I'm far from finishing the Midnight Suns game, but given that I've been playing for the last few months and recently took the step of buying the season pass, I figure I've enjoyed myself enough to talk about the XCom-style new wave game that Firaxis broke their streak of in-universe tactical games in order to create. Which I'm not at all bitter about. How could I possibly be bitter about the fact we've waited something close to seven years in order to hear some update on the cliffhanger ending for XCom 2 and in that time have received a half-sequel re-release of two, (which is a lot of fun but I can honestly say I've never finished a game of War of the Chosen) a completely bizarre cop-level spin-off game that seemed to be like an 'outsiders introduction to XCom' or something, and this- a card-based XCom game built around a Marvel brand that most people don't remember anymore.
Of course I appreciate that nobody wants to be stuck making the exact same sort of thing for their entire career, least of all creatives- and I appreciate the fact that this team at least remained with the tactical genre, knowing well their strengths and playing to them- but it's clear that nothing has landed with that same impact XCom: Enemy Unknown did. I think it's the sheer level of versatility in situation and gameplay that made those original two games (and their update DLC re-releases) so iconic. XCom are essentially story-making engines that utilise their vast network of possibilities and randomly generated scenarios to mount a desperate and daring tale of battling against the odds in a world where failure is ever present, but not always the end of the world if you know how to pick yourself up. The key to XCom, in my mind, is it's fairness. The player enjoys no plot armour. No Deus Ex Machina. They bleed and die like the bad guys do. And in that humbling mortality comes an intensity few other games can really match.
Which might be why the very prospect of playing as an unkillable superhero in Midnight Suns felt so very bizarre. Kind of like the cop-hero characters from Chimera Squad, who similarly felt more unkillable than the soldiers who won the war some several years prior- removing the mortal peril of being in combat would surely confer some sort of confident cocksureness that delineates the intensity of the tactical risks! And... well, it does. In Chimera Squad and Midnight Suns- but that is kind of the point. The intimidation factor of having the lives of everyone hang on your tactical prowess is surely a barrier of entry to the Xcom franchise for some, and there's a comfort in knowing that the worst that can happen, even on a total party wipe, is a brief relaxation period or a restart. No permanent death, and in the case of Midnight Suns- no fail state for the entire campaign whatsoever. You can fail time and time again to your heart's content. Maybe that was what influenced Firaxis' direction.
But I have to admit upon playing, that my biggest concern- the removal of the tactical soul of Xcom in favour of card game tricks, was decidedly overblown on my part. Anyone who has spent time getting involved with games like 'Guild of Dungeoneering' or 'Slay the Spire' might have known that concerns this direction were foolish. Hell, I'm sure Magic the Gathering fans could also protest, but I haven't enough knowledge of that game to know. There's certainly a decent amount of decision making that goes into synergising characters, choosing when to play attacks, redrawing card and picking who to take down first. But tactical positioning is completely gone from the game. There are situational environmental attacks that are in the player's arsenal, but they are the exceptions- never the reward of carefully managed footwork. Almost like a consolation prize to all those that felt abandoned by Firaxis' newest digs.
The big rub when coming to XCom Marvel edition is the obvious fact that no one, ever dies. How could they, we're talking about immortal Superhero's here- they couldn't be killed if you ran them through with a 4x4. The lack of fatalities does intrinsically mean that as a player I'm less inclined to care about the choices I make in combat, or forgetting to do my environmental attack one turn. It's more forgiving, sure, but it's also less engaging. The worst case scenario is my A-team getting injured and having to do a couple nights of easy missions while they recover, a waste of my time but hardly anything to lose sleep over. It really comes down to a matter of taste and how hardcore you are happy with your gameplay experience being. But for a certain vintage we expect, the Midnight Suns body tastes watered down and less sharp. Not worse exactly, but unfulfilling.
On the otherhand, Midnight Suns does feature a decent degree of enemy variety with mechanics that can't always just be punched to death. Some enemies explode on death, punishing melee players, some put up shields to guard the weaker buff providers of the match, some are summoners, others are one-hit-kill trash specifically existing to provide opportunities to proc knock-out-building abilities. With the positioning factor removed from the equation Midnight Suns really does shine as a puzzle planner game where the solutions are as complicated as you, the player, are willing to make them. This especially shines with the infuriating bosses with their special little match-changing abilities that shift the battlefield with their mere presence, it's all additive to the play experience and keeps playthroughs feeling fresh.
Something else that I think Midnight Suns does surprisingly well is the character drama between the Heroes in the Suns. I expected iconic and unimpeachable icons to the calibre of Tony Stark and Captain America to be blank pieces of cardboard similar to how they appear in Marvel's Avengers, but there's a bit of personality to them. Most of the actual depth is reserved for the B-Team however- Nico Minoru, Magik, Robbie Reyes: these are the people you'll really start digging to the route of as you hang around the abbey, get into extracurricular clubs with them and touch on the various traumas and tribulations that make them who they are. Replacing the mortality of Xcom units, the relationships you build with the other heroes goes a long way to establishing a heart behind the missions- and even make you care about the emotional swells even when the middling presentation doesn't quite pull them off to the utmost justice. No romance though. They were explicitly strict on that front for some reason. All heroes are celibate, apparently.
As I am with the game right now, I enjoy Midnight Suns as an alterative to the XCom brand, but nowhere near a replacement. It just doesn't scratch those same itches and doesn't dig anywhere near deep enough under the tissue layer to leave me satisfied. But there are some half decent new ideas that this game gets exceedingly right and those alone manage to justify it's existence. (Of course one of those good new ideas is not the focus on being more cinematic, I have to assume this team didn't even consider bringing on anyone with actual cinema-experience because it's pretty poor on everything except the quality of the animations themselves.) Still, there's something stopping me from getting as red-hot addicted to Midnight Suns as I was with XCom in it's heyday, and maybe that deficit will become more clear the deeper I delve into it.
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