It really seems like Firaxis is going out of their way to make XCOM: Enemy Unknown the reboot fans of the title have been clamoring for. For the first time in the history of the franchise, XCOM will allow players to go head to head in a deathmatch. If you can break yourself away from defending the earth from the seemingly inevitable alien onslaught, the two-player mode will allow players to put together a team of six soldiers or aliens (or any combination of the two) in an all-out war for battlefield superiority.
Firaxis released a press statement breaking down what we can expect from the mode a bit.
“Players can mix and match both alien and soldier units to comprise their squad, outfitting soldiers with dozens of armor types, weapons, items, and class-based abilities for thousands of possible loadout combinations. These dream squads of up to six units are built using a point cap that can be scaled for players to fight in small skirmishes all the way up to epic battles. Matches can be modified by point limit or time limit per turn.”
The multiplayer mode doesn’t have a direct tie in to the single-player campaign found in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Firaxis is actually breaking away from the “aliens bad, humans good” mentality by allowing mixture of races on their teams, but it sounds like a pretty good idea on the whole. The game won’t be breaking away from its fast-paced strategy roots; it’s simply interjecting another player.
We’ll have to wait until it’s released on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 9th to see how it pans out, but color me cautiously optimistic.
