Monday, February 8, 2016
“XCOM 2”
Grade: B+
Details: PC, $59.95
When the aliens come – and they will – don’t expect the government to save us. If you’ve ever watched “The X-Files,” you know half of them are in cahoots with the invaders anyway.
Besides, we tried that already in 2012’s “XCOM: Enemy Unknown.” In “XCOM 2,” we find out that all our efforts were for naught. Twenty years have elapsed, and the extraterrestrials have pretty much taken over Earth with the help of human collaborators.
You are the commander of a ragtag bunch of desperate, ill-prepared men and women who are nonetheless determined to stick it to our new bosses. You don’t have much in the way of firepower – just some rickety pistols, rifles and grenades – but you do have a cool airborne base, the Avenger, that you can fly to hot spots all over the planet.
In each mission, you send four recruits to the surface to battle the insect-like aliens, sabotage installations, gather intelligence or rescue civilians. Each confrontation takes place on a three-dimensional map viewed from above. Your four soldiers move in turns, and can do two things each turn. The first thing is usually moving closer to the enemy, and the second is usually shooting at it. You also can spend one of your action points healing a comrade, hacking a computer or hunkering down behind cover.
From the start, these missions are quite challenging, even at the default difficulty setting. My best advice is to save your game frequently, because you never know when one of your hapless squaddies is about to get his head lasered off. And in “XCOM,” death is permanent, with no magical spells to reincarnate your lost partners.
The good news is that your soldiers get tougher and smarter with each mission they survive. Meanwhile, the scientists you rescue are eager to get their hands on whatever alien technology you can salvage, which they can use to create more-powerful weapons and armor.
The overarching game – where you’re adding new facilities to the Avenger, leveling up your soldiers and deciding which attacks will be most effective at stopping the alien takeover – is quite satisfying. You never have all the resources you need to put out every fire, so you have to make plenty of tough decisions. And I became quite attached to some of my brave guerrillas.
“XCOM 2” looks lovely, but it is marred by technical hiccups, with the action slowing down or freezing all too frequently. And since it generates new missions on the fly, the loading times can be excruciating.
Players who are used to the run-and-gun antics of first-person shooters such as “Halo” may find “XCOM 2” too demanding, but I found its strategic challenges far more satisfying. I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
SEnDLou Kesten, Associated Press