XCOM ENEMY UNKNOWN

I got XCOM Enemy Unknown for free (thanks to the Bioshock Infinite pre-order offer) and gave it a try one night... and couldn´t stop playing.

Funny thing is, the basic gameplay seems to have been directly copied from the original XCOM from 1994. I played it for a while but I remember it was extremely punishing and couldn´t finish it. This reboot is practically the same, although with better graphics. Still I had to try 3 times to make it till the end. The golden path of the game is really narrow, and if you don´t make the proper calls early at the beginning you´ll be screwed the rest of the game.

But the playability works incredibly well. Each combat scenario takes 30-40 min to be completed, allowing to adapt your playtime to any personal circumstance. You´ve got plenty of options to customize your base and squad members, and during combat you've got a semi-random element whenever you shoot at an alien that always makes you wonder if you´ll be lucky or not. I admit I played with the saving system (whenever I failed a mission I´d reload the save) so my soldiers would achieve the highest rank as soon as possible. Otherwise the game was too punishing.

Anyway, I strongly recommend it. Although there are plenty of animation / camera bugs, and sometimes the shot success / fail calculations are inappropriate, the overall result is amazingly engaging, the story serves its purpose nicely and the gameplay works like a charm.