Gaming: Upcoming In Defense Of Xcom: Chimera Squad

Once more unto the breaching turn, before they close up the wall with their chryssalid dead.

XCOM: Chimera Squad was announced less than two weeks before it was released, and then was sold for an introductory price of $10. You'd think that would garner it some goodwill—given how often people complain about games being hyped up years ahead of release, looking at you Elder Scrolls 6—but instead it seemed to give people just enough time to sharpen their knives.

Even mild reviews called it a "watered down" version of XCOM, while ours said its strategy layer "feels like fussy, abstract number crunching" that was "too much like admin." The strategy portion was its weakest element for sure, but then the harsher user reviews on Steam (where recent reviews give Chimera Squad a Mixed rating) accused it of being "Preachy, badly written SJW crap." That 2020 sure was a time.

Forget the losers screeching about SJWs in the Chimera Squad comments, though: Everyone else got it wrong too.

Look, the mainline XCOM games are great, but they have one thing that grinds my gears: the pod system, where hidden enemies lurk in clusters, activating when you cross an invisible line. Almost all my failures in XCOM happen because I try to flank someone, then step over lines that activate two pods in a single move—tripling the amount of enemies I'm facing. At that point, the mission's basically over. This encourages a tediously cautious playstyle, never flanking, always in overwatch. It's a mark of how much I like everything else about XCOM 2 that I still vote for it in our Top 100 every year in spite of this.

Chimera Squad has no pods. Every encounter is a small space, maybe a rooftop or a nightclub, and you can see every enemy from turn one. Instead of activating gangs of enemies who hang out like they're passing around a cigarette behind the bike shed, you kick down doors or leap through windows and go into a slow-motion breach turn.

I love the breach turn. You assign your squad to positions, maybe blowing a hole in a wall or leaping through a skylight, with different bonuses or penalties for each. They leap into action, the enemies look startled, and you snap off a single shot with each squaddie. You can target aggressive enemies, who shoot back if you don't drop them in this phase, or you can target alert enemies, who will take cover or activate buffs, or surprised enemies, who gawp at you and are easier to hit.

Every time it's a gamble. Can I take down this aggressive enemy

Source: PC Gamer