As a beloved cult classic franchise, XCOM has been around a long time and seen many forms of gameplay. While I eagerly await XCOM3 with a fervor that would put half-life 3 to shame, I’d love to hear your thoughts, stories and future hopes for the franchise. Spoiler warning, obviously.
My personal favorite is probably XCOM2, if only for the sheer number of mods that allow me to customize a single character for hours (only for them to die on their first mission) and completely overhaul the challenges and theme of the game.
I started with the XCOM reboot, which was such a delightfully crunchy little game full of steroid abusers wearing armor made out of hastily repurposed fridges. I would later look at a retrospective of the series and appreciate that the reboot simplified inventory management and condensed the base building down to just one base, which meant you could enjoy the strategy side of things without it wearing out its welcome. Just a fondly remembered game experience all around.
The DLC for XCOM was very welcome as well, adding new toys to play with but only letting you have them if you got off your ass and stopped over watching every turn. It was a good change that forced me to be aggressive in order to get a giant stompy mechsuit or a team full of go-go-gadget soldiers. It definitely refreshed the game for a playthrough or three.
Then came XCOM2, which turned the formula on its head and left me stunned that I canonically lost the last game. This inversion of not responding to random strikes all over the globe but /being the one doing them?/ I was SO in. Even on launch the game was a blast but they came out with some seriously solid DLC.
War of the Chosen is the closest I’ve seen to the universally praised (and regrettably copyrighted) Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor since that game came out, and they adapted it quite well to the style of the game. It rebalanced a few things, added new toys to play with, and gave you just another chance to have a massive wrench thrown into your plans to train up your all-rookie backup squad.
XCOM 2.5 episode 1 Chimera squad. Honestly? I liked it. I think it should stay a side project, a spin-off I can happily say is part of the XCOM family but it isn’t required reading to understand the rest of the franchise nor is it a massive experience you can’t miss on its own merit. It’s good for when you’re itching for a change but still want some XCOM. Can’t complain.
I love this series, one day I’ll go back and try the OG if I can ever get over the controls. Until then I’ll just stay here enjoying good company. So, what are your thoughts and experiences with the franchise (pre or post reboot)? Any legendary tales to share?
I was a huge fan of X-COM from the 90s. I saw it in some magazine with a couple of screenshots and knew I would love it. I went to my local Media Play (basically like the proto-Best Buy before Best Buy) and they didn’t have it but their selection of PC games was large enough I went to the counter to have them look it up in case I missed it. I didn’t. But they’d order it for me. So a week later I had X-COM: UFO Defense/Enemy Unknown.
I loved it. It was hard but I loved having multiple bases, being invaded as part of the sandbox experience and the tactile stuff you could do. I love how you could destroy almost anything and the strategies you could do for that. Like if there’s an alien you can’t see on the second floor of a farm house but you can see the shots coming from there? You can just toss in an incendiary grenade in there and it’ll burn down the floor and spread. Maybe the alien panics and runs out. Maybe it falls through the floor. Maybe it burns to death.
Yes a first turn wipe with an alien grenade in the sky ranger sucks. but it kind of does add to the charm…after the fact when you think back on it later. Dumb civilians are dumb.
The pixel art is fantastic and you can really see it shine in the city maps with all of the cool details.
The biggest downside to the OG is that you can easily fall behind because there was essentially a static clock. You could doubly feel this because of the quick lack of funding as your funding lowers and nations leave. It would have been cool for those nations to try to fight back if they left you due to you ignoring them, even if that meant that the forces may be hostile to you if you happen to be fighting on the same turf or something.
X-COM 2 was more of the same but underwater with some bug fixes. X-COM 3 was different and I could see myself liking it if it was actually finished and focused on either real-time or turn-based.
When the XCOM reboot came out I thought I was going to hate it, especially with the simplified movement but it was great and even better with the expansion. The only thing I didn’t like was having to overwatch my way through at the beginning or risk losing a lot of people. The system of pods was also annoying. Also not being able to re-take nations after defeating the alien bases unmodded was annoying. Having basically “XCOM but bad guys” was also really cool to go along with the exosuits.
XCOM 2 was better, including with its expansion. I thought I’d hate more timed missions but it does force you not to overwatch all the time and in XCOM 2, you really don’t need to, even early on. Fantastic game. Being confined to one base was OK but I do prefer multiple bases but it made sense in the story and was still pretty cool. I have to always have three mods though: Evac All so I can just click one button to evac everyone in the square instead of going through each one-by-one; the one that makes the zombies equal chance to attack aliens, mostly for immersion; and lastly the mod that makes the rebels actually be armed and not be super dumb though they can still be really bad shots with really crappy guns, also mostly for immersion.
I hope XCOM 3 adds underwater and hope it just reboots again or does something very interesting with interstellar travel.
Really I would like them to treat XCOM like they do Civilization. Instead of a continuation of a story that will eventually be terrible, just keep revising the game every time but don’t do the Civ thing and release it again but hold back features from the last one just to be able to put them in a DLC later.