Test: Chimera Squad, the little bit of (X) com '

"That’s XCOM, baby"

Once in the walls, we find all the classicism still effective of an XCOM sauce Firaxis, but always with this small twist often specific to derivatives. The two camps no longer play freely each in turn as in the previous installments of the franchise, but one character at a time, following a frieze of initiative closer to that, for example, of a Original Sin. It is therefore necessary to prioritize targets differently, in an otherwise very traditional mixture where movements, actions, long forced marches and passages in surveillance jostle to punish enemy movements. The shots are always defined by this famous cascade of random draws which decide whether to hit, if so for what level of damage, what possible share of critical damage, and so on.

As the other would say: " it's the game, my poor Lucette ", The one where we sometimes end up blushing, plagiarizing (that's when we plague while sputtering) all over his screen because of yet another shot that misses at the worst moment. On that, no problem, XCOM must remain XCOM so that others (Gears Tactics, Mario + Rabbids, Into The Breach) can mark their difference. On the other hand, we must be able to begin to wonder when Firaxis will decide to review its relationship between probability, decor and situations presented by the game: like its ancestors, Chimera Squad is sometimes still a great lover of open lines of fire but evaluated at 70 poor percentages while your target is standing five meters from you, uncovered, and has practically not moved for three laps. Note however that, for questions of adaptation, the basic formula is planed elements which did not go in the direction of this spin off : less verticality in the program, four heroes maximum per mission and above all, no way to sculpt the decor with the grenade launcher to progress. Somehow it makes sense.

Fortunately, the little game has a secret boot, an extra toy that makes a splash-boom-hue and encourages to forgive it for this almost retro classicism: it leaves you finally play aliens. By welcoming lots of races from the XCOM universe into playable troops, this little spin off makes you taste the pleasures formerly reserved for the enemy. Blur the minds of your opponents with the psionic powers of a Sectoid agent, go into melee and trample your enemies with a Muton, catch the poor vipers' tongues and hug them to death. Here again, Chimera Squad recycle a lot: powers, types of heroes quite clearly derived from historic troops or hybrids introduced by XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. The bulk of the equipment was already there, and it was finally enough to add powers capable of shaking up this new initiative frieze (advancing an Allied turn or reversing that of an enemy) to shake up the existing combat dynamics. On the whole, the contract is also quite fulfilled: these new tactical options replace the fans of gadgets from a canonical episode at a moment's notice and make it possible to build up very interesting group synergies.

The base of the base

These eleven individuals with strong characters are found after each mission in a base that concentrates most of the management part of an XCOM while degreasing the rest. We always manage a map (this city-wide view), with its gauges of chaos rising and its daily interventions to be prioritized to maintain balance. The flow of money, materials and information must be balanced to finance better weapons and armor here, there gray operations (reduce the global chaos of the city, get discounts from merchants) or the training of your troops (to unlock passive bonuses and a few little surprises). This whole management / strategy dimension is ultimately quite simple: we allocate the soldiers who have stayed behind at work stations, we monitor a few gauges before each decision is made, we take a hook by the barracks to celebrate the passage of grade d 'a protagonist, but that's about it. No real convalescence system to manage with turnover of troops in the key for example: a character put on the ground then stabilized (if he dies, it's back to the loading screen) can go back to battle the next day dressed up a penalty (to the Darkest Dungeon) that the game does not require you to seek treatment. Nor is there any engaging visual customization beyond simple changes in the color of the undershirts (given the liabilities of the series, it's a bit of a shame).

The only real difficulties imposed by this strategic component will in fact come from the cursed interface, which is at the same time loaded, invasive and counter-intuitive as possible. It is also just as true in combat, where it is practice and testing that will fill all the gaping holes and the logic attacks committed by the game. Chimera Squad is the kind of beast that introduces a system of icons in a menu pane, but does not use it to designate the same elements in another, where he prefers to use text. He will ask you if you wish to sacrifice a group care module during a Breach

, but will forget to display the information necessary for this random decision-making, the health of your soldiers. He claims to separate, via his tooltips, attacks that interrupt a soldier's turn from those that can be followed by other maneuvers, but sometimes forgets to do so; when he’s just struggling to explain clearly how a skill works. (minus reference = "La VF dispatched") In this little game, VO as VF are sometimes lost, even if the French version will offer you as a bonus the automatic translations next to the plate and the dubbing quickly shipped. Add to this concerns about contradictory signals, interface zones still in the state of work in progress and the whims of pointer magnetism and you get …? A festival of long sighs and immersion breaks for XCOM regulars. And a game that relies too much on your understanding of the historical workings of the series for it to be recommended to laymen. (/ Minus)

Fed up tax

As soon as we have survived all the little betrayals committed by the game's UI and we know, almost every time, what a click will give: what does this famous give spin off Who has been squatting Steam and Twitch inserts for a week? You will have left for twenty to thirty hours of a campaign divided into three mini-stories, which can be carried out in the order of your choice (their difficulty varies depending on). Three investigations with their enemy faction, their bestiary and their final mission with a big boss to kill, which however remain mounted on a single structure: a little bit of management, secondary missions with repeated quick objectives, an urgency of time in time, and central interventions which obey more or less the same rules as the others. Few surprises in the end, except for the arrival of a new member of the team. A real little event, insofar as the skill trees are actually more like shrubs, and we have often already toured the available heroes when the new kid decides to come back. The repetition is inevitably felt along the way, especially since the most observers will soon find the combination that will completely flatten the stakes posed by the management part of the game. From there, it’s fighting, fighting and still fighting, in environments that end up repeating themselves, in their layout, in their decor, and sometimes both at the same time.

In addition to the repetition which is installed halfway, you will also have to reckon with a not very elegant difficulty curve, which will let you roll over the game for hours and then will throw you on a mission thought like a deadly trap where only jets particularly mild dice will save you. These brutal jumps in difficulty (there are two here) are added to a more general observation of a title rushed to the exit to hold a date. The interface, for example, would certainly have benefited from being turned over by some angry beta testers. A real quality control phase could also have detected the bugs new (from inventory manipulation that breaks everything to the invisible mission objective) like the older ones (some, like broken camera angles, inherited from games to games since Enemy Within). Not to mention the many returns to the office – almost twenty in our thirty hours of play, even if as usual with Firaxis games, some buyers are struggling while others do not regret the slightest pitfall. So let's hope that the studio is already on the turbine on a patch that would put everyone on a healthy level playing field. As long as it hits the market in the form of disguised early access, you might as well get out of it all from above.