Cliff Eastin

When Valve announced its first major venture into the console market, gamers throughout the world got excited at the possibilities it offered for playing games on the go. The Steam Deck is essentially a small customizable PC that runs on Steam OS allowing players to tap into their current library of ga From the single trailer shown, the game appears to be putting an emphasis on player choice, but the game's development is still quite underway, and Triangle Strategy is currently a working title. As the game is currently slated for a 2022 release, they're plenty of time to speculate on what the game can have in store for play A questionable approach by the XCOM Project to creating great soldiers, the MEC Trooper required a procedure that involved removing the limbs of those who were in the program. However, the results were posit FTL , or Faster Than Light , is an impressively punishing roguelike . The element of chance and dealing with impossible and unfair situations is just what fans love about it. People can do dozens upon dozens of runs through deep space before ever actually winning. Space is scary and dangerous, so it only makes sense for FTL to be so difficult. Adapting to the systems and honing FTL skills is a great thing to do on a morning comm In the meantime, Firaxis is supporting XCOM 2 with what ultimately amounts to a Season Pass. Players have the option to purchase the Reinforcement Pack DLC, which will release three bonus collections of content between Spring and Summer later this year. In the meantime, modders are actively supporting the title with puppy-based weapon The game purposefully left the fate of Doctor Vahlen, the chief scientist from Enemy Unknown , a mystery throughout the game. While she was mentioned briefly, it looks like XCOM have been unable to establish communication with her. In the prequel novel for XCOM 2 , it was revealed that Vahlen escaped a brutal ADVENT attack on a research outpost by taking a boat to the sea. We have little doubt that Firaxis left her fate open for a reason, and we suspect she has been one of the first to work out that a new threat is due to emerge from the dep The Lost add an entire new layer of strategy to missions, as players need to tread carefully lest they find themselves boxed in a back alley surrounded by swarms of ashen zombies on all sides. They're not a huge threat compared to the ADVENT, but they certainly throw a wrench in otherwise routine missions. That's likely why Firaxis Games has introduced unique mission modifiers called sit reps, which can fill a map with volatile explosives or require that only low-ranked soldiers be sent on certain missions. It's all about a variety of added challenges, and War of the Chosen provides this in spaFans in 2012 were anxious to get their hands on another XCOM SLG game blog after so many years absent. Coming from the creators of the Sid Meier's series, players were cautious in their anticipation, as while the developer is known for creating strong strategy elements, XCOM was a whole other ball game when it came to combat. Involving complex world building elements and critical decisions through the campaign, Enemy Unknown and its follow-up expansion, Enemy Within, became arguably the best installments in the long running franchise. It featured incredibly hardcore elements with the concern that even the simplest mission could end with a couple of your most invested and powerful comrades coming back in body bags. There was nothing like it on the market, and because of this, Firaxis was far from ready to hang the series up and has been working on a new and greatly improved sequel that will undoubtedly make fans joyous. While it seems XCOM 2 improves upon its predecessor, there are some shortcomings to its execution. Once the end-game final assault is completed and players witness both the resistance finally gaining the upper hand on their ADVENT oppressors and the Avatars being eliminated, the game closes with an ominous camera pan down to the bottom of the ocean, where a purple glow is emitted from between two tectonic plates. Veterans of the XCOM series will have immediately recognized the obvious nod to Terror From The Deep , but as that game is now twenty years old, we'll provide a brief synopsis for players who may not have played the original tit Regardless of how victorious players were in XCOM: Enemy Unknown , Firaxis Games continued down a canon storyline with XCOM 2 that assumed players had ultimately lost the fight against the technologically superior alien invaders. This more or less sets the tone for the new War of the Chosen expansion: there are some fights you just can't win, and the impressively deep expansion pack for XCOM 2 piles on the signature pain that strategy fans have come to embrace in almost masochistic fash We've already seen from playable Triangle Strategy demo that the choices that player is forced to make aren't always going to be black and white, and that there will be pros and cons to the choices they make. Maintaining this approach over the course of the game will be key, as it can lead to a much more hollow experience with telegraphed outcomes that are much easier for the player to anticip