XCOM: Enemy Within

In case you hadn’t heard, Firaxis’ critically acclaimed 2012 strategy title XCOM: Enemy Unknown is getting an expansion in the form of XCOM: Enemy Within. The expansion doesn’t offer a whole new campaign, but it does reinvigorate the original campaign with a number of new elements far beyond just new weapons and maps.

The new Mechtoid is what it says on the slimy, horrifying tin

A key joy of Enemy Unknown was kitting out and customizing your soldiers, and Enemy Within really runs with that. You’ll be able to genetically modify soldiers, which sets them off on a second, concurrent, ability tree which allows you to do icky things to their bodies. A favourite was stealth skin, which makes soldiers harder for enemies to spot on the battlefield. You can also go even more nuts and augment certain soldiers cybernetically, i.e. chop off bits of them and replace them with better robot bits, sort of like the Borg Queen but with less figure-hugging leather (unless you play XCOM whilst dressed as a gimp, which is totally ok). The half-mech soldiers are an impressive sight to behold, and the powerful melee, ranged and support abilities they can bring to the table will help to even the odds against your foes.

However, Firaxis certainly haven’t forgotten that XCOM is supposed to be hard. The aliens have some new toys to play with too. The new Mechtoid is what it says on the slimy, horrifying tin – a Sectoid in a massive mech suit. The other new addition to their roster is the Seeker. Anyone hoping for some sort of quirky Quidditch crossover will be disappointed – the Seeker is this nasty floating blighter that invisibly stalks around until your forces are spread out, before dealing heavy melee damage to an isolated soldier.

The Mechtoid is a troublesome scamp, who gets into all sorts of searing plasma-based hijinks.
The Mechtoid is a troublesome scamp, who gets into all sorts of searing plasma-based hijinks.

There is also a new threat in human form – the EXALT organisation. They are a group of humans that plan to use the alien technology to take over the world, and they mean business. They have a number of ways to undermine XCOM operations including delaying research and stealing money. You can fight back against them by sending single agents on covert missions, which usually end in a chaotic extraction mission involving a full XCOM squad facing up against fully-armed and numerous EXALT operatives. EXALT generally have access to the same weaponry and abilities as XCOM, which poses a notably different challenge to that seen in Enemy Unknown. For example, aliens don’t use snipers, but EXALT do.

The reward for completing covert operations against EXALT is a clue to the location of their central base. Once you have three clues you can start accusing council nations of accommodating that base within their borders – if your guess is correct, you can assault the base to strike EXALT at their heart remove that threat from the game. However, guess wrong and the accused nation will flounce off on their own, taking their funding with them for good. Regardless of the risk, you’ll need to try to deal with EXALT as quickly as possible, for they have a pernicious effect on global panic in addition to providing an unwelcome distraction for your resources from the main alien threat.

You might end up with some sort of useless mongrel of a soldier who can’t even tie his own shoelaces

In addition to the substantial new features mentioned above, there are also a bunch of more subtle yet still welcome tweaks and changes. For example, when you remove a soldier from the active squad their weapons and items now go into a central weapons locker, which removes the need to manually unassign everything and so makes preparing for missions less tedious. Also, when throwing grenades there is now a clear indication of which units will be hit by the blast and apparently panicking soldiers will be less likely to hit their squadmates with friendly gunfire. The nicest touch we’ve seen so far is that soldiers now speak in their native tongue, rather than them all having American accents. The best one is Italian – their jaunty tones are good for morale, just like in real life.

"Neural Damping" - better get that brain all good and moist for the Mechtoid hordes, chaps.
“Neural Damping” – better get that brain all good and moist for the Mechtoid hordes, chaps.

We’ve been assured that all of the previous Second Wave options will be available for use with Enemy Within, and they’ve added some new ones too, including one that entirely randomises the ability trees for soldiers past the rank of Squaddie. You might end up with an overpowered Heavy that can carry three medpacks and use the Squad Sight ability to fire upon any visible enemy on the map, or you might end up with some sort of useless mongrel of a soldier who can’t even tie his own shoelaces.

Enemy Within will release as DLC for PC and as a standalone “Commander Edition” for Xbox 360 and PS3 (which includes the Slingshot and Second Wave DLC) on November 15th, and its shaping up to be all but essential for fans of the series, stiffening the previous challenge but also making it more dynamic at the same time. In fact, if you’re a long-term fan of the X-Com series, check out the below trailer for confirmation that we’re going to be flexing our base defence muscles come November. Bring it on.

[youtube width=”560″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8qfBUxlosY[/youtube]


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