XCOM 2 is free to keep on the Epic Games Store right now
Plus mountaineering roguelikelike Insurmountable
This week's headline free game on the Epic Games Store is a goodie: XCOM 2. You have one week to grab Firaxis's sequel to their alien-busting turn-based tactics game, the streamlined reboot of ye olde X-COM games. XCOM 2 is a good game, well worth grabbing for free! Also free right now is Insurmountable, a roguelikelike mountaineering game.
Hit the Epic Games Store before 4pm on Thursday the 21st and you can grab these two free for keepsies.
XCOM 2 is good. It is. Fun stuff. Really. Adam's XCOM 2 review in 2016 called it "a classic in its own right and as good a sequel as I can remember." But I'm being a little reserved because oh goodness me it is so, so, so much better with its expansion, War Of The Chosen, which isn't included in the freebie. Yeah, XCOM 2 is nice. But XCOM 2: WOTC is fantastic. I'm in the final few missions of a WOTC game myself and have completed all the expansion and DLC missions, leaving me with a game that... it's nice, it really is, but cor WOTC is a right beaut.
If you do want the whole shebang, the Epic Store is currently offering an 80% discount on a pack with XCOM 2's expansion and all the DLC packs. Grab the base game for free and you can upgrade to get the rest for only £7.99. That discount lasts until the 28th. It's more expensive than the Steam discount in February but still a great price.
Insurmountable is pretty decent too. In our 2021 Insurmountable review, Matthew Castle said that the attempt to channel mountain climbing into a roguelikelike was "a surprisingly taut genre fit, occasionally let down by fiddly execution."
Today has also brought Insurmountable's big version 2.0 update. It brings a new story, a new tutorial, side-missions with procedurally generated maps, and more. That update's hitting the Steam and GOG versions too, obvs.
After these two, the next freebies will be first-person horror Amnesia: Rebirth and top-down co-op monster-masher Riverbond. Thursday the 21st for those.
Looking for more free games? Read our round-up of the latest free games on the Epic Games Store, as well as our list of the best free PC games you can play today. Want to take your free Epic games on the go? Then here's how to install the Epic Games launcher on your Steam Deck.