Before running away for a few days of competitive eating and cooperative gaming, Evan, Cory, and Tyler gathered to reflect on the most memorable victories, losses, and stories they virtually experienced in 2013. Watch the whole five-video series on the PC Gamer YouTube channel, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more regular content, gameplay footage, and conversations.

Holiday time means gaming time: this week Tyler, Evan, and Cory talk Battlefield 4, XCOM: Enemy Within, Hearthstone, and other games they've been playing over the holiday break. Listen all the way through for Cory's exclusive interview with Ananda Gupta, lead designer on XCOM: Enemy Within.

Accept no substitute for PC Gamer Podcast 366 - Chattlefield!

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@ELahti (Evan Lahti)
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Playing with genetics always involves tubes of neon liquid.

Rest in peace, Major Evan “Mad Dog” Lahti. You single-handedly killed a Muton with a scatter laser, saving the life of rookie sniper Wesley Snipes. It’s too bad there were two Mutons, but seriously, you died a hero, and we all know that last 82 percent chance shot should have hit—that’s just total BS. And hey, you also completed a secondary objective that was really important, so we appreciate that. Sorry you’re dead.

That’s just how XCOM goes. It’s about making hard decisions as you command earth’s front line defense against an alien invasion, primarily by nurturing squads of soldiers which you control in a series of turn-based assaults on the extraterrestrials. Unless you’re using save reloading as a crutch, your soldiers’ lives are in your hands. If they die, they’re dead forever. Not only do I attach emotional value to these customized troops—usually named after my friends or actors with appropriate names—I’m invested in their skills and how they fit into a well-balanced squad. Losing a great soldier can be devastating, and sometimes you have to lose one to save another, or bad luck smacks one down with a surprise critical hit.

Sq. Lahti was killed. Not to be confused with Major Lahti. He dies later.

Improving by adding

I love XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I love the base-building metagame, I love the tactical combat, and I love the permadeath. The Enemy Within expansion adds good stuff to all of that. My biggest criticism, however—and the reason it took me forever to play the original Enemy Unknown campaign to completion—is that the number of surprises drops off steeply after the first ten or so missions. Once all the aliens are introduced, the most common kill-all-aliens missions become route exercises.

I’ve solved those missions like this: Spotting a group of aliens by advancing a soldier into line of sight contact is dangerous, because it “activates” that threat and gives the aliens a free movement turn. But the aliens won’t advance until activated, so I keep my soldiers in tight formation and use my sniper’s Battle Scanner, which can be tossed like a grenade and provides two turns of remote sight, to activate alien mobs from a distance. Then I just patiently wait for the enemy to come to me, using the Overwatch ability to take shots whenever they try to move up. It works nearly every time, but feels exploitative of the mechanics.

I try to make sure all my soldiers remain in line-of-sight of each other.

Enemy Within tries to solve this problem by adding a secondary objective to each basic mission type—find and collect a new resource used in genetics and cybernetics labs, Meld, before the containers self-destruct—but it’s just a patch. It’s still a problem that moving my squad forward puts me at a disadvantage. For instance, in one mission, I immediately sent my sniper to a rooftop. She got line-of-sight of nearly the whole map, which activated three enemy formations simultaneously. When I reloaded the mission and moved more slowly—not using my sniper as a sniper should be used—I activated the mobs individually and the mission was much easier.

So that's not well-addressed, and Enemy Within only trivially addresses my other criticisms of Enemy Unknown: the action camera is still wonky, I’m still not fond of the base interface, and I want better visual soldier customization. And yet, Enemy Within is a fantastic expansion. Instead of solving Enemy Unknown’s problems, it adds so much good stuff that it buries them. There are great new objective-based missions, new maps, new enemies, and a crazy amount of new ways to customize and become attached to soldiers, all of which make the game better.

Human on human violence

The most significant improvement is Exalt, a human terror organization which is countered with covert operations and extraction missions. Funnily, XCOM’s tactical combat is much better against human enemies than aliens, and objective-based missions are immeasurably better than the more common search and destroy missions.

A few days after sending a soldier to infiltrate an Exalt cell, you’re prompted to embark on an extraction mission. The squad you send will be joined by the operative, who can only carry a pistol, and is required to complete the mission objectives. In one type of mission, for instance, the operative begins at the opposite side of the map from your squad and must hack into Exalt Comm Relays on the way to the extraction zone. Meanwhile, Exalt sends constant waves of reinforcements to harass you.

Five enemies in sight—Exalt comes in force.

These missions generate the best of XCOM’s terrifying decisions. I have have to protect my agent at all costs, meaning that sending a soldier out as bait to draw fire is a reasonable maneuver. But in the interest of keeping my best crew alive, I want to keep them close to the extraction zone so I can get them all out after the agent makes it across the map. The alternative is sticking around to clean up all remaining Exalt forces, but the bastards are tough. They act more like I do, sticking to cover, sniping, using Overwatch, popping smoke, and healing themselves. They are much more surprising than Sectoids, Floaters, and the other extraterrestrial kin, and much scarier to confront—when one Heavy drops in with a rocket launcher, I have to completely reconsider my plan.

On the other hand, I appreciate the new alien types for the variety, but they’re as predictable as the original roster. Seekers, for instance, are flying tentacled creatures with invisibility cloaks which can latch onto soldiers and strangle them. They come in groups of two and cloak as soon as they’re spotted. Dealing with them is simple: keep your troops close and put them on Overwatch. When the Seekers reappear, everyone gets a shot. If one of the air squids manages to get a soldier in its tentacle death grip, one shot should do it in, and the affected soldier is disabled for a turn. Not too bad.

Seekers look a bit like children birthed by The Matrix's Sentinels

I like the alien design, but the fun of making decisions on the fly is lost when they follow flowchart tactics that are best countered with my own flowchart tactics. I’m especially curious as to why they almost always appear in the same groups—three Sectoids, three Floaters, three Thin Men, and so on. Why not a Thin Man riding a Floater?

That’s why I prefer fighting human enemies, though that’s not to say the standard anti-alien abduction missions are easy. XCOM remains brutally hard on Classic and Impossible difficulties—though if you don't lose any high-ranking soldiers and are smart about your research and engineering progression (I'm not...I just want everything), they can become extraordinarily powerful in the end game. Too powerful, even. Still, a streak of bad luck or a few bad decisions can cause serious consequences.

Body modifications

Many of XCOM’s toughest decisions don’t even happen in the battlefield, but in the metagame played at XCOM HQ between missions. Prioritizing and managing resources can be exhausting—with Enemy Within’s additions, there’s so much to take care of it feels like I’m the CEO of a multinational company staffed by three temps and a cat.

Here are some of the vital things I need to do: maintain a worldwide fleet of interceptors to shoot down UFOs, build a global satellite array, research technology, build new weapons, armor, and facilities, upgrade existing technology, balance my finances, seek out Exalt cells and use clues to try to guess at the location of its HQ (guess correctly, and I can take down the whole operation), keep tabs on injured soldiers and recruit new troops, and award commendation medals which come with new stat bonuses.

Could you go ahead and research up an administrative assistant?

Having that much to manage with limited resources forces decisions I often regret. Because I desperately wanted to play with Enemy Within’s new genetics and cybernetics labs, I forgot to recruit new soldiers when I was running low on healthy veterans. That led to me running a vital mission with only three soldiers, two of them rookies. One made it out alive. Oops.

The botched mission was totally worth it, though, because we brought home lots of fresh Meld with the bodies, and the genetics and cybernetics modifications which use the resource are great. If you thought you were attached to your soldiers in Enemy Unknown, wait until you mutilate their bodies in the name of saving humanity, but at the cost of their own humanity, and then send them into combat where they might die in five turns anyway. My gene-modded sniper, Lt. Lewis, is the most prized member of my army, capable of jumping to rooftops in a single leap and using superhuman depth perception to gain an aiming bonus from high ground.

New gene mods are unlocked by performing alien autopsies.

On other side of the ethical gray area, the cybernetics lab fuses flesh and machine, permanently throwing soldiers into giant MEC suits to become mechanical bipeds. Major Cory Banks volunteered to have his limbs amputated and replaced with metal, and is now a flamethrowing, jet-boosting human tank. He just can’t, you know, relate to other humans or feel the warmth of their touch ever again, but he knew what he was getting into.

Given her advantages, I naturally send Lt. Lewis to high ground. Maj. Banks and his MEC suit are my tank—I use him to draw fire and panic enemies with his flamethrower, which sends them out of cover so that Lt. Lewis can pick them off from the rooftops. I once sent just the two of them on a mission to challenge myself, and that kind of harrowing self-imposed drama helps XCOM’s basic missions stay fun into the last stretch of a playthrough. The aliens rarely force me to go outside my small stable of cautious maneuvers, but Enemy Within does more to encourage my creativity. I try new tactics because I want to tell a story with my soldiers’ strengths.

You have MEC Troopers, they have Mechtoids.

My biggest issue with all these additions is how complex my mental database has to become to cope with the amount of statistical information. I don’t count that against the game, but the mental tug-of-war it causes is worth noting. On one side, I just want to make a decision and get on with it, because there’s always the chance a lucky alien plasma round will just blow a hole in Major Lahti’s chest anyway. On the other side, I know that if I take it slow and consider each of my soldiers’ bonuses before making a decision, I might save a life. The latter is always more rewarding.

XCOM is a game of resource management and tactics more than a game of chance. I can pretend it’s the dice roll that decides who lives and who dies, but it’s my decisions. Because I decided to spend money on laser rifles instead of body armor, I had to send an under-equipped soldier on a difficult mission, and I pulled him out of cover to collect Meld for my laboratories. And now he’s dead. In that respect, it’s more vitally a game about sacrifice, ethics, and responsibility.

Enemy Within muddies up those ethical waters with even more excruciating decisions, requires more complex tactics, and promotes an even deeper connection to the soldiers I dearly want to protect. It doesn't significantly address Enemy Unknown’s shortcomings, but adds more great, challenging experiences to an already great game.

While multi-format publications froth expectantly at the coming release of a plastic box, we might as well laze back and enjoy a bit of strategy news. XCOM: Enemy Within is either out or incoming, depending on your geographical status, but if you're waiting - or just haven't bought the turn-based expansion - an interactive trailer takes you through some of the new features and mission types.

This isn't that interactive trailer. Instead, it's the trailer for the interactive trailer. What a world we live in.



To playwatch the full thing, head over to the 'Extraction' micro-site, try not to throw up at the line "Start The Experience", and make a series of binary choices to be shown each operative's execution. It's far from a real game of XCOM, because not every choice is between "move slowly, ending on Overwatch", and "die".

Expect an XCOM: Enemy Within review to appear as soon as our shadowy critic has properly pondered his final turn.

Names are important. Giving a name to a tiny, mindless unit in games such as FTL or XCOM: Enemy Unknown—and XCOM: Enemy Within, out today—gives them the importance necessary for permadeath to matter. I don't care if some anonymous squaddie bites it in an alien base mission, but I care a lot more about the well-being of Lt. Tyler "Maverick" Wilde.

Once you've used all of your friends' names, though, how to you find the right identity for your team? Do you use pet names, or celebrities, or characters from fantasy novels that clearly don't fit in a sci-fi setting? You probably freeze up, unable to remember the names of loved ones or childhood heroes. We know this condition all too well. This is Naming Paralysis, and while your insurance may not cover the treatment necessary, we can help.

Last year, we created The PC Gamer Character Name Repository, a shared Google Doc that we encouraged you to throw XCOM and FTL-friendly names into. Since then, you've added more than 300 names to the list, across different categories. As XCOM: Enemy Within launches today, we're putting the Name Repository back into your hands, so that together, we can all fight Naming Paralysis.

You better watch your back. Since we first heard about XCOM: Enemy Within's disruptive new faction Exalt, the quest to save Earth has been looking a bit more complicated. As we learn in a new dev blog from the DLC's lead designer Ananda Gupta, the "insular and self-serving" Exalt has its own agenda entirely.

"Exalt is a paramilitary secret society," Gupta writes. "Their goal is to capture the benefits of the aliens’ arrival—their genetic project for humanity and their technology—and use those advantages to rule what’s left of the world once the aliens have completed their plan and departed. And XCOM is in the way."

Confrontations with the Exalt revolve around dealing with the group's work creating problems within allied council territories. Exalt deploys propaganda to boost panic, sabotage to take a bite out of XCOM's cash flow, and covert hacking to disrupt any research progress you've been working on, according to Gupta. To counter these effects, XCOM troops will deploy in two new mission types in order to confront Exalt—Covert Data Recovery and Covert Extraction.

Our recent hands-on preview deals with an attempt at data recovery in a covert battle with Exalt, but as we learn from Gupta's update, the extraction mission type also adds an additional, objective-based twist to the XCOM metagame. In order to fend off the work of Exalt, XCOM sends out covert agents to perform counter intelligence against the terrorists. You have to recover these agents and their intel somehow, and that's exactly where the extraction missions take you—hacking comm stations and VIP recovery, according to Gupta.

With its initial release, XCOM nailed the sense of community, the feeling of "we're all in this together" that propels you against the alien invasion. To add a complicating element to that equation—Exalt—that works selfishly against consensus seems entirely appropriate, and also very human. XCOM: Enemy Within releases Nov. 12.

Hat tip, VG24/7.

Here's a trailer that focuses on the Exalt: those covert enemy operatives that Tyler revealed in his XCOM: Enemy Within preview. They're an enemy within, you see. Within the expansion, within your species, and, as your trailer shows, within your own base. While the trailer consists entirely of cutscene, it does suggest that base defence missions could be making a return.



If that is the case, then hurrah, base defence! The original X-Com's alien infiltrations were an excellent way to escalate the danger of the mounting invasion. It's not quite clear how that would work given the new game's multi-level dioramas, but hopefully the engine can cope. I found XCOM: Enemy Unknown frequently buggy when it came to mouse selection during interior battles over multiple floors.

One of the confirmed Exalt interactions involves you sending counter-operatives to infiltrate their own hideouts. For more on this, head over to Tyler's hands-on report, where he takes you through the tactical choices at the heart of the conflict against these enemy cells.

Judging by their clothes, Exalt might have accidentally wandered out of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.

Except in the case of a sitcom gag involving a hilariously awkward two-person costume, covert operatives should generally be of the same species as the enemy if they want to be at all covert. As XCOM: Enemy Unknown is about fighting aliens, and was not filmed in front of a live studio audience, covert operatives never had a place in the earth defense organization—until the human threat was exposed.

The upcoming Enemy Within expansion introduces a "literal enemy within," as Lead Designer Ananda Gupta puts it: a terrorist organization called Exalt with sleeper cells peppered across the globe. The underground group is piggybacking on the alien invasion to seize power from the world's governments, perhaps in hope of becoming the alien puppet government. For us, it means two new mission types against human enemies, and a new strategy layer with a Guess Who-style metagame.

Exalt cells are exposed through intel scans (which cost credits) or when they perform an operation—either a direct attack on XCOM or a propaganda campaign which increases panic. At the outset of my hands-on demo, I discover that Exalt has stolen 376 credits from my coffers, exposing a cell in Egypt. Not much of a take given that their punishment is me violently killing all of them.

Once exposed, an Exalt cell can't operate, but if it isn't infiltrated and destroyed quickly, it will relocate and go back into hiding somewhere else. The first step is to deploy a counter operative, which can can be any soldier except a Heavy, and can only be armed with a pistol. After implanting the agent and letting some time pass, I'm prompted to complete a covert data recovery mission. I could decline and abandon my agent, but I'm not a monster. I'm also not very covert—I'm about to very loudly kill 17 Exalt soldiers.

Exalt reinforcements can include perched snipers.

I put two snipers on my team, because I love snipers, but it feels like a mistake at first. Exalt attacks in big waves, and more grenades and rockets would have created opportunities to splash some damage into groups. Instead, I've got two guys who are good at aiming. But precision is helpful during data recovery missions. It begins with the Encoder, a device across the map which can be hacked by Exalt if they stand within its capture radius for three uncontested turns. Once hacked, the Encoder leads Exalt to the Transmitter. If the Transmitter is captured or destroyed, the mission is over, which means missed shots and irresponsible use of explosives are dangerous.

I'm too timid to save the Encoder—I should have known I'd have a few turns to move across the map before the enemy appeared—but I do manage to wipe out a pack of Exalt soldiers standing in its capture zone, expending one of my two rockets. I fall back to defend the Transmitter, and it looks like I'm in good shape until I'm surrounded by a wave of reinforcements.

I'm terribly outnumbered, but I have two advantages. The first is my operative: In addition to my hand-picked assault team, I can command the counter operative I sent previously. He only has a pistol, but he gets the special ability to hack Exalt comm arrays (if he can get to them), which prevents all Exalt troops from firing during the next turn. When my medic is stuck in the open for a turn while I'm re-positioning her to heal an injured unit, the ability is crucial.

My second advantage is that Exalt's primary goal isn't to wipe out my soldiers. The bad guys' first goal is to reach the capture points, so they'll often give up flanking shots in favor of sprinting toward the Transmitter. They are plenty clever, though, using covering fire on my best sniper and tossing a grenade when I foolishly bunch up three soldiers. Even more frightening are Exalt Heavies—not only can their rockets decimate my entrenched defenders and their cover, a missed shot could take out the Transmitter. Later in the expansion, Exalt Elites will be introduced—I didn't see them, but Gupta teased that the group won't shy away from using genetic modifications.

The new Ghost Grenade stealth-ifies your units.

Near the end of my battle, Exalt units start slipping into the Transmitter capture radius inside the map's central building. I'm just barely holding them back, especially thanks to headshots from my star sniper, who I've backed against a wall. In one harrowing moment, a grenade injures him and destroys his cover, putting an Exalt Heavy in sight, with two other Exalt soldiers standing in the capture point. I can't risk letting the Heavy get a rocket off—never mind that he might turn my sniper to giblets, he might damage the Transmitter—so I ignore the capturing units and take the shot. The sniper is a hero, scoring a hit, but can't finish him off. Miraculously, my second sniper—who's been a bit of a dud the whole battle—hits a low-percent shot from behind a car outside the building and takes the Heavy down. The rest of my troops bring down the capturing units with one turn to go. Safe!

I prefer XCOM's objective missions to the "kill all enemies" missions, and point defense works well. The secondary goal creates more opportunities for clutch moments, heroics, and dramatic sacrifices. The one soldier I lost died to protect the mission, not another soldier, which would have been a tough decision were I playing with my own characters on Ironman mode (no save reloading). I'm also excited for the mystery-solving metagame: After destroying a cell, you'll be given a clue as to which country is harboring the Exalt HQ—e.g. "The HQ is not in Europe"—and after three clues, you can start making accusations. A correct accusation leads to a unique mission to take down Exalt for good, but a false accusation will cause the accused country to withdraw from the XCOM project—it's a dangerous risk, but so is letting Exalt increase panic and interrupt your primary mission.

Along with the already-revealed new locations, mech soldiers, and more, the Exalt subplot gives me confidence that Enemy Within is substantial enough to call me back to world saving duty in November. And Gupta tells me that "even this is not everything" going into the expansion pack. On to the next reveal, then.

Remember when buying a game didn’t feel like a guarantee of seeing the ending? There are still hard games out there, Dark Souls flying the flag most recently, but increasingly, the challenge has dripped out or at least softened, often leading to sadly wasted opportunities. What would Skyrim be like, for instance, if its ice and snow wasn’t simply cosmetic, but actually punished you for going mountain climbing in your underpants?

With a quick mod – Frostfall in this case – you’re forced to dress up warm before facing the elements, and things become much more interesting. That’s just one example, and over the next couple of pages you’ll find plenty more. These aren’t mods that just do something cheap like double your enemy’s hit-points, they’re full rebalances and total conversions. Face their challenge, and they’ll reward you with both a whole new experience and the satisfaction of going above and beyond the call of duty.

Misery
Game: Stalker: Call of Pripyat
Link: ModDB



All those weapons scattered around? Gone. Anomalies? Now more dangerous. Magic mini-map? Forget it. Valuable quest rewards? Good luck. Things you do get: thirsty, and factions who send goons after you if you anger them. On the plus side Pripyat is much more active, with a complete sound overhaul, and new NPCs to meet – who all have to play by the rules too, with no more infinite ammo. If you can survive here, you’ve got a good chance when the actual apocalypse comes.

Project Nevada
Fallout: New Vegas
Link: Nexus Mods



Nevada is a good example of making things more difficult without being openly psychotic. Levelling is slower, players and NPCs get less health, and obvious features are now in, such as armour only being a factor in headshots if the target actually has head protection. It’s also possible to toggle some extra-hardcore options, such as food no longer healing and taking care of hunger/thirst/ sleep on the move. There’s a sack of new content, and an Extra Options mod is also available, offering even more control.

Brutal Doom
Game: Doom
Link: ModDB



Despite what modern ‘old-school’ shooters would have you think, Doom was a relatively sedate experience – fast running speed, yes, but lots of skulking in the dark and going slow. Not any more! Brutal Doom cranks everything up to 11, then yawns and goes right for 25.6. We’re talking extra shrapnel, execution attacks, tougher and faster monsters, metal music, and blood, blood, blood as far as your exploding eyes can see. It’s compatible with just about any level you can throw at it, turning even E1M1 into charnel house devastation. The enemies don’t get it all their own way, as Doomguy now starts with an assault rifle rather than simply a pistol, and a whole arsenal of new guns has been added to the Doom collection – including the BFG’s big brother.



Full Combat Rebalance 2
Game: The Witcher 2
Link: RedKit



This streamlines the combat and makes the action closer to how Geralt’s adventure might have played out in the books. He’s more responsive, can automatically parry incoming attacks, begins with his Witcher skills unlocked, and no longer has to spend most fights rolling around like a circus acrobat. But he’s in a tougher world, with monsters now figuring out counterattacks much faster, enemies balanced based on equipment rather than levels, and experience only gained from quests, not combat. Be warned this is a 1.5GB file, not the megabyte Hotfix that’s claimed.

Requiem
Game: Skyrim
Link: Nexus



Elder Scrolls games get ever more streamlined, and further from the classic RPG experience. Requiem drags Skyrim back, kicking and screaming. The world is no longer levelled for your convenience. Bandits deliver one-hit kills from the start. The undead mock arrows, quietly pointing out their lack of internal organs with a quick bonk to your head. Gods hold back their favour from those who displease them. Most importantly, stamina is now practically a curse. Heavy armour and no training can drain it even if you’re standing still, and running out in battle is Very Bad News. Combine this with Frostfall, and Skyrim finally becomes the cold, unforgiving place it claims to be.

Radious
Total War: Shogun 2
Link: TWCenter



Not only is this one of the most comprehensive mods any Total War game has ever seen, its modular nature makes it easy to pick and choose the changes that work best for the experience you want. Together, the campaign AI is reworked, as are the skills and experience systems, diplomacy and technology trees. There are over 100 new units. Campaigns are also longer, providing more time to play with all this, with easier access to the good stuff early on in the name of variety. There’s even a sound module that adds oomph to rifles. Add everything, or only the bits you want. It’s as much of a tactical decision as anything else on the road to conquering Japan.

Game of Thrones
Game: Crusader Kings II
Link: ModDB



Real history doesn’t have enough bite for you? Recast the whole thing with Starks, Lannisters, Freys and the rest and it will. This doesn’t simply swap a few names around, but works with the engine to recreate specific scenarios in the war for the Iron Throne. Individual characters’ traits are pushed into the foreground, especially when duels break out. Wildlings care little about who your daddy was. It’s best to know a fair amount about the world before jumping in, and the scenarios themselves contain spoilers, but you’re absolutely not restricted to just following the story laid down in the books.



Realistic Weapons
Game: Grand Theft Auto IV
Link: GTAGarage



Guess what this one does. A bowling league for Roman? Cars that drive themselves? A character who appears to tell Niko “You have $30,000 in your pocket, you don’t need to goon for assholes” after Act 2? No, of course not. These guns put a little reality back into the cartoon that is GTA. The missions weren’t written with that in mind, obviously, but there’s nothing stopping you from giving it a shot. Worst case: murdering random civilians on the street is much quicker, easier and more satisfying. At least until the cops show up to spoil the fun. Range, accuracy, damage, ammo and fire rate are all covered, though be warned that you shouldn’t expect perfect accuracy from your upgraded hardware. This is GTA after all. Realism is not baked into its combat engine.

The Long War
Game: XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Link: NexusMods



You’re looking at eight soldier classes, many more missions, invaders as focused on upgrades as your own science team, and a much longer path to victory. Research is slow, not least to make early weapon upgrades more useful, while the aliens are constantly getting more powerful. Their ships are better, their terror missions are more regular, and more of them show up for battle. In exchange, you get to field more Interceptors, the council is easier to appease, and the ETs don’t cheat as much.

Ziggy's Mod
Game: Far Cry 3
Link: NexusMods



Ziggy makes Rook Island a more natural place, removing mission requirements for skills, cutting some of the easier ways to earn XP, increasing spawn rates to make the island busier, and throwing away the magic mini-map in favour of a compass. The second island is also unlocked from the start. Smaller changes include randomised ammo from dropped weapons, being able to climb hills that you should realistically be able to, and wingsuit abilities made available earlier to get more out of them.

Terrafirmacraft
Game: Minecraft
Link: Terrafirmacraft



Minecraft has a Survival mode, but it’s not desperately challenging. Terrafirmacraft takes it seriously, with hunger and thirst that must be dealt with at all times, and key elements added such as the need to construct support beams while mining to prevent cave-ins, and a seasonal cycle that determines whether or not trees will produce fruit. Many more features are to be added, but there’s enough here already to make survival about much more than throwing together a Creeper-proof fort.



Synergies Mod
Game: Torchlight II
Link: Synergies Mod



This adds a new act to the game, over a hundred monsters, new rare bosses, a new class – the Necromancer – more and tougher monsters and the gear to take them on. There are also endgame raids to add challenge once the world is saved yet again, and more on the way – including two new classes (Paladin and Warlock). It’s the top-ranked Torchlight II mod on Steam Workshop, and easily the most popular. Be aware that it’s still in development, and has a few rough edges.

Civilization Nights
Game: Civilization V
Link: Steam Workshop



While Brave New World has officially given Civ V a big shake up, for many players Nights remains its most popular add-on. It’s a comprehensive upgrade, adding new buildings, wonders, technologies and units, with a heavy focus on policies and making the AI better. The single biggest change is how it calculates happiness, citizens adding cheer simply by existing, but the slow march of war and other miseries detracting from the good times. Annexed a city? Don’t expect too many ticker-tape parades. Yet keeping happiness up is crucial, as it’s also the core of a strong military. This rebalancing completely changes how you play, while the other additions offer plenty of scope for new tactics and even more carefully designed civilisations.

Ultimate Difficulty Mod
Game: Dishonored
Link: TTLG Forums



This makes Dishonored’s enemies more attentive, faster and able to hear a pin drop from the other side of the map. When you get into a fight, it quickly becomes an all-out street war. The biggest change is to Dishonored’s second most abusable ability: the Lean (Blink of course being #1). Corvo can no longer sit behind scenery, lean out into an enemy’s face and be politely ignored. He’s now much more likely to be spotted – especially in ghost runs, where his advantages are now limited to the Outsider’s gifts rather than the Overseers’ continued lack of a local Specsavers.

Hardcore
Game: Deus Ex
Link: ModDB



New augmentations! Altered AI! Randomised inventories! Also a few time-savers: instead of separate keys and multitools for instance, a special keyring has both, while upgrades are used automatically if necessary. Difficulty also changes the balance considerably, from the standard game to ‘Realistic’ mode where you only get nine inventory slots, to ‘Unrealistic’, which makes JC Denton the cyborg killing machine he’s meant to be, but at the cost of facing opponents who warrant it. In this mode he gets double-jumping powers, and automatically gobbles health items when he gets badly wounded. Good luck though, I still got nowhere.

XCOM: Enemy Within replaces Enemy Unknown’s opening Arthur C Clarke quote with a pearl from American polymath R Buckminster Fuller. “Those who play with the Devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.”

It captures the central theme of this major expansion: how far are you prepared to warp your soldiers with alien tech before they lose touch with the race they’re defending? Fuller’s words do fall slightly askew, though. It’s not a sword, it’s a giant rocketpowered robot fist.

That fist belongs to Rebecca ‘Freya’ Berry, a US soldier strapped into a ten-foot-tall mech suit. I’m playing through a battle at Firaxis HQ, Maryland, surrounded by a squadron of design leads, all quietly waiting to see what I’ll do with this destructive new toy. The XCOM fundamentals remain unchanged: you build a base, research alien tech, conduct autopsies and invent new gear for your soldiers to utilise in turn-based human vs alien skirmishes. Enemy Within introduces new enemies, units, classes, gear, abilities, maps and more to grow that base game into something bigger, tougher and full of giant robots.

Mech-Freya is standing next to a tractor in the dark. I’m using my robo-soldier as a unmissable lump of bait, but I’ve played XCOM. I know how this goes. You throw a lone soldier forward and before you know it they’re knee-deep in little grey men blasting them in the flanks. Not today. I select my nearby assault soldier, Marco ‘Maestro’ Bruno, and have him take a covering position in the back of a pickup truck a few feet behind Freya. To my delight, he confirms the order in Spanish. Soldiers speak their native tongues in Enemy Within, rather than the generic US voices of old. XCOM’s team of international super-warriors will finally sound that way.

Is it Marco’s Mediterranean machismo that attracts the aliens? Is it the red glimmer of his laser shotgun? Only the hive mind knows, but a pair of Sectoids dart nervously into the light like rabbits in a Attenborough documentary. A hulking shadow follows them. Is it the alien close combat specialist, the monstrous Berserker? No. It’s another Sectoid, in a tall, sleek exoskeleton of his own. That’s new. He looks both fearsome and adorable, but that won’t save him. I’m going to make my big thing punch their big thing, for science.



Freya lopes forward with surprising grace and engages the enemy robot. The ‘Mechtoid’ tries to grapple his attacker, but he’s having trouble processing the fact that a pair of rocket thrusters have just popped out of Freya’s right hand and started firing. With a crunch, the human mech pilot pounds the alien into the earth. Firaxis have gone to town on these new animations. Mechs will mercilessly obliterate enemies of all sizes in close combat, if they have the correct upgrades. I’m told that the killing blow can even knock their targets back a distance. They can punch enemies over precipices. They can punch enemies through walls, creating openings and shot opportunities. They can punch enemies into cars to blow them up. I like them already.

Mechs serve as an entirely new class. You’ll need a new Cybernetics Lab to construct them, but once you’ve got that, you can convert an existing soldier into a robo-soldier. They’ll gain a passive benefit based on their former role – assault soldiers will be more resistant to close combat damage, for example – but their skill tree will be replaced by a new robotic one, and their equipment slots will only be able to hold new mech gear that can be researched by your scientists. Offensive gear includes the aforementioned doom-fist, a grenade launcher and heavy weapons, which – like the standard XCOM weapon variants – come in three tiers: minigun, railgun and particle cannon. They can also equip other gadgets, such as jet boots to get them to higher ground, and a healing mist that helps out nearby allies.

Back at base, the augmented forms of your mech soldiers will wander around outside of their suits, sparing us the sight of a man trying to eat breakfast with a Gatling gun for an arm. Just because they can detach themselves from their battle shell doesn’t mean they aren’t disfigured. Holes have been carved into their bodies to allow for the interface implants. When you commission a mech conversion, you’re asking a soldier to sacrifice their body to your cause, a morally troubling scenario that I imagine Firaxis enhancing with some grotesque conversion scenes. “Such scenes may or may not be in the game,” laughs lead designer Ananda Gupta.

I ask Gupta how far the moral ambiguity goes. It’s potentially a significant tonal shift from Enemy Unknown which, in its broadest strokes, was a positive story about international unity and the power of human innovation. “We definitely did not want to go very dark,” he says. “You are still the good guys, you are still XCOM, you’re still defending the world against the alien invasion. You are the last hope. But we also wanted to make it clear that when you get this expansion pack you’ll be asking more of your soldiers than you have ever before.”



I’d buy that if it was just about the mech conversions, but there’s another breed of soldiers that apply the ‘enemy within’ theme quite literally. I scan the battlefield and find my sniper, Thomas ‘Tireur’ Durard, a genetically modified human fused with the processed flesh of captured aliens. He’s hard to see thanks to the camouflage biotech implanted in his skin, but he de-cloaks as I move him to an elevated position, and I notice that he’s wearing new armour. GM soldiers have visual variants for all of Enemy Unknown’s armour types to set them apart from standard plods. They’re still human, to outward appearances, but those alien molecules grant them superhuman abilities. When Tommy McAlien reaches his destination, he leaps ten feet into the air to reach his sniper perch, the show-off.

Like psychic abilities, genetic modifications are also applied to a trooper’s class skills, added to their brains, eyes, skin, leg and chest regions using material recovered from autopsies in a new Genetics Lab. Scarily, human soldiers can be both psychic and genetically modified, opening up a huge number of customisation options for your most powerful soldiers.

I’m just starting to feel sorry for the aliens when another Mechtoid stomps out of the gloom. One of his flanking Sectoids hangs back and bestows a pink psychic buff on the bot, granting him an extra few bars of health. Those vanish immediately when my GM sniper shoots the enemy mech’s little helper in the head. Then I have Freya hit the mech really hard with her huge metal hand. My heavy weapon guy, Edmundo ‘El Cid’ Ramos goes for a killing blow, but fluffs the shot and sprays plasma into the sky. It’s all down to the Marco to finish the job. It’s a 38% chance to hit, but his aim is true. The Mechtoid collapses. Marco cocks his laser shotgun one-handed and drops a quick Spanish curse on the corpse.

The turn isn’t over. There’s one Sectoid left in view, hovering uncertainly near a forklift. You picked the wrong farm to accidentally crash land in, buddy, Edmundo might say, in Spanish, if he had any action points left. I mobilise my ace in the hole, a second mech piloted by a laid-back German fellow wielding a railgun and a huge flamethrower. There’s only enough fuel for a couple of sprays, but I select the flamer, angle a large red aiming cone squarely over the little survivor, and watch the mech douse the entire area in fire. The Sectoid is vaporised instantly. Everything touched by the attack is charred, and remains on fire for a few turns after.



If this all sounds a bit easy, it is. But I’m rolling with an unusually powerful team to get a proper look at Enemy Within’s new gadgets, and there are powerful new enemies that Firaxis aren’t ready to show yet. It’ll take a lot of work to afford two mechs and genetically modified soldiers in the same team in a campaign. Mechs are bought with a new and scarce resource called Meld that can only be retrieved by walking up to glowing yellow canisters in maps and slurping their contents before their turn limit runs out. Firaxis want to use these precious, time-sensitive resources to draw players into XCOM’s maps a little quicker. They also serve as another design knot, pulling together the turn-based battles and the strategic overlay that governs base building. Pick up Meld in a fight, send the Meld to the Cybernetics Lab, buy upgrades and mechs that you can deploy in the next fight. It’s loops like this that bring XCOM’s various elements into cohesion, and the separate resource means you’ll still have money to upgrade your ordinary humans as you see fit. Firaxis estimate that good players will be able to sustain two or three mechs during a campaign.

The two mechs in my uber-squad make a terrifying vanguard as they perform a final sweep of the area. The dark farmland zone, a throwback to the original 1994 game, is one of two new areas I’ve seen. The other was on the top of a dam, and showcased an impressive vista in the background. Enemy Within will add many, many new maps, and rework all of Enemy Unknown’s to support Meld canisters. The number of extra arenas hasn’t been finalised, but Gupta estimates that the odds of not seeing a new map in your first three missions are somewhere in the range of one in ten thousand.

I approach the entrance to the downed alien vessel cautiously with my flamer mech and move the rest of my squad up in support, sensing that the end is near. Yes! An Outsider – the alien pilots you find at every crash site – finally materialises, and makes to leave his ship. Sadly for him, I put a two-ton mech at the door on Overwatch. At the first sign of movement, my man lets loose a blistering railgun blast. The creature is dust. Earth is safe once more.



My people survived, this time, but Gupta tells me that if someone had popped their cybernetic clogs, the updated memorial would have recorded the date and cause of the soldier’s death as well as their name. I mull over some of the losses I took in last year’s campaign. ‘Killed by incidental car explosion’ doesn’t sound quite as impressive as ‘lasered to death by giant alien robot’, which implies some significant progress in the heroic death department. Enemy Within will let you award medals to special squaddies for as-yetunspecified performance benefits.

Many more tweaks have been made under the hood. Firaxis tell me that one of the big advantages to doing a proper expansion, rather than incremental DLC, is that it’s allowed them to delve deep into the codebase and devote the time needed to some serious rewiring. This has enabled them to fix the notorious enemy teleporting bug, and a few bugs that would deny soldiers their hardearned flanking bonuses. They’ve also made lots of what they call ‘quality of life’ improvements. Cover can be targeted by explosive weapons. Objects and enemies within blast radius now gain a red scanline effect that makes it clear what is and isn’t being targeted by the attack. If you take a squaddie out of your lineup, their gear is placed into an easily accessible locker, so you won’t have to check every squad member to see who has that arc thrower you need. It’s a collection of small but significant changes that the community has been requesting since Enemy Unknown released.

All of these additions add up to a chunky and exciting expansion for XCOM, but there’s definitely more to Enemy Within than I’ve seen so far. Gupta describes the campaign as being “like the director’s cut, the ultimate version of the game,” but also alludes to “a few new story beats.” My questions about base invasions and a rumoured rogue human antagonist element were stonewalled. “There are some pretty big additions in terms of the strategy layer and the situation room,” Gupta teased, “but we can’t talk about them yet.”

I suddenly envy the psychic soldiers of my Enemy Unknown campaign. I’d give up a percentage of my humanity to scan the room and extract all those hidden details. Come to think of it, I’d give at least an arm to have jet boots and a giant metal fist. That’s the appeal of Enemy Within: the Devil has all the best toys.