XCOM: Enemy Within Preview

PC Gamer’s Tom Senior has penned a 2-page preview for XCOM: Enemy Within, based on a hands-on gameplay session with the expanded title. Here’s a snippet:

Mech-Freya is standing next to a tractor in the dark. I’m using my robo-soldier as a unmissable lump of bait, but I’ve played XCOM. I know how this goes. You throw a lone soldier forward and before you know it they’re knee-deep in little grey men blasting them in the flanks. Not today. I select my nearby assault soldier, Marco ‘˜Maestro’ Bruno, and have him take a covering position in the back of a pickup truck a few feet behind Freya. To my delight, he confirms the order in Spanish. Soldiers speak their native tongues in Enemy Within, rather than the generic US voices of old. XCOM’s team of international super-warriors will finally sound that way.

Is it Marco’s Mediterranean machismo that attracts the aliens? Is it the red glimmer of his laser shotgun? Only the hive mind knows, but a pair of Sectoids dart nervously into the light like rabbits in a Attenborough documentary. A hulking shadow follows them. Is it the alien close combat specialist, the monstrous Berserker? No. It’s another Sectoid, in a tall, sleek exoskeleton of his own. That’s new. He looks both fearsome and adorable, but that won’t save him. I’m going to make my big thing punch their big thing, for science.

Freya lopes forward with surprising grace and engages the enemy robot. The ‘˜Mechtoid’ tries to grapple his attacker, but he’s having trouble processing the fact that a pair of rocket thrusters have just popped out of Freya’s right hand and started firing. With a crunch, the human mech pilot pounds the alien into the earth. Firaxis have gone to town on these new animations. Mechs will mercilessly obliterate enemies of all sizes in close combat, if they have the correct upgrades. I’m told that the killing blow can even knock their targets back a distance. They can punch enemies over precipices. They can punch enemies through walls, creating openings and shot opportunities. They can punch enemies into cars to blow them up. I like them already.

Mechs serve as an entirely new class. You’ll need a new Cybernetics Lab to construct them, but once you’ve got that, you can convert an existing soldier into a robo-soldier. They’ll gain a passive benefit based on their former role assault soldiers will be more resistant to close combat damage, for example but their skill tree will be replaced by a new robotic one, and their equipment slots will only be able to hold new mech gear that can be researched by your scientists. Offensive gear includes the aforementioned doom-fist, a grenade launcher and heavy weapons, which like the standard XCOM weapon variants come in three tiers: minigun, railgun and particle cannon. They can also equip other gadgets, such as jet boots to get them to higher ground, and a healing mist that helps out nearby allies.