A hectic dash to escape is mounted including the use of a flying drone to hack an enemy sentry position - turning it to your cause.Īs hefty new Alien heavies arrive alongside their human helpers in a fresh wave of reinforcements, the few surviving XCOM members beat a hasty retreat.

When the bomb is finally planted on the statue and explodes, the terrain of the level is adjusted significantly as a result. Panicked, the human guards unleash a dangerous new snake-like alien beast to help combat the team - and later, I see that same enemy taken down with the sword, a new and appropriately improvised weapon for the more budget-constrained XCOM soldiers.Ī range of aliens both familiar and all-new now live on Earth as an oppressive occupying force. Most of the improvements in XCOM 2 appear to be evolution rather than revolution - the game looks and moves slicker, while small touches - such as what appears to be a lot more mission-relevant dynamic dialogue from squad members each recorded with the appropriate geographical accent for that character - make the game feel that much deeper.Īs alarms blare, I catch a glimpse of a few new elements for this release. When the time comes for the XCOM crew to 'go loud' with shotguns, blasting the enemy to reach the mission objective, the score crescendos before crashing down into a louder, more combat-appropriate tune - it was striking. The score here stands out - the soundtrack in this mission appeared dynamic, adjusting as small animation sequences pointed out important parts of the issue.

Gone is the iconic sprawling underground base, replaced instead with a more ragtag operation - the Aliens are 'benevolent' dictators over humanity, and XCOM has tasked themselves with ending their reign through any and all necessary guerilla tactics. On the true, harder difficulties most players failed, a Firaxis Games representative later tells me - and so their sequel canon fits right with that. The story is a complete tonal flip on the XCOM people know and love - this time the alien-fighting organization is on the back foot having been defeated in the last game.

XCOM now isn't just battling aliens - they also must fight the humans propping up their regime.įaster, more dramatic and more immediately involving than its predecessor, our XCOM 2 demo kicks off with a solid amount of cinematic flair, the story so far delivered through snippets from news bulletins that eventually pulls out to a shadowy briefing room and then back in to the mission at hand once more. What a time to start coverage, too - XCOM 2 looks more than a little brilliant. It only took a few minutes from XCOM 2's announcment before somebody uttered the fateful words in the RPG Site staff channels: 'Should we cover it?' For me, the answer was immediately yes - I always felt our decision to skip coverage of the original XCOM reboot was a mistake - and now we can right that.īut why? Well - when you actually look at it, XCOM's turn-based, grid-driven gameplay featuring permanent death, statistics, hidden dice rolls and skill trees at the forefront isn't that dissimilar to the greats of the Strategy RPG genre - and so here we are.

Xcom 2 demo pc