It isn’t ugly, but it is blurry at times, and if you play in handheld mode, you will find yourself squinting to read the tiny fonts that are used in menus.įramerate issues abound, especially during the little scenes that show your team deploying on missions. Outside of the rather nice looking cutscenes, XCOM 2 on the Switch best resembles a well-made early PS3 title. The visuals take the biggest hit, of course. But XCOM fans must remember that getting a game that struggled to run on current gen consoles to perform on Nintendo’s glorified Android tablet required some pretty major concessions to be made. ![]() All of those issues persist on the Switch, along with the added bonus of reduced resolution.ĭon’t get me wrong, it’s impressive that this thing is running at all. The game was plagued by framerate issues, weird lock-ups, and some rather questionable camera angles. In order to answer that, it is best to keep in mind that XCOM 2 never worked all that well on a standard PS4. But the real question is, how does the game work on Nintendo’s handheld? So yeah, I love XCOM 2, and I’m enjoying the heck out of my current time with it. Players could easily spend a hundred hours on this thing, save scumming their way through endless twists of fate and labyrinthine story beats. The base game of XCOM 2 is sprawling, but with all of the DLC activated the scope of the game is downright epic. The flow of the game generally has players taking four of their carefully tended and easily destroyed army guys out into a fantastically exciting turn-based battle, then returning them to The Avenger for some slightly-less-exciting, but still intriguing management time – which is invariably interrupted by fires breaking out all over the place, each of which desperately needs your attention. Managing the folks on The Avenger, your mobile base, feels very much like managing your vault in Fallout Shelter, taking almost as much of your attention as the turn-based strategy battles themselves. Much like the first XCOM, a great deal of time is spent in between battles fiddling with menus and setting commands for the various teams at your disposal. As the newly resurrected/recovered commander of XCOM, the player must lead his paltry troops around the world in a series of skirmishes intended on keeping ADVENT’s nefarious schemes at bay – all while juggling things like resource management, engineering issues, and research into alien tech. Rebranding themselves as ADVENT and firing up the propaganda machine, these aliens bring every force to bear on wiping out XCOM. The aliens are solidly entrenched as the political and military leaders of the world. Having lost that battle, XCOM has been reduced from its status as a well-funded global defense force to something more akin to an underground cell-based resistance force. Beating back the alien invasion was mad difficult. In a rather bleak turn, the sequel imagines that players failed in their attempts to beat back the alien invasion of the first game – not a wildly off-base supposition. Players can choose to play just the base game, or toggle the various DLC on at will, which are sprinkled throughout the base game.įor those few still not familiar, XCOM 2 takes place about 20 years after the original game. ![]() Now the game has released on Nintendo Switch, packaged with every piece of DLC content Fireaxis produced – including the extensive War of the Chosen expansion. XCOM 2 is a fantastic follow-up to the original title, with a mountain of content and some seriously hard-fought battles. Regardless, this site’s feelings on the quality of XCOM 2 are fully on record. Closer, but still a little low in my estimation. A beautiful, brutal beast of a tactics game.” Citing some of the technical issues – framerates and general hitching – Randy game XCOM 2 on console an 8.8. Its tactics are hardlined, its urgency is persistent, and it will wear you down even as it builds you up. In Randy’s review of the console version in October of that same year, he said, “If you can take punishment as well as you can dish it out, then XCOM 2 strikes the right balance. ![]() That may be appreciated by series fans, but doesn't welcome newcomers.” Fair, I suppose, but a little harsh. The overwhelming difficulty is frustrating. The game stumbles, however, at making the series accessible to a larger audience. The game's random nature and urge for trying new strategies will keep players coming back. At that time, we said that “The improved turn-based strategy gameplay and base management are the true highlights of the sequel. We first reviewed XCOM 2 when it released as a PC exclusive in February 2016, giving it a (maybe a little low) 8.0. This is no less than the third time that Gaming Nexus has reviewed XCOM 2 – the fourth if you count Randy Kalista’s review of the Shen’s Last Gift DLC.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |