It has been a while since we last heard some XCOM news from the folks at Firaxis, but that all changed last night with the surprise announcement of XCOM: Chimera Squad. The latest game in the series is a standalone follow-up to XCOM 2, continuing the story five years later. 

XCOM: Chimera Squad has been secretly worked on since XCOM 2: War of the Chosen wrapped up. The game has not only been announced this week, but it will be launching very soon too. The game arrives on April 24th and will be available for just £8.50/$10 until the 1st of May. After that, the game will go to its normal price of £17/$20.

The story picks up five years after XCOM 2, with a new squad set up in new city where humans and aliens are working together, attempting to model “peace in a post-invasion world”. Of course, something does go wrong and players will be tasked with strategizing their way through a series of combat scenarios.

All of the agents in Chimera Squad are hand-crafted, realised characters, rather than NPCs created by players. Combat also plays out differently to a normal XCOM game, with your squad members being assigned their own ‘entry points' to each map, with each agent using their own Breach-specific skills to enter. Death is also a bit different- instead of permanent death when health reaches zero, your agents will be put in a ‘bleeding out' state, giving you a chance to bring them back to good health. If you don't stabilise a character bleeding out, then they will die.

Due to core gameplay changes like this, Chimera Squad was worked on as a standalone game, rather than a bigger, full-fledged sequel.

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KitGuru Says: With Gears Tactics coming at the end of the month, I assumed I'd have my yearly strategy game all lined up. However, with Chimera Squad now suddenly coming out days earlier, I may have to reconsider which one I pick up first. What do you all think of XCOM: Chimera Squad? Will you be picking it up at launch next week?  

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