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Xcom 2 Critical Hit
| Ray the Ranger, callsign: Deadpool, introducing us to XCOM 2 |
Seven Mods That Make XCOM 2 Less Frustrating. Nathan Grayson. Critical hit every alien! XCOM 2 is at its most obnoxious when you have a character in range to land a shot (or sword slash.
XCOM 2: Hit Chance 100%
XCOM 2 is a masterpiece of modern gaming. I’ll go ahead andget that out of the way.
XCOM 2 is the highly nuanced and brutalsuccessor to 2012’s exceptional XCOM: Enemy Unknown by Firaxis. It ups the antein almost every regard over the original, while remaining very faithful to whatXCOM stands for – brutal gameplay, persistent challenge, constant tradeoffs, and jugglingstrategic and tactical concerns. XCOM 2 adds massive levels of replayability tothe mix through an excellently crafted random events and customization systems, fully randomisedmaps in nearly every mission, and strong 3rd party modding support.Where 2012’s Enemy Unknown would start following a predictable path afterthe first dozen challenging hours, XCOM 2 never gives you a minute of respiteor undue familiarity, and is stronger for it.
A major change is to the pacing of the game, in Enemy Unknownenemies would attack only after you saw them, which made gamers advance across the map at a glacial pace toavoid ‘revealing’ and encountering too many aliens at a time. Given the pain oflosing a character, this strategy made tactical sense but led to a repetitiveexperience over time. Firaxis saw this behaviour and how it took away from theexperience and improvised - now most missions (over two thirds) are under astrict time limit. Miss the timer, and the mission is afailure – the target gets away, or your evac has to abort, leaving anyone leftbehind. Your payout from the mission is lost or much lower, and your squad hasa hole in it now. However, if you run too far ahead too quickly, your troops risk being caught in the open andattacked. Advance too slowly, and you may still fail due to the timer. This constantprodding is an excellent way to keep battles tense and constantly challenging,no action can be taken for granted at any point in the game.
Firaxis also understood the connection gamers had with theirsquad characters, so they added a wonderful character pool feature which allowsplayers to design and share their custom characters who can appear in the gameas soldiers, NPCs, or even random civilians across maps. This time around, therange of customisations on offer is substantial, and modders continue to addmore. Through all this, I ended up with a squad with Danaerys (GoT) as my PsiOp, Trinity (The Matrix) as my Hacker, Mikasa Ackerman (Attack on Titan) as my gunslinger(bad dice roll, should have been a blademaster), Captain Picard (Star Trek) asHeavy Weapons, Big Boss (MGS) as demolitions, my friend Ray as the Blademaster,and myself as the long range sniper. Oh the stories!
The Pledge
| Ah yes, early game accuracy. It makes sense given that my solder had no training in combat up to this point |
XCOM2 pulls off an interesting twist on the story till date.Firaxis mentioned that 60% of players in XCOM lost during their first playthrough, and tookthat to be the canon ending for the game - the Aliens winning and taking over Earth. Your victory in XCOM was retconned tohave been a simulation run in your head while you were being used as a wetware computerused by the aliens to learn human tactics, after your base in XCOM wasdestroyed. In the present, 20 years since the fall, XCOM is a rag tag insurgentforce, fighting back from the margins, always a step behind in manpower,technology and resources. The Aliens have kept humanity alive and governed under a totalitarian state for reasons explained across the game.
XCOM pledges to make you feel like humanity’s last defence fromextinction, and to its credit, the game mechanics communicate this brilliantly.You are always short of strategic resources, time during missions, your peopleare often wounded or worse, and the aliens are merciless. For the first fifteenhours, you are thoroughly overwhelmed by how badly undermanned you are, how fragile theresistance is, and how each upgrade you gain is at the cost of another one.
| Too many missions ended this way early on, with a lot of my team healing from their wounds. Side note, mission names are randomly generated and a lot of fun |
The Turn
| Before my team blazed through here, this building had a shortage of windows. The ability to tactically destroy the environment is excellent |
Emergent storytelling is something XCOM2 does exceptionallywell, by throwing up so many elements of structured randomness, every person’s playthroughwill be different, and every encounter is memorable. Unlike the originalwherein missions started to fuse together in my mind, I can look back at ascreenshot from any of the 40 missions I completed in my 40 hour playthrough andremember exactly what went right and wrong and what I should have done better.It’s a game that doesn’t hold your hand and demands that you keep up pace.However, at the same time, it’s put in a lot of effort to not be unfair either,when enemies are dropping in you know exactly where they’ll land. In betweenturns, you can hear which enemies are hidden from the sound of their footsteps/treads,and hit rates / hacking success is transparently visible.
In sync with the resistance theme, your team start mostmissions in concealment, and until a soldier is detected or until you launch anattack, the enemy will mind their own business, patrolling the streets. Thefeeling of setting off a successful ambush is thrilling, and the action cameradoes a great job of putting you into the moment.
| Dark Events: You can never stop them all, and they will change how you play the next month's missions |
Mission diversity has further improved, and you usually havea choice of missions you can undertake at any given point of time – VIP rescue,supply capture, hacking an enemy terminal, shutting down a relay station, andmany more. Notably, you can never counter all the activities aliens are running, and often have to make a trade-off between which mission to take - each has its own rewards, difficulty level, troop readiness, and negative outcome. Each mission you take prevents that negative outcome, however the mission that you can't prevent will go ahead and trouble you, such as by reducing your funds, spawning more enemies on missions, or other negative modifiers which materiallyaffect your experience.
| Each weapon has a fair number of customization slots. Each weapon can be named, and if the operator doesn't survive, it can be brought back to base and passed down like a legacy. Neat |
The four key soldier classes have been rebalanced and tweaked, and snipers are no longer head and shoulders above other soldiers by the endgame. Specialists now have the ability to hack enemy robots, and a successful hack is a gamble - a failure means the enemy is boosted, however the risk reward most often makes it worth it. Assaults are now rangers with blades, and excel at recon while under concealment.
Xcom2 Critical Hit Only On Flanks
Maps are well designed, and the scenery is incredibly chewy - have an enemy getting a good angle on your troops from a roof? A good grenade/rocket will send them falling through the floor (and often to their swift demise). It's a good time to be a grenadier in XCOM.
| Captain Picard takes the fight to our robotic overlords |
Soldiers react to the world around them and likewise. Successfulsoldiers have wanted pictures against them put in the world, and will respond if moved next tothem. Based on their attitude, soldiers react differently to your commands andto making successful or unsuccessful shots. Tragically, their final moments arealso haunting, my own character’s last words were ‘Not like this.’ (It was atthat moment I broke down and couldn’t continue, I had to resort to savescumming from that point on to make it through, and even then at great pain. I do regret this, and missions became more frustrating and less rewarding, but I just couldn't let him fail)After a successful mission, everyone on the flight back is overjoyed. If a few teammates didn’t make it back, the mood and the music are more sombre. If therewas a sole survivor, they return traumatised, with their head in their hands.There’s only ever a hair between your team winning and losing, and the gamemakes you live on the edge’s knife, making every victory heady, and every lossdamning.
| The base at the start of the game, with space for facilities being cleared |
Xcom 2 Critical Hitler
Base management is slightly simpler this time round, withmanaging energy levels and your small crew of engineers being the mainchallenges. New systems this time round include hacking, making contact withrebel networks across the world, and revamped skill trees. The bonus for havingall countries on a continent is random at the start of each campaign, as is thelayout of your bases’ interiors, meaning that no playthrough is ever the same.
Critical Hit Music
| Hacking usually has a risk of failure, in this case my operative had lots of experience working in her favor |
In the first game, the main challenge was preventing nationsfrom leaving the XCOM project, which became easier with time. Here, the mainchallenge is preventing the aliens from finishing their top secret Avatarproject, which they are constantly making progress towards. Progress is measured on a doomsday meter, and if you aren’t activelyworking to stop their efforts by taking down their research centers, the aliens can win at any point in the game (yes, even very close to the ending). It’s worthmentioning that the core loop of get scarce resources – slightly improve teams or base – fightoff enemy missions – prevent progress on the Avatar project – is so strong, thegame feels it could be played forever. The story missions add to the flavour andcontext of what’s happening, but it’s the core loop that sells the game.
| A view of all the different things being juggled during a normal day on the Avenger. The doomsday clock is at the top of the screen |
The Prestige
When you decide you’re finally up for the final missions,you better be extremely confident in your team, the final missions are a majorspike in difficulty and will be more punishing than most games I’ve comeacross. The ending is satisfactory coming after a very hard fought battle which willchallenge your tactical prowess to the hilt and make you feel amazed that youmade it through. The story’s conclusion, though not cathartic, was fair, andthat’s fine by me. If anything, I will say the story was overpowered by thestrong systems holding up the game, and that’s alright.
| Trinity vs an Archon, scary in close ranged combat |
The Aftermath
After completing one campaign, you can take your newfoundskills and start it all over again to see how much better you can do or try new strategies and teams, and giventhe excellent procedural generation systems in the game, it would be a worthychallenge. You can also share your squads online for other players to download(mine’s available if anyone’s looking) and add their roster to your own. Wherethe base XCOM2 is already better than it’s predecessor after that has hadmultiple expansion content, XCOM2’s expansion content will be joining by Julyor so, and I eagerly look forward to a magnificent game getting even richer incontent. At the same time, user created mods are expected to further expand thevariety of the game and that is another great thing. The game also has amultiplayer mode, however I’ve had a hard time connecting to servers fromIndia, so I can only say that it’s an extra reason to play.
| Danaerys vs. a Sectopod |
For specificdemographics:
Price sensitive: Go for it, it can easily be replayed forhundreds of hours.
Genre sensitive: Fair story, challenging but fair gameplay,an excellent addition to the Turn Based Strategy Genre
Replay enthusiasts: Go wild, the makers of the Civilizationseries have brought a level of replayability from there to here, and it’s wonderful.
Diversity seekers: There’s a good amount of new content herefor players both within the genre and from outside
Those with older systems: Graphics intensive, however canwork ~30 FPS on old systems, and this isn’t a game where FPS materially affectsyour turns.
Art lovers: A lot here to love, the details in the world,the new look of a number of enemies, there’s a lot of quality art direction atwork here
Final Verdict
A paragon of the genre, and a worthy successor to thethrone, I recommend XCOM2 as a must buy to serious PC gamers
In case you haven't played XCOM: Enemy Unknown - The Complete Edition, I'd recommend you do that first, and then pick up XCOM2, by which time the technical wrinkles should also be sorted
Game: XCOM 2 (Base Edition)
Launch Date: 4th February, 2016
Time Reviewed: 41 hours
Get it on: Steam or a boxed copy (Not available on consoles, this one's a PC Exclusive)
Price: $60 or INR 3000 on Steam, INR 999 on Amazon.in
Side Note - Technical Glitches: As of launch, the gamesuffers from poor optimisation and is not too comfortable running at highsettings. While that does not affect the quality of gameplay itself, it isstill something I do not appreciate. Yes, it is an exceptional game, but I doprefer games come out well from the start. In a bit of good news, Firaxis isexpected to work on improving the performance over the next few months, and Ieagerly look forward to that.
For more on the Pledge/Turn/Prestige/Aftermath Reviewstructure, check out:http://criticalh1t.blogspot.in/2015/06/the-prestige-and-meaningful-game-reviews.html
Warnings & Ratings
Important Health Warning About Playing Video Games
Photosensitive Seizures
A very small percentage of people may experience a seizure when exposed to certain visual images, including flashing lights or patterns that may appear in video games. Even people who have no history of seizures or epilepsy may have an undiagnosed condition that can cause these “photosensitive epileptic seizures” while watching video games.
These seizures may have a variety of symptoms, including lightheadedness, altered vision, eye or face twitching, jerking or shaking of arms or legs, disorientation, confusion, or momentary loss of awareness. Seizures may also cause loss of consciousness or convulsions that can lead to injury from falling down or striking nearby objects.
Immediately stop playing and consult a doctor if you experience any of these symptoms. Parents should watch for or ask their children about the above symptoms—children and teenagers are more likely than adults to experience these seizures. The risk of photosensitive epileptic seizures may be reduced by taking the following precautions: Sit farther from the screen; use a smaller screen; play in a well-lit room; and do not play when you are drowsy or fatigued. If you or any of your relatives have a history of seizures or epilepsy, consult a doctor before playing.
Precautions to take during use
- Sit a good distance away from the monitor.
- Avoid playing if you are tired or have not had much sleep.
- Make sure that the room in which you are playing is well lit.
- Rest for at least 10 to 15 minutes per hour while playing a video game.