The Firaxis formula has been copied but never bettered. It’s the little things, like the way the camera swoops in when you’re aiming or as the last squaddie hustles into cover at the end of a turn. I feel more connected to my guys if the sensation of being an invisible hovering giant playing toy soldiers gets broken every now and then and I get to see a close-up of the action.
Instead of replaying XCOM 2 for the Nth time, maybe with a mod that makes everyone look like Sisters of Battle or characters from Ghost in the Shell, I decided to go back to the previous XCOM. I wanted to remind myself what had changed between Firaxis’s first two takes on XCOM.
A Return to Purity
XCOM 2 can feel like an overwhelming flood of mission types and mechanics, so I thought hopping back a few years would be a return to some kind of purity. It would just be me and my four-to-six knock-off G. I. Joes with pockets so small they can only carry one grenade apiece. But the add-on DLC had already jam-packed XCOM with extras.
You’re turning soldiers into MEC troopers or upgrading their DNA while also building a Foundry to construct a different flavor of robots and upgrades, and then adding psychic powers on top. There’s a messy redundancy in the way you can research a suit of armor that comes with a grappling hook to help your snipers get on rooftops, but can also upgrade their legs so they can just jump up there.
I don’t mind, though. It may not have the mythical purity I remember, but it’s still a lot of fun to turn a squad of rank amateurs into the A-Team. XCOM is basically a big funnel: you pour rookies in one end and badasses emerge from the other. I’ll never stop enjoying that.
Comfort Food for Gamers
These days I’m dropping the difficulty to Normal, which is like removing the hidden blades from the inner sides of the funnel. I know the internet’s sold on “Iron Man or GTFO” but when I return to XCOM it’s for comfort food. If a sectoid in metal pants gets lucky and kills a veteran I don’t want it to be the end of the line. The safe playstyle that forces you into, all full-cover overwatch and alpha strikes, bores me to tears.
Revisiting this version, which I’m carefully not calling “the original” so I don’t get emails from people who think I don’t know about UFO: Enemy Unknown, means I get to replay some of my favorite levels—like the one where you work through a train carriage by carriage or fight across the top of a battleship in midair. The best is still the fishing village in Newfoundland where chryssalids hatch out of big fish and you have to call in an airstrike then hustle back to the extraction point before the bombs fall, leaving at the absolute last minute.
The Next Turn
XCOM 2 is definitely better, though. In this predecessor I’ve found myself unable to select a rooftop square I want to move to because it keeps highlighting one on the floor below, and I sure do miss target previews and the variety of mods and cosmetics XCOM 2 has. That’s where I’ll end up next time the turn-based tactics itch needs to be scratched—maybe with mods that make everyone look like they’re space marines or characters from Mass Effect.