XCOM - The Best XCOM Content I've Ever Seen

Cherish the Knowledge! Cherish the Failure!

I create a lot of XCOM content. This will be my 70th post on this substack, and before I was posting here, I was posting a lot of stuff on reddit. I’ve been journaling my campaigns for even longer. And so I have spent a great deal of time, not just playing XCOM, but also thinking about what kind of information is worth remembering, and worth sharing. With that in mind I want to tell you a story about what has been the best player created XCOM content for me.

A bit of background first. I played the original Long War for awhile without looking for advice or watching other people play. It was a lot of fun, but painful and frustrating as hell. Eventually I quit, proclaiming to my spouse “This game is ruining my life!” Which was true, but only because I was stubbornly trying to figure out how to win all by myself. I didn’t want to spoil the game by looking for answers online.

Skip forward a few years and XCOM 2 is released. What an incredible game. I played through it a couple times, and a couple more times with all the expansion packs, and then again after modifying the ini files to make it even harder. But eventually it got stale, and so I was super excited when Long War 2 was announced. I thought this would give me a shot at redemption, as I had never finished the first Long War.

So I start playing Long War 2 (this is where the story actually begins) and I am just rolling. I only needed to learn a few new mechanics and what to expect from the new enemies. So I am murdering advent, having a great time, and even considering jacking up the difficulty to the hardest level.

But then I get this crazy mission with reinforcements dropping on my head every single turn. Eventually it ends in an ugly squadwipe. What the hell is this? I figure it must be a bug. The mod is still in development. No worries; I don’t mind restarting the campaign and trying again after the bug has been fixed. And so I wait for the next version of the mod to come out, and start a new campaign, and go right back to steamrolling advent, until once again I get a crazy mission with reinforcements raining down every single turn, again ending in a squadwipe. Really painful and frustrating.

I can’t keep restarting a campaign every time I encounter this bug. I need to find out when it has been fixed. And so I start googling for answers. Eventually I find what I am looking for. As you may have already guessed, I was encountering the snare mission; a tempting trap that advent sets in high alert regions. I had no idea that it even existed, and it was ruining the game for me. And all I needed was to read this blurb on a reddit forum from some random dude. And this made me realize what I should have known a long time ago, which is that I needed help from the online community.

For most games, online tips and advice can be spoilers. But those games aren’t XCOM. Nothing you read online is going to make XCOM too easy, or spoil the game. And in fact, the Long War mods require a substantial amount of online research just to understand the game mechanics. Even if you read the entire ufopaedia, and I have, you won’t know everything. You will still want to go search the pavonis message boards or discord or reddit because some of the best advice is hidden on these forums. And be sure to use the search feature.

And so maybe these helpful little posts on forums are the best player created content.

Or maybe not.

Right after I found that tidbit of information regarding snare missions, I decided that I should do much more research before starting another Long War 2 campaign. What other hidden game mechanics are out there waiting to trip me up? And so I poked around and saw that several players were making Long War 2 videos on youtube. I selected a video with a lot of views and watched it.

The player was Northernlion, and he had decided to run a 4 man squad on a hack or rescue mission, I forget which. He was trying to do it somewhat stealthily, but he botched it all up. First he sneaks around a bit, wasting time. Then he is cut off from the objective, and surrounded by all 3 advent pods. And then he is forced to fight, has terrible luck, and his squad is cut to pieces. I was laughing so hard I was crying - just incredibly relieved to see another player suffer a squadwipe after having endured one myself. I felt strangely grateful; Thank you for sharing your failure!

And so I think that is the best player created content for XCOM that I have ever seen. I wanted to post a link to the video but couldn’t find it. Maybe its no longer on youtube. Oh well. I am sure there are plenty of other squadwipe videos out there if you need to be cheered up after a defeat. This is “failure content” and it serves a noble purpose. The blundering mistakes of other players are often the most instructional content you can find, and what is more, they help us laugh off our own screw ups.