Brutality Can Be Fun

User Rating: 9 | XCOM 2 PS4

In a nutshell, XCOM 2 is a brutal and unforgiving game. Be prepared to keep a huge number of save games, because every turn, something can go wrong and you might lose your soldiers.

XCOM 2 picks it up from XCOM, and adds a number of twists to the tried and tested formula of the earlier game.

The core mechanics are still the same. You pick a team of 4 or more members, equip them with weapons and pit them against aliens in a chess like tactical action setting.

However, unlike chess, in every turn, you will probably get a chance to move or engage each of your unit members. I am saying "probably", because if you're unlucky, some of these units may get killed or stay disabled during multiple turns.

Few things make this game so intense. First and foremost, deaths are permanent.

Each soldier in your team gains experience from the battles they fight in. They level up, acquires new ranks and new abilities, but all is lost if they die during the course of a battle. Sometimes these soldiers will also get captured; you may or may not get an opportunity to retrieve them.

All the units start with a randomly generated name, nationality and traits. But you can customize them. You can give them armors and weapon tints as per your choice, you can change their name, nationality, looks, voiceover and a lot more. Doing all these things are fun, and it creates a strong feeling of belongingness with the individuals. So you will fight hard to keep your squad alive, along with the objective of killing the foes.

The game is so realistic that even a single bullet can incapacitate your soldier for the next battle. So keeping a large roster of experienced soldiers become a constant challenge. Will you send out your best soldiers so the fights are easy, or would you send out the rookies so they can level up and replace (if needed) the veterans during a tough fight?

This is just one aspect of the game. There so many other things to do. You need to invest in new technological resources, establishing contact with rebels across the globe, build facilities, relay stations, and constantly take part in missions.

XCOM 2 is actually 2/3 games bundled under a single umbrella. Not taking care of one aspect can demolish all achievements from the other aspects.

Once again, let me reiterate. It is a brutal, unforgiving game even at the easiest difficult levels. If you are really looking for a mind boggling, and often crazy thoughts inducing gameplay experience, I would highly recommend XCOM 2.

I only played the vanilla version, but I hear the expansions/DLCs are quite good, too.

A solid 9 from me.