With its old school difficulty and gameplay. XCOM Enemy Unknown is one hell of an experience.
Graphics: The game developers are not exactly a huge triple A standard company, and you can tell that the over all graphics are not the best in the industry. However they made a very smart move in making the graphics cell shaded and stylized, so a lot of the graphics are very vibrant and colorful. the effects for the most part, look and sound very well done, from the explosions to lasers firing across the battlefield. The voice acting is also pretty decent for the most part, nothing award worthy, but well done nonetheless. The designs for the aliens, XCOM operatives, weapons, structures, etc. are all wonderfully designed. Like I mentioned before, the over all power may not be the greatest, some glitches and bugs, and maybe some bad textures, but everything else is designed so well and put together nicely, that the good far out weigh the bad.
Gameplay: Now while the first two categories lacked in some aspects, the gameplay most certainly does not. Gameplay is mainly split into two sections: combat, and micromanaging your base. First the combat; this game is a turn based strategy game, meaning that you only have a limited amount of moves that your squad mates can move, shoot, or use a special item such as grenades, medkit, etc. You also need to decide what your soldiers should do; do you have them charge all the way forward without having them get a chance to shoot back, do you put one man out in the open to get a better shot, but leave him exposed to enemy fire. The choices you make in battle will greatly effect the outcome of the battle for better or worse. Each soldier has his/her own specific class (assault, support, heavy, and sniper). Each has its own different abilities and can really help turn the tide in battle. Now as you go through the game your soldiers progress and gain experience, and will level up as the game goes on. However if a soldier dies in combat, they are dead... permanently. So it is important to try and keep your soldiers alive and to train up your newer soldiers and make sure that by the end of the game you are not fighting some tough enemies with only a bunch of rookies. Now as the game progresses you will come across many different types of aliens that will do everything from just shooting at you, to pummeling you to death, and even brainwashing your soldiers. To combat this threat you need to have the latest and greatest gear around to do so, hence the second part of the gameplay, managing your base of operations. After returning from battle, you often pick up alien technology from the field and the hard working folks behind the scenes at the XCOM base do their best to manufacture new weapons, armor, abilities, items, vehicles, and lots of different methods to combat the alien threat. By finding all this tech you can better equip your soldiers with the best gear and help them tackle the situation. Speaking of situations, there are many different types of missions to do, all with ranging objectives, from UFO raids, which simply have you kill all the enemies and salvage alien tech, to terror missions, where saving civilians is a priority. Doing so will help keep the panic level down for the world nations. If a nation is not helped, they might panic and withdraw their funding from the XCOM project and you will loose their support. Loose enough countries and its game over, that's right, there is an ending where you loose the war. All these aspects such as permanent death for your team mates and loosing after thirty hours of gameplay can lead to a very intense and satisfying gameplay experience that will leave you hooked until the end. The only bad I can say about the gameplay is that if you are a huge action junky that doesn't like to think a lot in playing games then this isn't for you. The game can be brutally difficult at times. And I have had my fair share of glitches in the game, some of which were game breaking! But with all that aside, I still loved every moment of this fantastic experience. (I'm also aware that there is multiplayer but I never really paid much mind to it and from what I have heard, it is pretty fun, just rather limited, but the main attraction is that you can play as the aliens).
Overall:
Story: 8 While nothing special, is still entertaining and will keep you interested for the most part.
Graphics: 8 While not amazing by any means, still very well designed and well put together.
Gameplay: 9.5 Almost a flawless gameplay experience, if not for a few technical problems.
Enjoyment: 10 If not for someone at work bringing this up, this masterpiece would have passed my radar and I would have missed out on an amazing game!
Final Score: 9