It’s life, but not as we know it
Phoenix Point
COME INTO PHOENIX POINT unprepared,
and you may accuse its devs of playing a
lot of XCOM. This is almost certainly true,
but beside the point. Snapshot Games
has played a lot of X-COM, too, having
been co-founded by Julian Gollop, one
of the designers of the original X-COM:
UFO Defense from 1994. As a result,
XCOM veterans will find Phoenix Point
familiar to the point of feeling like an
expansion pack, but different enough to
be thrilling. Anyone new to the series will
find it a convenient place to get on, even if
it doesn’t quite hit the heights XCOM 2 did.
This time, rather than arriving in flying
saucers, the threat comes from the sea.
Mutated creatures mixing human,
seafood, and unknown DNA are wreaking
havoc on the last bastions of humanity,
and it’s up to your rag-tag bunch of
soldiers to blast them back into the water.
If you think you’ve seen that all before,
check out the Geoscape, a draggable
world map on which the locations of your
bases, allies, and missions are marked.
You transit this globe in your dropship,
exploring, scavenging, and fighting. Kill
some bad guys, and you can pick up
their weapons, research them, and make
your own. The bodies you recover can be
autopsied for an increased understandingcuts both ways, though, with your soldiers
just as likely to have their heads disabled
by well-aimed enemy fire. Medikits heal
hitpoints but don’t fix disabled limbs—
these are fixed when the mission ends,
but hitpoints aren’t, so you need to wait
before the next mission or risk taking
an under-strength team. It adds to the
feeling of it being a massive balancing act.
It’s not flawless—every time we fired
up the game there was a clash between
our latest local save and the one in the
cloud, and it often opened a save with
the map upside down, or focused on the
other side of the world from our dropship.
Annoyances aside, though, this is a strong
game of strategy, tactics, and alien-
shooting, and deserves to be more than
“just another” XCOM. –IAN EVENDENMission maps come in
many different styles.Headshots do a
lot of damage, but
don't always kill.Bullet placement is key
to depriving enemies of
their abilities.Back at base, you can train
and equip your soldiers,
who level up in battle.of your foe. There are bases to build,
secrets to uncover, and alliances to broker,
all while battling the undersea menace as
it increases its incursions on to land.
Having a game that’s so familiar means
any changes stand out, so while Phoenix
Point may be recognizable enough to play
without tutorials, it can still catch you
out. Manual aiming is top of the list: Gone
are the XCOM percentages that would
see your shotgun be 99 percent certain
to kill an alien yet miss, in favor of two
circles; 100 percent of your shots land in
the larger circle, with 50 percent of them
in the smaller, central one. Every shot
is a simulated projectile rather than a
probability, so if it looks like it will hit, it
usually does. There are still chances to
miss completely, such as your trooper
fumbling his gun or a negative status
effect throwing you off, but manual aiming
makes things more certain.
Leaving shooting to your soldier means
they target the enemy’s center of mass
rather than its discrete hit locations, and
the value of being able to shoot the arms
off a foe or cut its legs from underneath
it means you’ll be manual aiming almost
all the time. This changes the game
enormously, so you’re more likely to take
shots you’d shy away from in XCOM 2. ItPhoenix Point
BETTER Classic tactical
gameplay with strategic layer.
WETTER Glitches can frustrate; graphics
not that spectacular.
RECOMMENDED SPECS Core i5 3GHz/AMD
FX series 3.2GHz; 16GB RAM; GeForce GTX
1060/Radeon R9 390X.
$40, http://phoenixpoint.info, ESRB: Not rated7
VERDICT©^
SN
AP
SH
OT
GA
ME
S
maximumpc.com MAR 2020 MAXIMUMPC 91
STRAT
EGY