Oo Gin Lee
I have a tough choice to make. Should I send Crawford, Blueblood or Patchwork into the fray of battle?
Crawford is a demolition specialist, while Blueblood is a gunslinger who can fire a powerful shot that takes out multiple enemies. Patchwork, the tech mistress, can command her drone to electrify enemies. And they are just the human operatives.
There are also alien allies such as Torque, a snake that spits poison, binds enemies with her grip and wields a submachine gun. Or Verge, the skinny, mind-controlling Sectoid that turns enemies on each other.
Welcome to XCOM: Chimera Squad, the latest game in the turn-based tactical franchise which puts you in charge of managing a team of 11 operatives - humans, hybrids and aliens. Your goal is to keep the peace in the utopian City 31, where its citizens live side by side with beings from outer space.
The game starts with the assassination of the city's mayor and your team needs to investigate three potential rogue factions that might be the culprit behind it. Unlike earlier versions of the game where you search the globe for alien threats, all the action here is focused on the city you have sworn to protect.
You start with four agents and will hire more. The game is essentially a series of missions whereby you have to send your four best operatives to kill baddies, save scientists, sabotage the enemy's evil plans and more. The focus is in the turn-based combat, where you have to make use of the capabilities of each agent to succeed. As you win fights, you will earn three resources - cash, intel and elerium - needed to upgrade your equipment, improve your economy and unlock new technologies.
I really like that Chimera is almost totally focused on the battles.
Each agent gets two action points every turn. Moving, shooting, reloading and throwing a grenade will typically cost you one action point a move. But once you use a combat action, your turn ends. So you can move and then shoot, or reload and shoot, but you cannot shoot and then move.
The key strategy then is to make full use of your action points and plan how to upgrade your agents so they can pull off more attacks during their turn.
For example, the shotgun-toting ranger Godmother has a skill that lets her get three action points on her first turn. But it would be useless unless you have a gun accessory called Reflex Grip which stops her turn from ending after she shoots. That means Godmother can shoot three times, potentially taking out three enemies instead of one.
Verge, the psionic alien, is my favourite. He looks weak at first but his ultimate power, called Puppeteer, lets him control a whole bunch of baddies.
FOR
• Amazing hand-drawn graphics
• Deep character customisation
• Focus on combat
• Affordable for a quality game
AGAINST
• I could unlock only eight of the 11 agents in one playthrough
• Occasional bugs and crashes
• No multiplayer option
SPECS
PRICE: $27.90 (PC only, via Steam)
GENRE: Turn-based tactical combat
RATING: 9/10
Apart from combat, you need to figure out how to stop the city from falling into anarchy. To do so, you need to earn resources to invest in building city infrastructure to strengthen the economy.
When you unlock the Scavenger's "black market", you can access the best equipment that can turn the tide of battle. They include epic guns with names like Endless Brevity and Lonely Herald, which can take out the toughest baddies with a shot.
Having played all the XCOM franchises since the original game in 1994, Chimera is definitely one of my favourites.
