XCOM: Enemy Within - 8 Reasons It Is 2012 & 2013’s Game Of The Year

Xcom Jetpack €œA strange title for an article€, you may be thinking. However for any of the uninitiated Enemy Within is the expansion pack to 2012€™s phenomenal XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a game that itself was a remake of 1994€™s original 2D troop-manager. The beauty of Enemy Within€™s mishmash of isometric class-based squad management and puzzle elements becomes ever more complex as the game goes on, forever pulling you further and further into its pendulum-swing of alien invasion and human resistance. Enemy Unknown reminded all of us what we loved so much about turn-based strategy games, and whilst that genre in itself is not the most easily-recommendable, XCOM provides a fun sci-fi backdrop of countries uniting to provide incredible technology with which to repel the advancing hordes, grounded in a realistic €˜a-few-bullets-and-you€™re-dead-forever€™ gameplay system that if you give it a chance, will suck away entire days of your life. Although the game might not get the big-budget, celebrity-starred promotional campaigns of the likes of Call of Duty, nor is it thrust down your throats in an annual manner like Assassin€™s Creed. What€™s on offer in this years€™ XCOM, albeit an €˜expansion pack€™ of last year's instalment, are additions that completely refine the entire game (for half the price of the big budget titles I just mentioned), and will separate the gamers from the boys.
Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.