XCOM: Enemy Unknown’s Free Second Wave Title Update Changes How You Play

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is receiving its second piece of DLC for free today, which will be arriving via a title update. The Second Wave content is intended to enhance your gameplay experience after completing the story campaign. So, if you have yet to stick it to the alien scum, then you will only have access to a limited selection option as you start up your single player game.

Here’s a full breakdown of the new gameplay options and how they will affect your operations:

• Damage Roulette: Weapons have a wider range of damage.
• New Economy: Randomized council member funding.
• Not Created Equally: Rookies will have random starting stats.
• Hidden Potential: As a soldier is promoted, stats increase randomly.
• Red Fog: Combat wounds will degrade the soldier’s mission stats.
• Absolutely Critical: A flanking shot guarantees a critical hit.
• The Greater Good: Psionics can only be learned from interrogating a psionic alien.
• Marathon: The game takes considerably longer to complete.
• Results Driven: A country offers less funding as its panic level increases.
• High Stakes: Random rewards for stopping alien abductions.
• Diminishing Returns: Increased cost of satellite construction.
• More Than Human: The psionic gift is extremely rare.

Each of the gameplay tweaks seems to have a strong potential for greatly increasing the range of experience that XCOM: Enemy Unknown commanders will have. Many of the options seem to increase the already difficult skill level that the higher options of the game offer, so it will be interesting to see how many gamers elect to dive deeper into the alien threat.

With any luck, this could potentially mean that Firaxis is filling the gaps between major content with free updates. Hopefully we’ll be seeing another major content release for XCOM: Enemy Unknown coming shortly. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

In the meantime, tell us, are you still playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown or have you not checked it out yet? If you haven’t, be sure to read our review, and good luck for all you dedicated Commanders out there. The council is always watching.