7. A Great All-Hope-Is-Gone Atmosphere
With humanity being wiped off the face of the globe city-by-city, the worlds superpowers have bandied together, Pacific Rim-style and formed The XCOM Project, a unique body of specialist minds that you are now the head of, known only as The Commander. You hover around your own customisable base as some all-seeing-eye, frequently interacting with troops, researchers, engineers and other countries' needs, as well as managing a constantly expanding to-do list of ever-changing priority. An overarching narrative is in effect in the loosest sense possible, as aside from some key missions that introduce new antagonistic forces into the plot, and the way everything wraps up, the story on show here is more of a wider context than a driving character-specific motive. That being said, the atmosphere present is one of unremitting bleakness as hundreds of civilians are lost. Every decision forces you to defend one way, whilst the aliens hammer you the other. Its a game of turning the tide, in something of the same way World War Z portrayed the zombie apocalypse (in the book at least). Its such a feeling of desperate measures being implemented, that when you send off a lone craft equipped with only basic weaponry and an aiming modifier, only for them to fell a much larger alien cruiser, there always follows a fist-pumping explosion of pure euphoria that only gaming can deliver.