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'XCOM: Enemy Within' Preview: Making A Great Game Even Better

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XCOM: Enemy Within is a fantastic expansion to one of 2012's best games.

Firaxis has done something remarkable.

They've taken one of my favorite games of 2012---XCOM: Enemy Unknown---and made it even better. Lot's better actually, with tons of new content, customization options, and challenge that makes revisiting the game a real pleasure.

XCOM: Enemy Within is an expansion that doesn't merely tag on content around the edges of Enemy Unknown. Rather, the new material and game options are woven directly into the fabric of the game itself. This is similar to other Firaxis expansions, such as the recent Brave New World expansion to Civ 5. Content isn't treated as a sequel or follow-up; rather, it becomes a natural reimagining of what the game could be with tons more stuff to do.

One of the best parts of Enemy Within is something simple that has almost no impact on gameplay: character customization.

Now your boring squad members can't just distinguish themselves by sporting purple hair, you can completely change the way each one looks---and sounds. A few dozen different armor color combinations, new hair styles, and a bunch of different helmet/hat options make each soldier truly unique looking. (And yes, you can wear a Fedora.)

Maybe that shouldn't matter so much, but I find that the more level of character customization I have, the more invested I become in my team and their potential life-ending altercations with aliens.

You can also customize the voice of your troopers, with several new language options making your squad a multi-national team in more than just flag patch. If you get annoyed by squad chatter, you can just change everyone's language to one you don't speak.

Beyond surface level stuff, Enemy Within adds something called "Meld" to the game.

This is a precious material that can be used to enhance your soldiers either via genetic modification or as new, robotic MEC units. Genetic mods enhance aim, movement, and various other aspects of your soldiers. But transforming them into MECs makes them awesome super-soldiers, albeit while losing any upgrades you may have already given them. They upgrade as MECs now, rather than Snipers or Heavies, and so forth.

It's also a bit harder to upgrade MECs since you'll need the prerequisite research first.

To get Meld, you need to find the canisters full of the stuff on certain missions. These all have a count-down timer, which can make reaching them in time a trick, though from what I've played of the expansion---not all of it, but probably around half of a full campaign---it adds tension more than outright challenge.

Along with Meld and MECs and genetic enhancements, come new buildings to facilitate the creation of these new super soldiers. There are also new weapons and other items and new research projects to complete.

Myriad little new details and resources to manage, making the game more challenging and more rewarding---and changing the basic early game strategy quite a bit simply by requiring a new priority calculus.

That only deepens when the EXALT come into play.

A secret society of humans bent on using the alien invasion for their own ends, the EXALT are a dapper bunch of villains that add an entirely new story to the game, replete with new missions and obstacles to overcome. You send an un-armored, pistol-wielding infiltration agent to spy on EXALT and then go extract that agent with your squad.

This adds a nice new complication to things (and allows some missions to complete with a total of seven squad members.)

A new medal mechanic allows you to give slight bonuses vis-a-vis medals to your squad members. And you can rename these, which has allowed my men and women to earn a number of Badass Medals of Doom and such.

All told, I'm extremely happy with the expansion. It adds lots of new layers and a great new level of challenge to the game, while allowing you to more fully own and customize your squad. MECs have some really cool new features like flamethrowers and powerful melee attacks, and the new enemies---including the invisible flying squids known as Seekers---are lots of fun.

There are some brilliant new missions, including one frightening encounter at a fishing dock with far too many zombies and those dreaded, damned chrysalids. Perhaps even better, there are simply more varied levels now, with new environments to explore. All told, 40 new maps have been added.

I'll follow up with a full review of the expansion, but so far I'm quite impressed.

The game will be available on PC as a $29.99 expansion. On consoles, gamers will need to buy the Commander's Edition for $39.99, a stand-alone version that includes the vanilla title and previous DLC.

Enemy Within launches November 12th on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

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