1. Xcom Enemy Unknown Best Armor Of The World
2. Xcom Enemy Unknown Best Armor Review
3. Xcom 2 Weapons

Ghost Armor is an advanced body armor in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. XCOM: Enemy Within amends this with: Ghost Armor is an advanced body armor in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. XCOM: Enemy Within amends this with. Such as to rescue civilians/covert operatives, disarm bomb power nodes or collect Meld, a Support is the best choice to get there and the cloak. XCOM: Enemy Unknown – Message Board. Archangel for my snipers. Grapple can get you to high ground, flying creates high ground. Ghost has less health than Titan but offers the cloak, movement. And while it's there, Ghost will continue to be the best armor in the game. With Tactical Rigging, it's easy to slap on Chitin and be comparable to Titan in hitpoints. If they decide to fix/change this in the future, it can be debatable on which is best again. To me, it's not a big deal once you have your A (and B).

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a 2012 turn-based tacticalvideo game developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K Games. The game is a 'reimagined' remake of the 1994 cult classic strategy game UFO: Enemy Unknown (also known as X-COM: UFO Defense) and a reboot of MicroProse's 1990s X-COM series.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in North America on October 9, 2012, and in Europe and Australia on October 12, 2012. An 'Elite Edition', containing all previously released downloadable content, was released as a Mac OS X exclusive by Feral Interactive in April 2013. A port for iOS was released in June 2013 and an Android conversion was released in May 2014. An expansion pack, titled XCOM: Enemy Within, was released in November 2013. In June 2014, Feral released both XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its expansion pack XCOM: Enemy Within for Linux.^[9] A bundle containing both Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within was launched on the PlayStation Store for PlayStation Vita in March 2016 under the title XCOM: Enemy Unknown Plus.

Set in an alternative version of year 2015, during an alien invasion of Earth, the game puts the player in control of an elite multinational paramilitary organization called XCOM and is tasked with defending the Earth. The player commands troops in the field in a series of turn-based tactical missions; between missions, the player directs the research and development of new technologies from recovered alien technology and captured prisoners, expands XCOM's base of operations, manages XCOM's finances, and monitors and responds to alien activity.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown was critically acclaimed, with several reviewers commenting on the game's difficulty, replayability, and addictiveness. A number of publications, including GameSpy, GameTrailers and Giant Bomb, named it Game of the Year. A sequel to the game, titled XCOM 2, was released on February 5, 2016 for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux.

• 2Plot
• 4Release
• 5Reception

Gameplay[edit]

Much like its predecessor, XCOM: Enemy Unknown casts the player as the commander of an elite military organization. As commander, the player directs their soldiers in turn-based combat missions against alien enemies. Between missions, the player directs the organization's research and engineering divisions in creating new technologies and improving XCOM's base of operations, and manages the organization's finances.^[7][10]

The turn-based ground combat uses a top-down3D perspective. The player controls a squad of between one and six human soldiers or robotic units as they hunt the aliens on the map and attempt to complete other objectives dependent on the mission. Map layouts are not randomly generated, but enemy placement is.^[11]Fog of war hides the aliens and their actions from view until the player's soldiers are in range and have line of sight on them, and enemies normally do not act at all until the squad initially comes within line of sight. Soldiers can carry items and perform special abilities; use of these items and abilities is controlled through a toolbar on the head-up display (HUD). A few examples of abilities include firing on enemies automatically after they emerge, launching explosives, and healing allies.^{[7][12][13][14]}

Soldiers can take cover behind walls and objects in the environment to gain a measure of protection. Units can use suppressive fire to disadvantage enemies, and use active camouflage to maneuver around opponents.^{[15][14][16][17]}Cutscenes and dynamic camera movements emphasise particularly exciting gameplay moments, such as kill sequences and use of special abilities.^[14][18][19] The game includes some tactical role-playing elements, whereby the player's soldiers can gain new abilities as they survive more battles.^[7]

The game's strategy element occurs between missions. XCOM's underground headquarters is presented in a view dubbed the 'ant farm'.^[7] From this view, the player manages construction, manufacturing and research projects underway, and directs how the scientists and engineers use resources recovered from missions and received from XCOM's sponsors. A holographic view of the Earth called the 'Geoscape' allows the player to keep track of the situation around the world, ordering aircraft to intercept UFOs and dispatching soldiers to engage aliens on the ground.^{[7][12][14][18]}

This also influences the panic level of XCOM's member nations. Responding to situations in certain areas decreases panic, and ignoring them results in a rise in panic and potential for the nation to pull out of XCOM. The 'ant farm' also allows the player to observe the team of soldiers relaxing or exercising at the base's gym. A memorial wall to soldiers killed in action is also viewable.^{[14][18][19][21]} Passive bonuses are provided depending on which continent the player chooses for a base location. The player can better detect alien activity by launching satellites and positioning them over territories of interest.^[11]

The game can be played on higher difficulty levels: Classic (in a reference to the original game) and Impossible, each with the option to enable the 'Ironman' option (which limits players to a single save file) separately for each.^[22] Jake Solomon, lead developer, stated on numerous occasions that he believes that the 'truest XCOM experience' is playing without the ability to reload saved games.^[23] On the higher difficulty levels, the random nature of battles, where soldiers under the player's command can permanently die from one enemy attack, the against-all-odds nature of combat against the unknown and technologically superior enemy, and the requirement to sacrifice some resources – including soldiers and even entire countries – for the greater good combine to create a bleak atmosphere where the player feels the weight of command.^[24]

The game also features a multiplayer mode for one-on-one tactical battles. Players spend a predefined points budget on assembling a squad of up to six humans, aliens, or a mixture of both. Human units are customizable in terms of weaponry, armor and gadgets. A simplified version of the single-player perk system is also present. Alien units may not be customized but possess the abilities of corresponding aliens types in the single-player mode of the game.^[8]

Psionic combat from the original 1994 game is retained,^[25] but some gameplay features of the original have been removed or adapted. The time units system, the always-visible grid map and the inventory system of the original have been removed. The initial mission phase of disembarking from the transport has also been removed – missions now begin with troops deployed outside the craft. Unlike in the 1994 game, only one XCOM base exists, the location of which is chosen at the beginning of the game.

Although there are some differences in the interface between platforms, unlike other games such as Firaxis' Civilization Revolution, the content is not simplified for the console versions.^[26] The PC version features a mouse-driven UI.^[27]

Plot[edit]

Setting[edit]

The game's campaign begins in the spring of 2015, as a global alien invasion begins.^[15] Prior to the start of the game, a group of countries called the Council of Nations has banded together to create XCOM (short for Extraterrestrial Combat Unit), the most elite military and scientific organization in human history, tasked with defending them from the alien attack.^[7][28] The player assumes the role of the commander of XCOM, and proceeds to engage in a war against an extraterrestrial enemy with overwhelming technological superiority.^[7][12][29]

Story[edit]

After success with shooting down alien scout ships and securing the crash sites from surviving alien crews, as well as interdicting alien attempts to abduct human civilians for unknown purposes, XCOM manages to also obtain the corpses of various different alien troops. Autopsies reveal that all these types have been genetically and/or cybernetically altered, which seems to indicate they are merely foot-soldiers for unseen leaders. XCOM's head of research, Dr. Vahlen, requests that a live alien be captured for interrogation. This also involves developing a specialized weapon capable of capturing a live alien, and constructing a facility in XCOM's subterranean base capable of safely holding a live alien prisoner.^[30]

Capturing one of the alien troops and conducting the interrogation reveals vague information about another type of alien called the Outsiders, artificially-created crystalline beings encountered aboard UFOs, that appear to serve as pilots and navigators. Dr. Vahlen then requests that XCOM capture an Outsider for study. Upon capturing one of these, the examination reveals that the Outsiders' exotic crystalline structures behave in a manner similar to antennas, receiving a signal broadcast from a location buried underground on Earth. XCOM dispatches a team to investigate the signal; it is found to be coming from a base that the aliens have secretly established on Earth, where experiments are performed on abducted humans.^[30]

XCOM develops a method for gaining entry to the alien base and assaults it. During the mission, the alien serving as the base commander is discovered to have psychic abilities, but is nevertheless defeated by the soldiers. The commander's psychic communication device is recovered and reverse engineered. Tapping into the aliens' communications reveals a previously hidden, stealth 'Overseer' UFO making rounds across the Earth. When the UFO is shot down, it is found to hold an alien species that had not been previously encountered, as well as a strange psionic artifact. The newly discovered species, called Ethereals, possess powerful psionic abilities.^[30]

Once the Overseer ship is shot down and the psionic artifact recovered, the massive enemy 'Temple Ship' reveals itself in low Earth orbit over Brazil, and starts causing earthquakes even as far away as XCOM HQ. The reverse-engineering efforts enable XCOM to unlock and develop latent psionic powers that are present in certain human beings, thus enhancing their human soldiers. Out of these psychic human soldiers, the most powerful becomes the Volunteer, using the psionic artifact recovered from the Overseer UFO to tap into the aliens' psychic communication 'hive', an experience that also increases his or her psionic strength. This allows them to attack and board the Temple Ship to seek out the Uber Ethereal, the leader of the alien invasion.^[30]

During the final battle aboard the ship, the Uber Ethereal reveals that, because of their own failure to improve their own race further, they have been testing and experimenting on other species throughout the universe in an attempt to identify a race worthy of being 'Uplifted', searching for a race that is strong in both mind and body; the various species of alien troops that the player has encountered have all been failures in the Ethereals' experiments. By allowing humans to obtain their technology a few steps at a time, the Ethereals allowed humans to evolve to a fuller potential, and believe that humanity may be the culmination of their search, to find the perfect species to move on and prepare for 'what lies ahead', a vaguely worded destiny that they do not describe further.^[31]

After slaying the Uber Ethereal, the Temple Ship begins to collapse into itself, creating a black hole, which would destroy the Earth due to its close proximity. While the psionically gifted Volunteer urges the other XCOM soldiers to rush back to their transport and escape the doomed ship, the Volunteer stays behind, using the psychic gift to take control of the ship and fly it further away from the planet, finally causing it to self-destruct and save Earth, though at cost of [what was thought to be] the Volunteer's own life.^[a]

Development[edit]

The game went into development in early 2008 as a 'very, very big budget' project with about 50–60 team members^[32][33] led by Jake Solomon.^[10][34] Its prototype was a straightforward remake of the original 1994 game UFO: Enemy Unknown with all the classic gameplay features.^[18][33] The game subsequently went through many revisions, and features were added, tested or removed to create the final result.^[7]

XCOM: Enemy Unknown was developed independently of 2K Marin's XCOM (later rebranded as The Bureau: XCOM Declassified), and although the two games are set in entirely different universes, the developers of both games were in contact with one another, As in the expansion Enemy Within, after researching Meld it says Dr. Vahlen discovered some records from the 60s which shows that maybe they were in the same universe.^[13][18]Enemy Unknown was also the first title developed by Firaxis Games not to feature the name of Sid Meier, who served as the director of creative development but was not directly involved in the game's development day to day.^[6][35] The designers also made an internal board game to help get the 'feel' of the game right.^[36]

The interface team was split into halves to develop separate GUIs for the PC and console releases.^[37] All members of the development team played and finished the original Enemy Unknown game – they were required to do so if they had not already when they joined the team.^[38] Roland Rizzo, who has been working with the X-COM series since the beginning, became the audio lead for the game and was tasked with reimagining and updating John Broomhall's famous original music score.^[39]Michael McCann, composer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, was also involved in creating the game's musical score.^[11] The Civilization series' art director Greg Foertsch was given the task of reimagining the look of X-COM,^[40] including redesigning the classic alien species.^[41] The aim was to have the characters resemble action figures,^[42] and the result was a stylized, bright, flat-textured look.^[40]

Release[edit]

XCOM: Enemy Unknown was first revealed on January 5, 2012 by Game Informer.^[43] A playable demo of the game was available at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June 2012.^[44]Pre-order bonuses included the 'Classic X-COM Soldier' (a haircut for the player's male soldier based on the model for troops in the original 1994 X-COM) and the option to customize the aesthetic design of soldiers' armor.^[45] Those pre-ordering the PC version on Steam also received bonus items for Valve's Team Fortress 2 and a free copy of Firaxis' 2010 strategy game Civilization V.^[46] The game's playable demo version was released on September 24, 2012 for Steam,^[47] on October 9 for the Xbox Live (available for the Gold subscribers of the Xbox Marketplace) and on October 10 for the PlayStation Network.^[48]

Eight custom promotional XCOM: Enemy Unknownarcade cabinets were produced in August 2011 by 2K Games and Bespoke Arcades. The machines were used to run tournaments of the game at various exhibitions including i47, London MCM Expo, Play Expo and Eurogamer Expo with the machines being awarded as prizes.^[49]

XCOM: Enemy Unknown was released in stores on October 9, 2012 for North American consumers and on October 12, 2012 for Australian and European consumers. The game was released for digital distribution via Steam on October 9, 2012.^[50][51] On PC, two editions were released: a normal edition and a special edition which includes a variety of unique items, including an art book, a fold-out poster of the XCOM headquarters, an XCOM insignia patch, and a collection of digital bonus assets such as desktop wallpapers, soundtrack and more.^[45]

An 'Elite Edition', containing all previously released DLC, was announced as a Mac OS X exclusive by Feral Interactive on February 26, 2013 and was released on April 25, 2013.^[52][53] An iOSport, scheduled to be released in the summer of 2013, was announced during a PAX East panel on March 23, 2013.^[3] The game was released on June 20, 2013 at the App Store for $19.99, at the time one of the most expensive iOS games ever released.

The game was available digitally between June 16 and 30, 2016 on the Xbox 360 as part of Xbox Live's Games with Gold.

XCOM: Enemy Within[edit]

An expansion pack, XCOM: Enemy Within was released worldwide on Steam and in retail stores on November 15, 2013.^[54] The pack retains the core storyline but adds a broad variety of content, including new weapons, special missions and the ability to enhance soldiers via genetic engineering or cybernetic implants. Both of those options consume an elusive substance called 'Meld' that can be obtained during battles.

Reception[edit]

Critical reception[edit]

XCOM: Enemy Unknown greatly impressed the public and media at E3 2012, where it won a number of awards from a variety of gaming publications, such as the title of 'Best Strategy Game' from GameSpy,^[78]Game Informer,^[79]IGN,^[80] and Machinima.^[81] The game also won the titles 'Best PC Game' and 'Best Strategy Game' in the 2012 E3 Game Critics Awards.^[82]

A pre-release version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown received highly positive previews by, among others, PlayStation Official Magazine,^[83]Official Xbox Magazine^[84] and Rock, Paper, Shotgun.^[85] The full version of the game also received a high praise from critics. Adam Biessener of Game Informer called it 'a singular achievement that every gamer deserves to experience.'^[64] Ian Dransfield of PLAY called the game 'a phenomenal reimagining of a classic title and an instant classic in its own right.'^[86] It was also described as 'a hallmark of excellence' by Destructoid^[87] and 'an exemplary turn-based strategy game' by Joystiq.^[22]

Dan Stapleton of GameSpy wrote: 'I consider the 1994 turn-based tactical masterpiece X-COM: UFO Defense to be the single best videogame ever made. Compared directly to that impossibly high standard, Firaxis' 2012 remake, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, does remarkably well.'^[66]GamesTM called it 'a worthy reboot of the franchise, easily the most addictive game this year, and one of our favourite Firaxis games ever,' with the final verdict of it being 'fresh, yet authentic – a stunning reboot.'^[67] Josh Harmon of Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) stated that 'to say that XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a phenomenal remake would be selling Firaxis' monumental accomplishment short. The developer hasn't just managed to capture the spirit of the original; they've also tweaked, trimmed, and innovated enough to deliver the freshest, most engaging strategy game in recent memory, if not ever.'^[61]

Eurogamer's review by Rich Stanton described XCOM: Enemy Unknown as 'a winner' and 'a fantastic game' that 'brings back and revitalises a classic.'^[62] Alex Rubens of G4 called it 'an exceptionally solid return for the series, and one that every turn-based tactics fan should experience,' adding that 'even if you never played the original, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is turn-based tactics and management at its finest, and a perfect introduction to the genre.'^[63]

David Houghton of Game Revolution said that despite its flaws, the game 'feels like the revival of not just a brand, but a genre.'^[88]Polygon's Russ Pitts criticized the 'weird dichotomy' of the game's strategy component, but praised the tactical gameplay, calling it 'one of the best and most artfully designed strategy games in recent memory.'^[89] Edwin Evans-Thirlwell of Official Xbox Magazine stated that it 'isn't just Xbox 360's finest strategy experience – it's also a strategy game which changes how you think about strategy games.'^[24]

The game's difficulty received both praise and concern. G4's review noted that 'the extreme difficulty of the game might not be welcomed by all players'^[63] and Official Xbox Magazine described the game as 'reliably unforgiving'.^[24] According to EGM, 'XCOM hates you. XCOM wants you dead. And XCOM will see you dead, over and over again.'^[61]Game Informer called it 'one of the most challenging, intense gaming experiences of this generation.'^[64]PLAY's review stated, 'dying is back in fashion.'^[86]

Several reviews also commented on how addictive the game can be for the player.^[67][90] David Houghton of PlayStation Official Magazine called XCOM 'one of the most unique and endlessly compulsive games of the year so far.'^[91] Erik Kain of Forbes called it 'one of the most addictive games I've ever played' that 'falls somewhere between chocolate and crack on the scale of addictive substances.'^[92] Allistair Pinsof of Destructoid, in pointing out how easily one could be absorbed in the game, told readers to 'take the act of me wiping XCOM from my hard drive as high praise. It speaks volumes on how addictive and replayable XCOM is.'^[87]

Xcom Enemy Unknown Best Armor Of The World

In a retrospective article about the original from 1994, Alec Meer of Eurogamer compared both games, coming to conclusion that 'X-COM and XCOM are completely different games, both ingenious and both flawed in their own ways.'^[93] According to Chris Schilling of VideoGamer.com, 'Enemy Unknown is respectful of Julian Gollop's 1994 turn-based strategy classic, but it's not reverential.'^[11] Charlie Hall of Ars Technica wrote that 'in the end, this is not the X-Com that everyone was expecting. It's more. It's better. If you're merely looking for a highly competent re-skin of the original X-Com, keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming Xenonauts.'^[94] Gollop himself said:

I think Firaxis did a terrific job with the new XCOM. They have made a very console friendly and accessible game, but it still has a lot of strategic and tactical depth. The character progression is done very well, and the tactical combat system is great. I would have done things differently for sure. I was a bit disappointed that the Geoscape is basically irrelevant, with no strategy involved about positioning of bases, detection ranges, base attacks and so on. It is also a shame that there is no random map generation. The development of the alien menace seems to be driven by specific events, such as the first alien base assault, rather than the aliens own development agenda as in the original X-Com.^[95]

Awards[edit]

Multiple publications including Giant Bomb, Kotaku, MTV and GameTrailers gave XCOM: Enemy Unknown their overall Game of the Year award for 2012.^{[72][73][74][75]} GameSpy also gave XCOM its Game of the Year award ('Achievements: Game of the Year, High Tension, Making Turn-Based Cool Again'), commenting that 'few games can deliver the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in the way that XCOM does.'^[71]

XCOM: Enemy Unknown was chosen by the 2012 Spike TV Video Game Awards as a nominee in the category Best PC Game.^[96] At the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, it was nominated for three awards, including Game of the Year, and ended up winning two for 2012's Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Gameplay Engineering. Awarding the game its title of Strategy Game of the Year, PC Gamer wrote it can be 'forging player memories that'll live as long as you play and care about games.'^[77]

Sequel[edit]

A sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2, was released on February 5, 2016. It was developed by Firaxis Games and was released on Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux. At release it was a PC only game. The game takes place 20 years after the events of Enemy Unknown, in an alternate scenario where XCOM failed to stop the alien invasion and humanity surrenders. The player controls a small resistance movement fighting against the alien conquerors.^[97][98][99]

See also[edit]

• The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge – a previous attempt of a 3D remake of UFO: Enemy Unknown by Julian Gollop.^[100]

References[edit]

Xcom Enemy Unknown Best Armor Review

Notes

1. ^In 2014, Jake Solomon, lead designer of XCOM, revealed that the Volunteer in fact did not die, and instead disappeared before the temple ship explodes.^[31]

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77. ^ ^ab'The Strategy Game of the Year 2012: XCOM: Enemy Unknown'. PC Gamer. December 30, 2012. Retrieved November 5, 2013.
78. ^'GameSpy's Best of E3 2012 Awards'. GameSpy. June 7, 2012.
79. ^Bertz, Matt (June 13, 2012). 'Game Informer's Best of E3 2012 Awards'. Game Informer.
80. ^'IGN's Best of E3 2012 Awards'. IGN. June 5, 2012.
81. ^Smith, Rob (June 8, 2012). 'Machinima Announces Best of E3 Nominations'. Indie Gaming Daily.
82. ^'2012 Winners'. Game Critics Awards. Retrieved June 1, 2013.
83. ^'XCOM: Enemy Unknown Preview'. 'PlayStation: The Official Magazine'. Archived from the original on October 28, 2012. Retrieved October 12, 2012.
84. ^'10 things I love about XCOM'. 'Official Xbox Magazine'. Retrieved October 12, 2012.
85. ^'Hands-On: Forty Hours With XCOM'. 'Rock, Paper, Shotgun'. Retrieved October 12, 2012.
86. ^ ^ab'XCOM: Enemy Unknown Review – PS3'. Play Magazine. Retrieved October 12, 2012.
87. ^ ^abWe’ve finally arrived, Destructoid, August 10, 2012
88. ^Daniel Bischoff, X-COM: Enemy Unknown Review, GameRevolution, 10/12/12.
89. ^Russ Pitts, [1], The Verge, October 8, 2012.
90. ^Steve Watts, XCOM: Enemy Unknown review: a space odyssey, Shacknews.com, October 9, 2012.
91. ^David Houghton, Xcom Enemy Unknown PS3 review – Middle management has never been so badassArchived October 12, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Official PlayStation Magazine, October 8, 2012.
92. ^Erik Kain, 'XCOM: Enemy Unknown' Review – Part Two: Better To Have Loved And Lost, Forbes, October 16, 2012.
93. ^Alec Meer, UFO: Enemy Unknown retrospective, Eurogamer, October 14, 2012.
94. ^Charlie Hall, Review: XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a credit to the name, Ars Technica, October 8, 2012.
95. ^Julian Gollop: «I have no firm plans after Chaos, but I certainly want to stay in the games industry»Archived June 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, GameStar.ru, December 5, 2012.
96. ^John Scalzo, 2012 Spike TV Video Game Awards nominees announced, Warp Zoned, November 16, 2012.
97. ^'XCOM 2 Announced!'. xcom.com. Take-Two Interactive. May 30, 2015. Retrieved June 1, 2015. XCOM® 2 ... is currently in development for Windows-based PC. ... The game will also be coming to Mac and Linux via Feral Interactive.
98. ^Stapleton, Dan (June 1, 2015). 'XCOM 2 Announced -- IGN First'. IGN. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
99. ^'XCOM 2 Reveal Trailer – IGN First'. June 1, 2015. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
100. ^'Julian Gollop on XCOM'. Edge. Retrieved October 12, 2012.

External links[edit]

Xcom 2 Weapons

• XCOM: Enemy Unknown at MobyGames

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/XCOMEnemyUnknown

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• Anti-Climax Boss: The final boss, while not the same joke the one in the original games was (which couldn't attack and could be killed before even entering the room it was in), can be taken down in just a few hits if you bring enough snipers. Woe betide the player who incautiously moves their troops into Rift range and fails to kill him, though - he (and his goons) are more than capable of dishing out a Total Party Kill if you let him.
  • One sniper with Squadsight and Double Tap armed with a Plasma Sniper Rifle can take the final boss out in a single turn, before the battle can even begin.
  • You can also ghost in some Heavies and rocket-spam him. He can't handle more than two rockets anyway.
  • An apparent bug can also cause this, skipping the opening speech of the final boss and causing his underlings not to spawn.
• Ascended Meme: Vahlen's infamous request to avoid the use of explosives where possible was turned into around 5 and a half minutes of scenes of explosives-use and the corresponding request, with 1 minute of that as a Stupid Statement Dance Mix (and a single 'Close range?'), on a stream, looped for 24 hours. It also received multiple humorous references in the sequel.

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• Author's Saving Throw: While the game itself isn't this for 2K, since Enemy Unknown was started before the FPS was announced, looks like Enemy Within is this for The Bureau. Just when people saw the final game and got angry, Enemy Within was announced and that rage was lessened, since the trailers were really promising.
• Breather Level:
  • Council Missions once you get far enough into the game. You can be losing good soldiers to Sectopods and Ethereals left and right, and then you're asked to clear a map of Thin Men who were only a challenge back when you couldn't One-Hit Kill them. Those missions are also great for training rookies, as their inexperience is not too much of an issue there. They also make for excellent opportunities to fill in your interrogations - if you didn't put off the base raid for a while, there's a good chance you'll have missed the chance to stun a regular Sectoid^note or a Thin Man for interrogation, and they more or less stop showing up after raiding the base, which without the Council missions would make the research credits from interrogating them Permanently Missable Content.

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  • Operation Gangplank, the final mission of Slingshot. You're on a Battleship, but unlike late-game Battleships, this one is mostly crewed by Sectoids and Thin Men, and they show up piecemeal. Sure, a Chryssalid, a Muton, and a Cyberdisc show up later on, but those are singular in every instance, and are nothing a good team with Carapace Armor and lasers can't handle, especially when compared with the Muton rush that was Confounding Light, the previous Slingshot mission.
  • Furies, the final mission of Operation Progeny, counts as well. The previous mission, Deluge, often had Mutons and Mechtoids pouring down on the level, all the while being timed. Though this mission is timed too, the only resistance one faces here are Thin Men and the occasional Berserker. The layout is the familiar Abductor ship level too, so there's no way to get lost either.

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  • The Site Recon mission is a Shout-Out to Cthulhu Mythos, and it is a genuine Cosmic Horror Story... if you get it when Carapace armor and basic laser weapons are in development, and you're stuck with body armor and ballistic guns. If it comes up when you have a comfortable amount of Heavy and Sniper Lasers and at least the Skeleton Suit, and especially at the plasma-and-powered-armors stage, it's more like Lovecraft Lite. And the desperate flight ending becomes a bit of Gameplay and Story Segregation, as your team could keep killing the waves of Chryssalids until the final turn when it's time to leave.
  • If you're competent at rescuing civilians, Terror missions are a breather for the problem of global panic. These missions are not easy in the slightest, but if you manage to save a respectable number of civilians, panic will abate in the country of the terror attack as well as, to a lesser extent, in the entire continent. It's especially important when panic is high on countries you already have satellite coverage over.
• Broken Base: With a series like this, it was bound to happen. Most of the players can be split into 3 groups:
  • The purists who hate the game because they feel it's nothing like the original X-COM.
  • The fans who love the game and believe that it's a worthy successor to the X-COM name.
  • The moderates and newcomers who don't really care about the history of the franchise but think it's still a pretty good game.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Some possible class skills simply never get picked, due to perceived or actual uselessness. Rarely will you find players with more than two snipers not trained with Squadsight, Supports without Sprinter, Field Medic and Savior, or an Assault without Close Combat Specialist and Close And Personal. Fortunately, Firaxis rectified these issues in Enemy Within, although now the skills to pick are Grenadier, HEAT Ammo (which is absolutely essential for fighting Mechtoids and Sectopods) and Squadsight (again).
  • Some of the new enemy types specifically address the overpowered nature of some class builds. Seekers now actively target isolated soldiers, including Squadsight snipers who normally hide at the very back of the battlefield. EXALT also forces a break from typical tactics, thanks to the fact that large numbers of them will swarm you on maps, reinforcements arrive every turn or so (so you can't simply press forward slowly and trigger one group at a time like with regular aliens) and they use your own tactics against you.
  • As several Let's Players point out, becoming complacent is actually a very bad idea when playing this game. To paraphrase one: 'When you're getting complacent, start worrying'.
  • 'Training Roulette', a Second Wave option that randomizes most soldier skills save for a few (Squaddie class-specific skills and mostly skills inherent to weapons that other classes can't use, like rockets for Heavies and sniper rifles for Snipers), does away with most of this. That said, it's rare to not pick Bullet Swarm, Field Medic, Lightning Reflexes and Sprinter over almost anything.
• Creepy Awesome: Some of the more unsettling aliens, like the Chryssalids and ThinMen.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Sectopods. Enough health to require almost your entire squad's damage output to put down, high enough Defense to ensure a good portion of your squad will miss anyway, multiple attacks per turn and a free Overwatch shot, the ability to unleash (after one turn) a devastating area attack which, if you're unlucky, you may not see coming. And as a mechanical unit, it is impervious to most psionic abilities, and since it can't take cover, it has innate defense at all times and it's Hardened, so immune to critical hits unless the soldier's chance is boosted in some way like skills or the upgraded S.C.O.P.E.. It gets worse in Enemy Within, where to balance the increase in firepower from MEC Troopers and the versatility of gene mods, they have Reinforced Armor, a bonus that halves all damage taken (rounded up) but doesn't affect Drone repairs, the Heavy's HEAT Ammo only deals 50% bonus damage against robotics, and their death explosion actually deals considerable damage over a wide area, similar to a grenade^note . What's more, in very late game Terror missions, all enemy pods can be Sectopods plus Drones. By the time they start showing up, you better always have a good Field Medic on the team and a setup strategy in mind to dealing with these guys.
  • Chryssalids in the early game. Their very long movement range (complete with In a Single Bound, so you're not safe even on the rooftops) and powerful melee attack (which can zombify any human it kills, to boot - even if it doesn't kill on impact, it's poisonous) makes them insanely dangerous, and they're very hard to kill with ballistic weapons, especially since they're resistant to Critical Hits. In the 'Alien Base Assault' stage, they are very likely to appear and close the distance before you even get a turn, and can kill any of your soldiers in two hits at most if you only have Carapace Armors and Skeleton Suits. It doesn't help that they're essentially Big Creepy-Crawlies – almost literally Demonic Spiders, albeit with six limbs, not eight. Fortunately, they have hard counters in the form of MEC Troopers with either level 1 ability (especially the Flamethrower, as it can annihilate an entire pod of them, while the Kinetic Strike Module is a One-Hit Kill on at most two and that's if they surround the MEC), and Scatter Laser-wielding Assault troopers with Close Combat Specialist, and by the time your whole squad has plasma-tier weapons, Titan armor and beyond, they're only really dangerous if they mob a soldier.
  • Thin Men in the early-game on the higher difficulty settings. Incredibly mobile, deadly-accurate, twice as tough as they are on normal difficulty, and able to casually leap to higher ground. Many players have reported getting a Code Black on their first encounter with the Thin Men on higher difficulties. What's worse, they tend to be glass cannons with 'Damage Roulette', capable of dishing out up to 9 damage on a non-crit shot.
  • The Mechtoids in Enemy Within are nothing to be laughed at. They have a lot of hit points, are heavily armed, can attack twice in a turn if they don't move, just like Sectopods, you can't flank them and if a normal Sectoid mind merges with it, it gets a psychic shield that allows it to tank damage even better. Killing the Sectoid that is doing the mind merging only does a little bit of damage to the Mechtoid. One exploitable vulnerability since they have to be piloted by a Sectoid, they are still vulnerable to psychic powers, so if you are lucky and mind control one, the tables can change very quickly. Additionally, the Sectoid pilot's cowardly nature will come out if the Mechtoid is wounded and there are several enemies in sight; it will choose to retreat (possibly using both moves) instead of taking down as many as it can, as Cyberdisks or Sectopods would. However, they just as often enter Overwatch the moment they're out of sight, so you will trigger a lethal ambush when you go after them unless you have a soldier with Lightning Reflexes on site.
• Disappointing Last Level: A major complaint that's been brought against the game is the sub-par nature of the final level. It tends to feel rushed, like it was cobbled together at the last minute by ideas they thought would be cool but came up with late in development, and ends rather abruptly. Enemy Within, which brings so much new content to the game, has the exact same ending – the new alien units don't even feature in it.
• 8.8: 8.2 from IGN, igniting a mass of muttering and furrowed brows from dedicated fans. Metacritic gives it a solid-ish 89/100, brought down by one 70% review. Even Yahtzee liked the game enough to include it on his top five for 2012.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Dr. Vahlen, due to her actions and thinking well reflecting that of many XCOM players. While she may get excited at the sight of new technologies, she does show empathy for the soldiers and fear for humanity. She still does whatever it takes to get the info she needs out of captive aliens and they tend to 'expire' quickly. From their perspective she must be some mythical demon and the reason why you DON'T want to get caught alive by those creepy humans with their stun guns.
  • The Thin Men are pretty popular as well, a result of combining cool design, creepy animations and a very memorable interrogation scene.
  • Delta-2, who is a premade character in the tutorial with one of the generic soldier voices. However, the fact that the Justified Tutorial effectively makes Delta-2 and his squad the stars of an Action Prologue to the game's story, and that Delta-2 is the Sole Survivor after the rest of his squad gets cut down, gives him a lot of attention from the fanbase. Even moreso if going for the 'Aint' No Cavalry Comin' achievement, as Delta-2 would be the only candidate able to achieve it by partaking and surviving every mission: effectively letting him take a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the aliens who killed his old squad for every single battle in the war.
  • Shaojie 'Chilong' Zhang from Operation Slingshot, a former Triad criminalwho defects to XCOM after learning his boss wants to sell off a dangerous alien artifact.
  • Annette Durand from Operation Progeny, a civilian who was hunted by both the aliens and EXALTfor her unprecedented Psionic potential. The fact she was powerful enough that the aliens could use her as an Amplifier Artifact to charge their psionic powers to mind-control most of XCOM HQ's staff just before launching their Base Assault is enough to cement her as a girl not to be messed with.
  • The three 'Furies' rescued from the final mission of Operation Progeny: like Delta-2, they are pre-generated characters with generic voices, but their Psionic potential makes them all badasses on the level of Zhang or even Annette herself. It helps that two of them seem to be a Brother-Sister Team as well.
  • A few of the VIP characters from the Council Escort/Extraction missions, mostly for providing opportunities to fight back against the aliens after being extracted by XCOM:
    • Anna Sing, a woman who was a victim of Alien Abduction, and is able to escape her captors before XCOM moves in to save her: while a Broken Bird and The Woobie, she is certainly high-up in most lists for favorite extraction targets.
    • General Peter Van Doorn, a Four-Star Badasswho enthusiastically taunts his alien attackers, and expresses remorse for how many of his men were cut down by them (while promising to make the aliens pay for it in aRoaring Rampage of Revenge). Notably, in the Long WarGame Mod, the reward for extracting Van Doorn is having him resign from the UN, and join XCOM as a soldier. The sequel also acknowledges his popularity, allowing you to recruit him.
• Evil Is Cool: XCOM is cool, but the aliens are some of the most badass characters in the game. The Thin Men and Mutons are emphasized in this, as demonstrated by their interrogationanimations.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • In several communities online, XCOM fans and WH40K fans are one and the same. Expect jokes about the Adeptus Mechanicus and the MEC Troopers, countless calls to Purge the Xeno, and praising the Commander as though he was a Primarch.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Pretty much all of the Hero Units, though this is deliberate.
  • SHIVs. There's three mechanics that make SHIVs exceptionally overpowered: you don't have to pay for their weapons, they get increasingly cheaper from every workshop connection (being completely free at 8 workshops), and in Enemy Within they get continuous healing up until they're critically hit.
  • A sniper with Double Tap, Squad Sight, and a Plasma Sniper Rifle is going to pretty much slaughter the opposition, especially if they have the high ground. In The Zone is also pretty broken, but relies on your sniper being in position to flank everyone, or all enemies being out of cover.
    • A pretty great way to get the high ground is via the Archangel Armor (especially so with the Advanced Flight Foundry project). If you fly high enough with that you're simultaneously unlikely to be targeted while also being likely to be in a good position for squadshotting enemies and providing far-reaching overwatch. A properly equipped sniper can end up being a critical attack fiend and even possibly your squad leader due to racking up kills easily.
  • With a Heavy to clear the aliens' cover and lower their health, an ITZ Sniper can kill all opposition, and still have a turn to spare.
  • Mimetic Skin in Enemy Within. Soldiers with Mimetic Skin have auto-activating invisibility if they move into high cover from outside enemy sight range, and can remain invisible in that position until they move or attack. And it becomes available very early in the tech tree. This enables extremely aggressive and risk-free scouting, ensuring that you will never run into an enemy ambush, and it also allows you to rain fire using a Squadsight Sniper with complete impunity. The fact that it has infinite uses makes it arguably better than Ghost Armor, a very late-game active stealth suit that many considered to be a game breaker to begin with. It can't stack with the Stealth ability from Ghost Armor or Grenade, and the fact that you need full cover can limit its usefulness in some maps... except for Major-ranked snipers and above, thanks to their 'Low Profile' ability, which makes low cover count as full, meaning any kind of cover at all can trigger Mimetic Skin. It says something that its cost was substantially raised in a later patch. The only conceivable problem with Mimetic Skin is that it's not a 'get out of jail free card' when the operative is trapped by Suppression or will trigger an Overwatch by moving.
  • As noted above, in vanilla Enemy Unknown, the Ghost Armor can be incredibly powerful, as four usages can often be sufficient for most of or the entirety of the map in all but the longest missions. By the time you're going to be fielding Ghost Armor, chances are explosives and destroying alien equipment is going to be less of a concern for you, which is great because ambushing enemies with grenades or rockets becomes significantly more viable. Instead of needing multiple units or multiple turns to take down a single enemy, a lone Heavy or grenade-toting other unit can potentially clear out three or more enemies with a single attack. Chances are you might already have other ability combinations that are pretty powerful, but few things compare to the low risk, high reward strategy of ghosting. In particular, Terror missions become significantly easier when you can save civilians via a de facto victory over clustered aliens.
  • Enemy Within made Snap Shot viable by reducing the Aim penalty after moving, so a Colonel with Snapshot, Mimetic Skin, Low Profile and In The Zone is a walking hurricane of headshots, as they can slip undetected through an enemy line to take cover in the perfect position, then shoot them all dead the next turn.
  • MEC Troopers. Even with their basic starting loadout these guys have a huge minigun that will rip apart most enemies, and their starting MEC gives more health than any of the armor worn by normal soldiers except for the Archangel and Titan Armor, and the only normal armor that gives higher defense is the Ghost Armor. Though the MEC Troopers can't use cover, the Kinetic Strike Module system lets them One-Hit Kill anything short of a Cyberdisk or Mechtoid (and if upgraded, only Berserkers, Mechtoids, Sectopods and Ethereals can survive a hit from it), and its Flamethrower is easily among the best Area of Effect attacks in the game, that causes all organic units to panic if it doesn't kill them. All this before getting any of the MEC upgrades or class abilities, which in the late game can make a single well-used MEC almost unstoppable.
  • With Training Roulette, you can potentially get incredibly powerful characters by mixing and matching certain combinations of skills. How about an Assault class with Sprinter and Low Profile to help them close the distance with a shotgun and then be in decent cover afterwards? Low Profile also pairs well with the Mimetic Skin gene mod, as it allows essentially any cover to trigger the free ghost stealth. You could even pair it with Muscle Fiber Density to leap up buildings or Adaptive Bone Marrow to make sure that even if your Assault does get hit, they'll be able to heal it up over time and likely recover quickly after the mission anyways. If the Assault is also gifted with Gunslinger, he or she is the perfect scout and a Meld-collecting machine, not to mention a superb covert operative. Even with the restrictions that covert operatives can face, with the right set of equipment and abilities it's like EXALT was essentially infiltrated by Superman.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Several in the research project codenames:
    • The Blaster Launcher research project is codenamed 'Tunguska', no doubt after The Tunguska Event.
    • The Sectoid interrogation is codenamed 'Roanoke'. Roanoke Colony was established at the coast of what is today North Carolina in the late 16th century by more than a hundred English settlers. A ship returned there a few years later and found the colony completely deserted, with no signs of struggle, and none of the settlers were found in later investigations.
    • The Sectoid Commander interrogation is codenamed 'Voynich'. The Voynich Manuscript is a book dating to the 15th century written in an unknown script and language, and no one has been able to decipher it thus far. Experts are divided on whether it some kind of artificial code or cypher, the only specimen of a dead language or mere gibberish.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Units firing may bug out and be shown shooting in a completely different direction... but the rounds will still go right into their target. It's especially notable when a Sniper in cover uses Disabling Shot – they'll actively aim away from the target before shooting.
  • Suppressing melee enemies will have them stand still out of fear of provoking a reaction shot from the ability, and can take no other actions if not adjacent to attackable units because melee enemies can only attack in melee or move. Of course, them standing still for a turn to let the rest of your troops get in position to shoot them to ribbons is more likely to be hazardous to their health than one reaction shot while they run for cover. Fixed in Enemy Within, where they'll either take the gamble and move.
  • Snipers with Squadsight, when put into Overwatch, can take reaction shots at sniper distance even with a pistol (which is incredibly beyond its maximum range). Good pick for taking out a low-health enemy not trapped by Overwatch from a soldier within its sight.
  • Sometimes, when using their sidearm, your soldiers will still keep their primary weapon model on their hands, so this can result in your trooper holding a plasma sniper like a pistol and shooting regular bullets. Typically happens when they get to cover and you give them the command to switch weapons before their animation for settling in finishes playing. Something vaguely similar happens when an EXALT Elite Medic fires off his Regen Pheromones and then uses a Medikit immediately afterwards.
  • The Ethereals' attack reflector has a few setbacks:
    • It doesn't work on missed shots from an Assault's Rapid Fire skill, and if it reflects the first but gets hit by the second, the first shot won't be reflected.
    • They'll reflect the first few shots fired from Suppression. The reflected shots deal no damage, since if the user isn't a Heavy with Mayhem, they're not meant to cause damage.
  • If a Mind Controlled alien is killed, they're treated like a fallen squadmate when it comes to their gear. That is, their inventory is salvaged after the mission, so you often receive bonus Plasma weapons and grenades.
  • At least in Enemy Within, Floaters can now get themselves stuck on terrain, and waste both their moves trying to escape, leaving them sitting ducks for your soldiers.
  • Spontaneously, the weapon camos in Enemy Within can bug out and leave you with the default camo.
  • Occasionally while travelling to the far side of the Earth (e.g. XCOM Europe to Melbourne, Australia), the Skyranger will fly to the north pole and teleport to the south (or vice-versa) and continue on to the destination as if it hasn't suddenly broken all known laws of physics.
  • Related to controls: Using a mouse lets you more precisely aim a grenade or rocket, but using a console controller (e.g. Xbox 360) seems to let you extend your maximum range via analog sticks at the cost of being noticeably harder to aim. Depending on the positioning of enemies, this extended range could be enough to give you the edge on a turn when enemies are clustered but far away.
  • In the otherwise awful Vita port, using an item while in cover makes you get stuck in it... or lets you clip through the wall the soldier is leaning on. Used properly, it can be a get out of jail free card that also allows you to damage aliens/EXALT with a grenade and leave their line of sight.
  • On the PC version of Enemy Within, the game very rarely allows a MEC Trooper to move after using their last action point on a non-movement action. It happens most often (but not necessarily) when the MEC Trooper is the last squad member to act in the turn by killing the last enemy in sight.
  • Rarely, a soldier will have an action after using the grappling hook even if they use it as their second action in the turn (after moving/firing with Bullet Swarm/something else). Typically only a few actions will be available, but if the soldier isn't a Heavy, switching weapons will make all actions that aren't on cooldown (except movement) become available.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • Floaters: unlike the original game, many players actually hate them now. Their jetpacks mean they'll almost always find exactly the right spot to land in where your entire team is flanked and they're safely behind cover. Heavy Floaters are The Same But More: more firepower (regular plasma rifle, and a grenade to make things worse), more mobility, more aiming accuracy, and more hit points.
  • Thin Men as well, as they're highly mobile like Floaters, and pack the same amount of firepower. Sure they die in one shot (unless you shoot them with your basic sidearm or are playing on Classic or Impossible) most of the time, but they have the annoying poison attack (which reduces a soldier's Aim) that never misses and they explode into a cloud of poison when killed. They're especially good at flanking injured troops at just the right time to deliver a killing blow, which thanks to their considerable aim, almost never misses. Especially with Damage Roulette, they can whittle down even an advanced XCOM team that's having problems moving without ending up flanked or exposed.
  • Drones are a pain. They have very low health and a high aim soldier can waste one easily (in fact, they're always fodder for a Colonel Sniper with In The Zone unless you're rolling with Damage Roulette), but their innate defense and tendency to take flight and gain even more defense from it makes them irritatingly hard to hit for soldiers with middling aim and Assaults with a shotgun-type weapon. In Terror Site missions, they'll forget everything in favor of flying off in search of civilians to kill, and otherwise, they can repair robotic enemies without even needing to be close to them. It's even worse in Enemy Within if they're escorting a Sectopod, as Reinforced Armor doesn't matter for their repair potential.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The game was set in 2015. The sequel was originally set for a 2015 release.
  • After researching Xenobiology, a cutscene would play in which Vahlen explains the mechanism of the Arc Thrower: going into close range and stunning the alien. Bradford reacts to this with a bewildered utterance of 'Close range?!'. Fast forward to XCOM 2, and the Ranger class not only uses shotguns, but also a blade that they can use in melee. And even more hilariously, in the 'Alien Hunters' DLC pack, Bradford is a Ranger himself while in the field.
  • 2014's Scottish independence referendum ended with Scotland remaining part of the United Kingdom. In the game's setting, in 2015 Scotland is an independent country.
  • XCOM: The Unknown Menace, a novelization of the original made in 2002, had an Ancient Conspiracy allied with the aliens and trying to hinder XCOM. Ten years later, EXALT was here.
• Inferred Holocaust: On a comparatively small scale, but the mission to rescue Annette Durand from EXALT takes place on a massive hydroelectric dam in France that was heavily damaged before XCOM even got there. There's no uncertainty that the dam will break very soon (part of the mission involves opening emergency valves in order to gain enough time to save Annette before this happens), and given the dam's size and France's population density, countless people will die in a Giant Wall of Watery Doom within an hour of XCOM leaving the AO victoriously. This is never brought up in-game, although that can be justified by even a catastrophe on this scale being largely insignificant when compared to a worldwide alien invasion.
• Memetic Badass:
  • While Annette is a powerful psionic, her power often get exaggerated to extreme degrees.
  • Already popular for being a clear Four-Star Badass that wants to make the aliens pay for killing his men escorting him, Peter Van Doorn's addition in the Long War mod as a playable soldier led to many players attesting him to be a reliable star player on their team and quickly mutated him into being an unstoppable action hero that only doesn't kill all the aliens by himself because it's not fair if he has all the fun.
• Memetic Loser: XCOM rookie troopers actually have pretty good accuracy ratings if you compare them to real-life soldiers, but they're mainly remembered for all those times where they missed when firing a shotgun point blank at an alien the size of a bus. 'XCOM Rookies' is sort of a byword in many communities for 'supposedly elite trooper that can't hit the broad side of a barn.'
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Jake Solomon's 'That's XCOM, baby!' whenever something goes horribly wrong or wonderfully right despite being very unlikely. Missing with three 95% shots in a row or succeeding with a 10% Mind Control attempt? That's XCOM, baby!
    • Similarly, this has leaked into other video games that use RNG - such as Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics.
  • SpaceBattles.com and others swiftly took to calling Total Party Kill missions 'Code Black', after the E3 2012 trailer ended with 'Status Black' for the same purpose.
  • On the 2K forums, any reference to the Blaster Launcher always mentions that it's GLORIOUS.
  • Bradford's bewildered 'Close range?' seems to have gotten this a bit too.
  • The development of Enemy Unknown is attributed by some to an epic 'BETRAAAAAYAL! BETRAYAL! BETRAYED ME!! THIS GAME SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS!!!' in response to The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, then a FPS simply named XCOM.
  • After it was revealed that XCOM 2 follows an alternate timeline where XCOM gets overrun early on, any game that's going particularly badly is occasionally met with 'This campaign is now canon'.
• Most Annoying Sound:
  • Vahlen's requests to preserve the aliens' equipment can get rather annoying on harder difficulty modes, where fighting without extreme prejudice (read: explosives) is generally out of the question. It's gotten to the point where Firaxis included the option to turn it off in the Enemy Within expansion.
    • If you capture an Outsider alive before completing your first alien interrogation, Vahlen will keep nagging you about killing any future Outsiders despite the fact you already have one in storage. At least this will go away after you research the crystal.
  • The advisers' urging you to hurry things up during some Council missions can get pretty annoying.
  • If you find yourself in a situation where you can see a group of Chryssalids and they can't see you, you'll come to regret it fast. They start roaring every 6 seconds, and since they don't start at the same time, you'll hear a never-ending stream of screams until you finally move.
  • In escort missions, not only are the civilians you need to escort utterly helpless, they also tend to make a brief speech every single turn – irritatingly freezing the game interface until they're done talking.
  • In the very beginning of the game, and some instances later on, the game will constantly remind you to visit the research labs, engineering, the situation room, or mission control.This seems to be most prevalent for players who spend a lot of time meticulously constructing personalized soldiers at the start of the game. While the game is still playable like this, it can get rather frustrating as there is no way to turn it off. Nobody wants to be barraged by the PA reminding you every few seconds that you should be somewhere else.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Alien death cries, especially Chryssalids when they let out a loud painful shriek when you shoot the last life out of them. Each one you hear means you have successfully taken out something that was trying to kill your men and anything that looks like your men.
  • Your advisers' compliments when you complete a mission without any XCOM soldier even getting injured. Feel proud, you deserve to.
    • Even better than this is the Council telling you what a good job you did if you get an A grade at the end of the month.
  • The Run and Gun sound effect (optionally followed by 'Moving at the speed of death' or 'Gun 'em down'). Well, except for the times when your Assault charges in to give one hapless alien a faceful of shotgun only to aggro six nearby Mutons (unless you have explosives to blow them up with).
  • Any time you mind control something. The Mutons (any type) in particular make this deafening roar as you do. Given how much of a pain Mutons are, this makes seeing one do some of the work amazing.
  • The Alloy Cannon sound when you fire it. A deep resonating 'boom' that is usually followed by the cries of agony of your target.
    • Also, the sound of a Blaster Launcher firing, and the warbling noise its projectile makes. Followed by the sound of something (possibly several somethings) violently leaving this plane of existence.
• Narm: There are times when the randomly generated operation names can be rather silly. Word Salad Title is the most common form of this, but you'll occasionally see Department of Redundancy Department as well.
• Paranoia Fuel: Seekers. Once they show up in a mission, you've pretty much got to drop everything and put your entire squad into Overwatch, because they're out there, hunting you, and if you drop your guard for even a heartbeat, one of your soldiers is getting strangled.
• Porting Disaster: Enemy Unknown Plus on the Vita suffers from a massive amount of issues. Loading can take up to three minutes from startup to actually playing the game, and load times are still pretty long once you actually start playing. There are plenty of graphical glitches, which occasionally include not showing where a character's movement becomes dashing and the smoke from smoke grenades becoming invisible. The framerate also stutters every now and again. Using any item in a soldier's inventory when they're in cover has a chance of them clipping into it and being stuck and unable to move, even with explosives destroying the thing they were stuck on. And lastly, even if you do manage to get through everything, it has a tendency to crash later on in the game!
  • It should be noted that this is after the rather unpopular mobile phone port (despite having Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within released separately) for the same reasons, although the loading time is slightly quicker due to lots of reductions and a far smaller level template is used for the mobile phone port.
• The Scrappy: Central Officer Bradford is not popular with some fans, probably because the first thing he does in game (at least, if the tutorial is activated) is command the very first XCOM squad to their death leaving only one survivor, and from then on seems to make it a point to act in complete Genre Blindness. He's also a rather generic crew-cut military man, with little characterisation, making him hard to like even disregarding his bad decisions.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The 'Security Breach' trailer from Enemy Within has changed this, though, simply because Bradford is shown beating the crap out of a mind controlled base technician.
    • If you fail the mission where the aliens attack XCOM HQ, a cutscene plays showing Bradford's dead body propped up against the wall and with a pistol at his side. Lying in front of him is a dead Sectoid. The implications are profound.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Reinforced Armor trait on Sectopods in Enemy Within. This trait halves all incoming damage, meaning that it essentially has sixty hitpoints. The only exception to this is the MEC's Electro Pulse attack, which does a full five damage and stuns. If none of your squad has Shredder Rockets or Heat Ammo, your best strategy is to stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye. After the first encounter, it's never a bad idea to go on a non-abduction mission expecting a miniboss.
  • Overwatch is normally a useful ability, but one alien is capable of triggering multiple overwatches at the same time. This means that your soldiers can fire a disproportionate amount of ammo into a single alien, possibly resulting in other aliens being able to move unhindered. This was fixed for the sequel, where overwatch moves are now sequential, and a Game Mod that retrofits sequential overwatch into EU/EW is among the most popular mods out there.
  • Control is completely locked out when it's the aliens' turn. Upon realizing a mistake save-scumming players hate having to wait to load from a more desirable point.
• That One Level:
  • 'Portent' is the first real difficulty spike in Enemy Within. It happens within only two months after the start of the game and if the game didn't introduce the Thin Men before, they will now. Everything about this map seems tailored to the Thin Men's advantage. High ground to boost their accuracy to insane levels, close groups which means you will more likely trigger two or more groups at a time, and your troopers measly health will more likely wiped out in a single shot on Classic or Impossible. This mission is responsible for most early rage quits on Classic or Impossible.
  • The second special Council mission, 'Confounding Light', from the SlingshotDLC. You have only ten turns to find and activate four beacons, all of which are heavily guarded by poisonous Thin Men, who start receiving hard hitting Muton reinforcements (who pack full-sized Plasma Rifles instead of the Light ones they normally have early on) after a while. Putting it off until your soldiers have some better equipment is advisable.
  • Enemy Within gives us 'Site Recon', which tasks you with exploring an abandoned fishing village that has gone silent after an alleged alien attack. It turns out that the entire town was overrun by Chryssalids and is now infested by Chryssalid zombies. But wait, it gets better. The source of the infestation is a fishing ship with a whale carcass that the Chryssalids are using as a hive. Understandably, Central decides that this entire town can fuck right off and calls for an airstrike to purge the area. From there, you have eight turns to make it back to the opposite corner of the map for extraction while fleeing from an endless wave of Chryssalids spawning from the hive. Unless you can cleverly strategize and get a few lucky rolls, you'll probably lose people, either from the Chryssalids or from simply being left behind. Though if you get this mission late enough, it can turn into cakewalk instead, since no enemy unit can shoot you, Archangel armor can make you practically invincible here. Having a squadsight sniper with Archangel Armor means that they can easily kill any enemies that dare move into his/her line of fire. Power-armored assault troops and well-upgraded MEC troopers can also slaughter the Chryssalids by the dozen in the late game.
  • The XCOM Base Defense mission for those unprepared in 'Enemy Within'. Players may have heavily-wounded soldiers from the preceding Alien Base Assault mission, if not fatalities, and may be overall lacking in resources to field a proper defense. The justifiable but still very cruel lack of a pre-mission loadout option may also ruin any defenses if the top 4-6 members of the barracks aren't properly outfitted.
    • This mission got added at the same time as the new button to remove all non-default gear from all soldiers not in the current team you're outfitting. This otherwise welcome addition (it saves a lot of tedious searching for who has your good gear before every mission) makes it extremly likely, especially for first time players, that any soldiers that weren't in the last mission you fought have had their gear stripped when this mission unexpectedly pops up.
  • The player's first Terror mission, bonus points if it's their first play through too. It comes early enough in the game where you might not have a lot of upgrades, and is the first time you encounter Chryssalids. That's bad enough, but there's tons of civilians scattered across the map, who are being killed by said Chryssalids, if the player doesn't kill the Chyrssalids and any Zombies fast enough, they'll get swamped as the number of enemies multiply.
  • The level 'Street Hurricane' is referred to as 'Murder Street' by some players because good cover is sparse, its linear design means there are few flanking opportunities, and the size of the map means activating multiple groups of enemies at once is quite likely. At least until you get Squadsight snipers on the roof of the bus stop, in which case the long distance and poor cover can work in your favor. Made even worse in Enemy Within where it can be a Terror Mission.
    • Street Hurricane is also home to a bug which can cause one of the 'pods' to be activated before getting vision on the aliens, likely causing your units to take damage from overwatches that shouldn't be possible.
  • The level 'Demolition' was infamous for its design immensely favoring the defending aliens. With the few good covers lumping your squad together as grenade bait and often breaking line of sight, the approach giving the aliens the high ground, and the only flanking route long and tedious with zero cover if you're spotted, players winced whenever they saw the map on the briefing. The map holds the (dis)honor of being the only level so unbalanced that it was overhauled in Enemy Within.