App of the Week: XCOM

This would totally have been my App for last week if I'd had time to write it up (and one of the reasons I didn't have time was that I was playing on this app...)

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a 2012 strategy game based on the earlier XCOM and UFO games. I played XCOM for the first time earlier this year, when it was finally made available on Mac, and was instantly hooked. Your goal is to defend earth against increasingly overwhelming odds as a powerful and technologically advanced alien race invade.

Your time is split between high-level base management, setting research projects, managing the engineering team building items and facilities, and trying to mitigate the general panic which breaks out from alien activity. The rest of the time, you command your squads in turn-based combat against the aliens, with a variety of objectives.

XCOM launched on iPad a few weeks ago, and it makes the jump to tablet VERY well. It's pretty much perfectly designed for a touchscreen (with a few minor annoyances, but I think most of those come from being used to the desktop version). Pretty much all of the original game has made it over intact.

XCOM is addictive partly because it is HARD. There are different options for difficulty, but the fact is that incautious tactics at any difficulty will get your soldiers killed, undoing your hard work in training them, failing you missions, and bringing you closer to losing the game. There is a real sense of working against the odds - the aliens start out vastly better equipped than you, and only seem to continue to possess all the unfair advantages as the game marches on. So when you do execute some excellent tactics that destroys them without taking any damage to your squad, you feel real elation.

For an iPad App, XCOM ain't cheap, coming in a whopping £13.99. I'm pretty sure that's the most I've spent on any one app, definitely a game, but it does feel worth it. This is a full-blown AAA gaming title  which just happens to have come over to a tablet. If this sounds like your thing (and, as ever, it's not for everyone), seriously consider picking this up. That said, as with most apps, it will inevitable go on sale at some point, so you could consider waiting. Or pick it up on another platform. I'm not picky. But you won't regret having played this game. Until you're sobbing in the corner that your squad, which you named after all your pet cats, have been brutally killed by Sectoids.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/xcom-enemy-unknown/id639544885?mt=8