XCOM 2 Review

What you do need to worry about is ADVENT themselves, because you aren't the only one slowly building up your forces. The aliens evolve too, primarily through "Dark Events" that occur with alarming regularity throughout your campaign. These events provide the aliens with extra powers, from heavier armour to enhanced vision. You can prevent some of these events, but not all of them, and the longer your campaign takes, the more powerful ADVENT becomes.

On-top of that, the aliens are working on something intended to annihilate XCOM once and for all. This is represented by a red progress bar at the top of the screen which, if it fills completely, will cost you the entire game. At first it doesn't seem like too much of a problem, but it gathers pace with terrifying speed as the aliens dedicate more and more resources to it. If you don't counter their efforts by progressing in the campaign or attacking specific bases, you'll be in serious trouble.

Basically, you've got your work cut out for you, and at the same time you need to build up your resources, gathering supplies to recruit soldiers, build equipment and facilities, collecting intel so you can expand your resistance network, and so forth. What results is a majestic, multilayered puzzle that completely absorbs your focus. There's never enough time or resources to do everything, so you need make constant decisions. Do you set an engineer to building a new facility, for example, or staff them at your Resistance Communications centre to expand your available contact network? Do you research more powerful weaponry for your soldiers, or a project that's crucial to countering the aliens' plans? Do you attack that research base now, or wait until you've gathered all this month's supplies and risk them pushing their project one step closer to completion? It's absolutely enthralling.

It's also worth noting that XCOM 2 is splendidly presented. The game looks fantastic, with vastly improved lighting and particles, and some incredibly detailed models. The aliens in particular are beautifully designed. The central story, and I think it's reasonable to state that XCOM has a story, is threaded ingeniously through its emergent systems, replete with dramatic cutscenes that are voiced and acted with the same calibre of a narrative-focussed game like the Last of Us. My only gripe is that the deployment music isn't as good as Enemy Unknown's stirring combination of orchestral strings and thundering drums. Then again, nothing is.

Unfortunately, this extra detail comes at a heavy price. XCOM 2 has some pretty serious performance issues and its fair share of bugs. Weirdly, the performance issues aren't consistent. There were times when it ran as smooth as glass, and others where the framerate plummeted like a cormorant diving for a fish. But given we're running on a GTX Titan, the fact that it drops at all is a cause for concern. There are also long periods of downtime between player and alien turns, and even lengthy pauses between individual actions like the aliens spotting a player and the game running the appropriate animation. At times you can almost hear the gears squealing as the game struggles to calculate the moment-to-moment events.

This is a damned shame. I was all set to give XCOM 2 our first ever "Outstanding award". As sequels go it is absolutely first-rate, on the same level as a Mass Effect 2 in terms of how it improves upon the original, maybe even a Half Life 2. But I can't ignore the fact that, on a technical level, XCOM 2 is a bit of a mess that impacted upon my overall enjoyment. So I'm forced to say that it is merely excellent, which isn't exactly a poor endorsement. XCOM 2 may gobble up your hardware like a hungry troll, but it remains a deep, fiercely challenging, and utterly gripping strategy game.