I’m by no means a traditionalist and am not averse to change or progress in games but the thing that was so wonderful about XCOM and XCOM 2 was that, even with all the changes, they still felt like XCOM games.
#Chimera squad series#
This is something absolutely intrinsic to the series and, without it, it loses something.
Even with these positives though, it somehow just doesn’t feel right that I can’t put all my friends in the game and give them ridiculous moustaches. There isn’t cavernous depth to any of the squad members but it certainly helps to give a fleshed-out feel to the little guys being ordered around the map. This does work well and some of the banter and sniping between the different team members is amusing and revealing. The benefits of this approach are readily apparent with the writers being able to give squad members dialogue, interactions and personalities that you would have just had to imagine in previous games. Each member of Chimera Squad is a pre-defined character with their own name, background and personality. The scope is one city, rather than the whole world, and the game consists of a mixture of semi-familiar turn-based squad combat and some resource management and strategic planning between fights.Ī big departure from previous games is that you no longer get to customise and project your hopes and dreams onto your soldiers. As expected, Chimera Squad, is stripped down in many ways from it’s older, bigger siblings. On the day of release I launched the game with some trepidation. Once question I never had was whether I would get XCOM: Chimera Squad. Much of the UI will be familiar to veterans of the previous games.
#Chimera squad full#
Does the release of Chimera Squad, then, indicate XCOM 3 is nowhere near? It has been suggested that the release is being used as a testing ground for some new concepts for the full sequel and this could be one explanation for the release. Was this XCOM 3 but branded differently? It certainly seemed not the price point (£15 full price on Steam) indicated not and the information about the game made it seem like a smaller, tighter experience. XCOM: Chimera Squad, then, left me confused. One of my big videogame hopes of 2020 had been for news of, or even (whisper it) a surprise release of XCOM 3.
It’s been four years since the release of XCOM 2, and three years even since War of the Chosen. “Where is XCOM 3?” was the first, and loudest. With that understood, the news of the release of a new XCOM game should have been music to my ears but the announcement of Chimera Squad, only a few weeks before release, left me with questions.
The second did the unthinkable by being a better game in every single way without losing any of that core. The first game managed to be thoroughly modern without losing the heart and soul of what made the original so good.
#Chimera squad mods#
I have sunk hundreds of hours into XCOM, XCOM 2 (and again when War of the Chosen was released) and Pavonis’ Long War mods for both. I enjoyed the original games (my first was Terror from the Deep) but really what I’m talking about here is the Firaxis reboots. The very first thing that must be understood about me before this review goes any further is that I bloody love XCOM. The titular Chimera Squad is a special unit, the first to consist of both humans and aliens, tasked with keeping the peace in a place filled with resentment and unrest. XCOM: Chimera Squad is set five years after the events of XCOM 2 within City 31, a place where the liberated humans and aliens are trying to peacefully coexist.
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