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3 months ago
Feature: Mor Balaten for your buck
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…
5 months ago
Feature: Hey, teachers, leave those kids alone!
I reckon that when I was growing up I spent longer reading the manuals for games than I did playing them. The thicker the better (as the someone said to the etc.), and if it were up to me every game would come with a chunky instruction booklet. The standard these days is the in-game tutorial, and many of them feel like afterthoughts. Either they’re…
8 months ago
Feature: Avengers vs Aliens
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.
1 year ago
Feature: Hit Parade
An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC strategy games ever made, now freshened up to include our favourites from 2017 and 2018. From intricate, global-scale wargames to the tight thrills of guerrilla squads, the broad expanse of the genre contains something for everyone, and we've gathered the best of the best. The vast majority are available to buy digitally, a few are free…
2 years ago
Feature: Along came a spider
The mutant spider queen ripped through another building and I knew my team was dead. This didn’t bother me, I’ve played enough of nu-XCOM to accept the loss of humanity’s last hope. But there’s something more unsettling than being impaled by a large arachnid in Phoenix Point. Its the game’s uncanny and unnerving resemblance to its XCOM cousins. It’s like seeing a doppelgänger of your…
Feature: The biggest hits of the past 12 months
Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months. Below is the full, hundred-strong…
Feature:
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…
We already knew that Pavonis Interactive, the team behind the RPS-approved, game-changing Long War mods for XCOM and XCOM 2, were working on a complete new game of their own, but seeing as Long War 2 has been in the wild for a while now, I thought I'd catch up with 'em about Terra Invicta. This takes the essential XCOM concept - humans fending off…
Feature: A flash of inspiration
The one thing that makes every XCOM 2 War Of The Chosen campaign different
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…
Feature: New XCOM every day, hooray
I will play XCOM 2 War Of The Chosen’s Challenge mode forever
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.
Feature: Balsawoodman
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…
Feature: Steam Trains at number one again
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.
Feature: ALIEN PUNCH CHAT
Podcast: The Electronic Wireless Show talks Destiny 2, Absolver and 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…
Feature: One soldier, one turn, countless kills
One absolutely, perfectly ridiculous turn in 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…
Feature: Cheap at twice the price
Other sites will bombard you with "facts" and "details" about the top-selling games on Steam, but not us. We won't patronise you with such things. We know you're better than that, taller, more attractive than the readers of those sites. We know you know we know you better, and as such reach for higher, smarter, more eloquent brilliance.
Feature: Choose life, choose a fucking big mag cannon
XCOM 2: War of the Chosen’s alien champions, lost cities and soldier bonds explained
Fallen cities swarming with the dangerous remnants of their human populations, alien battlefield commanders who resemble fantastical heroes, new rulesets for friendship and fear, and an actual active resistance out on the Geoscape. XCOM 2 [official site] is changing. The War of the Chosen is "definitely the biggest expansion we've ever done", lead designer Jake Solomon told us at E3. Introducing unique enemy champions doesn't…
3 years ago
Feature: unwanted flying objects
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. There was a time when I'd buy anything X-COM. I sometimes look at people who have an entire room dedicated to collectibles and tat based on a specific franchise and think, "there but for the grace of Gollop go I". If there'd been…
Feature: The Council of Funding Nations convenes
Phoenix Point is now crowdfunding: we spoke to Julian Gollop about standing out in a post-XCOM world
The original X-COM (UFO: Enemy Unknown), Julian Gollop tells me, "succeeded in spite of itself". I asked him how he felt about the game now, twenty three years after its initial release, and particularly about the way it's often placed on a pedestal. He didn't expect it to be a success and certainly didn't think he'd be making a game heavily based on its legacy…
Feature: Mods within mods
Those of you familiar with XCOM 2's Long War 2 [official site] mod will know it needs little introduction. Crafted by Pavonis Interactive (formerly Long War Studios), it's the indirect follow-up to Enemy Unknown's Long War - a total conversion mod that expands upon Firaxis' core concepts and ideas, making just about every little detail more difficult along the way. Long War 2 offers much…
Feature: Harder, better, slower, stronger
From the very first mission of The Long War 2, the stakes are different. Your enlarged squad isn't doing anything as brash as blowing up an Advent statue; instead, they've managed to track down an under-strength patrol and are determined to take it down. Two things are immediately clear: the insurgency aren't as bold as at the beginning of vanilla XCOM 2, but, as individuals…
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