Midnight Suns

Lilith, a powerful supernatural force of evil, has seized control of Hydra and launched a series of attacks across the Earth. The world's mightiest heroes, the Avengers, have failed to stop her, so reluctantly agree to join forces with a superhero group specialising in the occult, the Midnight Suns. The two groups, who do not get on well, still find themselves outmatched, so have to summon back to life the powerful hero who defeated Lilith three centuries ago, the Hunter. The combined group must now wage a lengthy campaign to reverse Hydra's gains, defeat Lilith's champions and then take the fight to her before she can summon one of the dark elder gods to destroy the world once and for all.

Midnight Suns has seen varying levels of hype during its development period. Initially teased as "Marvel XCOM," even made by the same team as XCOM and XCOM 2, it was then revealed the game would use card mechanics for its battles. This made people think of mobile games and write this title off immediately (especially as a solid Marvel card game on mobile, Marvel Snap, had become popular). Then, as the game got closer to release, it was revealed that the game would have a heavily Japanese RPG/tactics-inspired layer as well, which reignited interest amongst some gamers but turned others off even more.

Now it's here, Midnight Suns emerges as a game which draws upon a ton of other games and genres for inspiration. Elements from XCOM, Final Fantasy Tactics, plain old regular Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, Valkyria Chronicles, Persona, any open-world Ubisoft game of your choice and Mass Effect combine with the Marvel universe in ways that initially feels messy and unfocused, but over time coheres into a strong strategy title that makes for a generally great gaming experience, albeit one that feels like it needed a better, more experienced writing and RPG team on board to bring everything together. Still, if it's a messy collision of influences at times, it's never a dull or uninteresting one.

Once you get past the opening cinematics and early, slightly tedious, tutorial-like battles (and this section of the game does drag on interminably), the game decides to get going. To start with, you create your character, the Hunter. In grand old Mass Effect style, you choose the Hunter's appearance, gender and voice, as well as their combat abilities. The Hunter is your avatar and you generally spend almost the entire game playing as them, apart from the occasional side-mission where you can send three other heroes whilst keeping your main character back at base. It's an interesting approach, and initially has the reek of fanfiction about it, as your avatar chats with Dr. Strange or Iron Man about their backstories and they tell you how awesome you are. But it does end up working reasonably well, and it allows the game to unfold with some tension about it. If you were playing Scarlet Witch or Spider-Man, it's probably safe to assume that you're safe from death or mutilation, but with an original character that's not such a given.

The game unfolds in a series of days, each consisting of three segments. These are organised from the Abbey, a dimensionally-sealed pocket area of Massachusetts that serves as your headquarters (the equivalent of XCOM Headquarters in XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within or, er, the carrier Avenger in XCOM 2 and War of the Chosen). In the morning, you can engage in research, build new facilities, organise intelligence, and train your troops. Amusingly, these are handled by familiar Marvel faces. Dr. Strange and Iron Man handle your magical and technological research, respectively, whilst Captain Marvel takes command of the strategic centre. Blade runs the barracks and helps your troops train between battles. These activities cost resources (but sometimes generate more), which you also gain from finding treasure chests around the Abbey grounds or as rewards from missions.

In both the morning and evening segments, you can also explore the Abbey grounds, which I was really not expecting. The Abbey itself is not massive, but the grounds are impressively sprawling and, like any Ubisoft game-of-your-choice, are packed with collectibles, crafting ingredients and secrets. Exploring the grounds pushes forward the storyline, grants the Hunter new powers and abilities, and gives you more resources to use in battles. It should be noted that constantly exploring the grounds is not really necessary, and you only really need to spend maybe 5 days or so out of the 50+ it'll likely take to complete the game on doing so. 

This section of the game is also where the game's team-building section kicks in. The Hunter has a relationship meter with every other character in the game and their opinion of you can rise and fall based on your actions and your words. The characters are also different in their approaches and attitudes: a gung-ho, fist-pumping, inspiring-speech approach usually impresses the Avengers but alienates the Midnight Suns, for whom a much more cynical, downbeat attitude with a dark sense of humour is more appropriate. Borrowing much from how Mass Effect's character relationships work, and more than a few JRPGs (Persona is probably the most obvious influence), this is probably the most divisive part of the game, since it sucks up quite a lot of the time you spend at the Abbey.

To build up relationships, you have a lot of options. You can visit hang-outs around the Abbey grounds and engage in activities like bird-watching, painting, star-gazing, fishing, playing video games, watching movies and having a picnic. I can tell you right now there is nothing weirder you've ever experienced in a video game than taking Blade fishing or practicing meditation in a forest glade with Wolverine. However, this then goes a lot further, through the use of a Microsoft Teams-like app for coordinating work and meetings with the team (!) and the group also forming social clubs (!) to chill out with. A regular motor workshop class with Ghost Rider, Iron Man and Spider-Man tinkering with the Hell Ride kind of makes sense, but the regular book club with Blade, Captain Marvel, Captain America and Wolverine doesn't really (although some of the dialogue indicates that the characters are also aware of the non-sequitur nature of it all but are rolling with it). There's also a "magic club" with Dr. Strange, Magick, Nico and Scarlet Witch which is hugely important to unlocking your backstory, but the club has the unfortunate name of "Emo Kids," which definitely feels like a 40-year-old guy named it in a vain effort to be cool and down with the youngsters.

The cumulative mass of this is a game where the world is in imminent danger of mass destruction, but your team is also spending a lot of time bird-watching or arguing over thematic interpretations of Kree literature. Anyone who's played a JRPG or an RPG at all (or a modern open-world game), where this kind of thing happens a lot, will probably just roll with it, but it can dissipate the tension and is not helped by the writing, which is mostly functional and effective (and occasionally awful) rather than sparkling. Mostly solid voice acting does help sell the experience.

In the middle of the day, you get to go to the cool holographic table and select your next mission. You usually have multiple missions available, consisting of the next story mission (which usually requires certain characters to be available) and a ton of side-missions. These mostly randomly-generated side-missions vary in difficulty and may or may not require certain heroes to be present. They are mostly useful in grinding experience, boosting relationships and providing resources.

And then, finally, you get to fight! The battles are where the game simultaneously recalls XCOM the most and also where it rejects it the most. Like XCOM, the battles take place on 3D battlefields strewn with obstacles and scenery, with a certain number of enemy forces to fight. Also like XCOM you have varying objectives, from rescuing civilians to eliminating every enemy to stealing enemy tech to defending an asset. Unlike XCOM, the battlefields are usually relatively small, occupy only one level, are completely lacking in any kind of usable cover and also lacking any movement grid. Battles unfold in turns, with all your heroes going first and then the enemy (the interleaved turn experiment of XCOM: Chimera Squad seems to have been rejected here).

On each turn you can use 3 abilities from any of your characters. So one character can attack three times, or one character can attack twice and another once, and so on. These abilities are represented by cards, falling into different categories: regular attacks which do not have any prerequisites and generate Heroism points; special attacks which burn up Heroism points but usually hit faster; and support/defending abilities which can either generate or use Heroism. However, building up Heroism also opens up additional environmental attacks. If you have points left over after playing your cards, you can use these to yank a streetlamp down onto an enemy's head, detonate an explosive barrel or throw a box at an enemy's head. You can also use your one solitary movement point (!) to either position a hero to use an environmental attack in a more advantageous way or carry out a limited melee attack. The game also makes critical use of "knockbacks," hitting an enemy and sending them flying, possibly into other enemies or explosives for increased damage.

This system initially appears limited but rapidly becomes far more interesting. Your cards have additional classes, such as being "Quick," which means if you knock out an enemy with that attack, the card use is refunded, so you start with 3 card draws, knock out an enemy, and still have 3 card uses afterwards. The card draw for each turn is random, but abilities allow you to swap cards in your hand for ones elsewhere or draw more cards into your hand. This can theoretically cause problems if you have 0 Heroism points for the turn but all the available cards require points to activate, rendering you unable to attack. In practice you almost always have options for swapping cards around or using special abilities to compensate, like Nico's formidable Empower ability which drops the Heroism cost for all abilities to 0 for the turn (even mega-powerful ones normally requiring 6 or more points to activate).

If you're a boardgamer this might sound familiar, which is because the card system is very similar to the Command & Colours system used in games like Memoir '44, BattleLore, Battles of Westeros, Napoleonics and Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare. The cards simply govern your abilities and you decide which to use on a given turn, but you also have ways of overcoming the limitations of a poor hand.

Where the game becomes powerfully flexible is the ability upgrade system. If you have card duplicates, you can merge them into more powerful versions of the ability, perhaps lowering the Heroism cost, increasing the Heroism gain or inflicting debilitating status effects on the enemy. Later on you can add additional abilities to cards, dramatically increasing their versatility. You characters also have stats of their own, like Offence, which govern how much damage the abilities unleash. If you get too many of the same kind of card, you can burn them up for resources, and research new abilities and bonuses in the Forge with Dr. Strange and Iron Man. The card system, which I thought initially was going to be awful, ends up being an engrossing part of the game as you build your character's array of abilities and defences to your liking and try to game the odds of what cards will appear when. And on top of that there's also consumables and items you can deploy mid-battle for free, for bonus effects or healing.

The result is a game where there's a lot going on that you have to think about, arguably even more than XCOM. There's also stuff you don't have to worry about. Permadeath isn't a thing (obviously; Captain Marvel is not going to be killed by a random Hydra goon) and thus a total failure state seems almost unachievable, you can just make life a lot more difficult for yourself. You can end up with several severely wounded heroes who will be out of commission for several days, or you will have to go into battle with massive debuffs for example.

There's a few other interesting ideas, like the game locking all but the standard difficulty level at the start of the game and gradually unlocking them as you go along, offering you the chance to switch up difficulty levels dynamically as well as starting a new from-scratch campaign at the higher level. The game also has the almost-now-requisite animal companions, with Charlie the hellhound joining you on some missions. Amusingly, if you track down and pet the two animals every day you gain cool bonuses for combat as well.

Midnight Suns is an odd game, a mishmash of different genres and influences blended together, sometimes very well, sometimes in a weirdly jarring manner. It feels very much like a western studio's take on a normally Japanese style of game, which works much better than expected but still feels a bit off compared to how a Japanese team would have handled the same ideas. The writing is a bit mediocre, which is a problem for a game with as much writing in it as this, and the graphics are decent but not outstanding. The music is very good, though, and the combat is surprisingly excellent, despite some early frustrations as you transition from your expectations from other games, and the research/development/training system is fairly compelling, even if the game has maybe one or two resource types too many and not always straightforward ways of gaining new resources.

After all that, Midnight Suns (****) emerges as a sometimes janky and occasionally downright deranged game (the world needs saving, why am I taking art classes with Captain America?!) but one that is never not interesting, and once its dull opening is over and the core game loop is cooking it emerges as a pretty compelling title. The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Versions for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch will follow at a later date.

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XCOM creators spill the beans (a bit) on upcoming Marvel XCOM-alike, MIDNIGHT SUNS

Following rumours from the start of the summer, Firaxis have confirmed they are making a Marvel tie-in game. Midnight Suns melds the turn-based, tactical gameplay of their enormously successful XCOM series with the Marvel superhero IP.

In the game, the player creates their own hero, The Hunter, who joins forces with a roster of Marvel heroes to battle Lilith, the Mother of Demons. Heroes to appear include Iron Man, Wolverine, Blade, Ghost Rider, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Magik, Nico Minoru and Dr. Strange. 

The game has been described as a "tactical RPG", suggesting there won't be a deep strategic metagame as in the XCOM series, with instead a more story and character-driven between-battles section. Aside, presumably from the turn-based combat, the game will not share any mechanics with the XCOM series.

XCOM franchise head Jake Solomon has led development, with Marvel Comics artists and writers lending support and assistance, including help in designing The Hunter (who will be customisable in terms of appearance, gender and powers) and The Abbey, a hub area which the team will retire to between missions.

It sounds like the game will be drawing on The Rise of the Midnight Sons comic arc in 1992, in which a group of Marvel heroes and antiheroes join forces to fight Lilith. 

This does beg the question of whether Firaxis is developing more XCOM games; both XCOM 2 (2016) and Chimera Squad (2020) had substantial cliffhanger endings that seemed to be setting up more games in the series. However, a second team at the company helmed both XCOM 2's expansion, War of the Chosen, and Chimera Squad, so certainly they have the scope to develop more than one game at a time.

Marvel's Midnight Suns is due for release on Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One and Xbox X in March 2022. Firaxis will unveil the first gameplay trailer on 1 September.

The creators of XCOM are making what sounds very much like MARVEL TACTICS

A leak from the upcoming E3 video game convention has revealed that Take Two and their subsidiary Firaxis are developing a licensed Marvel turn-based tactics game. It sounds like some or most of the team behind the hugely popular XCOM relaunch series are working on the title.

There's been a bit of a fad for properties spinning off turn-based tactical games and whacking the name "Tactics" after the title. This started with the classic Final Fantasy Tactics (1997) and has recently seen entries like Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics (2017) and Gears Tactics (2020). However, the more recent iterations have been somewhat lacking in depth, often featuring passable combat but no strategic metagame to make things more interesting. If the XCOM team are working on this, I'd assume they'd be putting together a really good strategic layer as well. Hell, XCOM 2 and War of the Chosen with their Avenger totally-not-a-helicarrier and increasingly colourful, semi-superhero soldiers weren't far off being Marvel games already.

The last XCOM game, Chimera Squad (notably not made by the "main" XCOM team who were working on another project, possibly this Marvel game), experimented with stronger narrative elements and fully-voiced, pre-generated squad members who could not die in the traditional manner (instead being injured, with a full squad knock-out requiring a reload), which felt incongruous in an XCOM game but makes more sense as a dry run for a licensed game.

More news should come at E3, where Take Two will be unveiling their new projects on 14 June. As well as this Marvel game, reportedly they will confirm a Borderlands spin-off and a new project from the Mafia studio (but not a new game in that series). However, don't expect any news on Grand Theft Auto VI from Take Two's other studio Rockstar, as that game is still likely two to three years off.

XCOM: Chimera Squad

2040. Five years ago, the XCOM resistance movement successfully defeated the alien Ethereals and liberated Earth from their control. However, the destruction of the Ethereals not only freed humanity, but also the dozen or so alien races under their control, who found themselves marooned on a strange world and having to coexist with their former enemies. This coexistence is controversial, but several cities have prospered with mixed human and alien populations. One such place is City 31, but when three criminal factions try to overthrow the new order, XCOM is called upon to deploy a police force to the city to help salvage the situation.

Chimera Squad is the latest game in the XCOM series, rebooted by Firaxis in 2012 to great success. Unlike its two predecessors - to which it is more of a spinoff than a direct sequel - Chimera Squad eschews a global perspective for the more focused setting of a single city. You're also not in command of XCOM any more, instead taking control of the Reclamation Agency of City 31. Reclamation is a subdivision of XCOM which deals with police operations in the aftermath of the War for Liberation (as depicted in XCOM 2 and War of the Chosen). Unfortunately, Reclamation is low in the priority list and doesn't have access to the high-end technology developed towards the end of that war, explaining why you start the game (once again) with machine guns and shotguns rather than plasma rifles and alloy cannons.

The game proceeds much as its forebears: you have a strategic map, this time of just the city rather than the planet, where you choose which operations to undertake. You can also research new equipment, purchase new stocks, train your soldiers or send them on secondary missions which generate more resources, such as money, intel or Elerium. You have to keep the city's panic level low, which can be achieved by completing missions and establishing police forces in each district and levelling them up.

Whilst the strategic side has less options than in previous games - there's no way of interrogating enemy soldiers, for example, and no fellow resistance forces to coordinate with - it still provides a pleasing degree of choice, with dire consequences possible if you make the wrong decision.

More controversial is the decision to limit your soldier roster. You choose four starting characters and as the campaign continues more troops trickle in from other XCOM assignments at your request. You can have up to eight agents on the team, four of whom can be deployed on a mission at a time (unlike prior games, there's no way of increasing the limit to six soldiers). The others can cool their heels at base or go on secondary missions, help speed up research or train to unlock new skills (or remove permanent injuries sustained in battle). The big difference is that these soldiers are all recruited from a set pool of eleven. You can't hire random new recruits any more. On the plus side this means all the soldiers get full voice acting with nice lines of dialogue resulting from which characters they are paired with. On the downside it means the attachment you get from shepherding characters through several missions in a row and growing their skills from scratch is lost, and you also don't have the customisation options any more to give them crazy haircuts or names. They are also irreplaceable: if they die, they die and it's game over rather than having to soldier on (particularly odd as there's more characters to recruit than there are slots on the team, so they could easily have had an option to slot in up to three replacements before saying it's game over).

Removing player choice from the game for relatively limited rewards - your soldiers' "banter" is decidedly non-revelatory and a bit hackneyed - is an odd experiment, but it does make the game more distinctive. Another questionable choice is limiting the roles available. Most of the XCOM 2 classes are represented (Terminal is a Specialist, Verge is a Psi Operative) but several are missing. Grenadiers not being around kind of makes sense - you don't want rockets blasting around an urban area with civilians present - but not having any Sharpshooters feels strange (police snipers are a thing), especially as one of your characters, Blueblood, is effectively a Sharpshooter locked into the pistol specialisation tree. Again, it feels like this franchise which celebrates player agency and choice has taken such choice away from the player and limited things.

This extends to the missions themselves, which are now played out in combat encounters rather than continuous maps. Each mission has between one and three encounters, and moving between encounters is accomplished by a "breach" sequence where you access the next encounter by smashing through windows, rappelling through skylights, booting down doors or occasionally just walking onto the battlefield. The audio barks don't change to the situation though, resulting in the occasionally non sequitur sight of one of your squadmembers screaming "BREACH! BREACH! BREACH!" before taking two steps forward and ducking behind a car. This does feel more limited than the continuous maps of the previous games and can get quite annoying, as previous encounter zones are inaccessible, sometimes resulting in your characters being bottlenecked at the entrance to the next zone and not being able to fall back to the previous room and take better cover, as the previous map is now greyed out and simply can't be accessed.

Once you get over these differences to the standard XCOM experience, much fun is to be had. The new mechanics, although sometimes irritating, do mean you spend most of your playtime making actual combat choices rather than slowly inching forwards into the fog of war in continuous overwatch. The breaches have a lot of options for when and how you enter the next encounter (like deciding to blast a hole through the wall with shaped charges to take the enemy by surprise or charging through a door into an enemy crossfire but which puts you closer to the toughest opponents). The result is much shorter, more focused combat experiences.

A big change to combat is that rather than having team turns - so all the XCOM agents go and then all the aliens go - the game instead uses interleaved turns, so one agent goes, then one enemy, then one ally and so on. This makes for a change in tactics as you start focusing on the enemy who is about to go next and can use abilities which adjust the timeline (moving characters around in it to your advantage and the enemy's detriment). This has a lot of good points, such as meaning that the enemy can't gang up all their fire on one exposed agent and kill him or her and there's nothing you can do about it, but again it does loose the ability to pick which agent is going next and having finer control over their actions. Broadly speaking, I thought this change was interesting for making combat a more varied experience, but there was no strong argument for it being better or worse than the alternative, just different.

Chimera Squad is probably not the way forwards for the franchise permanently, but it does offer a lot of variations on the standard XCOM formula which make it fun to play. It's short and focused - a single playthrough will last around 20 hours rather than the ~50 hours of an XCOM 2: War of the Chosen campaign - and the smaller scale works surprisingly well. The removal of choice from the player in favour of set characters, a preset squad roster and focused, short combat sequences is interesting, but I think would go down badly in a full XCOM 3, so hopefully if XCOM 3 is in development (and based on the cliffhanger endings to both XCOM 2 and Chimera Squad, that seems likely) they take on board the ideas that work (the breach mechanics to start a mission, but may not mid-mission, and maybe the interleaved turns as an option) and leave out the ones that do not.

Chimera Squad (****) is a tight, experimental and fun variation on the XCOM formula with some ideas that work well and others that are less successful, but fun in this spin-off context. It is available on PC only now.

A brand new XCOM game is coming out this month

2K Games have surprise-announced a brand new game in the XCOM franchise which will be released in just ten days. XCOM: Chimera Squad is a new, stand-alone game that will act as an interlude between XCOM 2: War of the Chosen and...whatever comes next (XCOM 3, one hazards).

Chimera Squad is set in City 31, apparently after the XCOM-led human resistance defeated the alien occupiers in War of the Chosen and drove them off-planet. With the alien Ethereals gone, many of the other aliens they were controlling have broken free and joined forces with humanity. Chimera Squad is so-called because it is the first XCOM squad with alien recruits among its number. Whilst XCOM is rebuilding to face a renewed threat from the Ethereals (or the mysterious enemy they themselves were fleeing), it is also dealing with more hostile aliens who have gone to ground and also with human groups unwilling to work with their former enemies.

Chimera Squad isn't quite a full-blown entry in the XCOM series, instead consisting of a 20-hour campaign of preset missions with pre-generated characters with their own personalities, custom dialogue and in-mission character development. In that sense it is more reminiscent of the XCOM 2 Tactical Legacy Pack from a couple of years ago, which added linear, story-driven campaigns to the more familiar strategic gameplay. The game also adds a new Breach mechanic to the game and expands on the idea of teamwork from War of the Chosen, which allowed you to develop relationships between characters which yielded in-mission rewards and special abilities.

XCOM: Chimera Squad will be released in 24 April and is currently available for pre-order at the price of £8.50, or $10 in colonial currency.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

The alien occupation of Earth, aided by the ADVENT military force, continues unabated. XCOM, the organisation committed to defending Earth from alien invasion which is now acting as an underground resistance, has scored some major victories, inspiring the aliens to summon three powerful hunters - the Chosen - to destroy XCOM once and for all. But XCOM also has some new allies to bring to the fight...

War of the Chosen is a huge expansion for the strategy game XCOM 2. Just as XCOM: Enemy Within (2013) completely updated and revised XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012), improving every element of the game until it shone to perfection, so War of the Chosen attempts to do the same thing for XCOM 2.

In this game's case, it was more sorely needed. The vanilla edition of XCOM 2, released in 2016, was a fine game but also a slightly frustrating one. The turn-based combat section of the game was altogether more polished, more interesting, more varied and just plain more fun than that of the original game and its expansion. However, the strategic metagame was messier, less focused and less interesting than that of the original game. This left XCOM 2 as being a huge step forward over its predecessor in one area and a huge step back in another.

War of the Chosen certainly solves the biggest problem by giving you much more to do on the world map. The original generic Resistance faction has now split into three distinct groups you can ally with: the Reapers, an elite squad of ninja-like sharpshooters; the Skirmishers, a group of ADVENT soldiers who have escaped alien control and rebelled; and the Templars, a group of humans who have embraced the aliens' psionic powers. Winning the trust of each faction requires some work on the map screen, and in turn getting their support means you can aid them through covert actions, joint operations where XCOM and the factions work alongside one another in off-screen adventures. These operations also allow you to level up your soldiers outside of the traditional missions. The rewards - more intel, more Resistance contacts (allowing you to contact new regions without having to build more comm rooms) and even sabotaging the Avatar Project - are impressive and powerful. The factions are also fun in the sense that they had distinct characters to the game, voiced by veterans of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The aliens, of course, can also bring more friends to the party. There are now 3 powerful special alien characters who are each given control of one-third of the globe. Doing missions in one of those regions can see the Chosen intervening in the battle, giving you a mini-boss to fight. The Chosen can be driven off (but not killed, yet) and they can also achieve their own objectives (usually knocking one of your troops out and scanning them to learn clues to tracking down the Avenger, XCOM's mobile headquarters). Defeat the Chosen and they gain weaknesses (such as a fear of explosives or greater vulnerability to snipers). Fail to do so and they become stronger, eventually amassing enough knowledge to assault the Avenger directly. This has a whiff of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis System, a great game mechanic I'm surprised more titles haven't stolen. With the help of the new rebel factions, however, you can also track down each Chosen's lair, eventually mounting an assault to finish them off once and for all.

There are also new ADVENT troop types (including a flamethrower soldier and one with psi abilities) and a new, neutral faction called the Lost. Effectively zombies, the Lost are humans adversely affected by those green alien pods dropped all over the globe at the start of Enemy Unknown. These appear in missions set in abandoned cities and are attracted by explosions and gunfire. Canny players can trick the lost into attacking ADVENT forces, which is very entertaining.

On top of this, you also have new weapons, new research and much greater character customisation, including the ability to form bonds between pairs of soldiers which increases their combat effectiveness when deployed together. Soldiers also become tired after missions and need to be given time off to recuperate, encouraging you to recruit more soldiers rather than just relying one one single super team for every job. There's also tweaks to gameplay, such as offering the ability to reduce the number of time-limited missions from the vanilla game (which everyone hated).

The result is a bigger, brasher and more confident game than the original XCOM 2. There's a lot more going on and you have a lot more choices to make which are more meaningful. The game gives you more control and you do feel like you're running a worldwide resistance movement as you order covert operations to be undertaken, research some much-needed new tech or decide to launch an assault on an ADVENT base. War of the Chosen fixes most of XCOM 2's problems in one fell swoop.

There are, however, some issues. The onslaught of all this new stuff means that campaigns now last a lot longer than previously (my first XCOM 2 playthrough lasted 30 hours, whilst my War of the Chosen playthrough lasted about 50), which means a typical campaign now goes on so long that the game risks getting stale. One of the key issues with XCOM 2, the ridiculous length of time it took to resolve an action (3 days to pick up supplies when you know their precise location? 8 days to rescue a stranded engineer?), remains firmly in place and can make the early game unnecessarily punishing as it takes forever to get going. However, when you do hit a stride the sheer range of option and missions available also means that you will be levelling characters to max level very quickly, leaving you with a huge roster of top-tier soldiers for most of the game who can curb-stomp everything. This leaves the new alien threats, particularly the Chosen, feeling underwhelming as a threat once you hit the mid-game and utterly trivial in the late game period.

There's also the fact that although War of the Chosen dramatically changes an XCOM 2 campaign, the still basic structure is in place underneath and, once you get over the new factions and the Chosen, the game won't offer any new surprises. This was also true of Enemy Within, but in that case it was a very modestly-priced expansion pack which also replaced the original game. War of the Chosen, on the other hand, has been sold as a full-price game which requires XCOM 2 to run, making it a fairly expensive undertaking (less so these last few weeks, when it's been more readily available on sale). For such a higher premium people might be forgiven for expecting much more content. Firaxis have realised this themselves, recently adding the Tactical Legacy Pack which adds more weapons and equipment, more map types and a 28-mission, story-focused campaign, which certainly helps add variety to the game.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen (****½) improves the XCOM 2 experience and makes it a more rewarding, more fun, deeper and more compelling game. Both the strategic and tactical options gameplay are improved, and there's a richness in the experience that very few games can match. It's not perfect, though, and occasionally the game can feel a bit too whacky and crazy for a series originally rooted in paranoia and horror, whilst nearly doubling the length of the game risks it getting stale.

The game is available now on PC and via the online stores for X-Box One and PlayStation 4.

XCOM 2: Tactical Legacy Pack

Released back in 2016, XCOM 2 was a worthy, if flawed, sequel to the classic 2012 turn-based strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown (itself a remake of the 1993 game X-COM: UFO Defence) and its expansion, Enemy Within. A year later Firaxis released War of the Chosen, an interesting expansion pack to the game which, inexplicably, they decided to sell at the same price as a full-price game. I demurred on purchasing it until it came down in price.

It's taken well over a year, but the expansion has finally come down in price and I'll be checking it out in full soon. However, to make the expansion more worthwhile and better value for money, Firaxis have also released a new expansion for the expansion, the "Tactical Legacy Pack" to make it even better value for money, as it's completely free. Taking place between XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 proper, the expansion charts how the XCOM organisation brought itself back from the brink of extinction after the aliens successfully conquered Earth.

The Tactical Legacy Pack contains several key parts, including a collection of challenge maps which pits your team against a tough objective as well as new items and maps (some of them revamped versions of fan-favourite maps from the original game and its expansion). However, the meat of the pack is something new to the franchise: a narrative and story-focused single-player campaign. A standard game of XCOM consists of two parts, a strategic metagame where you recruit soldiers, research new technology and make decisions on what operations to carry out next against the aliens, and a tactical, turn-based combat mode where you deploy the troops you've chose and outfitted in battle.

The Tactical Legacy campaign throws out the strategic part of the game in favour of a series of missions. There's no research, flying around the globe with the Avenger or recruiting new soldiers (at least, not in the traditional way). Instead you go from battle to battle to battle, with objectives being laid out during the loading screens and in-mission voiceovers. It's an experimental change to the standard XCOM formula and one that is quite interesting, removing as it does the agonising decisions on what troops to bring on missions and what equipment to use, as your troops are selected and outfitted for you.

The campaign is divided into four episodes, each consisting of seven missions. That's 28 missions to get through the story, and will in total take a player between 10 and 15 hours to traverse (depending on the difficulty mode you select). Each of the four episodes has a different focus: "Blast from the Past" sees Bradford (aka "Central") escaping from the fall of XCOM HQ and teaming up with some other survivors to carry out a mission. Along the way he and his new team attract more support and they realise they could transition XCOM into a guerrilla resistance force. "It Came from the Sea" is a nod at the 1994 game X-COM: Terror from the Deep, with XCOM having to fight off an invasion of aquatic chryssalids (sadly, there aren't any actual underwater missions). "Avenger Assemble" sees Lily Shen reluctantly taking to the field as she scavenges crashed Interceptors, UFOs and Skyrangers to get the rebel carrier, the Avenger, ready for launch. "The Lazarus Project" sees both Bradford and Lily entering the field to recruit more elite soldiers for XCOM.

Completing these missions also unlocks weapons, soldier recruits, maps and some new enemy types, all of which will then appear in a subsequent War of the Chosen campaign. The Tactical Legacy Pack therefore offers both a significant amount of gameplay on its own terms as well as a lot of new bonus stuff to enhance a new playthrough of the standard XCOM 2 campaign (although only with War of the Chosen installed; this stuff won't work with vanilla XCOM 2). Also entertainingly, the expansions allows you change the game's soundtrack, between the standard XCOM 2 soundtrack, the Enemy Unknown soundtrack or, impressively, a remixed and upgraded synthwave version of the original 1993 game soundtrack, which is very well-done.

It's hard to knock this kind of material, especially as it's free. One of the criticisms levelled at the pack is that a set of linear missions isn't very XCOM-y, which I sort of agree with. All of the new generation of XCOM games have had linear story missions popping up at one point or another, but as a change of pace from the traditional gameplay type before getting back to the procedurally-generated missions. If you're a purist who hates linear missions, then yes, this might not appeal to you. More irritatingly, the only way to unlock all the stuff from the expansion in a standard game is to play through the missions.

That said, the missions are pretty good and interesting. Selecting troops, equipment and upgrades forces players out of their comfort zone and gets them acquainted with troop classes and weapons they might not normally deploy. You can also massively ramp up the difficulty on these missions to very high levels to make them even more of a challenge for hardened players.

It may be churlish to criticise this amount of free content, but there are a couple of issues that arise. One is that the new missions don't make many concessions to in-universe logic: your soldiers include Reapers and Templars (from War of the Chosen) long before you may have recruited those factions. XCOM 2's conceit is that XCOM lost the war in the original game very early on, but this game sees XCOM using advanced plasma and laser weapons in combat and also features crashed advanced Interceptors from the original game. If, like me, you've not played War of the Chosen yet and decided to join in the hype train with this expansion, there's a hell of a lot of stuff left unexplained (even moreso if you didn't play vanilla XCOM 2 either). Also, given that XCOM 2 launched two and a half years ago in a pretty iffy technical state and has been patched several times, it was somewhat dismaying to see the game still managed to crash several times during my playthrough with occasional graphics and game logic bugs taking place.

Having said that, these problems are more niggling than catastrophic. If you have that itch that only quality turn-based combat can scratch, the Tactical Legacy Pack (****) certainly delivers on that front. The expansion offers a solid gaming experience on its own merits, adds a lot of fresh content to your standard War of the Chosen playthrough, brings in a lot of new challenge maps and skirmishes, expands on the XCOM story and lore, and even brings in a whole new (and presumably expensive) soundtrack. It's a lot of stuff for exactly £0 ($0). The Tactical Legacy Pack is available now on PC and will download automatically for all War of the Chosen players next time you install the game. Firaxis have been unclear on when and if the expansion will be added to the XB1 and PS4 versions of the game.

XCOM 2: LONG WAR 2 released

In a surprise move, the Long War 2 mod for XCOM 2 has been released on PC. During discussions earlier in the week no release date was given and it was assumed that it was still months away. But instead it's out now.

Long War 2 radically enhances the strategy game, adds a new soldier class (three if you count those incorporated from other mods) and gives the player many more options for fighting the alien menace, although the aliens also have more abilities to counter-attack. The early reception for the mod sounds highly positive.

The mod is available via Steam completely free of charge.

XCOM 2 to get revamped strategic layer

Firaxis have announced that their strategy game XCOM 2 is to get a revamped strategic layer courtesy of modders. The officially-sanctioned and authorised Long War 2 mod will allow players to take direct command of all the rebel cells on Earth, organising military strikes and recruiting new personnel directly.

This will make for a much more strategically involving game and makes contacting new rebel cells far more important than it was previously. It also means that everyone is involved in the fight against alien occupation rather than just your single group on board the Avenger. The mod will also introduce the Technical, a new soldier class who specialises in rocket launchers and flamethrowers, and Coilguns, a new weapons class that fits between the Mag Weapon and Beam Weapon layers. The mod will be released in the next few months on PC.

Based on the cliffhanger ending to XCOM 2, it is likely that we will see an XCOM 3 around 2019. Meanwhile, the original creator of the X-COM franchise, Julian Gollop, is developing a similar strategy game called Phoenix Point for release in 2018.

CIVILIZATION VI announced by Lord Boromir Stark

Firaxis Games have employed the mighty Sean Bean to formally announced that Civilization VI will be released on 21 October this year.

This will be (obviously) the sixth title in the series that began with Sid Meier's original, classic strategy game back in 1991. I must admit I thought this was a bit soon, but then I saw that Civilization IV (which I still think of as quite new) was released in 2005 and V (which I own but haven't played once yet) in 2010. I think I can safely say that it will be some considerable time before I get around to playing this.

Civilization VI will build on elements of V and will come with all of the features introduced in that game's DLC as standard. VI also promises to "unstack the cities" in the same way that V "unstacked the armies". VI will feature areas around each city where you can place additional buildings and facilities. The developers are also promising a stronger focus on AI and diplomacy than ever before.

If Sean Bean is a character in the game, I can confidently predicted he will be nuked to death by Gandhi before the endgame is reached.

XCOM 2

2035. Twenty years ago, aliens invaded Earth. An elite military organisation was formed to stop them: XCOM. It failed. Despite a heroic effort, the world was overrun and is now run by a joint alien-human government called ADVENT. On the surface ADVENT is peaceful and benign, pressing forward with advancements in medical technology and science. But they rule at the point of a gun and more sinister experiments are taking place in the background.

Now an underground resistance organisation, XCOM is creating sleeper cells around the world and stealing the aliens' technology to turn against them. All it needs now is a leader.

XCOM 2 is a sequel to 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown (and its expansion, Enemy Within), itself a remake of 1993's X-COM: UFO Defence. The X-COM/XCOM franchise has a reputation as one of the greatest video game series of all time, its combination of managing the defence of the entire planet with commanding individual combat missions against the aliens providing some truly sublime gameplay moments. XCOM 2 starts with a controversial premise: you lost the war against the aliens in the original game and now have to fight back with an underground resistance movement. There's a canonical (kind of) explanation for why you may remember winning in the original game, but you can just rationalise it as an alternate timeline if you really want.

Gameplay is similar to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, although there are a few twists. Once again you have a base of operations and have to upgrade it, building new facilities and carrying out research and development. However, your base is now a mobile SHIELD helicarrier alien cargo ship called the Avenger. You have to physically move the Avenger around the world map to recruit new agents, pick up supplies and carry out assault missions. As well as supplies (which replace money from the first game) you have to glean Intel to uncover the alien plans and you have to be more tactical in how you get hold of resources like elerium and alien alloys, which are required to research and build new equipment. When a mission starts, the game switches to a turn-based strategy map as you guide your team of up to 6 soldiers to fulfil an objective. This can vary from killing all the aliens present to rescuing a VIP to hacking a data terminal, often against a punishing time limit.

As the game continues (a first playthrough of the campaign will take around 25-30 hours) new, more powerful aliens are introduced so you have to stay on your toes, constantly researching weapons and armour so you can survive these tougher opponents and take them down. XCOM: Enemy Unknown sometimes forced you to compromise between different research tiers and trees, but XCOM 2 is positively evil in how it forces you to switch between different objectives, rush around trying to put out lots of fires simultaneously and in how long everything takes when the aliens are almost constantly attacking. XCOM 2 certainly makes you feel like you've got the whole world against you. It's a much, much tougher game than its forebear even on the equivalent difficulty levels.

It's also a game that gives you a lot of options. Character builds were something you could get away with not studying intently in the original game, but XCOM 2 is so tough that optimising your upgrade path is much more vital. For example, you can pick upgrades for your Sharpshooters that allow them to snipe enemy targets across the map with chained shots and using other soldiers to spot for them. You can also eschew that and pursue a gunslinger series of upgrades that give them up to six pistol shots a turn. A pistol doesn't do much damage, but upgrade it to a plasma pistol and fire it six times and it rapidly becomes one of the most powerful weapons in the game. The other classes get similar upgrades, with Grenadiers able to deal out masses of high damage with explosives and heavy weaponry and Specialists getting powerful drones that can dish out first aid and force fields (effectively) from right across the map. Rangers get excellent scouting and melee combat abilities that makes them formidable both at range and up-close.

For those who love rolling dice and comparing stats, XCOM2 is immensely rewarding. For those who want to just enjoy the game and get through to the end, don't be afraid to whack the difficulty down to easy ("Easy" in XCOM 2 is really not all that easy at all) and save-scum your way through the game. It doesn't take prisoners.

The game does hit the same sweet spot as the original of combining the widescreen, epic war for humanity's survival on a global level with individual combat missions, allowing you to customise your soldiers in almost any way that you please. However, whilst in-mission combat is tenser, more varied and more scenic than before - helped by the new, randomly-generated maps - the global strategic game is a lot more annoying. Some things take inexplicably long amounts of time - three days to pick up a supply drop you've just been given the coordinates to? - and you can bet that a vital, non-skippable mission will crop up 2 seconds before you'd have otherwise successfully researched your next tier of body armour. The game does a great job of making you feel like you're up against insurmountable odds, but all too often goes over that line and makes it almost impossible to proceed. The problem is that this steep increase in challenge abruptly falls off once you get the best weapons and gear and the game becomes, if not easy, than relatively straightforward.

XCOM 2 (****) is therefore a very good game, but ends up being frustrating. The combat is more interesting than in Enemy Unknown and represents a major step forward over it, but the grand strategic game feels random, arbitrary and at times tedious, and is a bit of a step back from Enemy Unknown's. Combined with the much more punishing difficulty level, this makes the game hard to recommend unambiguously. If you enjoyed the previous game and want more of the same, but more hardcore, XCOM 2 is certainly worth your time. If you haven't tried the franchise yet, I would definitely recommend starting with the previous game before tackling this one. XCOM 2 is available now on PC.

Technical Notes
XCOM 2 launched in a heavily bugged state on PC, featuring unusual lag, inexplicable CPU and GPU spikes and frame-rate drops, and occasional crashes. I was lucky in that I experienced only one actual crash in the whole game, and this guide helped improve performance immeasurably. However, waiting for a more comprehensive patch to fix the game's problems may be advisable.

XCOM: Enemy Within

Earth is under alien attack and it is up to the multinational defence organisation XCOM to defeat the invaders. But the aliens are now employing more advanced technology, including genetically-engineered creatures and mecha-suits. It falls to XCOM to adapt these weapons against the alien threat, even as it finds itself under attack by a fifth column of humans sympathetic to the alien cause.

XCOM: Enemy Within is a major expansion to the original XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It isn't a sequel to the original game, but instead completely expands and reworks it. The meat of the game remains the same: you command XCOM, researching new technologies, launching satellites to scan for alien ships and launching interceptors to shoot them down, and then deploying combat troops to fight the invaders through a turn-based battle system. The difference is that as well as fighting the aliens, you are also battling EXALT, a group of humans who have sided with the aliens. In addition to this, you can now develop G-Mods (genetic enhancements to your troops) and MECs (massive robot battle-suits) to expand the fray. Rounding things off are more advanced options to make the game harder or easier, or expand its length dramatically.

At its core, this is still the same XCOM experience as the original and if you didn't like that, Enemy Within doesn't do anything that will win you over. This is for players who enjoyed the original game and want more of it. Sadly, there aren't any new weapons (although there now more varieties of grenade) or armour, or new alien types beyond the Seeker, a flying squid-thing which can cloak and strangle soldiers without warning. The Sectoids can also now use MECs themselves, which makes this fairly nonthreatening species dangerous again at an advanced stage of the game, but still fairly easy to defeat.

A big difference is the introduction of EXALT, a sort-of anti-XCOM who use similar weapons and tactics to your own troops. They seem a bit more threatening as well, more likely to use Overwatch and their troop types includes heavy missile and sniper classes that the aliens lack. EXALT are a worthy new addition to the game, but also one that can be disposed of without too much trouble: in the course of the new 30-hour campaign I played for this review, EXALT were around for maybe 8 hours of it before I defeated them for good.

The G-Mods and MECs are interesting new additions to the game, but are of limited utility. MECs look awesome, but their weapons are frequently less capable than the ones your own troops sport and their inability to use cover means they tend to draw the fire of almost every alien on the map on every turn. This makes them, weirdly, more useful as last-minute reinforcements to use only when everyone else is committed rather than the front-line shock troops they seem designed to be. G-Mods give your troops formidable bonuses, but these tend to be more useful only on the more punishing difficulty levels.

Enemy Within does bring a huge amount of variety to the base game. There are many more map types and variety of maps, and the various optional DLC has now all been folded into the game. This results in more narrative-based Council missions and more stuff to research and build. There is also a rather nasty new surprise in the form of a punishing base invasion mission, where the aliens will actually assault your base at an inconvenient moment and you have to fend them off in one of the more tense encounters in the game.

All of that said, the basic game is still the same and some may find these new additions do complicate what was a perfectly-balanced game. Others, and such is my view, will find that the additions inject new life to a classic title and elevate it just that little more. Enemy Within (*****) is available now on console in the UK (X-Box 360, PS3) and USA (X-Box 360, PS3), and on PC via Steam.

XCOM 2 announced

Firaxis and Take Two have announced that XCOM 2, the sequel to 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its expansion, Enemy Within, will be released in October this year.

The new game is set twenty years after the events of the previous ones and features a bit of an about-turn from the end of those games: the aliens have invaded, again, but this time in much greater force and have won, occupying the planet. XCOM has been forced underground, waiting until some degree of complacency has set in on the part of the aliens, and then striking back unexpectedly. The game features a mobile base, the Avenger, and XCOM teams launching attacks on alien forces both in rural areas and inside the gleaming, futuristic cities they have built for their human sympathisers/drones. There is more of an emphasis on stealth and guerrilla warfare this time around, with the game apparently drawing inspiration from the third of the original 1990s XCOM games, X-COM: Apocalypse.

The game will also use procedural generation to create battle maps, rather than simply rotating through the same eighty-odd default maps as in the original game. There will be new weapons, alien types and new character classes.

XCOM 2 is, unexpectedly, a PC exclusive with no console release mooted at the current time. Enemy Unknown did surprisingly well on console, so the decision to limit the release to PC only is interesting. Firaxis should be revealing why shortly, but there are theories that the new game will feature a much heavier modding focus than the previous ones.

Firaxis announce that next CIV game will be a spiritual successor to ALPHA CENTAURI

Firaxis have announced they are developing Civilization: Beyond Earth, the next game in their veteran Civilization series. As well as being a follow-up to Civilization V, the game is a spiritual sequel to Alpha Centauri.

Alpha Centauri was Firaxis's first game, released in 1999 after Sid Meier and a group of colleagues had quit Micropose. Unable to use the Civilization licence, they instead developed a very similar (and non-copyright-infringing) strategy game which basically followed up on the question of what happened to the colonists who left Earth at the end of every Civilization game. Firaxis were later reunited with the Civilization licence thanks to Take Two's financial firepower, but in the process lost access to the Alpha Centauri rights (which remain with Electronic Arts). Civilization: Beyond Earth is therefore the official Civilization sequel that Firaxis wanted to make in the first place, just fifteen years later then planned.

The game will be a turn-based affair using hexes for movement that will allow players to build up their own civilisation and seize control of planets through diplomatic, economic or military means.

 
 Game features will include:

• Seed the Adventure: Players will establish a cultural identity, select a leader and sponsor an expedition by assembling the spacecraft, cargo and colonists through a series of choices that directly impact starting conditions when arriving on the new alien planet.
• Alien World: Exploring the benefits and dangers of a new planet filled with dangerous terrain, mystical resources and hostile lifeforms unlike those of Earth, players will build outposts, unearth ancient alien relics, tame new forms of life, develop flourishing cities and establish trade routes to create prosperity for their people.
• New Technology Web: Reflecting forward progress in an uncertain future, technology advancement will occur through a series of nonlinear choices that affect the development of mankind. The tech web is organized around three broad themes, each with a distinct victory condition.
• New Quest System: Quests are infused with fiction about the planet, and will help guide players through a series of side missions that will aid in the collection of resources, upgrading units, and advancing through the game.
• New Orbital Layer: Players will build and deploy advanced military, economic and scientific satellites that provide strategic offensive, defensive and support capabilities from orbit.

The game will be released on PC, Mac and Linux this autumn.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Slingshot

Slingshot is a DLC  - or minor expansion - for last year's hugely successful turn-based strategy game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It shouldn't be confused with the absolutely massive and far more significant expansion, Enemy Within, out in November. Slingshot is an altogether modest, though far from pointless, affair. On console it will also be included with Enemy Within should you wish to wait for that release.

Slingshot makes a number of modest changes to a game of XCOM. It gives you a new character, a former Triad operative who quickly becomes a Lieutenant in your organisation. Starting a new game with Slingshot installed sees you get this character quite quickly, which can accelerate early-game progression. This has good and bad points. On the good point, you'll get him promoted (and thus access to the six-man squad upgrade) much earlier than normal. On the bad side, having a character of his level in your squad will also trigger the arrival of mid-game bad guys earlier than you normally would encounter them, which can cause a steep challenge if the new character is then injured or killed and has to sit out missions.

As well as a new character, there are also three new narrative missions. These missions see you taking down an alien battleship which is about to attack China. In the first mission you have to extract the new character and his intel on the alien ship. In the second, you have to install an alien homing device on a train to lure the ship into an ambush, and in the final one you have to storm the alien ship and capture it. This results in a significant early-game boost to XCOM's acquisition of new technology. It's all good stuff and can have a discernible impact on an XCOM playthrough. In particular, the much earlier unlocking of alloy rifles and other high-level weaponry (which usually are unlocked too late to make any major impact on a campaign) can make a big difference in how the endgame plays out.

For a modest cost, Slingshot (***½) does add some nice new features to an XCOM replay, though its feature set (but also the price) is dwarfed by the incoming changes from Enemy Within. For those who are already addicted to the game, Slingshot adds some welcome replayability.

Note: Slingshot is included as part of Enemy Within, so do not try to purchase this is you already have Enemy Within!

XCOM: ENEMY WITHIN announced

Firaxis have confirmed they are working on a major expansion and overhaul to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Entitled XCOM: Enemy Within, the game will launch on 13 November this year.

The game will be an expansion for PC users and a stand-alone boxed release for console gamers (where it will also incorporate the previously-published DLC for the original game). The bad news is that the campaign will unfold pretty much as before, with the same milestone missions such as attacking the alien base and infiltrating the enemy command ship. There's no new campaign as such. However, the existing campaign will be changed.

The most obvious changes include new weapons such as a flamethrower, which is devastating for short-range combat, and new enemies such as the Mechtoid, a Sectoid in a battle-mech suit. These battle-mech suits - known as MECs - can also be created by your forces, giving you a powerful new weapon on the battlefield. You can also genetically modify your soldiers using alien tech. Both MECs and G-mods will require a new resource called 'Melds' which need to be recovered during missions. However, the aliens will set the Meld canisters to self-destruct when you attack. This will introduce new tactical considerations to missions, with players having to choose to secure Melds, carry out their mission objectives more quickly or split their forces. Because the Melds are alien tech, it is possible for them to corrupt your soldiers if you are not careful, hence the title.

There will be 47 new maps and map-types, including much-requested farm layouts. The game will now also track how often certain maps are used and will pump in new maps to reduce repetition. The game's code has also been adjusted with some elements previously locked away in Unreal Engine files now transferred to the .ini files, allowing modders to adjust the game more thoroughly than before. However, enabling randomly-generated maps will not be possible.

This is positive news, although the lack of a new campaign or other much-requested features (like base invasions) is slightly disappointing. But anything that fleshes out the original, excellent game is certainly worthwhile.

The Making of XCOM

Polygon.com have an excellent article here on the making of the recent strategy game (and my top game of 2012) XCOM. Lead designer Jake Solomon and head of Firaxis Sid Meier talk extensively about the game's nine-year development process, the multiple false starts on the project and how it only came together when they brainstormed ideas for a week whilst playing a board game version of the title.

Lots of great stuff there and confirmation at the end that an XCOM sequel is being looked at.

Wertzone Classics: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

2015. The Earth is under attack by waves of UFOs. Alien infiltrators are kidnapping humans to unknown ends, or simply going on the rampage to spread fear and terror. To fight back, the nations of the world have established XCOM, an elite force designed to combat the alien menace. With a fleet of interceptor aircraft and well-trained soldiers at their disposal, the forces of XCOM must discover the enemy's purpose, turn their own weapons against them and win the war...or risk the extinction of humanity.

XCOM: Enemy Unkown is a remake and update of the classic 1994 strategy game, UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-COM: UFO Defense in the USA), which in turn was heavily inspired by the 1970 Gerry Anderson TV series UFO. It's a turn-based strategy game in which you command the defence of Earth against an encroaching alien menace. The original game is still held as one of the best strategy games of all time (if not one of the best games of all time) and remaking it is a brave move, but one that Firaxis seem to have pulled off well.

As with the original, the game is divided into two distinct sections. Between missions you hang out at your base, which is initially small but can be expanded to incorporate new laboratories, workshops and other facilities. At your base you can research new technologies, recruit new soldiers and build new equipment for them. You can also upgrade your interceptor aircraft and build and launch new satellites to increase your chances of intercepting the UFOs before they can cause havoc. Increasing your satellite coverage is also important to mollify your financial backers: if a country suffers too much damage in an alien attack or does not feel that XCOM is protecting it, it will withdraw from the XCOM project, delivering a serious blow to your finances. Once you don't have anything more to do, you can hit a button to speed up time, with the game pausing again to let you know about important news (such as research being completed or the completion of a facility's construction) or with news of a fresh alien incursion. Sometimes you have to scramble interceptors to shoot down a UFO, but at other times UFOs will land of their own accord. In either case, once an alien hotspot has been detected, you can send a Skyranger dropship packed with troopers to investigate.

At this point the game moves onto a 3D map depicting the area of operations (sometimes a town packed with civilians, or an empty stretch of countryside, or an alien base).You move your troops around this area in turns. On each turn you can move your troopers, have them fire at any aliens in range or switch to an 'overwatch' mode, which basically stores up their move until the aliens' turn, when they can automatically fire on any aliens who venture into their line of sight. You have to be careful as the aliens often do the same thing, and moving might trigger an alien attack of opportunity on their turn. Combat is undertaken by your troops aiming at the enemy with a percentage chance being shown of how likely the attack will be. Cover is vitally important, with both full and half-cover available to protect combatants, so flanking is critically important, as is the use of heavy weapons that can destroy cover. As the game proceeds your squad size increases (from four to six troops) and you gain access to devastating new weapons, including laser and plasma weapons, as well as psi-powers and expendable robotic drones.

The game itself is fairly straightforward, but what prevents the standard prodcedure (research and build stuff, shoot down UFO, fight on 3D map, rinse and repeat) getting repetitive is the importance placed on your decisions. Do you expand satellite coverage early on, but then lack the funds needed to research new weapons? Can you risk neglecting your interceptors' weapons in favour of upgrading your troopers' rifles? This also extends to your individual (and highly customisable) soldiers, who gain experience and new abilities between missions. Gaining new abilities (such as the ability to use three medikits per mission instead of one) comes at the cost of sacrificing others, and careful decisions have to be made. You can be fairly ruthless, upgrading your troopers' offensive weapons whilst ignoring their defences, since recruiting fresh troops to replace the slaughtered is inexpensive. But experienced combat veterans have powerful abilities, so you may want to pump resources into armour instead. There are numerous approaches you can take to the game, which immensely rewards replayability.

Presentation-wise, the game is slick but not lightweight. The UI is straightforward and instinctively easy to understand, whilst the 3D graphics are more functional than impressive, but with an attractive art style and some cool explosions. Sound effects are good, the alien designs (many of them directly upgraded from the 1994 originals) memorable and interesting, and there's even some pretty good characterisation of your various advisors. One mild misstep is a lack of personality and character amongst your soldiers (since you have full control of their development), which makes some events in the endgame not resonate as strongly as they should.

The game is quite hard, even on the easier difficulty levels, and does not tolerate too many mistakes. Many players, particularly those not familiar with the original, may find themselves having to play through several dummy runs to get acquainted with the concepts and controls before launching a proper campaign (this is not helped by a story-driven tutorial mode which doesn't actually do a good job of giving you the tech you need urgently in the early game period). Still, it's a refreshing change to find a game these days which will punish you but not overwhelm you with frustration to the point where you stop playing. On the contrary, XCOM is compulsive stuff, with the "Just one more turn," mentality resulting in you staying up until ridiculous hours trying to acquire that plasma rifle or bring down that alien base.

On the negative side, the game does lack some of the freedom of the original, such as the ability to exchange equipment in the field and bring a lot more troops to the battlefield, whilst the inability to destroy cover deliberately with normal weapons seems a bit limiting. But these are fairly minor complaints. More serious is a series of crashes I experienced shortly after installation, but these stopped after an hour or so and never reoccurred.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (****½) is a smart, intelligent and engrossing game, with compelling (but also challenging) gameplay and some fiendish opponents. It's a superb update of a classic game but also a great game in its own right, and a clear front-runner for game of the year. The game is available now on the PC (UK, USA), X-Box 360 (UK, USA) and PlayStation 3 (UK, USA).