Skin that one pilgrim

I remember watching Band of Brothers many years ago and occasionally mouthing the bad F word, stretched out, involuntarily during the combat scenes.  I’ve done the same quite a bit playing Xcom 2 over the last few weeks.  That a number of other choice expletives.

Xcom 2 has been a slow grower. At first I thought it was just more of the Xcom same but I grew to like it.  Since adding the Alien Hunters DLC which again I wasn’t impressed with at the beginning the game has become my new obsession.  Well let me put it this way, how often do you see me writing reviews on computer games rather than board games? It has to be something rather special for me to break my normal cycle (or I might not has gamed recently and I don’t have anything else interesting to talk about)

Alien Hunters DLC which was recently released is a small add on to the already excellent Xcom 2.  Unlike advent children which is just new and not so good skins this adds a number of small but surprisingly  impressive ripples to the game play pond

Queen Aliens

the Rulers are a group of Super Aliens way WAY more powerful than the already powerful aliens and way WAY faster than them to.  They are quite simply a royal pain the ass.  They follow you throughout the campaign occasionally beaming in during a mission to make a mockery of your cleverly laid plans.  They do make for magnificent arch enemies.  Once they’ve taken a bit of damage they summon a portal and then high tail it away to pop up later in the campaign to cause more trouble.  Like all good arch enemies they are damn hard to kill. 

Xcom has always been you move all your dudes. The AI moves all their dudes and repeat. The rulers unlike the normal aliens move everytime you take ANY action with ONE of your dudes. Reload a gun? The ruler takes a move. Fire one of your dudes. The ruler takes a turn. It’s brutal. A massively overpowered alien kitted out with devastating abilities and moving effectively in bullet time. When you eventually take one out it’s a real achievement and the cue for the next much nastier ruler to appear on the scene. 

New armour

Killing a ruler allows you to research it and gives you access to some unique armour with rather sweet special abilities. I won’t ruin it but some of the new kit is just awesome

New weapons

You also get access to a host of one off weapons some of which are really powerful BUT you need to mind them. They’re irreplaceable and losing a dude in the field is the end of it if you don’t carry their body home 

Overall

The difficulty level on an already difficult game ramps up a bit more. Once you accept this it’s fine. It’s way more exciting. The game is no longer safe and that’s no bad thing. 

And you know what? I haven’t even mentioned the tons of free mods out there for it or had a crack at multiplayer. Right enough talk back to my campaign. 

Huzzah!

Vic