#XCOM 2 SWITCH REVIEW PORTABLE#

To practice good ergonomics and eye health, you cannot have the screen be closer than about 40cm from your face. While I fully understand how porting it directly over to Switch would work well for most games, it seems developers hardly ever realise or take into account how small the Switch screen is.

#XCOM 2 SWITCH REVIEW PORTABLE#

However, herein lies the problem: the UI is impossibly cumbersome on a portable screen, and it is made even more difficult to use with text that does not scale. Porting the XCOM 2 Collection to Switch follows generally the same method, with a control scheme that mirrors that of the console ports. When they ported the game over to console, they adequately managed to make it work on a controller. Firstly, Firaxis modernised the turn-based tactical genre with user interface elements and a control scheme that make a lot of sense. The reasons for summarising the basic concepts of the game, even if this is just a port, are twofold. By default, soldiers have two actions, of which the first is generally reserved for moving – if you shoot using the first move, you will end this soldier’s turn unless they have other perks active. Moving soldiers generally comes down to a few things: how far they can move, where you want them to move, and how many actions they can perform in total. You can switch between individual members of the squad as you move them from one spot to another, and get them into the ideal position for that upcoming ambush. It is an isometric turn-based, team tactical shooter, where the player takes control of a team of soldiers.

The beauty of XCOM 2, and by extension the XCOM 2 Collection, largely comes from its unapologetic challenge. Together, you rebuild The Resistance and found a brand-new iteration of the clandestine defenders of Earth. In the advent of XCOM 2, The Resistance – remnants from XCOM who refused to give up – finally break the Commander free. Betrayed by the Council and left for dead after the XCOM base become overrun, the Commander is captured and transported to a secret facility before being subject to unfathomable tests. It takes places 20 years after the events of the previous game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and follows directly on the canon that the player has lost the war against the alien invaders. XCOM 2 is, as the title implies, the sequel to the reboot of the original series. What makes it more impressive, is that you can get it all for a single price on the Nintendo Switch. With that said, including all of the XCOM 2-related products in one neat package is impressive, to say the least. Of these four-packs, Resistance Warrior and Anarchy’s Children add the least to the game, as they are only cosmetics. These add-ons include the massive War of the Chosen expansion, and four additional content packs: Shen’s Last Gift, Anarchy’s Children, Alien Hunters, and Resistance Warrior.

Collection implies more than just the game and its add-ons, but I digress. Truth be told, I would much rather have called it the XCOM 2 Definitive Edition. The Switch version of the XCOM 2 Collection includes the base game, its expansion, and all major downloadable content previously released. All of this now leads us to the XCOM 2 Collection. DOOM, for instance, had one of the smoothest transitions the triple-A industry has ever seen, and many Japanese Role-playing games, like Final Fantasy, have also been ported without much complaint.

With that said, some games have enjoyed very nice ports to Switch. Unfortunately, most developers have had a challenging time porting their games over, with the biggest culprit being a serious lack of bigger fonts and proper tiny screen support ( The Witcher 3 and Overwatch are good examples of this). With the popularity of the Nintendo Switch at an all time high, it makes sense for developers to want to port games to the portable console. Alas, several years have passed before seeing some semblance of a mobile release with the XCOM 2 Collection… and I am torn.

They were so good, they made me think its sequel would come to mobile pretty much as soon as it released. My beliefs rang true when the game and its expansion eventually found their way to iOS and Android. Since the rebooted franchise first reared its beautiful head in 2012, I have firmly believed that a mobile port would only serve to benefit gamers and the franchise as a whole. For years, I have been a solid proponent of the fact that XCOM would translate beautifully into a mobile title.

Xcom 2 switch review