XCOM 2

Moderate overall intensity
Highest flag: Dark themes — intense
Sci-fiStrategy

What's in it

Violence realistic
Moderate

Turn-based tactical firefights with guns, explosives, and melee against alien troops and human-collaborator soldiers, with blood effects but no dismemberment focus.

Dark themes intense
Moderate

The story centers on a totalitarian alien occupation whose 'gene clinics' secretly liquefy and harvest humans, with propaganda, disappearances, and civilian casualties.

Horror & psychological spooky
Low

Some unsettling body-horror enemies and creeping-dread encounters, including insect-like creatures and, in the expansion, shambling zombie-like hordes.

Torture referenced
Low

Dialogue and lore reference the alien regime capturing, interrogating, and experimenting on humans, including the Commander's own captivity.

Language mild
Low

Occasional mild profanity in soldier banter and radio chatter.

Who can reach your kid

What it is

XCOM 2 is a turn-based tactics game where you command a small squad of soldiers resisting an alien occupation of Earth 20 years after humanity lost the first war. Between missions you manage a mobile base and research; in combat you move troops around a battlefield, take cover, and trade gunfire, grenades, and melee strikes with alien and enemy-soldier forces. Fighting is stylized-realistic with blood spray and bodies but no lingering gore focus, and your named soldiers can die permanently, which the game treats as a lasting loss. The setting is grim: the occupying regime secretly harvests and alters human civilians, and some enemy creatures have a body-horror design. There are no real sexual content, drugs, gambling, or purchases, and the core game is single-player, though it supports Steam Workshop community mods.

How it's framed

The game frames the player as a resistance leader fighting to free an occupied humanity, casting the alien regime's harvesting and propaganda as the evil to be overthrown; combat is presented as tactical liberation warfare, and the permanent loss of soldiers is treated as a sacrifice with weight rather than something celebrated.

Details

Developer
Firaxis Games
Publisher
2K
Released
Feb 4, 2016
Metacritic 88critic score (third-party) · out of 100

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