Dear Stubborn,

I don't usually do blog posts in letter form, but given the format of your blog it somehow seemed appropriate for this post. I enjoyed your Early Yearly Rundown post, and as the part about XCOM is strongly linked to a recent post of mine, I would like to comment on that. You wrote:

X-Com: Enemy Unknown 3/5 (but probably it deserves 4/5)

I really liked this game up until the point that I didn’t. I acknowledge perhaps I shouldn’t have played Ironman the first time through (meaning permadeath, essentially), but I rarely play games through more than once. Then I hit a wall where the aliens got super-strong without warning, and my team got wiped out. It irritated me enough that I quit and haven’t gone back.

I very much understand how this can happen with this particular game. XCOM is very much designed in a way that if you don't play on the easiest difficulty level, it is likely that you will lose your first game. And probably more than that. The idea is that you at least get an idea what went wrong, e.g. your weapon research didn't keep up with the aliens getting stronger, and you try to correct that in your next game. Where you then are likely to put all your research into making your soldiers stronger and then lose because you neglected another area. Depending on the chosen difficulty level it takes a few games or more until you learn how to defend Earth against the aliens and finally win the game. So for somebody who says "I rarely play games through more than once", XCOM isn't ideal.

But then XCOM has a rather good tactical combat, and it is somewhat sad to see the game abandoned because the managing part outside combat can be frustrating. I would very much recommend playing through XCOM once on easy mode, where you are likely to notice your mistakes but without that directly leading to you losing the game. In a way XCOM is like Civilization, a game that isn't supposed to be played through just once. You get better by playing, and then you can crank up the difficulty, or buy the expansion for additional content, and still have a lot of fun many games later. The fun is in trying different things, in experimenting with a multitude of options. The story, and whether you win or lose, are kind of secondary in the end.

Sincerely,

Tobold (currently on game 17 of XCOM: Enemy Within, and with the marathon option)