XCOM 2 is 10 years previous, and 2K is celebrating with a free weekend and a 95% low cost on Firaxis’ masterful sequel

Scramble the interceptors! Collect your squad! Begin the deployment theme! The unimaginable, distinctive, presumably unbeatable XCOM 2 is 10 years previous. To have fun, writer 2K is letting XCOM greenhorns play it free on Steam this weekend. And in case you like what you see, Firaxis’ turn-based techniques sequel can also be on a 95% low cost for the following week plus change.

What’s there to say about XCOM 2? Nicely, it achieved the seemingly unimaginable, bettering upon X-COM: Enemy Unknown. Firaxis’ refinement of Julian Gollop’s groundbreaking unique appeared like an ideal distillation, retaining the essence of what made Gollop’s sport nice—the stress, the heartbreak, that feeling of squaring off in opposition to overwhelming odds—whereas additionally ironing out lots of the kinks current in that unique design.

However then alongside got here XCOM 2. Firaxis’ sequel upped the ante from defending Earth from alien invasion to liberating it from alien occupation, recasting your organisation as a scrappy guerilla unit preventing a totalitarian regime from inside. It launched stealth to missions, letting you get the drop on xeno troopers, and remodeled your base right into a flying fortress that might journey throughout the geoscape. It additionally gave Sectoids mind-control powers, an exquisitely nasty resolution which gave me the shock of my life once I first performed it.

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All of that and extra may be yours for $3 (£1.74). It is also price noting that XCOM 2’s enlargement, Struggle of the Chosen, can also be on a 90% low cost at $4 (£3.94). This brings XCOM 2 nearer to Gollop’s preliminary imaginative and prescient by layering again in some granularity, including a number of resistance factions to entreat with, alongside highly effective sub-bosses that hunt you thru missions. It additionally introduces three extremely highly effective specialist lessons, Templar assassins, grappling-hook wielding Skirmishers, and ultra-stealthy Reapers.

It is a very good sport, which is maybe why we’re nonetheless but to see XCOM 3. Not solely has it been ten years since XCOM 2, it has been 4 years since Firaxis’ final turn-based techniques sport, Marvel’s Midnight Suns. It looks as if we’re due a brand new sport from that staff, though no matter sport it does produce will not have Jake Solomon on the helm, as he left Firaxis to discovered his personal studio in 2023.

Some (courageous) folks would possibly argue that XCOM 3 already exists, within the type of XCOM: Chimera Squad. Whereas a really completely different tackle the XCOM formulation, it definitely has its deserves, as Jody Macgregor not too long ago proclaimed. “More often than not once I activate a pod in XCOM 2 I roll my eyes at how synthetic it feels. After I kick in a door in Chimera Squad it is a fuck-yeah second each single time.”