XCOM: Diary Of A Wimpy Squad #1 - Meet The Team

Hah, 'meet the team' he says. Most of these guys won't live long enough to realise they're in a team. There is every chance they won't even survive the first mission. Never mind, their sacrifice will not be in vain. It will be stupid, it will be embarrassing and it will be horrible, but it will not be in vain. Fighting for the future of humanity is a brave, terrified group of RPS writers past and present. Who, if any, will survive? I will be playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Classic difficulty and in Iron Man mode - so no mistakes can be rectified. Death is forever.

Are you sitting uncomfortably? Then let us begin.

Important note: there isn't a cat in hell's chance that this diary can be 'finished'. The nature and length of an XCOM campaign means this would be a fifty million part series that prevented me from writing any other posts for the next decade, were I to go the full distance. So I have a number of pre-determined stopping points in my head. The first of these is if/when I run out RPS writers to name them after; the second is complete, dismal failure of the game (i.e. if too many nations withdraw funding from my useless project); others I will make clear if and when they happen. OK? OK!

Less important note: this begins on the second mission of the game rather than the first, purely because you can't rename your squad until that point.

THE TEAM

Jim Rossignol, squaddie, Heavy.

Jim's favourite colour is green, so he gets green armour.

John Walker, squaddie, Support.

John's favourite colour is black, so he is a black woman. John is our main healer. John is a rubbish healer.

Kieron Gillen, rookie, class TBA.

Kieron is currently away selling comicbooks in America so I can't ask him what his favourite colour is, but I'm pretty sure it's hot pink.

Alec Meer, squaddie, Sniper.

Alec is wounded for six days as the game begins, probably because he's a vegetarian with almost no immune system. He doesn't really have a favourite colour so picked sky blue at random.

More will join as others die.

Our base is on the African continent, which grants us a 30% funding boost. We're going to need that. Following our initial contact with the aliens - a pack of six Sectoids - research into Xeno-biology has begun. A satellite is busily being constructed to help expand our UFO detection, and we've built a Medkit to equip our useless healer with.

So that's our starting hand, and I'll be back soon with a report on how the first mission went. Pray for us.