XCOM 2

The hopeless vibe of the post-apocalyptic world of XCOM 2 doesn't really invite relaxation. 20 years have passed since the sad defeat of humanity during the war played in the excellent XCOM: Enemy Unknown released in 2012. We are now fighting 10 years of occupation by aliens. It is a theme that is perfect for a squad game where 4 to 6 soldiers will face a much more powerful enemy at first glance, as well as an excellent backdrop for unpredictable, tactical and addictive battles.

Just like in the previous installment, the challenges of turn-based tactical combat challenge you to become too attached to your characters, which can be personalized as you wish, when you know very well that they can die at any moment after an error or a stroke of bad luck. As with any game that includes a luck factor, such as Risk, Monopoly, or Warhammer, XCOM 2 is a cruel game. Even if the way you play is flawless, you can still lose from a bad dice roll. However, a good player will know how to stand out in the long term. Deciding what skills to improve and how to use them, and then crossing your fingers that your soldiers land their special move, all of these add up to a sometimes triumphant and sometimes tragic suspense.

It's like playing Russian Roulette with a single ball, your odds of survival are five out of six, or 83.3%. Pretty good isn't it? But you'd have to be crazy to risk your life on the remaining 16.6% risk, and yet that's what happens in XCOM 2. The game will ask you to play with the lives of your soldiers, and often with them. even worse percentages, every turn. You might think that an 80% chance is a guaranteed success… but when it fails, you need a plan B or you will only have your eyes left to mourn the death of your soldiers.

Not dying on your first game is one thing - you're doomed to fall for one of the myriad unknown traps, especially if you're playing on high difficulty (like I did - normal or 'veteran', don't. does not offer a challenge for someone who has already played XCOM). But one of the great strengths of XCOM 2 is its efforts not to become repetitive from party to party. Experienced players who have played XCOM: Enemy Unknown for a long time quickly understand how it works - they know what to build first, what research to prioritize, which paths to take in the maps, and where enemies spawn. In XCOM 2, this will no longer be possible, as randomness sets in throughout the campaign. The road that led you to victory the first time around may not have the same result in another game.

So within 20-30 hours of the campaign you will see a random assortment of weapon mods, bonuses for your soldiers, special ammo and grenade types, psionic powers, gains in your resistance network via the coverage of continents, etc. What are you going to use? Incendiary grenades that excel at disabling your enemies' special abilities while inflicting damage over time? Or poison bullets that reduce accuracy and deal constant damage? Or tracer bullets that increase accuracy in addition to other bonuses. You can't count on everything, but you will have something, and adapting to those resources is an ongoing challenge.

The same goes for high quality procedural maps, and variety of missions. Without knowing in advance the location of the objectives or the position of the hostiles, you will attack, defend, extract or eliminate VIPs by blowing everything up. Some missions will have a limited number of turns which will force you to play dangerously or retreat in a rush. I cannot say that I have ever lost a mission due to a poorly constructed map (although I have sometimes gotten away with blasting off.)

And since many missions start with concealed soldiers, your squad can ambush deadly and pay off, both for the mission and for the eyes. Stealth is an interesting concept, as if the aliens of XCOM 2 were telling us "humans, shoot first!" It is ultimately a simple system: at the start of a mission, the aliens do not know where the soldiers are unless they enter a certain perimeter or they open fire. It's not difficult to use, unless you go headlong into it (which I sometimes did, I admit). With a little caution, you'll put all but one of your soldiers into watch mode, circling the primary target, then watch your squad shred enemies (normally) in beautiful slow motion.

The aliens seem to be well equipped to compensate for your advantageous stealth, however, with powers that make them much more difficult to take down if they aren't downed in the first turn. Advent's shield holder is a case in point: if he survives and is unhindered, he will activate an ability that will give him and his allies an energy barrier capable of absorbing an amount. consequent damage. It is in your interest to pay close attention to who you are taking as your priority target because this has a huge influence on the rest of the confrontation, when it is their turn to attack.

Also when you take down two aliens in a group of three, sometimes the last one is smart enough to retreat and fit in with another group. This is great, because not only does the AI display a rare will to survive, but you also have to remember not to leave any survivors when you launch the assault, otherwise the next battle will be much more difficult.

XCOM is not only a beautiful series, it is a beautiful story. The progenitor of the saga, a creature of the brilliant Gollop brothers, practically invented a genre from scratch, mixing turn-based tactics, management elements and the great epic, never out of fashion, of the alien invasion in a single cauldron.

One of those games that remain: I still happen to talk about it, with some friends over a beer. "Do you remember, that time ...": and it is the time when a lone hero triggered a grenade and blew himself up in the midst of a swarm of Chrysalis; is when the recruit on her first mission rescued the wounded captain, carrying him on the shoulder amid the deadly glow of plasma weapons; is when we built our Avenger, and then yes, those damned aliens began to tremble.

Then follow more or less interesting (more Apocalypse, less Terror from the Deep). And also spiritual followers, from Aftermath to Extraterrestrials: pleasant games too, but which were not XCOM. Until Firaxis arrived, and decided that the best way to honor the great old man was to rejuvenate him. Do not limit yourself to a remake, as the most conservative fans were clamoring, but find the courage to improve what was already almost perfect. A feat by climbers from the Andes, given the premises. Still, the Firaxis guys threw their hearts over the obstacle.

The result was a faster and more immediate style of play, a lean structure, which however has not lost even an ounce of strategic depth and, indeed, has smoothed it with painstaking attention. XCOM 2 is the heir to this venture. Now the challenges are very different: fans have understood that Firaxis is serious, and they already know what to expect in terms of mechanics. It is therefore a question of repeating success by expertly dosing the new with the classic.

Let's start from the new, that is, from the setting. If you have followed even a little development, you will know it by heart now. Earth has been invaded, defeated and annexed to a mysterious alien empire, which governs through its human collaborators, the ADVENT. Except that these "humans" are not really humans, as it turns out in the early hours of the game. And, moreover, they seem to have obscure plans for the future of all of us: the Avatar project. What is not spoilero, but be sure that it is far more threatening than James Cameron's blue humanoids. The fact is that ordinary people, coaxed by the promises of alien technology, show no sign of rebelling: it is once again up to XCOM, therefore, to act as a revolutionary vanguard. Just like the good old Lenin said.

Vive la resistance!

The aliens may rule the world, but some things never change. The XCOM defense force is still resisting the intruder, even if it now has to make its way as an underground guerrilla corps. To this end, we are once again leading a team of up to six agents in tactical rounds of battles. In essence, they inherit the game principle of their predecessor : With two actions per nose and round, our squad moves across the field in search of the best cover and slams the enemy in the flank as deviously as possible.

An excellently designed box of tricks made up of items and skills ensures that there is demand and diversity on both sides. So far, so proven, so first-class - just like its predecessor, part two delivers lap tactics in top form . And on top of that, we know how to stage it in an appealing way: Our boys open fire in miniature tracking shots that are ready for a film, sometimes kicking in doors when sprinting over the map or swinging smoothly over obstacles.

Avenger, assemble!

We can find a lot of improvements for this in our home base, which is again the focal point of the campaign. We fill rooms with facilities such as the psi laboratory or the advanced war center and unlock new soldier upgrades there. This time, our civilian staff also play a much bigger role.

Engineers are no longer passive resources, but rather individual employees whom we assign to specific tasks. Should you free up new rooms, drive construction projects forward or increase the performance of various systems? We can hardly have enough engineers, they are so valuable, which enriches the basic construction with completely new interesting decisions.

Scientists are more boring, they simply passively increase the speed of research, but there is still a lot to consider. Because resources such as supplies and recyclable alien technology pieces are almost always scarce (we loot them from missions or plunder depots on the world map), we have to consider wisely what to add to our arsenal next. Depending on whether we research better armor, laser weapons or rather psi soldiers first, we should proceed differently on the battlefield. This freedom creates considerable replay value and upgrading our tactical capabilities is enormously motivating.

The flying revolutionary

And something else has changed: The base is movable this time! With the spaceship »Avenger« we roar across the world map to head for missions, investigate mysterious events and make contact with new resistance cells, which then contribute resources to the common cause. The world belongs to the aliens this time; XCOM has to re-establish itself in the first place - a cool role reversal, now we are the invaders.

And the aliens leave no stone unturned in fighting us back. They regularly initiate "dark events" and equip all of their soldiers with armor or poison ammunition for the next few missions. Devilish: We see these events coming and are allowed to start a guerrilla mission regularly to disrupt one of them. But three are always planned at the same time and we can never stop them all. With every decision we also choose which harassment the aliens are allowed to choke us into undisturbed. XCOM 2 leaves no doubt that as the underdog we are facing a hopelessly superior enemy, and that makes it darn exciting.

This tension is fed almost entirely from the game mechanics: Although XCOM 2 creates a cool scenario, it does not tell an overly dramatic story. Especially the figures, i.e. our XCOM staff, remain flat like in the predecessor. The story focuses on the war against the aliens and less on personality or depth.

The quiet way to victory

Apropos underdog: With the new guerrilla warfare, a lot is changing on the battlefield, because as an underground fighter it would be improper to fall into the house with a wild bang. That's why we start most of the missions camouflaged . The aliens patrol the map, and if we don't run into them like the last dork, we can work out an ambush: get agents in fire protection mode, then draw attention with a targeted shot, and while the alien pack is still in Dive for cover, they get a treat from all sides - wonderful!

And a much more interesting way to open a game than in the previous one. There we had to blindly grope our way until we stumbled across the aliens, this time we have the initiative. In terms of variety, the missions have also grown. We now also tact on snow or desert maps, which are also generated randomly and still have a consistently high quality. That eliminates one of the biggest criticisms of the predecessor, whose ready-made cards we had all seen at some point.

Only the controls continue to give us a crush. Many actions simply require more mouse clicks than necessary. So this time, too, we cannot simply drive over an enemy from the ISO view, see the chance of a hit and give the order to fire with a mouse click. No, we have to switch to the zoomed-in aiming mode for each shot and confirm it there. In the predecessor, a clear concession to the gamepad operation of the console version, in the PC-exclusive second part simply superfluous. Unless, of course, the developers still want to keep the option of porting a console or tablet open.

Drones are the future

We already know today that a lot can be done with drones. Delivering scrap ordered on the Internet and thus promoting the decadence of our civilization, for example. You could also snatch the said civilization from the clutches of alien tyranny, which is preferred by the new specialist class. It replaces the old supporter and controls a "Gremlin" drone. Among other things, we can send out the mini-aircraft to give allies a shield, to patch them up at a distance with a medicit (hallelujah!) Or to mess up enemy computer systems.

Hacking doesn't require a mini game or anything like that, our success depends on a chance chance based on the agent's tech value. And about whether we choose the easy variant, for example to switch off an alien 'Mech, or prefer to pull it over to our side. If that goes wrong, we can inadvertently even feed the opponent more juice.

The storm soldier doesn't care about such gimmicks, he has grabbed a sword and retrained to become a ranger. He risks direct hand-to-hand combat to properly deal out blade damage. The snipers and grenadiers have only changed in detail; the Psi Soldier as fifth class has done the most for that. It is no longer an additional profession for existing soldiers, which we only unlock towards the end of the game. On the contrary, we can even research psionics very early on and then specifically train thought force troopers. The class fresh cell treatment was successful all round, our agents are now playing much more interesting.

It's just a sectoid!

With all our new skills, we felt pretty powerful as we marched onto the battlefield under cover. Until we met our first sectoid. You know, those ridiculous little cannon fodder aliens from the first part. Or so we thought. And then the creature grabbed one of our boys by mind control, let him shoot his colleague over the heap and then woke him up as a zombie. Just because. In the first missions, yes. Uh please what?

And from then on it only gets worse: The human soldiers of the ADVENT regime initially act like the new throwaway enemies until they bring elite troops into the field, which give all allies protective shields. The viper pulls our people across the battlefield and then wraps them up, more advanced aliens even clone themselves or let all ammunition in our magazines fizzle out with a psionic cyclone. We suffer it with enthusiasm, because what XCOM 2 throws us against nasty enemies and thus tricky challenges is top notch.

Help, we are oppressed!

Especially at the beginning, on the second of four levels of difficulty, the impression arises that XCOM 2 is playing with harder bandages than its predecessor. Our boys die like flies in the early stages, and not always from completely fair causes of death. For example, when the game presents us with a civilian to be rescued who mutates into a giant alien slime paw without any warning and immediately knocks our next soldier out of the mountain without us even being allowed to react.

As soon as we've bred a few veterans, we'll survive this sooner - which makes XCOM 2 easier than harder as the game progresses . The frustration of the early missions then fortunately disappears, but the missions now fluctuate between pleasantly demanding and noticeably too easy. Initially unfair, later easier - that's actually exactly the opposite. A somewhat gentler start would do the game well, and if you want to sweat from the first minute, you could still set the level of difficulty to the limit.

Moving forward cautiously is by no means always an option, because we are subject to a time limit on a large number of missions and only have a certain number of rounds before we automatically lose. This has its advantages, because it forces you out of our comfort zone and demands a new way of playing. But XCOM 2 uses this too often for our taste, in a round tactics game we also want to use tactics prudently and not be constantly under time pressure.

My soldiers, my weapons, my family

Those who survive the mission gain experience and unlock one of two skills with each new level. Depending on their specialization, rangers can either line up devastating blade killstreaks or remain camouflaged, even if the rest of the team is revealed - both of which are extremely practical! The classes are more imaginative and powerful than in the first part, making it harder to choose. And then all these equipment options!

Do we prefer to put on spider armor with climbing hooks or a powerful exoskeleton that lets us wield heavy weapons like flamethrowers, similar to the Mech Troopers from Enemy Within? Weapon attachments such as automatic loaders (reloading does not cost any action points) or more stable pistons (even missed shots cause minimum damage), which we have to capture from aliens on the battlefield, are brand new. In the test center, we also make experimental but extremely useful items such as special vests that set melee attackers on fire. We have noticeably more freedom to adapt our soldiers than in the previous one.

The visual design options, which make even some role-play pale with envy, shoot the bird. Should our agent be a scarred Texan with a cowboy hat and a cigar? Go! A ninja ranger in all black armor with a veiled face? Go! Just like, of course, very classic soldiers.

We grow dear to our people more than ever because they really are our people: From the face to the armor design, everything can be adjusted, we can even determine the "attitude" - a nervous soldier actually comments more hesitantly on our orders than a stern one more focused. All of this, of course, is calculated perfidiously, so that the blow of fate permadeath hits us even worse when a lovingly designed and well-bred veteran gives up the spoon.

More extensive, better, more interesting: What applies to soldier design can also be said about XCOM 2 as a whole. Despite its quirks in terms of difficulty and controls, it turned out to be a fantastic tactical round game.

On the fingers of one hand, you can count the titles and series that have successfully resumed after years of break. Tomb Raider , Mortal Kombat ... and of course XCOM come to mind first. The latter, released under the Enemy Unknown subtitle in 2012, may not have been exactly what the old teasers who broke their teeth in the original series expected, but overall the strategy turned out to be a great proposition for tactical gamers. Contrary to appearances, we will not experience this in too many contemporary productions. Individual top-shelf titles today focus on turn-based struggles, and when we add to the "requirements" also managing a small team and the need to carefully plan the next moves, the list shrinks indecently. The XCOM series is not more competitive today, but this is not why it won the hearts of players. The success was determined by the quality, addictive gameplay and exactly what in the case of the Civilization series - the irresistible desire to play "one more turn". The latest installment again focuses on this formula, while trying to develop it ... although it does it in a very, very safe way.

Twenty years have passed since the events we saw in XCOM: Enemy Unknown , but from the very first moments we spent with the game, we know that two decades were not particularly successful for humanity. Despite the heroic actions of our staff in previous installments, the aliens returned to Earth and, what is worse, they won, but in a completely different way than one might expect. Instead of dominating us militarily, they offered "peace" and gave access to modern technology, which humanity, ignorant of the consequences, gladly accepted. Blinded by the vision of prosperity, the citizens decided to give up their freedom and meekly go under the yoke of aliens whose interests on the planet are guarded by the Speaker, the puppet government and the military units of ADVENT. The vision is extremely grim, but as always in such stories there is a light of hope - all over the world, individual units rebel against enslavement, and the remnants of the XCOM organization slowly rise from their knees, thus preparing to reclaim Earth.

We start the game with a rescue mission, in which our goal is ... a commander from the previous installment of the series. In the first few minutes, we take the leader out of the alien facility, and after restoring it to "usable" condition, we go to work. Due to the fact that this time we are not so much defending ourselves against invaders as trying to chase them away, the narrative is a bit different ... but only on the surface. Re-impersonating the role of the commander is of course a nice bow to the fans of the previous games, but the longer we play, the more often we find out that the creators are stuck in the fictional trap of the previously proposed convention. We face aliens, after a while the plot turns and a new, mysterious theme appears, and we solve all problems with a bold attack on the enemy's main center. Without going into details, let me just say that the pattern of the story is, with some exceptions, almost a copy of what we saw previously . To make matters worse, the deja vu impression accompanied me while playing, not only when I listened to the next dialogues.

After all, when launching any part of the series, no one expects a Hollywood script and narrative worthy of an Oscar. In XCOM 2, the most important thing is the gameplay itself, and this one again turns out to be absolutely amazing. Depending on the mission and the level of development of our organization, we lead a team of three to six soldiers, each of whom can develop within one of five classes. Grenadier, specialist, hunter and sharpshooter can also choose from two specialization paths, which greatly differentiate the style of playing with a given character. For example, the mentioned shooter can become a sniper, a pistol master or a mix of the advantages of both development trees . In practice, it works perfectly and really allows us to match our players to the challenges posed by the game. In addition, there is also a psi agent, this time functioning as a separate type of soldier, which can be developed in a slightly different, but no less intriguing way. In-depth variants of creating heroes also extend to their appearance, although a much more interesting option is the ability to modify weapons and the use of permanent "stimulants". By adding scopes, new holders or using chips, we are able to additionally improve, for example, the accuracy of our warrior or equip him with a bonus, passive ability. If you've always dreamed of creating a small army of real individuals, you'll feel like you're in heaven.

The third major novelty in the game, i.e. stealth, also requires some "taming". For most of the missions, our team starts maneuvers in hiding and stays in it until it fires a shot or is noticed by enemies. This option is quite interesting and to a large extent it resembles setting up units before the battle, known for example from the Heroes of Might and Magic series. Here it is, of course, much more extensive, which allows you to perfectly prepare for the first fight, in which we will destroy a group of enemies we meet, without suffering any losses. It works great and deepens the tactical layer of the game, but at the same time I have to cool down the enthusiasm of all the home-grown Cichociemni. It is practically impossible to complete the mission without any fight - and I have tried to do so many times. Even if we stay hidden 90% of the time, we still have to fire or we will be spotted in the final part of the mission. Then all enemy units that we bypassed are lashing our way from the entire map, and I wish you good luck in defending yourself against the onslaught of twenty enemies at the same time. There is usually not much time for stalking, because in some missions we have to stay within its quite narrow range - for example, we get eight turns to complete the task, so sometimes you have to fly forward at an alarming pace. Of course, XCOM 2 is all about shooting, but the creators could have solved the stealth mechanics a bit better, although it is still fun to use.

Fighting duels in turn-based mode is one thing, but as you know, XCOM is also a strategic game on a slightly larger scale. Due to the fact that this time we are reflecting the Earth and not defending it, achieving the goals looks a bit different than before. Instead of being stationed in a base from which we observe the situation in the world, this time we are fully mobile and regularly move from one end of the map to the other. We are responsible not only for regaining new regions from aliens, but also for supporting resistance centers, gathering resources, visiting the black market and attacking, for example, ADVENT's transport convoys. The whole thing is supplemented with building special towers in individual regions, which increase income, as well as dealing with so-called dark events. The latter are important because if we start to ignore them, the enemies we encounter will receive bonuses that make life difficult for us - for example, poisoning projectiles. Moreover, some of them accelerate the implementation of the mysterious Avatar project - if the aliens manage to carry it out, the campaign will end in failure. This additional factor has a very positive effect on the gameplay and we never have the feeling of "pointless" that sometimes accompanied us in previous editions. The specter of failure is constantly hanging over us, and this makes planning the next trips and actions not only more fun, but also forces us to think more intensively.

Speaking of the place where duels are played, one must also mention one of the biggest and at the same time the best changes that XCOM 2 has had . The creators, as part of the gameplay diversity, put a lot of emphasis on the randomness of the maps on which we conduct our activities. What does it mean? Approaching the same mission each time throws us into a different looking area with different enemy configurations. The scenery also changes, and it is selected from a pool of several archetypes, such as the jungle or snow-covered tundra. I had the opportunity to complete the game only once, but even when loading the saves from before a single mission, it was possible to notice significant changes, and this leads to an obvious conclusion - XCOM 2 for everyone will be a completely individual experience that can be repeated without weariness. Of course, there are also mods that were not available before the premiere, but in the future they will probably deepen the so-called "replayability" and lead to further visual modifications.

In this slightly far-fetched way we finally reach the issue of the audiovisual setting of the title. The soundtrack, the sounds of the shots and the voices of the characters are made correctly, and although they do not stand out, you can listen to them without any problem. The matter is a bit more complex when we start looking at the textures that the creators decided to implement in their production. The character and opponent models look nicer and more detailed than before, but at the same time you can still see that they are "the same XCOM ". On the one hand, you can at times be delighted with attention to detail, smoke rising from the barrels, grass torn by gusts of wind and new, really impressive effects, but on the other - it is associated with the extremely irritating work of the camera. If the crazy prospect has annoyed you before, stock up on a decent supply of tranquilizers before playing XCOM 2 , because this time it's even worse. Strange shots, funny-looking poses, freeze-ups, random spins, and other problems that everyone who plays Enemy Unknown or Enemy Within knows are back, and they are redoubled. Of course, it doesn't ruin the fun and you can swallow somehow, but I got the impression that the creators did not draw absolutely any conclusions from the previous lessons.