XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Multi-Platform)

I have a confession to make: I’m bro.

I hang out at sports bars. Wear straight brim caps. Talk about going to the gym, but never go. When I holla at my boys, I’m all, “What up brah.” And it’s never goodbye—always “Lates bro.”

So I was totally cool with the broification of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a remake of an old-school PC game from 1994. These days, when a bro tells me he hasn’t played XCOM, I look at him like “Bro?” Some people are kind of slow. XCOM is a bro’s dream come true. My squad is equipped with assault rifles and small rockets. They are the same size as the Pats’ o-line. I command them to flank the enemy position, to take cover behind the chassis of an exploded Mazda, to be bros.

My first order of business was to eff around with XCOM’s character creation tools. I give the tools an A. I was able to create a rookie soldier that was a near facsimile of Rick Ross after only a few minutes of beard-tweaks. I placed my newly created Rick Ross on a jet to Germany, along with four other unseasoned recruits, ready to take out some alien scum. Ricky was gunned down in the second mission. He never came home.

I know what you’re thinking. Trust me, I thought so too. That was very unbro. There is an assumption that when you go into battle with a hulking black dude, one who is hoisting a gun designed to be welded to a plane over his shoulder, that everything is going to be okay. You feel self-confident, reassured, indestructible. I have been taught by countless video games and Ridley Scott films that, against whatever odds, a bro will rush in, start shooting and, through sheer determination, save the day.

It just so happens that fail-safe plan will get you nowhere fast in XCOM, because, bros or no bros, Enemy Unknown is a thing called turn-based strategy. There are quite a few things that aren’t very bro about that. For one, bros don’t answer to men wearing green v-neck sweaters. Two, bros don’t shoot wide when they open fire on a slimy invertebrate oozing about in plain sight. And three, bros don’t stop running because a stretchy line that measures how far they can run comes to an end, especially when another bro is down. After a little ruminating, I sat my controller down and said out loud, “This ain’t bro.”

At first, I was cynical. I felt wronged—pandered to. Clearly, some big shot publisher was capitalizing on my bro lifestyle to hawk their nerdcore strategy game. I didn’t trade it in right away, though, perhaps out of sheer spite. I was determined not to let them win. So I learned to play their game. I was cautious. I calculated. I planned like I have never planned before.

Things were going smooth as butter until about twelve hours in, when I lost half my crew during what seemed like a routine sweep down in Mexico. Solvyova went down, then Rangarajan, then S.W. It was hell getting out of there. And it was my own damn fault. I had been rolling broless for so long, that when I really needed to, I couldn’t bring the bro.