X-Com 2

Stephen Bush recently wrote an article on 'Bothism' - where a political party responds to an either/or choice by trying to do both and accomplishing neither. It's a simple concept, but elegantly expressed and it has stuck with me. Particularly when playing X-Com 2.

The designers are on the record as wanting the player to play aggressively and take risks. But they also wanted to preserve the tense, punishing nature of X-Com. Well, that's Bothism at work there.You can either encourage gamers to take risks or you can punish them for taking them.

The end result of this is a game that is, while a lot of fun, just a little more irritating than I like.

You can play X-Com 2 aggressively well. I've seen plenty of it on YouTube. But what you notice quite quickly is that the people who do it manage it because they've got such a huge level of game knowledge in terms of how line of sight works that really, they're also playing quite conservatively at the same time.

I don't have that same instinctive knowledge. I can play that way, but I've got to be pretty bloody tightly focused. And of course, I'm often playing computer games when I'm not all that focused. So I play conservatively, enjoying the challenge and a little irritated at the artificial (and usually ineffectual) constraints trying to force me to do elsewise. And every now and again I get impatient and bored at myself, and that usually ends up with me ragequitting quite fast.

Taken for what it is - a serious challenge that requires a lot of self-education to play well, a game a that rewards meticulousness and caution - X-Com 2 is as good a game as is on the market. But the fact the designers themselves can't do it mars the game.