XCOM 2 Review: The Stress Of Strategy Now On Consoles

There was a time when the revival of the science fiction franchise XCOM by Firaxis Games was seen as simply a small-scale, back-up title to the main event. But long before the squad-based shooter disappointed many, the traditional, turn-based strategy XCOM: Enemy Unknown had been launched to near universal acclaim, not only doing the brand justice, but reinvigorating the genre as a whole. The expansion Enemy Within doubled down on the fiction and gameplay - but it was **XCOM 2 ** that had the anticipation in its fa


In the heat of war, especially war against terrifyingly advanced alien overlords who have already taken over the world, injuries will happen. In the base game, soldiers could sleep them off. Not with the Augmentations mod , which adds another layer of depth to soldier upkeep. This mod makes it so that grave wounds cannot be healed without cybernetic augmentati

**Updated August 15, 2021, by Matthew Mckeown: ** Firaxis’s classic turn-based strategy game has been given a new life with all the various unique and interesting mods the community has created for it over the years. With the collaboration of more popular modders becoming more frequent lately, larger and bolder projects have been released with some absolutely solid content making them arguably the best Xcom2 mods to have come out to date. Here are a few more that have recently been released and are proving popular for play

Having focused on the procedural systems and the modding, that kind of dictated the decision to go with PC. Half the procedural was something very big and something to focus on, and when you tie-in the modding community and that it’s proven on SLG PC Games, it was a natural kind of evolution and that’s where we are.


This mod makes swapping out squadmates the matter of two clicks instead of several, making weapon swapping almost instantaneous, and even allows brave Commanders to send out more than six soldiers at once! Stats, health, willpower, and even skill information are all readily available without sifting through menu after menu after menu. Thank you, Robojum

Greg Foertsh: In the storyline it’s 20 years in the future. It’s 2035 and you lost the fight in the first third of the campaign in Enemy Unknown. It’s where we’re mentally cutting it. So you never developed any of the crazy stuff, you lost early, and for the past 15-20 years you have been underground. Now the time is right and you’ve decided to come back and reclaim Earth.

We’ve shown in the demo the Specialist, which has the Gremlin, and again, the Gremlin will grow as the character grows. The Ranger, which is the melee character. And in the trailer we have the Sharpshooter and the Grenadier, and we’ll probably go into those characters sometime soon. But those are four of the new classes we have.

The way concealment is designed is to be broken. It gives you a heads up and a jump on the enemies, but it’s certainly something the player can stay in for as long as they want. But it’s not really designed to be stayed in the entire time.


A sign of a good cover is if someone who has no idea about the product can guess what genre it's in and what it's going to be about. It doesn't take a gaming expert to look at Halo 4 's cover and know instantly that not only is Master Chief the hero but that the game is going to consist of him at war with the odds stacked solidly against him, exemplified by him kneeling beneath the crumbling world ab


After proper research and construction, the augmented body parts will be applied to the wounded soldier. Their appearance will change, and you best believe extra benefits may come from having a metal torso — like a regenerating shield, for instance. It’s a fun mod that not only fits with the aesthetic and mood of the game but adds an interesting way to boost the viability and skill set of soldi


Grim Fandango was one of many iconic graphic adventures to have been remastered in recent years, joining The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle . The point-and-click classic is considered to be the genre's final bow, with its huge 94 Metascore being a testament to how it encapsulated so much about what was great about graphic adventu


The truth is, XCOM still exists, though it's become a shadow of its former self after world leaders and bases either surrendered or were destroyed. Reduced to a covert guerilla military operating in cells around the globe, this new "Resistance" has more than the standard aliens of the original game to contend with. Those monsters are back and scarier than ever, along with entirely new creatures - but it's the humans who serve the aliens - known as the ADVENT - that pose the most insidious threat. The odds seem insurmountable, and fight failing until resistance intelligence locates, then extracts their secret weapon: the Command

A lot of that stuff we’re working through, but with the Avenger, it’s a smaller, compressed space, and it’s named after The Avenger in the original game. UFO Defense, not The Avengers. laughs It’s like I have to point that out. All the people who haven’t played the original game don’t know it’s from the original XCOM. But, the whole strategy side is really cool and something we’re ironing out and going to talk about that a lot later.