Game Review: Xenowar

   Xenowars, a game developed by Grinning Lizard, and originally released for Android Devices, is essentially an X-COM Clone, with what the original did(along with the remake, since it followed the old X-COM formula in places), and distilled it to a basic and minimalistic design.

   First off lets begin with the Graphics, which quite honestly, are crap by normal PC standards, however because it was designed mainly for phones back a few years ago, I can understand and see why. However the graphics themselves aren't horrible, they are basic but functional. It's also not that hard to tell the difference between alien races, or your team and civilians. So while the graphic's aren't the best, they do their job rather well, and they don't do much more.

   Secondly the audio, which is lacking in a sense. There is no music in game, only audio-effects from the game. Examples of the effects include guns firing, and rockets. Although even then there isn't much variety. While I can excuse the music aspect, it could have done better with sound variety in game, although you don't really need the audio at all in some ways, so the audio has little effect on gameplay at the moment, although music would be useful.

   Next the Gameplay and story. The Story itself is non-existant, essentially you control a global force that's designed to protect the world from aliens, and you can buy new places, troops, items, ect. Now the gameplay is interesting, much like the original X-COM. When you first start a game you can either start a tactical or geo-game. tactical is simply a mission, while geo is the 'main-game'. In geo, you can place bases, and set them up(the first one is already designed for you), and you can send your troops out to battle with either shot down(requires a base to shoot it down) or is landed. If the alien is able to place enough crop-circles in a nation it's converted and you loose that nation. You can also manage your research and resources in this mode as well. During fight's you play tactical mode, which you search for the aliens and kill them, trying not to kill civilians(I thought they were aliens when I first saw them). You move units around and shoot, it's also worth noting that there is friendly fire, and I've lost several of my units that way. Also if you run out of clips you have to buy more.

   I also want to take a moment to go over in-game-documentation, which in this game there is very little. I had no idea there were civilians until I looked at the wiki(although there is a civilian category after you finish a mission, which I never really looked at). You also have to figure out things on your own for the most part, as the wiki is lacking. Another issue is that money isn't accrued fast enough it seems as well. Also it's worth noting that the game is technically mod-able, but there are no mods out for it as far as I can tell.
  
   So in conclusion, the game is fun, but generally lacks graphics, audio, and story, but makes up for it in gameplay. The only major drawback is it's lack of documentation which makes things difficult, however the gameplay on easy is already rather difficult as is. Also as with gameplay of this genre it can get really repetitive and a little boring after awhile, but when played for a short period of time(about an hour or so) with breaks in between, it can be fun to play. I suggest that you play on easy your first time, the game is rather hard already. While I don't think it's exactly worth the money that it goes for on Andriod devices, I do think it would be a good game at $0.99 (USD), or less and I suggest getting it on PC if you don't want to pay for it.

EDIT: I posted the wrong review initially.