Following the release of XCOM: Enemy Unknown‘s first DLC last month, the Slingshot Content Pack, developer Firaxis games has announced that another DLC content will drop today for free. It is called Second Wave.
Unlike the Slingshot add-on which introduced new contents for the game, Second Wave will add numerous game-altering options for players to experiment, 16 to be exact. Speaking in a phone interview with Polygon, lead designer Jake Solomon says, “we really want to allow people to get more replayability out of XCOM.”
The 16 game-altering options to XCOM that allow players to further customize their play experience beyond Iron Man mode and the existing difficulty settings (the last four options are unlocked only when the game is completed on Impossible difficulty):
- 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.
- War Weariness: Funding goes down over time.
- E-115: Elerium degrades over time.
- Total Loss: Lose all soldier gear upon death.
- Alternate Sources: The power source cost to build facilities increases dramatically.
Jake Solomon hopes the update will encourage XCOM players to sink more hours into the game, noting that the core philosophy of Firaxis Games is giving its consumers “value for their dollar.” He ended the interview by saying, “If people pay their hard-earned money for a game,” he reasoned, “they should be able to play however they want.”
The free update should drop sometimes today for the PS3.
Will this suck you back into XCOM: Enemy Unknown’s world? Let us know in the comment below.
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