History is defined by points of transition. The discovery of fire. The invention of the Walkman. The fall of the Berlin Wall. That moment sometime after 3am when you finally grappled XCOM: Enemy Unknown by the neck, wrestled it over your knee and administered a good, sound, vengeful spanking.
Xbox 360's greatest strategy game has played merry hell with our nerves over the past few weeks, tantalising us with mastery only to slam on the brakes in the form of a new, obscenely powerful alien type, a less than timely terror mission, a rogue Muton posse to the rear. Matt's OXM Squad videos bear witness to this, but he's been playing XCOM a lot since our review went live, and now feels qualified to lay down a few expert-level tips.
If you're midway through and having trouble, the below is essential reading. If you're just starting, you might want to check out these starter tips and our XCOM: Enemy Unknown class guide.
1. CHEAT THE PSYCHIC LOTTERY
We'd recommend avoiding this tip if you want to play through XCOM properly, but there's no harm in abusing the game's save & load functions if you're planning to try and finish it on Iron Man mode afterwards.
Even when you've finished building the facility that lets you test soldiers for latent psy abilities, it still takes a while to find soldiers that can use them. You can send three troops to be a tested at a time, but doing so puts them out of action for 10 days - taking all of their equipment with them in the process. If you're hoping that your star squad might have secret Professor X skills, be sure to unequip their precious gear so that other troops can use it while they're gone.
10 days is quite a lot of time, but there's an obvious exploit: save the game before you start testing, and let the 10 days pass without doing anything. If none of the soldiers have psychic powers, simply load the game and try it again. If you're playing on Iron Man mode, you'll have to choose the people you test much more carefully - characters with a high Will stat are more likely to show promise.
One of the upgrades in the officer training facility gives every soldier a boost to their Will every time they rank up. If you find a couple of psychic rookies it's worth buying this upgrade before you level them to max, as it will massively increase their chances of success when using the top-level psychic skills.
3 comments so far...
kronk10 on 16 Oct '12 said:
On my 3rd re-start of the game and have assaulted the alien base but i left it out almost entirely for most of the game while i upgraded everything so when i assaulted the base all of my men were wearing the top gear with plasma based weapons. Also helps that my men were all major class. Just unlocked some more goodies but what helped me the most was satellites build 2 satellite uplinks early on and get them up and you can get in some serious money for all the loveley upgrades
fracturedrich on 16 Oct '12 said:
i love this game with a passion but them damn aliens have got skills i play on ironman mode but to be honest there should not be a choice in that matter but ive paid for this choice in full this is my third complete restart as i would have been ended anyway for losing to many countrys but this time ime treading carefull and not sending my best troops to be slaughterd every chance i get i can just imagine how tough the game gets towards the end when they break out the bigger guns.this game has made my game collection complete i hope its done well enough to warrent more of the same in the future
kronk10 on 17 Oct '12 said:
You will pee your pants when you see some of end of game stuff! I still have not completed it i have assaulted the alien base (1st time and no deaths) and i think there may be more new aliens i have not seen yet. It is all about the satellites get 2 uplinks built side by side and build loads of satellites, if you lose countries do not worry you can only save so much. I lost brazil and a few others and started off with A grades then some D grades then B's getting a decent sniper with a decent top end weapon is a must!!! And i agree with you on how good this game is i look at it in my game collection and think how out of place a strategy game like this is on the console then think it is probally one of the better games of this gen console!