XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the game that made you feel proud when you completed a mission without any team member casualties or the game that made you feel angry and sad at the same time, reloading the same “save file” over and over again, just to get that perfect killing scenario! 2K raised the bar with their fantastic turn based strategy game and after the game was played, it left a big black hole waiting to be filled with the next chapter of XCOM 2. That moment is finally here, let’s decide if the commander made it out alive or left the stasis compartment brain dead!
The first XCOM game takes you to a defenseless place, called “earth” where a team of soldiers does anything they can to fight off these unknown enemies that are targeting their beloved planet. Eventually after a lot of effort and some badass moments, the people of earth surrendered themselves to a new order, a coalition of aliens. While this new coalition tries to convince the remaining humans that the world is once more without violence, people all over the world are disappearing and no one knows where they went. Of course, there’s this “little” guerilla movement called XCOM, that noticed these disappearing and tries to stir up this “peaceful” world. It’s time to take up arms and rebel against these aliens and that’s where you come in… After 30 years of being in stasis, a small group of soldiers managed to get you back home to the Avenger, a mobile commando base infused with alien technology that you’ll call home for the next couple of months.
Why use ” a team of Avengers” when you can win with only one “Avenger”?
In fact, you got both options: you have your ship” the Avenger” with your very own “Avengers”, a group of soldiers all with their own set of guns and abilities. The Avenger is a big mobile base that needs a lot of your time and effort to be that kind of command center that’ll take you anywhere and change the world forever. By completing missions with your own customizable team of soldiers, you’ll earn money that gives you the ability to recruit fresh new soldiers and to expand your mobile base. Unlike the first game, there’s less space to fully expand your command center. Here’s where the tricky part already starts, you choose how to build up your base because each “section” has their own advantages and abilities (all of them helpful) but build a couple of “sections” too late in the game, and it’s already game over… Don’t get me wrong, you won’t die that easy but it will only get harder and harder. Look at it this way: you grow in numbers and even strengths thanks to all of your upgrades and time but don’t forget the following: your enemies have the exact same mindset as you! They will take over parts of the world, gain influence and exterminate your guerrilla ops. So, it won’t be just a walk in the park, you’ll have to plan out everything carefully.
All those sections won’t operate if they don’t have the electricity or even brainpower for that matter. Your base needs power, so you’ll have to build power generators to give the juice and recruit “specialized” recruits (engineers or scientists) to operate the section. You can’t fully equip all sections, you’ll have to decide what’s more important to do first, what’ll give you the edge in this battle. New armor and weapon upgrades?? A quick healthcare plan for your soldiers? The latest combat techniques to withstand all adapting enemies? It’s not an easy decision to make, and it’s definitely not easy when the world is at stake.
This kind of “decision-making” frustration or let us just call it “digital” stress is found throughout the whole game. If these decision factors don’t do the trick, let’s imagine a doomsday timer on top of this whole kind of experience… oh wait THERE IS! There’s a progress bar that stands for the “AVATAR PROJECT” which is a secret alien project that will mean the end of the world. The bar fills up and when the bar reaches the end, the destruction of the world is upon us. Your decisions influence the whole vibration of the game, some “intel gathering” opportunities will take a longer time to finish while you could be gathering important supplies to reinforce your squad. It’s a wonderful experience.
Moving to drop zone…
The moment you’ve chosen a mission which can vary between “escorting a VIP to a safe point”, “clear out all enemies” or “investigate”,… etc. you have to compose your squad. Each member can be equipped with a primary and a secondary weapon, utilities, body armor and abilities. These weapons can be modified with weapon upgrades, some of them give your character an extra “passive” ability. Each specialization gets access to different weapons and tools which makes you think about different kind of strategies. Characters who kill a lot and survive missions, can be promoted to a higher rank. Each rank lets you choose between 2 different soldier abilities. Once you’re dropped in the war zone, you’re concealed from the enemy which gives you the upper hand in the mission since you’re the one who can make the first move, if you don’t screw your concealment up that is… Each soldier can move a certain distance, it’s your job to see if they’re running the noiseless way or the “make the most sound” kind of way. Glass shatters, doors can be opened with brute force, alarms set off, … in other words, there are a lot of ways to get noticed! Squad members can take cover high and low but it doesn’t mean your protected. Cover can be blown into smithereens and in the end, luck and percentage are the two factors that decide whether you’ll live to fight another day or die quickly and end up forgotten. These percentages can be influenced through the use of abilities: powering up or decreasing a certain percentage. Once a teammate dies, there’s no way in getting them back. You’ll have to recruit a new member and start over with that newbie. Sometimes team members or enemies can drop loot which can be used again but you’ll only have a certain amount of “turns” to get it.
Speaking of “turns”, the game is all about turn based strategy. Once you’ve made a move with each of your team members, the turn is being passed on to the enemy and vice versa. Each soldier has 2 action points which can be spent to perform certain actions. Some actions take more than one action point but most of the time, it’s only one action point to activate a certain skill. These actions go from walking a certain distant, covering, bunking down, shooting, throwing grenades, activating certain abilities, hacking, opening doors, … etc. So be warned on how to put those action points to good use. One wrong decision can have a big influence on the succession rate of your mission, if it’s the wrong decision you’ll be quickly re- loading your very own “safe file” and this for quit some time until you get that perfect scenario. These percentages are a good thing but it can be frustrating sometimes. An enemy can be standing in front of your squad member, you choose to obliterate his body with bullets and you just miss… Same goes for the exact opposite, you can be standing in the worst place ever, you see a few your enemies body and you “test your luck” and see if you can hit it. You’ll be thinking :” I’ll be glad when it hits” but then the game makes your shot critical and it’s just big damage! Then you’ll be thinking ” This was pure skills!”, yeah it’s not… You see the kind of pain you’ll be going through? Awesome right! I love it!
Then again, sometimes those enemies abilities can be a real pain in the butt. There’s this new snake type enemy that spits out poison and hurls out his tongue to grab your body, throws it in front of him and binds you. I can deal with the poison and the binding but his tongue is just a “sticky-goes-through-everything” tongue. It can take you from the ceiling and take you to ground floor where it’s standing. This can be really annoying. Of course, it’s science fiction but then again, even Ridley’s aliens little baby tongue can’t go through walls like that! You’ll also notice that you’ll be fighting in destructive environments. Guns and bombs can really tear an environment apart. I know the covering system lacks a bit of reliability since it’s all percentage based but then again, if you’re standing right in the open, you’re just dead so it’s better to stick to cover.
The enemies are very strong and they adapt to the situation. Sometimes the enemies can easily be defeated when they’re alone but the “fun” starts when they’re all together. They can easily deplete your life bar in a snap! There’s a good variety in XCOM’s enemies and this makes each battle different. Different enemies are lethal, but different combinations of those different enemies can even be more life threatening. You’re always on the move but a good commander thinks out different plans when it comes to possible war situations. If plan A fails, you better have plan X stacked up and ready, only then will you be able to handle each situation perfectly.
All the drop zone places have different set-ups and gives the game a deeper and richer tactical experience. The maps give you the option, to fight the enemies in the way you want it to be. You can do a full frontal assault with your cannon wielding agents, you can let your rangers stay in the darkness and flank the enemies with a heavy blow or you can do an “ineffective” front assault and let your snipers deal with the enemies with one shot kills. Either way, it’s your choice and each enemy asks for a different strategy. Most of the maps also have buildings wich can be used in different ways. You can go on top of them and set up a crow’s nest or attack from the outside through the windows. It’s this kind of tactical level that brings out the best of XCOM. Some of the missions even have countdown timers ( so many turns left) to make the mission even more challenging, besides all of those tactical options. The excitement is to be successful in a limited amount of time without a lot of team casualties.
There’s a bit more to it than what meets the eye…
The game is really good and when a game is good, you tend to only see the good things and stop focusing on the bad things… This behavior is quite normal since you don’t want the bad things to ruin your experience but there are some things I do like to mention. First of all, the game performance isn’t how it should have been during launch. A lot of people, mentioned a lot of frame issues when they first started up the game and I was one of them. Long loading screens, framerate issues, black “Alien Activity” screens, sound dropping issues, … etc. Some of the graphical issues do influence your gameplay experience but can be dumbed down thanks to the configuration settings but some of them like the black “Alien Activity” can be deciding during your missions. The Alien Activity shows you the plan of the aliens and you better not miss those, these can’t be fixed throughout your settings, this is an in-game bug. The sound dropping is something I can live with, since it’s not a major issue and most of the time it fixes itself.
Another thing I would like to mention is the variety of maps. This was a big problem in Enemy Unknown and they’ve tried fixing it with a system that randomly generates these maps but with the use of the same objects or elements. All these elements or objects have been set perfectly, so you won’t notice any kind of “same pattern” in those maps. The game looks good and all of the enemies or characters have been well designed but I don’t feel it’s “next gen” material and that’s okay really. This will give players with a “not so decent system” the chance to play this wonderful game, if the problems will be fixed with next patch. The game also has some graphical bugs, for example: sometimes the action cams won’t show the cinematic since you’re not standing correctly. There are also bugs which include weapons through walls or running through certain objects. But like I said in the previous section, it’s a wonderful game and it doesn’t really ruin the gameplay experience.
Cool features!
As a commander, you make the decisions but you’re not seen on the field. Your soldiers are the face of your commandment. All these soldiers can be fully characterized: you can change the name, they have their own country, facial features, … etc. It’s this kind of feature that will help you bond with your team members. If one of your puppets dies, it’s okay just start “building” another one but it’s a lot more difficult to distance yourself from a character that has a name and has been with you throughout the whole story. 2K also included this “nickname” mechanic which is a blast to see. The more experienced characters will make a name for themselves, to let you know what they’ve been through. It gives you the feeling that the name is based on how you use them.
Conclusion:
XCOM 2 is a wonderful game which rewards you for your cleverness and patience. It’s definitely a step up from previous XCOM thanks to its variety of missions, maps and unbelievable combat mechanics. It’s a stressful game, I’ll give you that but it’s one of those things that gets you hooked. You want to make good decisions on and outside the field since you don’t want to mess up the world’s survival. The building and roleplaying experience are one of those features you really learn to love. It’s definitely a good start for PC gamers. I’ll be just waiting for the patches (hoping to fix most of the issues) and this turn-based strategy game will be nominated for “my Game of The Year”- type of game of 2016. You can be sure of it! Go get it and save us from this damned Alien coalition!
