XCOM: Enemy Within - Preview Roundup

I managed to find two more previews for XCOM: Enemy Within. So lets call this the first preview roundup.

EuroGamer

A sequel? Not quite. Instead - and this is weirdly appropriate, given the ground it covers - think of this as more of an augmentation.

"What we've been working on is a expansion pack for Enemy Unknown in the style of big Firaxis expansions like Gods and Kings," explains Ananda Gupta, who's been leading the XCOM team on the creation on Enemy Within - a project he's finally able to talk about. "So Enemy Unknown tells the story of the alien invasion and the Earth's defence. Enemy Within is the same invasion. You're starting from day one and then proceeding through the same arc. It's an overlay on the original. It's not the next episode, and it doesn't take place after the ending of the first game. It's the same storyline - but with lots, lots more stuff."

It's an expansion in terms of mechanics rather than narrative, in other words, which sounds like the perfect route to take for a game that keeps its players as close to its mechanical heart as XCOM does. Anyway, if you're still a bit disappointed that you won't get to see off an entirely new extra-terrestrial armada, Gupta and company have a pretty surefire way of making it up to you. Or - ha ha! - meching it up to you. Trust me: a few paragraphs from now, that line is going to be really witty.

Destructoid

Being at gamescom has its perks, especially when it comes to having the first opportunity to play a newly announced game. Or in this case, a new expansion so big that it's essentially a new game.

Those big-headed aliens? They haven't gone anywhere. While I'll never tire of blowing their bulbous heads off at close range, some more fire power to do so would be nice. Enemy Within brings that needed firepower a whole bunch of gameplay advances to the formula and lays them out in a story that's actually parallel to the original. Someone up there in videogame heaven loves us.

Let's get the biggest thing out of the first: Mechs. Or, in this case, MECs: mechanized exoskeletal cybersuits. And playing with them is as good as you'd imagine. They do big damage and can take big hits, making them a lot of fun. It's good that they can take the hits, as they can't really get out of the way fast enough. They're big but they're not too big -- there's a guy inside, after all.