XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen | Review | War Of The WoW Classes

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Phil the Conquistadork

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Published on September 28, 2017 3:00:02 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGaSE9k0EBk

Game:

XCOM 2 (2016)

Category:

Review

Duration: 8:26

329 views

13

I read an article on Kotaku recently about an infamous 70’s board game that apparently takes 1500 hours to beat. That means that if you spent two hours every afternoon, every day (even Christmas and National Pancake Day), it would still take you over two years to finish that game. My brother and I would give up on Axis and Allies after too many hours, for god’s sake. But, to be honest, if you know anything about those old cardboard cutout war games, it isn’t too difficult to believe. Some of those games had rulesets so spiraling and out of control that even Courtney Love was like, “damn 70’s wargames, you’re spiraling out of control”. And I pause for the laugh… here.

And the longer it is in existence, the surer I am that XCOM 2 is destined to be one of those games. At the height of games like World of Warcraft, Destiny, League of Legends, and countless MMOs, it becomes clearer and clearer that some gamers like games. And other gamers like one specific game. They spend their $60, and then they proceed to turn that game into their own Vietnam, racking up obscene numbers of hours with it.

Maybe the XCOM franchise was always meant to be that way. It’s a highly addictive hybrid of world-building and turn based strategy, and there are apparently endless ways of installing layer after layer of expansionary material that will eventually turn this game into a mobius strip of killing aliens and researching new technology. I recently spoke about the Firaxis-approved mod The Long War 2, and to be fair: that is still the reigning champion of long term gameplay. Long term as in your plan your vacations around it.

But the recent expansion War Of The Chosen is no slouch when it comes to taking the base game of XCOM 2 and improving on it in a big way. War of the Chosen is an expansion in the old school sense of the word. Somewhere along the way, expansions were replaced by DLC, and the difference seems to be that while DLC adds features to a base game, an expansion truly… well, expands it. Both in the way you play and what you play against.

In the case of War Of The Chosen, Firaxis has added a whole slew of new ways to play, from the mission types, to the dynamics of your squad. I’ve become a huge fan of the assassination missions, which send you off to kill high ranking Advent officers before they escape the map to go and laugh at your incompetence with their alien friends. Your squad members can establish bonds with each other now, a mechanic that allows new abilities based on how you arrange your team members. Put two bonded squaddies into the same team to take full advantage of these powers. Just… be careful that one of them doesn’t see the other one horribly massacred. That has… negative consequences.

There are new malicious plans for the Advent project, new gear and research, and even new factions you can ally yourself with. This had to be my favorite part of War Of The Chosen. Allying yourself with three new factions offers up three new styles of troops to choose from, from the reformed alien technology of the Skirmisher, to the psychic knife style of the Templars. My favorite, though, was definitely the Reapers, which are essentially alien-killing snipers with some of the best concealment abilities in the entire game. The ability of being able to make cars or fuel tanks explode from a distance is amazing, and can cause some serious chaos and damage in a clinch. The Lost are a zombie species that offer themselves up as a terrific third enemy type. Relying on quantity rather than quality, a mere handful of them can turn into a swarm in a hurry, and that can mean problems for your squaddies. Of course, it could also mean problems for Advent: strategically placing an alien between me and a charging horde of Lost is a damn satisfying way to distract the enemy while you’re looking for higher ground.

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