XCOM Chimera Squad Review

As an XCOM fan I was looking forward to this game as any new XCOM is good , right ? , well no any new XCOM isn't good if it's a striped down politically correct bastardisation of XCOM , the voice acting is cringe worthy and just as with the flops that were Far Cry New Dawn and Wolfenstein: Youngblood the feminism is strong in Chimera Squad.

Chimera Squad feels like a mobile game , which for £8 is OK I guess but whoever thought this was a good idea is no XCOM fan , the maps aren't small they're tiny and the much vaunted Breach Mode does nothing but stop the player setting out their own strategy at the start of the mission , the game kicks down a door for you , the team rush in and pick a target all the player need do is press shoot , then when they've had their turns they run to the cover of their choice.... no player choice.

The fights however are XCOM but on a smaller scale , there doesn't feel much scope for experimentation and enemies spawn in through doors when you've killed all or most of the original enemies , there's also the option now to incapacitate enemies so you don't have to kill our Alien brothers and sisters... how sweet.

I can now see why Firaxis discounted the game at launch and I sincerely hope these "new additions" don't make it into XCOM 3 , if it aint broke don't fix it ... or risk pissing off your fans.

If you can look past the political correctness , feminisation and mobile feel then it probably is worth picking up at the current price but when the price doubles on the 1st May I wouldn't recommend it

a reply to: gortex

I remember the original Xcom.

Was a great game.

Not looking at the politics of it, I feel like the gameplay is a bit unbalanced. I feel like I'm running into some high difficulty gates. I feel like the missions have to go flawlessly and with the way XCOM runs that's never guaranteed or else in some scenarios you're almost guaranteed to either lose or put one agent or more into trouble.

If you end up with agents who are scarred and running less than optimal, then you're set up for failure in successive scenarios and that snowballs extremely quickly. You never have enough personnel to speed production, do spec ops, *and* train them up to make them tougher.

I'm also not sure why they offer you such an array of extra stuff to buy since you're always scraping for credits and have such a dearth of slots to use for equipping.

As far as running encounters, I do like having to use synergies between team members more. It feels a bit like running the first Dragon Age game in that respect. However, and this goes back to difficulty gating, when you have a team member benched for scarring and you're running with a lower ranked or less optimally synergized pairing, some missions get to be a really tall order --- say a region anarchy mission that's VERY DIFFICULT (cons red to me, lol). Then you get even more team members backed up waiting for de-scarification and running sub-optimally.

I felt like it was far more possible to pull those harder mission off with lower ranked squad members in XCOM 2 than it is in this one.

I think the breach mechanic has interesting possibilities, but maybe it's not so ready for prime time. I still pick targets I want though, so I don't know why you're upset about that. I don't just take the first target suggested all the time. For example, if I know I am likely to take damage, I'll re-direct to the targets that are aggressive because they're the ones shooting at me and try to drop them through the door, even if they're a lower chance of success.

I also don't mind the idea of subduing targets. It's an easy way to gain intel. Intel buys you stuff on the black market, and that's better stuff than you can build. Besides, you're supposed to be police now, not soldiers, so arresting people makes sense.

If it helps, just pretend you're playing in the world of Alien Nation.

Upon reflection, I think I know what it is that bothers me most.

You have a set squad of individuals with individual abilities and the mechanics are punishing like they are for classic XCOM.

So if you lose the services of one of your individuals, you don't necessarily have a good backup to plug in and take that person's place. So if that character is a cornerstone of your strategy, you may not have a good backup answer waiting in the wings.

Contrast that with XCOM and XCOM 2 where you could have a deep bench of 4 or 5 soldiers in a single class all trained/experienced to within a level or so of each other. If one was in the infirmary, you ran with the next guy on the depth chart.

I'm not sure there is a good melding here where the two approaches are concerned.

a reply to: gortex

It is happening too much in too many game's, remember ME4

Another problem with the game.
Got home from work yesterday to discover my internet was down , stayed down all evening but I decided to give Chimera Squad another go but in Steam's offline mode only to discover this game requires an always on internet connection to play ... it's a single player game FFS !

Makes me wonder what the game is doing with that always on internet connection and what data it is collecting and sending home.

Did Bethesda buy Firaxis ?