Enemy Unknown is a strategy game that came out late 2012 and instantly became one of my favourites, if not my new favourite game altogether. It is a brilliant re-emergence of the XCOM franchise after 12 years of radio silence. It’s style and structure is very different to “United They Stand” but it share certain elements that has helped us to realise some flaws pretty early and improve the overall design and flow of our own game. It can take a while to complete, but is well worth the effort, and has a replay ability that lets you go through it 3 or 4 times without ever feeling bored of anything other than tutorials (which you can opt out of anyway). There are many approaches to playing it, but I don’t want to go into too many details, I’d rather you go out and see for yourself!       More on XCOM Some of the key aspects of XCOM are the use of terrain and immediate disadvantage you are at, so it really encourages you to think out your moves early. The sense of responsibility it invokes is one of the reasons why it ties in so well to our Creative Genius philosophy. The game encourages fast action, developing new weapons, getting new equipment, but if you rush to make the fighting easier through better equipment, the game becomes harder because you lack the more essential resources. Many time, you don’t realise how badly you’ve messed up until it’s too late to do anything, and all you can do is work with what you have and make your comeback. In addition to that, the permanent loss of soldier who die on the battlefield, the options to have injuries cause long term stat reduction and the ironman “no saving” move makes it a game that really pushes you to weigh every choice and live with your mistakes. It is both a great gaming and living experience that communicates some of the many things lost in most modern gaming, like the “Game Over” scenario, over the “Respawn” or “Last Check Point” scenarios that most games follow now. Take a look at how they’ve presented this concept themselves     Spoiler Alert If you haven’t played XCOM: Enemy Unknown, you might want to stop reading now! In 2013 XCOM released an expansion pack, so large that it is practically a different game, but follows the original story of Enemy Unknown, but with new elements integrated throughout, welcome, to Enemy Within     The main addition to Enemy Within, besides the obvious weapons and equipment upgrades, is the new character class options and abilities, that creates a completely unique and ever-changing gameplay experience!   There are many other new features to the expansion, from new aliens to base defence missions but most significantly is the new human threat.