HIGH The tweaks revitalize the campaign. Finishing several missions with a 100% hit rate.

LOW Getting all of the DLC properly activated is counter-intuitive. Performance issues.

WTF Seriously, don’t play Iron Man mode.

When I played XCOM 2’s original, vanilla version from 2016, I felt much the same way that Darren did in his review. Despite being a huge fan of tactics titles and of the previous XCOM games specifically, it just didn’t grab me – it didn’t seem better or different than what had come before, and worse, it felt repetitive and tired. I was disappointed, bailed out, and put it out of my mind until I heard some people singing the praises of the War of the Chosen expansion.

What a difference an extra 18 months of development makes! While the core experience shared between XCOM 2 and XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is essentially the same, the details, tweaks and additions make a world of difference.

The biggest thing, obviously, are the Chosen themselves — three super-powered alien foes who pop up at the worst possible moments to cause trouble for the player and their crew. Anytime they appear, a successful mission running smoothly can turn into panic after a single turn. Not only are they a dangerous wildcard, the devs did a great job of making them villains that got under my skin. They sneered, they quipped, and they were a colossal pain in the ass – and they were great. After all, there’s not much excitement to a story that doesn’t have a noteworthy enemy, and WotC has three. Killing them felt marvelous after being at their mercy for hours and hours.

On the other side of things, WotC also offers a set of ‘heroes’ – new classes that are capable of incredible feats on the battlefield. The Skirmishers are alien hybrid troops who’ve broken away from the overlords controlling earth, the Reapers are a sniper class who can remain hidden on the battlefield and sneak into anything, and the Templars are a psychic melee class capable of ripping enemies apart with energy blades and parrying any attack. Each one of these is an ace in the hole and they saved the asses of their fellow troops time and time again.

Other aspects of the expansion are equally well-done, especially the expanded mission variety offering several new map and objective types that kept the gameplay fresh – sometimes I’d be setting up an ambush with the enemy completely unaware, sometimes we’d be rushing headlong towards a goal while a timer was ticking away, sometimes it was a smash and grab, a straight-up assault, a rescue, or something else entirely. Each new challenge made me use my troops in different ways under different kinds of pressure, and the quality of the tactics easily sustained my interest from the first mission to the last.

Honestly, the attention to detail in WotC is outstanding. Characters can develop bonds with each other over the course of several missions, and this camaraderie awards them special abilities like taking extra turns, or being granted buffs. After a battle, the player can create their own anti-alien propaganda posters that pop up in the game’s environments, and I spent far too much time creating each one. There are tons and tons of tech to research and develop, which means that new elements are constantly being added to the mix over the whole course of the campaign — a powered exosuit that can create its own cover or a guided smart bomb that can go around corners and straight into a group of alien berserkers? Yes, please!

While the game doesn’t run optimally (some framerate chugging and stutters are quite prevalent, especially in areas with a lot of special effects) the upgraded, enhanced formula that XCOM 2: War of the Chosen offers is absolutely superb. I was fully engaged in this rebellion against humanity’s extraterrestrial overlords, and I’d have no hesitation recommending it to anyone in search of a top-tier tactics experience. And for those, like me, who bounced off of the original XCOM 2? It’s absolutely worth coming back.  Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Firaxis and published by 2K Games. It is currently available on PC, PS4 and XBO.  This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 65 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Use of Tobacco, and Violence. The official ESRB description reads as follows: This is a strategy game in which players attempt to save Earth from an alien invasion. From a ¾-top-down perspective, players manage resources, engage in combat missions, rescue characters, and terrorize alien installations. Players use rifles, machine guns, pistols, and grenades to kill enemies (e.g., human-, insect-, beast-like characters) in turn-based combat. Attack moves occur in brief cutscenes that depict characters getting shot or wounded/killed by explosions. Splashes and pools of yellow and red blood sometimes appear when characters are injured or killed. During the course of the game, players can customize soldiers with accessories, including lit cigarettes and cigars.

Colorblind Modes: There (are/are no) colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: It’s a turn-based game, so no audio cues are necessary. All dialogue is subtitled. The text is not resizable. Additionally, there are tons of on-screen indicators for nearly everything including alien sounds and the status of troops. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable and there is no control diagram. Although the game is complex, players will use the left stick to select objects or move a cursor, face buttons to confirm or cancel, and occasionally a shoulder button to change between menus.

HIGH Dashing across the map to chop up alien scumbags with the Ranger's Reaper ability.

LOW The current PC build is a technical horror show.

WTF My entire squad missing every shot during a perfectly-planned ambush.

It's nice when a developer provides a personalized experience in their games. For example, XCOM 2 is clearly based on the results of my Classic Ironman run from the first XCOM—everyone got their asses handed to them in short order and the Earth ended up under alien control. Of course, it's tough to keep a good (read: awful) commander down, and it's not long before the new, significantly diminished XCOM project is up and running again. Second time's the charm! 

Based on this beginning premise, things have changed somewhat on Earth. A peacekeeping force known as Advent now rules mankind. Benevolent on the surface, there are shady goings-on behind the scenes. If humanity doesn't want to get rendered into DNA-flavored goo, they need to strike back at the alien occupiers by setting up a guerrilla network across the globe that can wreck their colonization plans with the aid of a flying mobile base of operations, the Avenger.

The Avenger takes the place of the standard home base from Enemy Unknown, but most of its capabilities are similar. When not in active combat, the war effort has to be bolstered through weapons, research and technology production to give troops on the ground a fighting chance. Most of the upgrades are disappointingly similar to those in the previous game, but there's a ton of snazzy customization options so soldiers can be visually distinct and easily recognizable on the field. 

As for gameplay, it's business as usual, although the skills in each class have been given an overhaul, with the Ranger being my favorite—they might as well have been called Ninjas given that they now carry swords around for up-close-and-personal conflict resolution. Support class members are now Specialists, and carry nifty little drones to crack encryptions, steal resources and hijack mechanical foes from a safe distance. Firaxis did a good job in shaking up the classes without changing them beyond recognition.

Something else that's new is the ability to scout. Enemies can often be caught unaware of troop insertion during missions, allowing the chance to set ambushes. This concealment expires the moment a shot is fired or if someone gets discovered, but it does aid in wiping out some bad guys before they have a chance to get ready. It's satisfying to kick off a massacre by having someone run in and chop enemies with a sword before gunning the alien scumbags down as they try to flee.

These changes are solid, but that's not to say XCOM 2 is superior to its predecessor since many of my previous issues have carried over, and some new things are worse.

I'm sad to see that opponents still get a free and completely unwarranted opportunity to flee for cover upon being discovered, and the percentage indicators displaying the likelihood of hitting a target still feel like they're plucked from the air at random. I was incredibly sick of these misleading percentages by the time I finished XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and I could feel my teeth grinding themselves into dust every time I missed a high probability shot in XCOM 2.

There was one memorable instance when I set up an ambush against an enemy in an open field with the whole squad on overwatch, only to see the useless buggers miss every single shot in super-slow motion. The punchline to this particular joke was watching one of my veterans get his head blown off at the start of the next turn. Tactics, schmactics.

What's worse still is that many of the missions feel too similar to one another. Drop in, hunt aliens through the fog of war, duke it out and extract. Nothing seems to shake it up after a certain point— enemies get more health, armor, and even some new abilities, but the tactics required remain the same. Player equipment also plateaus way too early, and these factors meant that extended play sessions felt like grinding through samey encounters.

It's also worth noting that many of the missions are now on a timer. I didn't mind this much overall, but it does remove some of the tactical decision-making. Time limits can be harsh, and hoofing it across the map in order to make it to objectives in time leads to less-than-desirable combat situations. 

While XCOM 2 is a PC exclusive right now, I'm not sure why. Initial reports of earth-shattering changes to the controls are shown to be nonsense—it handled fine on consoles before, and the sequel remains similar in execution. I've also heard it was exclusive so as to be more welcoming to the mod community… Maybe Firaxis hopes fans will provide fixes and add some much-needed variety to their work before they release it on console? 

Whatever the real reason for PC exclusivity was, it certainly had nothing to do with ensuring smooth performance. Playing at launch, the experience has been embarrassingly bad from a technical standpoint —the campaign's full of glitches, stutters and annoying little bugs. Things frequently pause after enemy turns or moments before events occur, my cursor often disappears after switching elevations, the Geoscape map screen runs at about fifteen frames per second (or less!) and several important indicators wouldn't show up correctly—being unable to see where I need to evacuate from, for example, gave the aliens a wholly unfair advantage beyond their technological supremacy.

To be perfectly blunt, XCOM 2 is a pretty bad experience right now, and the best advice I can give is simple: wait for upcoming patches to fix things before buying. There's a much better game hidden somewhere beneath the performance issues and gameplay flaws, and it's a shame. With a few minor tweaks to the formula, I'd probably be singing a happier tune. As it stands, it's just too buggy, too repetitive and too damned random to deliver the experience it should. Rating: 4.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via digital download and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 35 hours of play was devoted to single-player modes (completed 1 times) and 1 hour of play in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood, use of tobacco and violence. Those pesky aliens have done some nasty stuff to humanity, but I'm pretty sure teens can handle it.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: No problems here—subtitles are available, and plenty of tags pop up to show soldiers' declining mental states or whatever.

Remappable controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. However, it can't be used with standard console controllers—only the Steam one.

Colorblind modes: There are not colorblind modes available in the options. A short look online reveals that there have been complaints from players attempting to differentiate between the deep red and black used in the health bars.

HIGH Squeezing out a transcendence victory just as my main competitor starting shoveling units into the Emancipation Gate.

LOW Finishing the Exodus Gate on a map that had far too little free space to actually achieve the victory.

WTF Getting condemned as a warmonger because none of my enemies would negotiate for peace.

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth begins inauspiciously, in darkness.

A pod lands on an uncharted planet, leaving the player to explore it by moving a buggy across its surface, and within a few turns, the player can launch satellites. This mandate to explore in the early game, carried over from the classic Civilization structure, provides a way to fill turns with activity while the player lacks sufficient cities, terraformers, and military units to make things interesting, so keeping this initial phase of ‘discovery' makes a certain kind of design sense. It makes no logical sense, however, when that landing pod came down from outer space, and the civilization has the capacity to launch satellites immediately. In that choice, though, as in many others, Beyond Earth clings to the familiar rather than develops a unique experience.

Of course, being part of the Civilization series, certain things are expected. The player must build and improve cities and claim resources in order to provide a base for military might and economic and technological advancement. Only by strategically balancing the need for money, strength, and research, carefully choosing which city improvements and which unique wonders of the world to build on which turn, can the player's society triumph over others. Unfortunately, Beyond Earth hews too closely to the established Civilization model rather than taking its sci-fi setting as a chance to experiment with the weird.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, to which this game is a spiritual sequel, imagined a world sheathed in a semi-sentient fungal substrate of a planet-scale mind, infested by telepathic worms. Beyond Earth offers up nothing so strange or so challenging. Some tiles have a harmful miasma that damages units, but it's nowhere near the obstacle the fungus was. Otherwise the worlds of Beyond Earth are almost completely mundane, except for giant bugs with the capacity to sink battleships. Asimov has been traded in for Verhoeven, sci-fi for SyFy.

If the worlds I found were too reminiscent of Earth for my taste, the same could be said of the factions. All of them are tied to the geography of the abandoned planet. They've been remixed so no identifiable nations are in play, but I still got the sense of a story tied to the old homeworld rather than one directed towards the future in the stars.

At least the player can eventually orient the development of his new civilization away from the mother planet, if they choose. The game allows the player to participate in three governing philosophies—requires it if she wants to develop her military units beyond the most basic level. Societies can cling to the old ways, insisting on human purity, or they can choose integration, either into the biology of the new planet or into the circuitry of computers.

The player picks this course by making choices in various quests in the game (some of which are broken) and, more significantly, by researching particular advances. As each of the different philosophies has attractive advantages and technologies, the choice seems significant. These can be difficult to parse out, however, as the web-like science interface tends to obscure rather than emphasize the benefits of particular routes of research.

Each philosophy has its own game-winning move, but while all of them boil down to building a large wonder and then doing a little extra work for 20 turns or so, they are badly balanced. The purity victory, for instance, requires building a minimum of four settlements, which can be a challenge even on a massive map if the game has gone on long enough. The biological integration approach, though, only requires the player to wait around for 20 turns (and can be sped up).

There's a similar requirement for the universally-available ending of contacting an ancient race of aliens. To get that far, the player must fend off other factions. Unfortunately, diplomacy is the game's weakest system. The interface itself tends to obscure information, particularly when enemy factions want to trade money or resources mid-turn. The enemy AI is also shot through with head-scratching behavior, as when two factions that were both actively trading and on friendly terms with me simultaneously declared war without having lodged any previous complaint.

This scuffle damaged me none, as the AI is broadly incompetent at actually prosecuting a military campaign, and I fended them off with a handful of units. However, both belligerents refused to negotiate for peace. I took a few cities to be able to offer them back as bargaining chips, and still they wouldn't talk. So, continuing to fruitlessly request peace talks every few turns, I methodically rolled up both their empires (again, never building a single additional unit) at which point all the remaining nations in the world condemned me for warmongering. While it was all quite frustrating, this sort of behavior wasn't that far out of the norm.

Civilization's legendary procedural hook remains intact in Beyond Earth. I did want to play one more turn. That addictiveness comes from the formula, though, and the best that can be said of this game is that it largely stays out of the formula's way. Beyond Earth feels like it's coasting, riffing ever so slightly on a well-worn loop, but seemingly uninterested in real innovation or imagination. It may leave our planet, but Beyond Earth doesn't get far enough away from its roots. Rating: 6 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via retail purchase and reviewed on a home built Windows 7 PC equipped with an Intel i7 processor, 8 GB RAM, and a single Radeon R9 270X graphics card. Approximately 70 hours of play was devoted to single-player modes (completed 6 times) and 0 hours of play in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains alcohol reference, fantasy violence, and language. The alcohol reference is minor and completely forgettable. E10 strikes me as a high rating in terms of content, though the stately pace of the strategy gameplay may not appeal to younger children.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: Nothing essential is conveyed via sound. Some parts of the interface primarily indicate that they have gone from good to bad status by changing color from green to red so colorblind individuals may have a little trouble keeping track of health.

HIGH My Mec unit punching an Exalt scumbag through a wall and halfway down the street.

LOW It all feels a little too familiar despite the changes.

WTF Those engineering lads at Xcom suggested cutting our agents apart just a little bit too quickly for comfort.

Xcom: Enemy Within isn’t a traditional video game sequel, or even a new chapter in the Xcom saga. It’s an old fashioned expansion pack that adds additional layers of play and new story threads into the original game. 

Most of the new features revolve around a substance known as Meld, which—for reasons unknown—the aliens now drop into most missions with a self-destruct timer already activated. It’s effectively a new currency or resource, with Xcom’s finest now having to hightail it over to the canisters and scoop out the contents before they explode. Successfully doing so will lead to new research and augmentation options. 

After a few of these Meld containers have been recovered from the field and researched, Xcom’s super-boffins come to the conclusion that ingesting alien DNA or slicing off our soldier’s limbs and stuffing them into mech suits would be a fun way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. Strap Johnson down on that table over there and warm up the spinning saw blades, we’re taking this fight back to those Xenomorph scum!

Option one is to use Meld to integrate Xcom agents into massive hulking mechanical constructs of death. Even better, those wacky Xcom engineers have replaced their voice boxes so that they all sound like Autobots as they stomp around the mission grounds punching aliens in the face and vaporizing them with lasers. On an audio and visual level, their inclusion is a real treat. If they pushed out a sequel where entire squads were comprised of these steel monstrosities, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

As awesome as the Mec suits are, however, when it comes to pure effectiveness they probably lag behind the option to genetically modify the Xcom soldiers instead. Instead of lopping off their limbs, those limbs are instead powered up beyond standard human capabilities. Eyeballs magically become able to spot a fly at ten thousand yards and confer aim and critical bonuses to each shot. Legs are suddenly able to propel agents onto rooftops in a single bound. Hearts inexplicably clone a twin which prevents soldiers from being instantly killed when shot down.

Yes, these are useful options to have—and each limb or organ has two choices associated with it for further customization, revealing themselves as autopsies are completed. Frankly, these enhancements are game-breakingly powerful. A Sniper with double tap, squad sight and armed with a plasma powered sniper rifle was already a force to be reckoned with in the original version of Xcom. Adding the ability for them to literally turn invisible while rushing around the map is arguably unbalanced—but great fun regardless. 

Naturally, there are a couple of new alien types to deal with too—but only a couple. The flying squidlike Stalker stealths its way over to isolated units and starts strangling them.  This is usually ineffective as they tend to immediately get blasted to hell by any surrounding operatives in the area. Sectopods are a significantly more vicious threat, essentially an alien counterpoint to Xcom’s Mec units. They take a ton of damage, can fire twice in one turn and are a significant obstacle for unprepared squads.

It’s not just alien incursions that Xcom has to worry about these days though—the new Exalt faction likes to throw a wrench in the works any time they get the chance. A rogue paramilitary group of fairly misguided humans, they’re after whatever secrets and technology the aliens have to offer and will cheerfully undermine Xcom’s war efforts if left unmolested for any length of time. 

To counter this new enemy, scanning the globe for Exalt cells is an important task which must be carried out from time to time lest the filthy, exploitative jerkfaces start stealing Xcom’s funding, destroying their research or actively spreading panic throughout any countries funding the Xcom project. Once discovered, undercover operatives must be dispatched from the squad to infiltrate their ranks and, after a period of time has elapsed, extracted with whatever data they can find. 

Having this additional layer of espionage underpinning the core gameplay sounds great in theory, but the Exalt missions are way too simple. They usually involve either a ‘King of the Hill’ style objective where enemies must be kept from tapping into communications arrays—set up early and it’s easy to pick them off as they rush in like idiots—or keeping the undercover agent safe as they make their way back to the ship. Also, their storyline doesn’t really have a satisfying conclusion, barely even dipping into what their ideologies or reasoning could be.

That’s where this expansion loses a certain amount of lustre—while these additions are undeniably neat, they’re not enough to significantly evolve the base Xcom experience beyond its original outing. Core gameplay quibbles remain, like alien reprobates getting a free and completely unearned turn on their discovery to better reposition themselves. Some shots can still pass through solid objects to hit their target at impossible trajectories, and free-aiming explosives can be tricky in certain situations. It’s a shame that the core play hasn’t been tweaked for the better, because it’s still a damn fine game—just one with some unfortunate issues holding it back.

Xcom: Enemy Within is a decent expansion to a slightly flawed original. There are interesting ideas in there, but neither the Exalt faction nor the new units shake things up enough, and many of the niggling irritations from the original release are still present and accounted for. That being said, more Xcom is definitely a good thing, even if it doesn’t shave off all the rough edges quite yet.  It may not be an essential purchase for those who’ve already gone through the game unless the sound of giant hulking mechs really appeals—and it should—but for new players or those curious as to what the series has to offer it’s undoubtedly the best way to play. Rating 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 24 hours of play was devoted to single-player modes and 1 hours of play in multiplayer modes. The game was completed.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood and gore, strong language and violence. It's comparatively light on bloodshed compared to many M rated titles however, so a strong stomach isn't really a requirement for play.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: While aliens can be heard poking around out of sight, visual aids essentially provide the same function. In short, it should be easy enough to play without sound.

Source: Extra Credits on Blip

HIGH The resurrection of a long-absent, fan favorite franchise.

LOW Restarting after ten hours due to crushing poverty.

WTF Walls don't function properly in this universe.

If nothing else, the developers at Firaxis had their work cut out for them.

The original X-COM: UFO Defense was an undisputed classic held in high regard by anyone old enough to have played it in the early 90s, and it's never easy to update something so treasured for a current audience. From this perspective, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is largely successful in taking the core source material and re-molding it to fit current sensibilities.

On the other hand, when viewed as an experience unto itself, it's not as balanced and as satisfying as it could be. I certainly want to applaud the work that's been done, but while the game gives a stellar first impression, I found that my enjoyment decreased incrementally with each additional hour invested.

As an isometric squad-based, turn-based strategy game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is easy to get into thanks to a straightforward formula and a fiercely streamlined amount of options. The emphasis is on tactics. Players will spend most of their time moving characters from cover to cover while taking shots at visible enemies, or holding in "overwatch" mode to guard against any that suddenly appear. Each map is of a small-to-moderate size, and portrays various real-world scenes; a gas station, a stretch of forest, an office building, and so on.

Characters are divided into four classes (Assault, Support, Heavy and Sniper) and the player is free to mix and match as they choose. The initial squad size is only a quartet, but the maximum of six troopers is soon reached, and it's just the right number. Less feels like too few, and more would be unwieldy.

It's been quite a while since a game of this sort grabbed me; the Western art direction and extraterrestrial subject material are a great change of pace from the usual Japanese-influenced offerings, and there's something deeply satisfying about moving soldiers around like the deadliest chess pieces that ever were. It's not quite as deep or as nuanced as I might have wished, but it's still satisfying to bring the hammer down on aliens through solid planning and brainpower.

I was also quite happy to see that the HQ management of the original was included in Enemy Unknown, although like combat, it's very streamlined and simplified. This side of XCOM asks the player to design their base of operations for optimal efficiency. A wide variety of rooms can be installed (Workshop, Science Lab, Power Generators, etc.) and placing similar sections adjacently will increase their functionality. Also carried over is the now-classic ability to dissect alien corpses for developing high-tech items and ever-deadlier weaponry.

When viewed on a macro scale, XCOM: Enemy Unknown seems to be the total package, and a spot-on update to something which earned the devotion of so many players back in the day. However, once I got over the initial rush of this long-lost face looking so fit and trim, its weaknesses started to appear. For example, as a strategy and tactics fan, I found it hard to accept the fact that line-of-sight in the environment plays an inconsistent role in most circumstances, and even worse, throws logic out the window with the "overwatch" mode mentioned earlier.

When a character is "overwatching," they get a free shot at any enemy who crosses their field of vision. The problem is that the game doesn't recognize when the shots are impossible. I saw characters shooting through walls, solid structures, and even entire buildings at enemies—and then hitting them—with laughable regularity. I have no idea how the developers thought the game was "done" when these ludicrous shots are possible.

The non-combat aspects of XCOM: Enemy Unknown have issues as well, primarily in the balance of resources and money. After getting ten hours in on my first playthrough, I was in such a severe state of poverty that I felt it necessary to scrap everything and start over. On my second attempt, I ended up with a cash surplus and frequent shortages of raw materials.

It's not always clear which resources will be necessary to advance the plot, so in trying to kit my troops with better gear, I was inadvertently consuming things I needed later. Due to the frequent lack of story-crucial materials, it's too easy to get stuck in tedious cycles of grinding through dull, samey missions while waiting for the game to drop what's required to maintain forward momentum.

The developers have said this paucity of resources was intentional, as a way of making players feel the tension of deciding between wants and needs, but it doesn't feel tense—it's just progress-halting bottlenecking that unnecessarily inflates playtime. As a result, the campaign's pace sputters into an overlong, patience-testing trudge when it should be ramping up to a fevered pitch.

Apart from what I've mentioned, there were production issues to deal with—I had characters "fall" through the world several times, and I had two sessions where my characters could move but not shoot. Because of the limited camera angles, it was sometimes hard to tell where a rocket would hit (friendly fire? No thanks!) and it's often tough to work effectively in multi-level buildings. It was also common to find that the top portion of the screen was cut off when zoomed-in, leaving crucial information unavailable while deciding whether to take a key shot.

While I still call myself an XCOM fan and was thrilled to see the property return after so many years, I couldn't commit to XCOM: Enemy Unknown wholeheartedly. Although I appreciate the update for modern audiences, the game comes off as a bit undercooked and stumbles on things which should be airtight. On the other hand, it's still a very welcome addition to a genre that's gone a bit stale—just be prepared for a little probing when dealing with these creatures from another world. Rating: 7.0 out of 10..

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Xbox 360. Approximately 34 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. No time was spent in multiplayer mode.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood and gore, strong language and violence. Although this game wouldn't be my first choice when my kids needed something to kill a few hours with, I didn't find it particularly objectionable, either. Of course, most of the action is about aliens shooting humans, or humans shooting aliens, but the graphics are mostly on the small side and hardly the bloodiest thing I've ever seen. I genuinely don't remember any instances of strong language.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There shouldn't be any problems. There are no auditory cues necessary for gameplay although the sounds and music do shift in certain circumstances. That said, I didn't find the sounds to be of great use, and had no difficulty playing with the sound off. All dialogue in the game can be accompanied with subtitles.

Amidst the sea of near indistinguishable first- and third-person shooters, MMOs and MMO shooters at PAX East, I found it somewhat ironic that two particular titles that stood out to me where both remakes of classic games: XCOM: Enemy Unknown
and Double Dragon Neon.

XCOM wasn't playable on the convention floor, but the developers were giving 25-minute gameplay presentations to limited groups of gamers who were willing to line up for the preview.

The beauty of Enemy Unknown is that fans of the original X-COM can rest assured that this isn't a duck-and-covered shooter with old X-COM elements retrofitted in. This is unquestionably a turn-based strategy game with alien resource and research management at the heart of its gameplay.

During the demo presentation, the developers walked through a classic X-COM-style intercept mission that gave audiences a sense of the tactical combat flow and highlighted the 4 specific roles of squad characters, which include assault, support, heavy weapons and sniper.

The thing that I found most striking about the gameplay was that there was no grid on the play map of any sort. Players select squad members and can freely direct them to any point or cover position, which made the game feel more open and non-traditional/hybrid-ish.

Commands for squad members can include pinning down enemies with suppressing fire, taking clear sniper shots and lobbing grenades. Aliens will also attempt to ambush squad members running through open spaces and larger brute-type aliens would smash squad members who aren't given properly coverage.

The big visual difference is that once commands are executed, actions immediately play out in dramatic cinematic slow-motion close-ups where you can see the detail and personality of the 3D models interacting with one another in bloody engagement.

Environmental damage to the surroundings and destructible building walls will also play strong factor in the strategic battles. Characters will also not faint and be revived. Death is permanent in order to add to the tension to the gameplay.

Closing out the presentation, the developers also gave a sneak peek of the home base which they likened to a childhood "G.I. Joe aircraft carrier" toy that only the rich kid on the block could afford. In that base, there will be all kinds of options for squad mates to hone their skills and of course research and develop captured alien technology.

Everything from the style of the art to the game design choices made it abundantly clear to me that not only are the developers fans of the original X-COM games, but they have a strong sense of what made them so great and that has me super psyched for this release.

In literally the final hours of PAX East, I also managed to discover Double Dragon Neon tucked away in one of the farthest corners of the exhibition hall.

At first glance, I'll admit I wasn't bowled over. There hasn't been a Double Dragon sequel that really grabbed me since Super Double Dragon on the SNES. Seeing the cheesy "neon" moniker left me a little puzzled.

It wasn't until one of the staff members explained the concept that Double Dragon Neon is essentially a tribute to all things eighties like Big Trouble in Little China did I really get it.

Just recently on the GameCritics.com podcast, we talked about how many eighties action movies would make terrific IPs for games and how it was near criminal that there isn't a Big Trouble in Little China video game.

Well boys, our prayers have been answered in the form of Double Dragon Neon where Marian bears a striking resemblance to Kim Katrall, Billy and Jimmy Lee sport ass kickin' mullets, embarrassing fashion choices abound and when a co-op player goes down, the other player can revive him by symbolically rewinding a cassette tape with a pencil (turning the thumb stick).

The fighting gameplay also felt worthy of the Double Dragon co-op legacy. In addition to the standard punch and kick combos, there were also grappling attacks that could be initiated upon stunning a foe.

The classic knees-to-the-head and elbow-drops-to-back were absent, but throws and double noggin knockers (if you grabbed two stunned enemies close together) livened up the action. The staff person assured me more grappling techniques would be unlocked as the player progresses through the game.

The hands-on demo ends in a crazy cliffhanger. Entering a Chinese restaurant-looking building reveals itself to be pagoda-shaped rocket ship that launches into space. Once in space, Billy and Jimmy face off against a heavily armored Raiden-looking boss wielding a massive sword with Marian being held captive in the background.

So while the business of video games drive the development of countless first-person shooters and MMOs, I'm happy to see that game culture has progressed to the point where revivals and reimagining's of classic titles actually feels more than just desperate attempts to cash-in on nostalgia.

When done right and in a proper historical context like these two titles, it feels like there's actual cultural value and relevance in revisiting these titles as is so often the case in other mediums.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is set to release in fall of 2012 for Xbox 360 and PS3 and Double Dragon Neon is due out on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network in July 2012.