XCOM Legends

A 98% miss on this one

What shocking news to wake up to right out of the stark blue of oblivion, materialising fully formed and unveiled, sneaking up on you like a stealth combat round; because we have a brand new XCom game out! That's a pretty dirty way for Firaxis to let me know that I have to step up my game on my Ironman Classic playthrough of the Original, but as I said I'm taking my time so that I don't end up inadvertently hating the game, thus I will respect Firaxis to back off. Let me play the games that are out already you absolutely crazy men! Stealth releasing a new XCom right out of nowhere, who do you think you are? And with absolutely no farfare too! Even XCom Chimera Squad had a month or two of agonising wait time before launch, whereupon I watched more back-lore videos than I had for any XCom game before. It's honesty pretty impressive that they managed to hide the development of  a whole new game from their seminal franchise until launch, especially one that was made during active development for their Marvel title- wait what? That's right- they're already making a Marvel XCom-style game, or at least that's what the rumours say, so how did they have the time to make- this was handled externally? Who was the studio? Iridium Stafish? That sounds dumb, and their website is almost entirely bare except for their own logo. What is this- oh god; it's a mobile game isn't it?

Yes. And I already hear the screaming calls of defence from those Mobile diehards out there who's job it is to swing for the throat whenever anyone dare imply bad things about their platform. "There are good games, you just have to find them!" "Not everything is a Microtransaction fuelled Gacha hellhole!". And you know what? This time they are wrong, XCom Legends advertises itself as a Gacha fuelled experience and something tells me they're not going to have nearly the amount of freely accessible fun that a game like Genshin Impact does. What is that cold feeling I have running down my arteries, trailing a web across my nervousness to my core? Is that my blood running cold at the realisation that yet another studio who has, up until now, done most everything right, has given up the struggle in favour of the quick path to cheap buck? "Whore out that popular name a little bit, remember to spit on the loyal fans whilst your at it, some of them are freaks they'll like it" . It's not disappointment, because I'm not really capable of trusting game studios, it's just exasperation at this point.

"But (I'm) being exasperated without giving it a chance", some very misplaced kind souls might argue, and they are right so I'm give it the rundown, for prosperities sake. XCom Legends is set during the events of the Xcom 2 timeline, so just after the failure of XCom during the initial alien invasion but before their victory in the subsequent guerrilla war of XCom 2 and the resulting rebuilding that integrated Alien races into Human society in XCom Chimera Squad. It follows a system whereupon players build a crew and fight hoards of aliens whilst supplementing their soldiers with powerful premade soldiers who cost premium currency in order to roll for in loot boxes and- god I'm so sick of these games. It doesn't even make sense, who are these 'legendary' characters from the XCom universe? Aside from the main cast and Kelly, who actually went on to become main staff in Chimera Squad, everyone else is a made by the player and thus comes their personal connections to each individual. There's no decades of comics to pull ancillary characters from, or tons of side reading material; so why even pursue a game literally labelled 'legends' if it's meaningless? Shall we ease of a bit? Sure, let's just chalk this nonsensical money-dependant progression system up to yet another aspect of core Xcom being stepped on here.

What else is being trampled out like the head of a dying wick? Oh yea, the gameplay. You know; the thing that makes XCom, XCom. You might be forgiven for thinking this would be another game laid out with tactical matches, focused on positioning and hit percentages; choosing your battlefield and playing bonus actions at the right moment. . I mean that would make sense, wouldn't it? That's exactly what XCom is about, and has been about, for nigh-on years now. I'm talking before Enemy Unknown and back to those originals; XCom core essentials go back to the turn based hit percentages. And the very fact that I'm drumming this home for you should portend exactly what I'm about to say, no? They butchered it. The gameplay has died. Look what they've done to my boy. Silly you for having hope, didn't you know that the original newage XCom game was already ported to Mobile, thus this new game is mandated to be considerably less creative. Typical stuff which makes this sort of game an absolute institution for lovers of tactics across the industry

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever played a Mobile game before? Chances are that if you have you've played one of two types of game. Either it's a city builder game, maybe with a popular property stitched ontop of the gameplay, maybe without; or else you're looking at the Shadow Legends model (which predates RAID, but I'm feeling unimaginative; just like Iridium Starfish.) There I'm talking about the gameplay model which is basically just building a team of characters who move from static encounter to static encounter, usually auto attacking the enemies in front of you. Sometimes there's an absolute basic level of tactical cohesion wrapped into the gameplay model, maybe you get to choose your target or use super moves, but at the end of the day the side with the higher 'combat rating' will win. Combat rating will never hit the heights you need without buying microtransactions, suddenly this free game ain't so free anymore; rinse repeat. If you're familiar with that latter model, as much as I hate to say it; you've already played XCom Legends.

I'm only being a little bit facetious there, this is a game that's as cookie cutter as they get and there's probably an online template for these games you can pick up nowadays. (Last time I checked there was one for the city builder type mobile game) It makes you wonder how little the licence holders must care for the integrity of their product if they'll just commission and put out a product this soulless for a quick buck. I mean even Bethesda, in all their infamy, put some originality into both of their mobile games to make them at the very least a value to the franchise instead of an abject drag. Heck, one of the key 'reasons to play' that Iridium Starfish listed on their description was the fact that the game gets resources for you while you don't play it. (Whilst likely leaving out the way the app tells you every time it collects a pebble) Those aren't features, it's a list of all the worst things to include to make your game as much as a sellout as possible.

So now comes the fun game, who do we blame for this monstrosity? Firaxis are the developers, but 2K are the publishers, so we could call this a mandate from 2K, but in my heart of hearts I'm not letting Firaxis off the hook for this one. Take 2 might hold the licence for the moment, but I just know that somewhere down the line the suggestion was raised to their offices from Firaxis. "Hey, while we're busy why don't you commission a cool spin off? That'll go great!" One of theirs pitched before driving home and realising halfway how the soulless vampires he was talking to would take such a proposition. I'm not saying they had the power to stop this, but they could have at least warned us. Maybe try to push 2K to spend more than minimum wage commissioning it? I don't know what they could have done, okay! All's I know is that there has to be a multiverse where this doesn't happen, and I don't care if Kang has already conquered that one; I want in.

But at the end of the day it doesn't really matter, does it? XCom is going to stay on ice for the foreseeable future until Firaxis are done with their Marvel engagements, and rather than having the decent Chimera Squad be the game they left us on, filled with curious memories of a fun Xcom-done-quick approach to the formula we love; instead we have Legends, reminding us that all good things are owned by bad/stupid people. And for the record I hold no- well not a lot- ill will towards Iridium Starfish. I'm sure with a name that bizarre they hold a promising future in this industry, I just hope it's one where titles like this end up as an anomaly on their future resume, just as it'll be a scratched-out blip on the XCOM release timeline.