XCOM Enemy Within is a re-make from the 1990s series X-COM and also a build upon last years very successful XCOM Enemy Unknown game. Firaxis like to re-produce games it seems and with the help from 2K Games again, can they achieve the same success a year later? I'm just going to answer that right now...yes, yes they can.
Enemy Within is the same game with the same story as Enemy Unknown but with added extras, and these added extras make the game feel very different, and improved as well, Firaxis have done very well with both games, so let's jump into what is new with Enemy Within.
The main new gameplay feature is a resource called Meld, which can be picked up during missions, Meld has been introduced to add a new level of warfare and decision making into the game, Meld comes from the aliens and when used on the humans, can provide anything from an extra jump ability, hardened skin to reduce damage, ability to see or sense enemies before they appear in your line of sight and even a back-up heart. Meld can only be found when in battle and can be picked up from canisters along the battlefield but you only have a certain amount of moves to collect them, and you can only spot them once they have entered your line of sight, so potentially, you could lose Meld before you even knew its position on the map, plus enemies can shoot and make them explode so you will need to pick your moments when to collect it. Meld can also be combined with a Mechtoid results in the MEC Trooper, the human version of the Mechtoid, which comes with its own abilities and heavy weaponry.
You will need to capture aliens and get them done through an autopsy, as this is the only way to reveal new gene mods for the soldiers. You can have mods affecting the brain, eyes, chest, skin and legs and have 2 options available for each and with this, you can unlock special armour for the soldiers with gene mods. You can not turn a soldier with gene mods into a MEC trooper and vise versa.
There are new enemies to contend with, only 2 but both pretty deadly, the seeker, hunts down the XCOM troops that fancy a wander and allows itself to latch on and strangle the soldier, needing another soldier to shoot the seeker of them or they will eventually die, they also have the ability to cloak themselves which makes them tricky to keep an eye on if you have ordered a soldier to go lone wolf. The other new enemy is one I've already mentioned, the Mechtoid, it is a sectoid in a mech suit, it is able to fire twice in a turn if it does not move and usually has a health rate of 20 but this depends on difficulty, luckily they do not use cover all that much but a sectoid can mind merge with a Mechtoid, which causes a health boost and reduces damage.
Along with new alien enemies, there's a new faction to face as well, named EXALT, they also are after the alien technology but plan to use it for their own good and look to take over the world, seeing XCOM as a rival for the technology, the EXALT see no other choice but to destroy XCOM and take all the goods for themselves. They are just smartly dressed XCOM, while wearing shirt and tie, they possess the same abilities and classes XCOM have to unleash on the battlefield as well. You do get additional resources when the EXALT appear to counter their attack. The EXALT also provide some new missions based around stopping them, these are data recovery, which sees you defending an encoder and a transmitter against waves of EXALT agents, think a king of the hill style game. The other new mission is extraction, this sees you hack into 2 different EXALT communications and then reach the extraction zone, this mission can be completed without killing if you are sneaky enough.
Maps have been added and also had a makeover and some have been mixed with the Enemy Unknown maps to keep things fresh, classes have been changed a few bits of new technology/weapons have been added and also a few bits of gameplay along with some of the interface have been tweaked to make it look better and fit with all the new options. Multiplayer has been tweaked as well, you can now save several load outs offline for online play, the point system online has been rebalanced, there are 8 new maps for multiplayer and also the added bonus of the seeker, a Mechtoid and EXALT agents.
There's a few things that seem to have been forgotten about, like the camera angle is still the same and can only move to 4 fixed points, the annoying process of trying to get your soldier into a gap and the cursor going to every place apart from where you want it, the also seems to be a small problem of enemies being shot and dying a few seconds after instead of straight away, also sometimes drones or EXALT agents will appear and land on your tile, meaning you get both can get stuck or they land of the map and find themselves trapped behind an invisible wall, just some small things that could of been fixed.
Overall though, Enemy Within is an amazing game, one that will follow its predecessor with accomplishments, if you have thought about getting into the series, Enemy Within is the game to get, simply because with the new features that are in Enemy Within, it is like Enemy Unknown, one of the games of 2012 but better.
