XCOM 2 hands-on preview: Earth is doomed if you leave me in command

Here’s what my XCOM 2 experience was like: I spent half an hour in the character customization screen creating my best faux-Snake/Big Boss. I couldn’t find a Kurt Russell mullet but I got the eye patch, the dangling cigarette, the scraggly facial hair. It was great.

Then I sent him into battle and of course he was the first damn character to die.

I mean, all five members of my squad died. But Snake’s death hurt the most, you know? And that’s, I guess, the masochistic charm of XCOM—a game I love even when I want to dropkick my monitor and flip my desk and throw my mouse through a window. Figuratively, I think.

Rage against the machine

I got about two and a half hours of hands-on time with XCOM 2 last week, spread across three missions: The tutorial, an “easy” side mission, and a might-as-well-staple-my-hand-to-my-face difficult main story mission (which is chronicled, albeit in abbreviated form, in the video above).

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