The Long Awaited XCOM2 Experience
XCom has been a game I’ve been wanting to play for quite a while. I bought it when it came out but never jumped in to play. Now I’m getting the opportunity to join in with my fellow bloggers to play in a succession game. For details about what a succession game is and how things for this particular game are laid out, I point you to Naithin over at Time to Loot, where he puts together a nicely written explanation and kicks us fledgling players out of the nest.
So here I am, thrown into this game with no knowledge or pregame experience other than I played through and got destroyed in the tutorial. I always thought tutorials were supposed to be easy to lure unsuspecting consumers into purchasing a game that was more difficult than they could handle. If that was the case here, I was in for a horrible round, and my blogger buddies were gonna have to pick up the pieces after my turn.
And there’s my first view – obviously, we are either fighting or supporting a bunch of militaristic goons. Ok, that’s only a cut screen, but it really does not make me feel good – are we on the goon’s side, or are we trying to protect the innocent? And I’m pretty sure there are aliens in this thing, so are the aliens the goons or not?
Oh well…time will tell, I suppose.
In any case, the first thing I did when I got into the game proper was to visit the memorial to pay my respects to Sq. Unwise “UnwiseOwl” Owl. Sadly he did not make it through the missions leading up to mine, and I vowed right then and there that I would do my best to bring my squad through battle successfully. I considered this a long shot since I got utterly destroyed in my only play-through of the tutorial.
After my time of mourning, it was a matter of trying to figure out what it was that my mission actually included since I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to do. Eventually, I figured out I was supposed to perform a guerrilla operation in the Eastern U.S. called Operation Perilous Strike. I did not like the sound of that, but it seemed simple enough…recover an item from an ADVENT facility. Apparently, this will counter the ‘Dark Events’ of hunting XCOM and launching a UFO to hunt XCOM so it would kill a couple of birds with one stone, and to kill those birds, I was given a team of 4 elite operatives.
Corporal Redshirt ‘Ramblin Red’, Corporal Lizz Winterfield ‘Magi,’ Corporal Hastjarjanto ‘Endalia’, and Corporal Dustfeather ‘Silentdeath’ were mine to command into action, and I took that job seriously.
To accomplish our missions, we were sent to fly into the Slums District in “Needle Point”, Kansas City, and all I can think about is how it’d be great to pick up some BBQ after the mission is over. KC BBQ is so delicious!
Anyway, thoughts of eating aside, ADVENT had boobytrapped the data vault, so if I didn’t deactivate the explosives in a designated amount of time, the mission would be an utter failure.
So I had 3 objectives
1) Keep my squad alive
2) Retrieve the data vault
3) Kill all the bad guys
Down to the nitty-gritty. With my primary goal of keeping everyone alive, I used as much surveillance as possible to try to keep my team in full cover. I deployed Magi and her sniper rifle to the top of a well-placed building to the South East of the target. She would be in a good spot if any bad guys were spotted, and it turns out her keen eyesight spotted 2 enemy turrets atop the data vault building that could prove troublesome…fortunately, they did not see her advance.
With the turret’s spotted, my goal was to get as close as possible without taking fire. Endalia was next to advance as she moved to another building top across from Magi to the West. I figured these two would be able to provide some good cover for the other operatives.
Silentdeath and her shotgun moved right up the middle of the map and into a solid position across the street from the objective, followed by Ramblin Red and his cannon. I figured these two closer range units would work well together to bash their way into the target building and extract the data vault while under cover of the snipers…I hoped that was a good plan.
With my squad in place, I hit the turn button and watched as a couple of targets moved in from the East, but I was too well concealed for them to spot any of my units. So I saw them while they had no idea where I was.
Now was my chance to ensure things worked out in my favor. Endalia was to fire the first shot. She had a clear view from the top of the Western building to one of the newcomers and was showing an 87% chance to hit…how on Earth did she miss? She was lucky I moved her to a well-defended spot, but I could have sworn she should have nailed that goon with her sniper rifle. Needless to say, the bad guys now knew we were there.
Ramblin Red took the next opportunity, and he let loose with a frag grenade that caused a bunch of damage, but somehow all the targets were still standing. This was not going as planned – I figured between the sniper and the grenade, I would have at least 1, if not 2, dead bad guys. Instead, they knew where I was, and they were pissed. I still had 2 units who could take action, though, and I planned on making them count.
And Magi would have to save the day. With a 93% chance of hitting, she took the first kill shot, and it was true. Injured by the frag grenade and now the sniper bullet, this bad guy went down…no questions. And to finish off the other injured target, Silentdeath threw another grenade in his direction, and he didn’t have a chance. Two killed, and the enemy had not even fired a shot.
That’s when the turret’s opened up. But my strategy was holding – every shot missed – sure it was nerve-wracking – but my defenses gave me the advantage. Now, I had 4 mobile units while their turrets were stationary, and I could move to take them out.
Endalia took out the first with a well-placed sniper shot while Magi nailed the second. Two shots…two turrets down. I was feeling pretty invincible. But there just had to be some other bad guys around.
Rambling Red moved up to the outside of the target building, and Silentdeath soon followed, but still, there were no signs of other ADVENT units until this creep showed up in the target building.
But once again, my strategy was working. My two snipers atop the buildings provided cover while Ramblin Red launched another frag grenade which took out one of the baddies and severely damaged a second. Endalia finished him off, and we were good to go.
The rest of the mission was a lot less stressful, and I was happy about that. Move in…hack the package…mission accomplished.
Much better than the tutorial I suffered through.
Ok, so after my successful mission, I had no idea what to do. I puttered around…I promoted Silentdeath to Sergeant and gave her the Shadowstep ability so she wouldn’t trigger overwatch from enemies, which seemed to go along with her stealthy style.
We recovered some stuff from the ADVENT Officer and the turrets and did an autopsy of the Stun Lancer, which seemed to be good for resources and technology advancement.
Other than that, though, I kinda just waited around pushing various buttons until a new mission showed up, and this one is all set for Kluwes over at Many Welps to take over and continue the succession game.