XCOM: Enemy Unknown Second Wave Update Has Landed

Being the unstoppable meddling force that we are, PC gamers (presumably wearing lab coats at the time) detected the existence of Second Wave back in October: a set of optional mutators that could be enabled to make XCOM behave differently. And by "behave differently" I mean "murder your soldiers even more brutally." A mod was released to enable those options, but in their unfinished state many were poorly balanced, and others simply didn't work. Those options have now been officially enabled in a free patch -- a patch which, by the way, also purportedly finally squashes the persistent and reviled teleporting aliens bug!

Also on the bug-fix list: the one that I hit during my review, which caused my squad to suffer a morale penalty when my mind-controlled alien puppet was killed. (In that particular instance, a Heavy was so traumatized by the death of the Muton Elite that he panicked and turned his heavy plasma on my psi soldier, killing her and ending the game.) I'm glad it's dead.

Anyway, the list of Second Wave modifiers includes many options for making your next XCOM campaign considerably more difficult than the last -- many of which Lead Designer Jake Solomon says are designed to bring Enemy Unknown closer in line with the harsh and unforgiving rules of the original X-COM: UFO Defense. Here's the full list:

• Damage Roulette: Weapons have a wider range of damage.
• New Economy: Randomized council member funding.
• Not Created Equally: Rookies will have random starting stats.
• Hidden Potential: As a soldier is promoted, stats increase randomly.
• Red Fog: Combat wounds will degrade the soldier's mission stats.
• Absolutely Critical: A flanking shot guarantees a critical hit.
• The Greater Good: Psionics can only be learned from interrogating a psionic alien.
• Marathon: The game takes considerably longer to complete.
• Results Driven: A country offers less funding as its panic level increases.
• High Stakes: Random rewards for stopping alien abductions.
• Diminishing Returns: Increased cost of satellite construction.
• More Than Human: The psionic gift is extremely rare.

(Note the absence of Blitz, a modifier that simply didn't make the cut.)

If you want to have an experience as close to the original X-COM as possible, I'd recommend enabling Damage Roulette, Not Created Equally, Hidden Potential, Red Fog, The Greater Good, and Marathon.

Of course, if you're just starting XCOM now, you won't be able to right away. The first four modifiers are available automatically, but the rest must be unlocked by beating the campaign on Normal, Classic, and Impossible difficulty. (If you've beaten those already, they're unlocked retroactively.) Each modifier can be enabled individually, so if you want a game to go extra long you can enable Marathon mode without also enabling the punishing Diminishing Returns, which makes each satellite you build cost more than the last, basically making covering the entire globe economically impossible. Sadly, there are no new achievements to mark the completion of a game with Second Wave modifiers enabled.

Solomon credits the modders who found the Second Wave options with helping him to bug test and (unknowingly) suggest additions. Solomon says players using the mod version pointed out flaws like Marathon mode requiring them to build two Hyperwave Decoders soldiers (since he'd simply doubled everything to extend the length of the campaign) and suggested that wounded soldiers take twice as long to recover, which has now been implemented in the final version.

These tweaks are all well and good (I plan to start a new run with most of these enabled ASAP) but where's big stuff? The new aliens? The new guns, armor, and gadgetry? The new maps? The new hats! XCOM is such a great platform for Firaxis to build on, but to date there's been only the disappointing Slingshot DLC. Reassuringly, Solomon confirmed that more alien-fighting gear is in the works. "That stuff takes time," he said, noting that 2K has stated that more XCOM content is coming after Second Wave.

I'm prepared to wait for it, as long as it's better than Slingshot. (Which, by the way, actively made my game last night worse by blocking normal Council missions from popping up after I'd completed the first of its three missions, and reminding me I had to run the second and third roughly every two days. Ugh.) Will you start a new game of XCOM with some Second Wave modifiers enabled? Which ones? And what would you like to see added in the next round of content-heavy DLC?