, and target specific opponents. It s intricate fun, but there s an auto-resolve option that will skip this phase if you d rather get straight to the nitty-gritty.

It s good looking, but the aerial combat mode is just one more way for you to get your people killed.

After a UFO has been brought down, you send in a dropship with an assault squad to kill the surviving aliens and capture technology. This phase, which makes up the majority of the game, plays out in a classic, turn-based style that is second-nature for classic X-COM fans but could involve some trial and error for newer players. Each soldier has a reserve of time units they can use to move, check their inventory, open doors, and shoot. Xenonauts sticks very close to X-COM s roots here, but my favorite improvement is a time-unit reserve slider. If your soldier can move 70 units this turn at a dead sprint, you can tell them to move less and reserve enough time units for a quick shot or save more time for an aimed shot. You can use these time units in any order, one or two steps at a time, and you ll still reserve a chance to shoot back when an alien flanks you by surprise. It s an incredibly useful addition that fits right in with the classic mechanics.

Another welcome addition: if you capture the UFO and hold it for five turns, you win the mission. The days of scouring the far corners of the map for the one alien hiding behind a rock have been thankfully left behind.

Xenonauts includes a detailed online manual, but it s a bit of a retro throwback that fails to take the place of a hands-on, in-game tutorial. If you ve never played X-COM or anything of its type, you may have a hard time getting up to speed in Xenonauts, which presents you with a ton of menus and not a lot of in-game guidance. The manual is opened through the launcher, but an in-game tutorial would ve made it more accessible for new players. For die-hard fans of the series, though, the game plays so much like X-COM that you ll already understand all but the most specific details.

Assaulting a crashed ship is a lesson in bloody close-combat.
Class warfare
I like the flexibility Xenonauts gives me to manage my soldiers, especially in regards to their equipment and class designations. The biggest frustration in Enemy Unknown is taking a rookie into the field and having them randomly promote to a soldier class that you don t need. Soon your barracks is full of snipers who can t replace your newly KIA heavy weapons expert. Xenonauts ditches that system and lets you assign any weapon to any soldier. There are class designations (assault, rifleman, sniper), but they re for your organizational purposes only. If you need another assault trooper, hire a rookie and hand them a shotgun: you re in business.

Having an adaptable squad is crucial, because these soldiers are fragile like porcelain dolls. In one of my first missions, my troop transport s doors opened to reveal an alien already aiming at us: we d been dropped into a hot LZ. The oversized reptile s first shot hit my assault trooper in the face, and he dropped dead like a bag of hammers. We returned fire, but the alien s second shot wounded our sniper, who dropped her rifle and ran. As the rest of the squad stayed in cover to take out the alien, she ran into a field and bled to death. Losing an experienced soldier to permadeath always sucks (with Iron Man mode on, there s no save reloading), but after that mission I was able to take one of my other veterans, equip him with a sniper rifle, and rebuild my squad without promoting a gun-shy rookie.

The Cold War theme is expressed with powder-blue uniforms and boxy helmets. Nice duds, Oscar.

Equipping your squad also gives you an opportunity to bring gadgets like demolition charges, heat-resistant riot shields, smoke grenades, and flashbangs. Adding these to your kit opens up new ways to play in Xenonauts fully destructible environments. I never imagined a version of X-COM that would encourage me to use C4 to blow apart a wall, toss flashbangs, and charge into close range with shotguns. Now that I ve found one, I never want to go back.

New features like these are a lot of fun, but in replicating and improving what made X-COM great Xenonauts also repeats the steep initial learning curve, unforgiving failure states, and occasional frustrations of the classic. The Geoscape and all its many possibilities is daunting for first-timers, and getting used to the time unit system will require some tinkering and missteps. Players who appreciate granular detail will love the options Xenonauts gives them, but it may take a couple of hours of work and a few quickloads to feel comfortable with everything the game has to offer.

If you re an old fan of the X-COM series, of course, forget about finding your old install disks or putting up with twenty-year-old graphics playing Xenonauts is the best way to relive those glory days with deeper systems. If you re new to X-COM, Xenonauts will let you explore the series classic roots with added depth and details.

Vitals
Price: $25 / 15
Release date: Out now
Publisher / Developer: Goldhawk Interactive
Multiplayer: None
Link: http://www.xenonauts.com/

The word went out in late May that the hit strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown was in the process of being ported to Linux by Feral Interactive, as were its DLC and expansion packs. Today that port went live, just in time for a pretty sweet Steam Summer Sale price.

I don't like the word "re-imagining" but I have to admit that XCOM: Enemy Unknown got it right. It somehow managed to turn a 20-year-old turn-based strategy game into a modern hit, putting players at the head of an elite international military organization charged with defending Earth from an alien invasion. It's not in the league of, say, Call of Duty, but the enviable review scores and healthy amount of add-on content speak for themselves.

Now it's available natively for Linux, too. Feral's version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown runs on Ubuntu 14.04 and SteamOS, and it's a SteamPlay release, meaning that if you already own the Windows version, you get the Linux release free.

And if you don't happen to own it, this would be a good time to rectify that situation: It's currently in the Steam Summer Sale mix at $7.50 for the base game 75 percent off the regular $30 price or $16.50 for the Complete Edition, which includes the Slingshot and Elite Soldier DLC packs and the Enemy Within expansion, that normally sells for $50. The Summer Sale pricing will remain in place until 1 pm EDT on June 21.

Some claim that summer doesn t start until the 21st, but Valve says it s time for the Steam Summer Sale and we haven t heard anything from the solstice lobby so, happy first day of summer! As always, it s celebrated with a ridiculous store-wide Steam sale renowned for its low prices and intoxicating effect on the PC gaming community. Everything looks great when it s 80% off, but before you start filling up your library, here are our favorite picks of day one.

Reminder: if a game isn't a daily deal or a flash sale, it could pop up later in the sale for an even lower price. If you want to be safe, wait until June 30 to pick up a sale-long deal.

5 - Trine Complete
85% off: $3.74 / 2.69 - Steam store page
What Trine lacks in challenge it's not very difficult as platformers go it more than makes up for in magical fairy tale charm. The sequel, Trine 2, improves upon the formula just about every way, particularly through the addition of cooperative multiplayer action. And with the original game about to undergo a dramatic (and free!) overhaul thanks to the coming Trine Enchanted Edition, this bundle at this price is a must-have by any measure.

4 - Hotline Miami
85% off: $1.49 / 1.04 Steam store page | Flash sale: Buy it before 8 p.m. EST
No game revels in ultraviolence like Hotline Miami, which turns pixelated murder sprees into an art form. It's brutal, stylish, and challenging in that perfect way: once you make a perfect run through a level without stopping, mowing down a dozen thugs with a knife and then a pipe and then a shotgun, you'll feel like the god of sleazy Miami murders. You'll want some practice now, since Hotline Miami 2 includes a level editor that will let you craft your own murder rooms. Get it fast the flash sale on Hotline Miami won't last long.

3 - Far Cry 3
75% off: $7.49 / 3.74 - Steam store page
Attacking outposts is our favorite part of Far Cry 3. The sandbox shooter s story is a strange and meandering mixture of Alice in Wonderland and the spring break trip you made in college, but dismantling the dozens of bases that populate Far Cry 3 s islands however you want is scrappy, open-ended FPS combat at its best. Now s a good time to jump in before Far Cry 4releases later this year.

2 - The Witcher 2
80% off: $3.99 / 2.99 - Steam store page
You ve got until early 2015 before The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt releases, and it s looking fantastic. That s plenty of time to catch up on one of our favorite modern RPG series not only is The Witcher 2 on sale, the first game is only $1.99 / 1.39. Bonus value: The Witcher 2's fantastic story splits into two completely separate arcs in its second act, so if you want to experience both paths, you've got two playthroughs ahead of you.

1 - XCOM: Complete
67% off: $16.49 / 8.24 - Steam store page
Our favorite strategy game of 2012, conveniently collected into bundle form with the equally-great Enemy Within expansion, has one of the best campaigns in gaming. Hand-building your alien defense force replicates the feeling of running imaginary missions with action figures in your living room. Except this time, G.I. Joe can die for reals. Thoughtful strategy, a tense metagame, and detailed maps that explode into pieces make XCOM the second-best digital board game available (Civilization V would be the first).

Other great deals today:
Rising Storm: Game of the Year Edition (50% off) $9.99 / 7.49
Tomb Raider (50% off) $9.99 / 7.49
Max Payne 3 (70% off) $5.99 / 4.49
Mirror s Edge (75% off) $4.99 / 2.49
The Witcher Enhanced Edition (80% off) $1.99 / 1.39
Papers, Please (50% off) $4.99 / 3.49
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (50% off) $4.99 / 3.74

Long-suffering Linux gamers will get a nice treat later this summer as XCOM: Enemy Unknown will finally make its way to the platform, in a bundle including all add-on content and the Enemy Within expansion. The "new" game is being developed by Feral Interactive, which until now has worked exclusively on games for Apple platforms (including the OS X version of XCOM), as its debut Linux project.

We re thrilled to have been given the opportunity to bring XCOM: Enemy Unknown to Linux, Feral Interactive Managing Director David Stephen said. It s an amazing game and we are hopeful that Linux gamers will welcome this addition to their platform.

The Linux version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown will be a SteamPlay title running under Ubuntu 14.04 and SteamOS, and will include the original game plus the Slingshot and Elite Soldier DLC packs. More significantly, it also includes the XCOM: Enemy Within expansion that adds new base facilities, weapons, research projects, upgrades, and of course plenty of new and interesting ways to die at the hands of the rapacious alien invaders.

There's no release date or pricing info yet, but as a SteamPlay title, those who already own the game on Windows or Mac should automatically have access to the Linux version once it's out. There's also a pretty cool trailer heralding the game's announcement, which is perhaps a bit more action-packed than the actual game, but I don't think XCOM is really a secret at this point; if you're buying it for Linux, the odds are pretty good that you already know what you're in for. In the meantime, you can find out a little bit more about what's coming (and listen to some ominously moody background music) at Feral Interactive's XCOM page.

For strategy gamers, Julian Gollop is a name of hallowed reverence. His Belt of Achievements includes pre-millenium classics such as Laser Squad and Chaos. Most notably, he created the X-COM series of turn-based tactical alien fragging and directed 1994's X-COM: UFO Defense widely considered one of the best strategy games ever made. The franchise spent some time in the engineering bay before returning in 2012 with Firaxis' excellent Enemy Unknown, but Gollop has lately turned to crowdsourced funding with a small team to develop his multiplayer wizard-em-up reboot Chaos Reborn. In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread on Reddit last weekend, Gollop answered questions on his take of the current state of strategy games, alternate funding, and the rise of early access.

Chaos Reborn's most recent status update saw a Kickstarter campaign kick off earlier this year as a means to gather additional funds for adding additional competitive and co-op modes to the turn-based sorcery dueler. So far, the campaign has amassed over $96,000 in donations with 22 days left.

Here's a few of Gollop's most interesting answers from the thread:

On preferences between "old, more complex" X-COM design and current, "more casual" remake design: "That's a toughie. There are some things about the new XCOM which are clearly better a better tutorial, a better interface. The old complex X-COM had a slightly different approach the aliens had their agenda which progressed no matter what the player did. Things were more systemic and less scripted. I still prefer this approach, but it's just not seen in any AAA game these days, let alone the new XCOM."

Gollop wanted to create a Lovecraftian, 20th century strategy game after X-COM: "After the first X-COM, I was so worn out by the development that I wanted to do something in a new direction. I proposed an X-COM-style game based on a kind of Lovecraftian Chthulu mythos set in the 1930s with cults, portals into a parallel world, and Nazis. Microprose said that horror games don't sell. However, some elements of these ideas did make it into X-COM: Apocalypse."

On how game development changed since the '80s: "The main changes are the abundance of powerful tools and engines (e.g. Unity, which we are using on Chaos Reborn), the specialization of many roles (I used to do everything. Art, coding, sound, etc.), and the diversity of the market opening up opportunities for new types of games. It was really very amateurish back in the early 1980s, but there was still some amazing talent and fantastic games made."

On early access: "Early access can really help developers get their project finished which might not otherwise get any funding. It's a two-way street, though. I think developers need to be very careful to offer something of real value if they are actually charging money for it. They must 'find the fun' quickly, and it must be present from the earliest release. In my view, rough graphics and functional interfaces are acceptable, but buggy, incoherent gameplay isn't."

On the next most exciting development in the industry: "I'm pretty excited about Steam OS, because it would be great to have an open games platform succeed. The Oculus Rift is even more exciting though, and I think it will do well. Above all, though, I think that the rise of the indie gaming scene is the most exciting thing I have seen in years."

On the current state of strategy gaming: "I think things are improving. XCOM is a standout success, of course, but there is some really good stuff coming out. I love Unity of Command, for example, with its brilliant presentation and UI. I like the work of Shenandoah Studio with its iPad games, Battle of the Bulge, and Drive on Moscow. I have been in awe of Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings 2. More stuff seems to be happening on tablets, which is a great platform for turn-based games, for sure. Still, I wish there were more high quality turn-based strategy games."

Youtuber Antti Kokkonen, who uploads Let's Plays to Youtube under the username Zemalf, is one of the best XCOM players in the world. On January 11, he finished a 50 hour run of XCOM: Enemy Within on Impossible Ironman difficulty without losing a single country. Or Interceptor. Or mission. Or soldier.

It was a perfect run on the game's hardest difficulty (and his first time through Enemy Within). On Ironman, XCOM is limited to a single save file. No do-overs. Beating the game on Impossible Ironman is a rare feat, but beating it without losing a single soldier? That really does sound impossible. But Zemalf did it, and he recorded it all across 58 Let's Play videos.

"I consider myself an okay player, but the run did go really well," he told PC Gamer. With Zemalf's help, we've broken down this achievement in XCOM mastery, dissecting his 58 part series into the key moments that defined the run.

As the XCOM faithful know, Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within operate on a reverse difficulty curve. They're brutally unforgiving in the early missions, when soldiers are inexperienced, panic easily, and die to a single alien blast. "The first five to ten missions are crucial," Zemalf says. "In this run I should've lost, or could've lost, a whole squad in a very early mission where I more or less played really badly. But just out of luck I didn't lose anyone."

If there's a consistent theme through all of Zemalf's run, it's luck. Luck in the missions the game generates, the panic levels he has to contend with, and the soldiers he starts with. And when luck fails him, Zemalf falls back on his slow and thoughtful playing style, methodically considering every option before making a move. He narrates his Let's Plays the same way, speaking in a deep, calm voice.

We've incorporated some of those LP videos below, timestamped to dramatic and crazy and revelatory moments in the run. Watch them as you read for examples of Zemalf's strategy (and some very, very lucky breaks).
Danger zone: surviving the early missions
Chance gets Zemalf out of more than one seemingly impossible situation. Early in the run, he's offered a council mission with a killer reward: five engineers, the equivalent of an entire workshop add-on to XCOM headquarters. He has to go for it. Fifteen minutes into the mission, though, things are looking bad. One of Zemalf's soldiers has already taken a hit and is down to 1 HP. And when he moves that soldier forward to deal with a lone sectoid, he accidentally reveals and activates two more (watch below now).



At this point, the sectoids get to take two shots at his sniper, who is perilously vulnerable in half cover. They miss, granting Zemalf another turn. He misses his first shot. His second, which needs to kill a sectoid, drops it down to 1HP instead. Then he makes what should be a fatal error: he presses the wrong hotkey, accidentally telling his third soldier now dangerously exposed to take a low-percentage shot. It misses.

He stews on it for a minute with only one move left. But that last soldier, the sniper, ends up saving his bacon.


Strategic moves
"In most cases I took an educated guess or calculated risk moving into certain positions, knowing if I activate a group here, I can deal with it, like having a heavy with a rocket ready to shoot," Zemalf says. "I was always thinking ahead to activate aliens with moves left." At least, almost always he admits that on a few occasions, like the one above, those calculated risks got him in trouble.

A couple LPs later, Zemalf encounters his first UFO crash. Some risky advances pay off by not revealing additional aliens. If they had, he would almost certainly lose two of his soldiers. But this mission, which he calls the most tense situation of the entire playthrough, shows off the side of XCOM that can be maddeningly difficult: missing high-percentage shots (watch below now).



The encounter starts out easily enough, with one alien totally exposed and at 1HP. But an 85 percent shot misses the mark. And then a 71 percent shot misses. "Welcome to XCOM," Zemalf says under his breath.

A miss from one of the sectoids at point blank range keeps Zemalf's support soldier alive, but the next turn gets even uglier. He reveals three more aliens by advancing too far and spends several minutes considering every possible option.

"Looking back at it, I could've played a lot better, but that's easy to say now," Zemalf says. He makes a mistake by advancing too far, but this situation highlights Zemalf's strength as an XCOM player: he thinks through each strategic option before moving and only commits to the best course of action when he's sure it's the best. And when things get really dicey, XCOM pays back for its earlier cruelty by helping him land three moderate-percentage shots in a row. He wipes out four sectoids in one fell swoop.

Most of the time, Zemalf's aggressive strategy works well. He methodically activates a group of aliens, then tries to take them all out in one turn. He points to an encounter in his ninth LP as an example (watch below now).



Since this is several hours later in the run, Zemalf already has a MEC trooper in his squad. He uses the MECs as tanks to take hits that his other soldiers wouldn't be able to survive. As he faces a pair of Thin Men, he methodically thinks through each of his soldiers' abilities, using the MEC's collateral damage ability to destroy one alien's cover, and a grenade to take out the other's cover. That gives him better odds of landing shots with his remaining troops, and he never has to leave cover to fire.

"It's kind of hard to describe my own style, but based on the comments I get, I think I'm playing more aggressively than many others," Zemalf says. "When I have activated alien groups, I play very aggressively to take them out as fast as possible. I think that was key in not losing anyone. The game doesn't get any chance because of the mechanic of how the groups spawn if you can take the one group out that you activated, before they even get an action, they can't shoot you, and then you more or less can't lose anyone."

Being able to take out alien groups so expediently took some smart base planning early in the game. Zemalf aimed to get as many satellites up as he could in the first three months of the game, which would prevent the XCOM countries from panicking, leaving the project, and denying him crucial resources. He also rushed to build a MEC early and to research laser weapons, which he'd need to deal with the HP buffs aliens get on Impossible difficulty.

Still, it took luck to get him through those first few missions with inexperienced, ill-equipped troops. "Getting hit and not getting a lethal hit is lucky, and I had quite a few of those early on," Zemalf says. The heavy soldiers' rockets and grenades help him get through those early missions. Later he favors snipers and assault troops over heavies, because their explosives could destroy alien weapon fragments he needs for research.


Over the hump
Zemalf's perfect run almost ends in the XCOM Council mission Confounding Light, which gives him 10 turns to outfit a train with transponders and send it down the tracks. The entire mission is tense; Zemalf has to push forward faster than usual, position his soldiers to activate the transponders, but still take out any enemies that could quickly decimate his troops. In the end, he's left with a single turn, a MEC one hit away from death, and isn't even sure he's going to be able to complete the mission (watch below now).



Here at the 10 minute mark, Zemalf accidentally activates some Thin Men and his MEC takes its first hits. Things get worse for the rest of the run. Skip ahead to 45 minutes to see Zemalf play through the last clutch turn. "Please, please, please," he pleads with XCOM as he tries to activate the train. Again, luck is on his side his MEC survives and he completes the mission with his last possible move.

Thanks to XCOM's reverse difficulty curve, he's over the hump by the middle of his 58 video run. Zemalf cites Confounding Light as the last mission he truly struggled on.

Enemy Within is, according to many players, a harder game than the original Enemy Unknown. It adds a resource called meld to maps that expires after a few turns, encouraging players to advance more quickly. It adds new enemies and missions. But it also adds gene modifications, which Zemalf uses to great effect.

"Something I think is borderline broken in the game is the mimetic skin gene mod," he says. Mimetic skin grants soldier invisibility and makes them untargetable. "Using the mimetic skin with the sniper, with squad sight, the aliens didn't even get a shot on me in many missions. , half cover counts as full cover and keeps them invisible. That was just ridiculous."

By combining mimetic skin with a sniper's Snapshot and In the Zone abilities, Zemalf was able to move his sniper and fire in the same turn. And with In the Zone, taking out a flanked enemy with the sniper lets that unit fire again. Zemalf could take out entire squads of enemies with a single sniper (watch below now).



This mission occurs about three quarters of the way through the run. By this point, Zemalf's soldiers are equipped with mimetic skin, and he uses that ability to get close to the aliens without worrying about taking a shot. He deals with them easily.

By LP 45, Zemalf is around 30 hours into his Impossible Ironman challenge. He hasn't lost a soldier or failed a mission. But he doesn't go out of his way to preserve the perfect run. Instead of abusing mimetic skin and coasting to a (relatively) easy zero-deaths finish, he switches out some of his troops for rookies and trained them up.

"I actually played quite sloppily in the later missions and I didn't shoot for not losing anyone," he says. "I just wanted to play through, and that kind of ended up happening anyway."

Amazingly, Zemalf went into Enemy Within with little foreknowledge of the game. He had played Enemy Unknown, but started Enemy Within soon after its release in Europe, and only spent a few days watching streams on Twitch before beginning his run. He knew that MECs were in the game, but knew almost nothing about them.

"I had seen the new stuff in some previews, I watched maybe a couple videos, but I didn't know what abilities the mechs had. I just knew they had a lot of hit points," he says. "I can't say it was blind, but I hadn't played any of the missions."

If not for the player/audience dynamic of Let's Plays, Zemalf likely wouldn't have come through his entire Impossible Ironman run unscathed. Commenters clued him into the gene mods, and he did research which autopsies he'd need to unlock them. They also warned him about the XCOM base assault, so he knew in advance how it would work.

"I got the mission relatively early as I built the hyperwave relay quite early. Some people said I was really lucky because I only got sectoids," he says. "I kind of would have liked to play completely blind, not even know the base assault was coming."

Even with some help here and there from the audience, Zemalf did something few XCOM players could accomplish. And he did it better than most others who have completed Impossible difficulty, too his game summary stats at the end beat the world average in every single category.



As the credits roll on his run, Zemalf reflects on his performance. "Little bit of an empty feeling as this draws towards the end. Little bit of sadness," he says. "But also happy that it went so well. And even more happiness at how much all of you have liked this. It's really something. I've always said that I'd be doing Let's Play videos even if just one person was watching, one person who enjoys them. And when there's a thousand, or several thousand, enjoying the videos, it makes it all even better. And the feedback that I get from all of you, that's what keeps me going. At times it was overwhelming. I was really happy to play this."

Zemalf plans to tackle the original X-COM: UFO Defense at some point in the future.

Before running away for a few days of competitive eating and cooperative gaming, Evan, Cory, and Tyler gathered to reflect on the most memorable victories, losses, and stories they virtually experienced in 2013. Watch the whole five-video series on the PC Gamer YouTube channel, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more regular content, gameplay footage, and conversations.

Holiday time means gaming time: this week Tyler, Evan, and Cory talk Battlefield 4, XCOM: Enemy Within, Hearthstone, and other games they've been playing over the holiday break. Listen all the way through for Cory's exclusive interview with Ananda Gupta, lead designer on XCOM: Enemy Within.

Accept no substitute for PC Gamer Podcast 366 - Chattlefield!

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Send an MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com or call us toll-free at 877-404-1337 x724.

Subscribe to the podcast RSS feed.

Follow us on Twitter:
@ELahti (Evan Lahti)
@tyler_wilde (Tyler Wilde)
@demiurge (Cory Banks)