Scramble the interceptors! Gather your squad! Start the deployment theme! The incredible, exceptional, possibly unbeatable XCOM 2 is 10 years old. To celebrate, publisher 2K is letting XCOM greenhorns play it free on Steam this weekend. And if you like what you see, Firaxis' turn-based tactics sequel is also on a 95% discount for the next week plus change.
What is there to say about XCOM 2? Well, it achieved the seemingly impossible, improving upon X-COM: Enemy Unknown. Firaxis' refinement of Julian Gollop's groundbreaking original seemed like a perfect distillation, retaining the essence of what made Gollop's game great—the tension, the heartbreak, that feeling of squaring off against overwhelming odds—while also ironing out many of the kinks present in that original design.
But then along came XCOM 2. Firaxis' sequel upped the ante from defending Earth from alien invasion to liberating it from alien occupation, recasting your organisation as a scrappy guerilla unit fighting a totalitarian regime from within. It introduced stealth to missions, letting you get the drop on xeno soldiers, and transformed your base into a flying fortress that could travel across the geoscape. It also gave Sectoids mind-control powers, an exquisitely nasty decision which gave me the shock of my life when I first played it.
All of that and more can be yours for $3 (£1.74). It's also worth noting that XCOM 2's expansion, War of the Chosen, is also on a 90% discount at $4 (£3.94). This brings XCOM 2 closer to Gollop's initial vision by layering back in some granularity, adding multiple resistance factions to entreat with, alongside powerful sub-bosses that hunt you through missions. It also introduces three incredibly powerful specialist classes, Templar assassins, grappling-hook wielding Skirmishers, and ultra-stealthy Reapers.
It's a superb game, which is perhaps why we're still yet to see XCOM 3. Not only has it been ten years since XCOM 2, it's been four years since Firaxis' last turn-based tactics game, Marvel's Midnight Suns. It seems like we're due a new game from that team, although whatever game it does produce won't have Jake Solomon at the helm, as he left Firaxis to found his own studio in 2023.
Some (brave) people might argue that XCOM 3 already exists, in the form of XCOM: Chimera Squad. While a very different take on the XCOM formula, it certainly has its merits, as Jody Macgregor recently proclaimed. "Most of the time when I activate a pod in XCOM 2 I roll my eyes at how artificial it feels. When I kick in a door in Chimera Squad it's a fuck-yeah moment every single time."
