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?

  • @JayEchoRayEnglish
    2•8 months ago

    Tales from:

    UFO Defence

    • Using flying suits with heavy plasma to make holes on the top of an alien space ship and dropping High Explosives in the subsequent hole, alternatively getting visual on aliens with blaster launchers and mind controlling them
    • Using low psionic skill soldiers as stun rod specialists and using them as point men on missions
    • Doing Terror Missions and completing them with a positive score
    • The feeling of power having global radar coverage, a powerful airforce, and enough ground defense systems to ignore any alien attempt to try and stop you from shooting down all their UFOs

    TFTD

    • Being able to smack a lobsterman with a melee weapon
    • Being able to complete at least one of every terror mission type specifically cruise ships and artifact sites
    • Learning about and being able to prevent the sneaky ambush attacks the enemy likes to do

    Apocalypse

    • Successfully identify and investigating infected buildings and getting a 100% hit rate
    • Watching highly advanced trans-dimension alien craft being shot down by a swarm of hoverbikes
    • Laughing maniacally when the aliens drop a Kaijuu on the city and it targets your enemies first
    • When you can research and build shields and teleporter packs and can be decked out in XCOM propriety armour

    XCOM Enemy Within

    • MEC Trooper kinetic punch execution animation on all the big aliens
    • Building a sniper that acts as a guardian angel with an archangel suit
    • Making sure tutorial survivor, Hernandez does every mission and becomes the Volunteer
    • Doing a mission with Annette and the Furies once they are Psi-Ops

    XCOM 2 War of the Chosen

    • Having to deal with a Warlock Avenger Defence during the Lost Dark Event, casually sniping for an hour trying to thin the aliens out, out pops a surprise Gate Keeper, PC stutters and I thought it froze as it revives I can only assume minimum 50+ enemies, most of it Lost and me bringing out every weapon and ability at my disposable to make sure the Gatekeeper dies before I do. I think that mission ended with close to 400 kills
    • Having a templar rush into a group of enemies, activate his ghost, and have one of the ghosts and the templar reflect on the same turn from two different enemies while having bladestorm kick in with both ghosts and templar.
    • Using a Reaper on supply drops with Lost, try get the Lost and Advent fighting each other while I keep my team hidden nearby the supplies for quick tagging when I need to go loud.
    • Do final mission for legendary win - which is like attempt 80+ or something for this run, with a team of faction members plus 3 of my best units - templar is my unit I put most care into, chip down the last objective enemy, rush it with the Templar, it standing next to his objective and finishes it off with an Ionic Storm