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No matter what you choose, you know there will be consequences down the line. They add tension, particularly in instances where your squad is wounded, the Avatar Project gauge is high, and there are multiple UFOs out for blood. And the aliens, too, will occasionally force your hand and make you choose, for instance, whether you'd rather deal with a UFO hunter or additional reinforcements for each mission.ĭecisions like these are the lifeblood of any good strategy game, and it's good to see them gain more prominence in XCOM 2. You will have to make a lot of interesting decisions, such as choosing whether to spend your supplies and intel on research, or to contact a new resistance cell and open up a new area of the map. You move to grab precious Supplies - one of the game's two currencies alongside Intel - and you run the risk of getting attacked by a UFO and forced to defend your ship. You take out a facility, and they launch a retaliatory attack on one of your resistance cells. The Avatar Project makes XCOM 2 feel like a tug of war as each side struggles for advantage. The Avatar Project is a time bomb that adds pressure to every decision.Īdditions like these help to elevate XCOM 2's strategic layer and bring it more in line with the excellent tactical segment. Often, you will have to divert from whatever you're working on to take out an enemy facility, or else you run the risk of letting the bar get too high.
XCOM 2 SKULLJACK FULL
In the meantime, the Avatar Project's bar to completion is slowly ticking upward, with a full bar resulting in a win for the aliens. As the story progresses, you learn more and more about what the aliens are attempting to accomplish - a slow drip of information that proves riveting. The Avatar Project serves as XCOM's central mystery, as well as its central source of tension. The story is advanced through secondary objectives like using a Skulljack to hack into the alien network via an enemy's brain, or raiding particularly sensitive facilities. In the course of XCOM 2, you will have to thwart alien terror attacks and strike at their secret facilities, all while constantly researching new technology and developing new weapons. On the ground, XCOM 2 is a turn-based tactics game with several distinct classes, all of whom level up and gain new abilities as they earn experience in the field. In the strategy portion, you fly around the world in a captured alien freighter fighting the alien occupation forces, making contact with worldwide resistance cells, and trying to discover the purpose behind the Avatar Project - an implacable countdown to destruction that serves as the alien's endgame. But, of course, these improvements have a malevolent purpose to them, as you discover soon enough.Īs with the other games in the series, XCOM 2 is divided between a strategy section and a tactics section. On the surface, it looks as if the aliens are introducing radical new technological innovations and wiping out crime. Subsequently forced underground, the remains of XCOM can only watch as the aliens come into the open and begin to build a new society. XCOM 2 posits a scenario in which humanity actually failed to stop the initial invasion depicted in Enemy Unknown. Character customization is much-improved. Rather than simply waiting for the aliens to make their next move, you have to take the fight to them. Perhaps the most important change is that you now control an underground rebellion, forcing you to be more proactive than reactive.
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After the positive reception afforded Enemy Unknown, Firaxis clearly feels more confident in taking risks with the form and structure of the tactics series.
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A perfectly executed ambush in XCOM 2 is truly a thing of beauty.Ĭoncealment, a new mechanic that allows you to move stealthily around the battlefield until you're spotted, is one of several interesting improvements in XCOM 2 - the sequel to 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown. All it takes is a single grenade, and all of the sudden the field will be alive with gunfire and alien screams as my squad stands and bloodlessly cuts them down. My single favorite moment in XCOM 2 is when I spring a trap out of concealment against a group of unsuspecting aliens.