XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Truly incredible tactical and strategic experience. The satisfaction and genuine emotional roller-coasters this game offers through the intense uncertainty of the unknown alien threat is unique. I had a lot of fun creating a personalised A-team with their own style, blasting away foes.

This is one of my favorite games of all time. I first played it when it came out on console and it looks great on PC. However, this game crashes about every 45 mins. So if you can get past that, I'd suggest saving your game after every 2 or 3 moves. Terrible experience.

very cool game but i insist on playing on the hardest difficulty and get wiped out after a few perfect battles

skill issue on my end, even now despite how old the game is, pretty good

How to fix the startup bug that wont let you play the game.

go to steam>browse local files>direct X> and press DX setup

after it runs you should be able to play the game if not abandon all hope and jump into oncoming traffic.


the game itself is pretty good, it is very optimized and can run on a potato. I personally enjoy it more than xcom 2.

Still the best. You should also get the sequel as it brings a lot of improvements, but I personally dislike the push style of play it incentivizes. XCOM:EW with Long War is an absolutely superb experience.

Love a turn based strategy. Very clean game. Offers a lot of options. Overall fun game.

Works fine for me! Awesome game too 10/10
Leveling up your team and growing connections/fondness with them is amazing
watching them get ABSOLUTELY destroyed by aliens- not so much

My only negative thing to say is the RNG can be a little... sadistic.. for either side though!

A brilliant reboot of the iconic XCOM franchise. The game masterfully blends turn-based tactical combat with deep base management, creating an intense and rewarding experience. Every decision matters, from how you develop your squad to what you research in your base. The tension of losing a soldier you've grown attached to adds emotional weight to every mission.

for hours of intriguing challenges, the X-Com games are worth a try. I can't begin to explain let alone convince someone of the excitement, enjoyment, and/or involvement of this game to draw the player into a world of possibilities. I truly love playing and replaying.

I loved this game, however... I was having crashing issue until I went into the games properties -> Installed Files -> Verify Integrity of game files and found 4 damaged files. The updated the files.

Pretty good strategy game with various decisions you make that both advance and differentiate personal units, a multitude of maps and enemies requiring involved tactics to overcome, and an interesting mix of mechanics for both in and out of combat. Personally, I'm a fan of the 'alien invaders' theme, as running a military branch of the government trying to save the world from an external threat is pretty classic as science-fiction stories go. Trying to juggle what things you might want to build and research with what's going to pay the best rewards can be a little tricky at first, but some of the later game unlocks can be well worth the wait. Story campaign can also take many hours depending on how you play, but also is straightforward and can be completed fairly quickly once you know the right sequence of events.
Overall, excellent and challenging experience, even on replay.

felt like those sci fi movies from the 90s :)
in game cinematics are simple but immersive

A tactical turn based shooter where a tiny gray man can 6 crit me 80 yards away with near pinpoint aim and my sniper missed on a 73% hit chance

It's a bit buggy but overall a solid tactic strategy game. Just make sure you have multiple saves going. Probably wouldn't recommend Ironman mode though

This is a PSA: Steam has finally updated their side and the game now works. You need a clean installation for it to work.


XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a great game, definitely recommend. Shame it took so long for Steam to update the game on their end to actually -work- without the Take2 Launcher.

Just have fallen in love with all XCOM games. I found myself playing for hours staright, redoing completed levels even to try for a beter outcome. Def worth the buy!!!!

An excellent game. Still fun after many years of being around. Works as it should. Better than most triple A live service offerings. Replayable and still able to challenge.

One that I keep coming back to across multiple platforms.

Brutal at times, but an absolute classic

As others have said, the "updating executable" thing makes you completely unable to start the game. I've played this for 301 hours on PC alone, and yet for the last few months I can't even open the damn game. DO NOT BUY. I will update this review when and if they fix it and make it a real review.

to start, the best XCOM game ever, id rank it over two in my personal opinion HOWEVER, this recent patch basically fucked it.

IT IS ON SALE ON GOG RN GO BUY IT, it is currently priced at $10 USD for the complete collection. (will do my best to remember to remove this when the sale ends)

Do not buy this game, it is currently broken and cannot be played after a recent update even after re-installation!

2K in their infinite wisdom have decided to brick our copies of the game. I didn't follow what's gone on, but I know the game is not accessible for me and others.

I would highly advise not purchasing this or any other 2K games until this has been fixed.

Game has become unplayable. Won't launch and no solution from the developer since 4Q last year.

Updating Executable, game has been unplayable for weeks. Totally unacceptable.

This is unbelievable... how can such big companies like steam and 2k blunder so bad. I mean sure this is a 12 yo game, but it was and has always been working absolutelly fine. Somebody dropped the ball real bad.

In my personal case, I had it installed since idk when, but my last playthrough was dec 2023 and it was working fine. Fast foward to jan 2025 i decided to play it again and I can't bc some stupid bug or whatnot. I reinstalled it, checekd file integrity, restarted, everything multiple times... wtf steam!

Seems like a pretty good game. Unfortunately, it cannot be launched. Ever. Personally, it's a bit of a dealbreaker when a game cannot actually be played.

The game is unable to launch. I re-downloaded Xcom after a few years away. After downloading, the title simply doesn't run. After googling around I learned this is now a common issue. Very disappointing.

The game is still for sale but does not launch due to a known and ongoing issue where it hangs on the step "Updating Executable" while trying to launch. It's been over 60 days as of time of writing with no fix and - at least to my knowledge - not so much as a "We're aware of the issue" statement from Steam or 2K.

All the challenge of the original with great new additions. It's a wonderful blend of resource management and tactical strategy combat. You can tell they really respected the source material and honored it perfectly.

Can not start :(
Tried removing the DLCs, still does not start :(
Some hours of downloading & then the shit doesn't run! This SUCKS!!!! :(

one of my favorite games of all time, but currently completely unplayable

This game no longer starts up for me, which is the minimum requirement for recommending a game.

"Updating Executable" - This game was great. It has a new bug that makes it literally unplayable. No help from the devs, no Steam support. Just a game that can't be played. The community has posted about it ...a lot, but there seems to be no options. Definitely don't buy it.

Absolutely love this game, and wanted to come back and replay it. Game won't launch, and there's no official fix or patch yet. 2K and Steam support both seem to be passing the buck to each other as well. Don't buy this until they actually fix this DRM / Digital Signature cert nonsense.

Updating Executable prevents me from playing the game at all. I've attempted pretty much every fix suggested here, 2k forums, reddit, and 2k themselves. Only thing I didn't try is using the signed binaries uploaded by someone on reddit.

If you want to play this great game get it on GoG.

Don't buy the game. Cannot play. There is a bug attempting to launch the game. 2K still have not bothered to fix the issue Other games of their's are having similar issues so the problem very much seems to be on their end and they don't seem to be bothered to sort it out.

A recent update broke the game for everyone, it will not launch.

Unfortunately I have to give this a negative review. Like others I have had this game for years and enjoy it.
However whatever update, DRM or launcher has made this unplayable and the length of time that the issue has remained is unacceptable. This has given pause to whether I will invest in civ 7 if this continues.

I'm getting so sick and tired of these game companies removing the ability to play older games. now the game just doesnt open anymore. i love modern gaming and companies :D

Cannot open game because of bugged executable.

game wont launch, many users having same issue. waste of money right now until fixed

To be clear, XCOM Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within are great games. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend that you currently (January 2025) purchase the game on Steam, because of some kind of error going on preventing many people, including myself, from launching and playing the game. You can check the Steam forums and other places on the internet - when you launch the game, Steam will say "Updating Executable" but the executable never updates and the game never launches.

I've tried every solution people have suggested and none of them worked for me. There's many people who say the solutions don't work for them either. Some people suggest that you have to wait a while; I've waited a few days and still not succeeded. I'll happily change my review to positive if the issue ever gets fixed - apparently 2K said they fixed the issue last month yet many people (again, myself included) are still having the problem. Some users suggest it has to do with Steam's old DRM that is out of date called CEG (Custom Executable Generation) but I'm no expert in any of that. Many users report the GOG version of XCOM EU/EW works just fine.

So, buyer of the Steam version beware!

::EDIT:: So, after I posted this review, the game started working again. Coincidentally, someone else on the forums had the same experience. I'm still tentatively going to keep this negative because so many people are still having problems

while the game is good, it currently has an issue wherein the game arbitrarily refuses to launch without any rhyme or reason. as such, i cannot recommend this game.

The Steam version of the game is currently unplayable - avoid.

UPDATE: MY GAME HAS FIXED ITSELF MAGICALLY AND NOW IS WORKING AGAIN, READ BELOW

A game I've bought and paid for with my hard earned money doesn't work. Super baffling how a game is still allowed on Steam that doesn't work. I was super excited to start my X-COM play-through just to be met with "Updating executable" for it to end up not launching at all.

No word from 2K nor Steam. Would not recommend purchasing any 2K titles on any platform as this isn't just a singular issue with X-COM but also including Civ 5 which also doesn't want to launch. This all occurred after I noticed there was an update released for the games...

Once they removed the 2K Launcher from their games, even on their FAQ it was listed:
"Q: Will I lose access to any of my games?

A: No, so long as you purchased the game on Steam or Epic, you’ll continue to have access to it on that platform."

That was clearly a lie, even after having uninstalled the game, reinstalled a bunch of times, do a clean wipe of all folders relating to X-COM and running multiple verify integrity checks for the game to still not working is laughable.

What a great start to a new year by sending out a patch that bricks the games that you paid for. Tremendous job...

Update Edit:
It's in the middle of the night, at 12:55 AM on Wednesday of January 8th, 2025. I decided to give this game one more shot in terms of it launching, low and behold it magically starts up again. I have no clue why or what caused my game to finally start back up again. Nothing new was added, the game wasn't added to any of my game update logs either...

I managed to start the tutorial and am able to play X-COM again. Hopefully this bug doesn't occur again, but I will leave my review as negative as many others are unfortunately also still experiencing this bug. With no real explanation as to why the game started up again, I am still super cautious on this bug reoccurring again with the "Updating executable".

I will re-update my review to POSITIVE once I have fully finished my X-COM play-through AND 2K or Steam provides an explanation as to why the game took such a long time to be fixed or what even caused this in the first place. Before that, my review will stay NEGATIVE.

I hope everyone enjoys their New Years and Holidays! Stay safe folks!

Game does not start anymore. Unplayable since November 2024.
Do not spend Money on a bricked Game

XCOM is one of my favourite turn based strategy games, and for a good reason. It is one of the games the entire genre gets compared to. "Is it like XCOM?"

It is not as punishing or difficult some people make it out to be, play on easy/normal difficulty with save scumming allowed and it is enjoyable and still somewhat frustrating and forces you to think.

If you like turn based RPGs, sci-fi, and good team customization you should give it a shot.

Basically doesn't run these days. Do not spend money on this unless they're willing to get their act together and make the software that they are selling for actual money... run...

Game worked fine for years and for some reason will no longer run on steam. Been a problem for just about everyone and the issue is months old with no attempt by steam or Firaxis to fix it. Sad!

Unfortunately, after contacting 2K games and asking about the issue, it seems the updating executable doesnt have a solid fix that 2K can advise on, as such I am leaving a negative review as the game is literally unlaunchable right now on steam. I am hopeful that 2K comes forward and fixes the issue, until then I am surprised steam is still allowing the sales of this title.

Stopped working, game wont even launch. "Updating executable" and does nothing. Dont buy for modern PC's i guess?