The agents of Chimera Squad banter with one another and crack jokes both at HQ and out in the field.

Cutscenes and story sequences appear as if they’re lifted directly from the pages of a comic book.

Bright, saturated colors replace the moody blue hues of Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2.

The game’s presentation and tone are easily the most noticeable changes. It looks like XCOM 2 and it plays like XCOM 2, but it’s the little things that give Chimera Squad its own unique identity that sets it apart from its grim predecessors. Instead, it’s a fun diversion that serves as a sidegrade rather than a fully-fledged sequel. The excellent 2016 sequel and its meaty expansion will still be the bread and butter of hardcore XCOM players, mostly due to their wealth of content and the enormous back catalog of community-created mods, but Chimera Squad doesn’t set out to be XCOM 3. XCOM: Chimera Squad doesn’t replace XCOM 2. That’s just the first on a long list of changes to the traditional XCOM formula made in Chimera Squad, but thankfully, these modifications come together to create a fresh, albeit safe, XCOM spinoff that is sure to satisfy longtime fans of the series. It’s one of the primary reasons strategy fans are drawn to XCOM ( other than it being a best in class strategy series), and when XCOM: Chimera Squad was revealed to be ditching custom characters entirely in favor of a predetermined cast, many fans were skeptical, myself included. The modern XCOM games provide an excellent middle ground between fleshed-out characters and generic troops, providing you with an endless pool of random soldiers that you can then project a personality onto, whether that be your friends, your coworkers, or your favorite celebrities. While not every strategy game attempts to flesh out its characters and world as much as something like last year’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses, even the faceless pawns in a game like Civilization live out their own unique stories over the course of a campaign, with each new ability and scar becoming a memento of a hard-fought victory. The heart of any strategy game is its characters.

Xcom 2 stuck in action cam