XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

Gather round, descendants of unwelcome occupiers. It is time to celebrate turkeys again. Now, I don’t have any comically large birds to slaughter, but I do recognise the emotional benefit of reflection, which is what this questionable holiday is all about. Being thankful. There are many small things we videosgamers take for granted, the stuff you don’t even think about. But tiny “quality of life”…

Tagged with feature, One Off The List, Apex Legends, Detroit: Become Human, Elite Dangerous, Life Is Strange 2, Metro Exodus, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Session, The Surge 2, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, Yakuza 0.

Welcome back, Commanders. I've returned to an expanded and finalised XCOM 2 this week. Since the launch of 2017's War Of The Chosen expansion and last year's Tactical Legacy Pack, things have been quiet on the XCOM front. The game is finally stabilised, giving modders a nice static test-bed to add new weapons, aliens and features to the squad tactics sandbox. Here's a deep dive…

Tagged with CreativeXenos, DerBK, feature, Firaxis Games, Modder Superior, mods, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

My favourite XCOM is XCOM: Enemy Unknown*, a pure and direct, no mess/no fuss modern-day remix of metagame-augmented turn-based tactics. My second-favourite XCOM is the polar opposite, XCOM 2 DLC War Of The Chosen, an absurd explosion of superheroics that throws internal logic to the wind.

Tagged with 2K, feature, Firaxis Games, Have You Played, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Have you ever stopped to wonder what life is really all about? To get to the bottom of why we exist, what our purpose is, where this is all heading?

Tagged with feature, Steam Charts, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Chinese Parents, Frostpunk, Grand Theft Auto V, Monster Hunter: World, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, The Scroll Of Taiwu, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

The calendar's doors have been opened and the games inside have been eaten. But fear not, latecomer - we've reconstructed the list in this single post for easy re-consumption. Click on to discover the best games of 2017.

Tagged with feature, Freelancer's favourite games of 2017, Battlerite, Bayonetta, Dead Cells, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Getting Over It, Hand of Fate 2, NieR: Automata, Night in the Woods, Northgard, OneShot, Opus Magnum, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Prey, Rakuen, Songbringer, SteamWorld Dig 2, Tacoma, The Norwood Suite, Torment: Tides of Numenera, West of Loathing, What Remains of Edith Finch, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, Zero Escape: The Nonary Games.

Back in the summer, I boldly declared that 'I will play XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen's daily challenge mode every day.' Er. Whoops. I've only played a handful since then, and I'm not alone there. Though the mode still pumps out a new challenge every day, it hasn't blossomed into a new religion in the same way The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky's daily…

Tagged with daily challenges, Firaxis Games, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

This week we finally learn who the killer is, but will the answer provide more questions than solutions? Read on for this week's hair-raising installment of... The Steam Charts.

Tagged with feature, NBA 2K18, Steam Charts, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dark Souls III, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Grand Theft Auto V, NieR: Automata, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

Now that the new, humungous XCOM 2 expansion pack has had a couple of weeks to bed in, the game's mod community has been steadily fixing up their tweaks to work with War of the Chosen [official site]. Over time, there'll be more Steam Workshop offerings which take specific advantage of the onslaught of changes WOTC introduces, but right now what I'm interested in is…

Tagged with feature, Firaxis Games, mods, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

Come one, come all, but not all at once or you'll break our caching, and see the Steam Charts in all their glory! Which game will have reached the coveted #2 position this week?!

Tagged with feature, Steam Charts, Arma 3, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Grand Theft Auto V, H1Z1: King of the Kill, Life Is Strange: Before The Storm, NieR: Automata, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

Though it suffers from having as many different tones as the last thirty years of Dulux catalogues sellotaped together, I found in my XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen review that the latest expansion for Firaxis' game is an extremely effective remix of, basically, everything. But there's one very small change in WOTC that I didn't mention - a tiny thing with massive, massive repercussions…

Tagged with feature, Firaxis Games, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

Who owns those odd voices? It's the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show and guess what - we're all in the same room, with our actual bodies. Unprecedented. And there's a special guest this week too. Chris Bratt of Eurogamer joins us to talk about the alien-murdering of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. It's a Brattcast! While Pip has been playing teen angst drama-llama…

Tagged with feature, Podcast, The RPS Electronic Wireless show, Absolver, Life Is Strange: Before The Storm, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

I'd long suspected it, but it's nice to have tangible evidence: I am the best in the world at XCOM.For one moment of one day, on one of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen [official site]'s daily challenge maps. It could happen again another day, and, yeah, I guess this is going to be my life now.

Tagged with feature, Firaxis Games, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

As predicted, I spent most of the weekend playing XCOM 2: War of the Chosen [official site]. It's good to be back, fighting against the faux-benevolent burger-making overlords of future Earth, but I haven't actually made a great deal of progress in my new campaign. That's because there have been several new campaigns, and that's because I'm an idiot who can't resist the lure of…

Tagged with 2K, feature, Firaxis Games, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

The Steam Charts aren't, as you may have been led to expect, large sprawling maps depicting the locations of all the world's known steam. They were, but due to government pressure we've altered them to list the top ten selling games on Steam, in reverse order, like a rocket taking off.

Tagged with feature, Steam Charts, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition, Absolver, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, The Escapists 2, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

Hark, it's the sweet vocal vibrations of the humble RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. The lads (lads lads) are back from the bright lights of Gamescom and ready to chat hard about the games they saw. But Pip is only giving us a maximum of three words about each one. Madness. Never mind, we can talk more verbosely about the alien-shooting of the Destiny…

Tagged with Bungie, Devolver Digital, feature, Firaxis Games, Gamescom, Sloclap, The RPS Electronic Wireless show, Absolver, Destiny 2, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

I had a whale of a time with XCOM 2: War of the Chosen [official site] (out today), despite finding its tonal ping-ponging between gritty resistance saga and preposterous superheroics a little jarring. Speaking of the latter, here's a video I made showing just how off-the-chain crazy the various new abilities, weapons and features can be. In the space of a single turn (the first…

Tagged with feature, Firaxis Games, video, XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.