These mind blasts and psychic takedowns are critical in combating another another great change Long War makes: the alien invaders now also gather resources and research technologies of their own, growing stronger over time if you don't strategize carefully and intervene when necessary. The Long War also gives you access to psionic powers significantly earlier in the game, and a much larger tree of psionic powers to develop. XCOM is a war of attrition, and what once took mere (in-game) hours or days now takes weeks or months to complete-while enemy attacks are as frequent as ever. The completion time for training your soldiers, researching projects, building facilities and items-pretty much everything across the board-has been ramped up considerably. Long War takes things to another level entirely.

XCOM is a difficult game to begin with, punishingly so on everything but the easiest setting. The core idea behind The Long War is to make the XCOM experience-commanding Earth's last line of defense against an alien invasion-more challenging, more rewarding, and as the name suggests, longer. And yes, the mod's been out in beta for more than a year, but a recent major patch added even more content, features, and tweaks. Yes, there's a version for Enemy Unknown too, but it isn't nearly as good. XCOM: Long War is a free mod for XCOM: Enemy Within that maintains the core gameplay but overhauls the entire system to add a depth and breadth of soldier customization, strategic options, and much more. And now there's a mod that's so good it makes the expansion pack feel like a tired retread. Its first expansion pack, Enemy Within, added so much amazing content that it made playing the game an entirely new experience. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a great tactical game from Firaxis games.

Xcom enemy within nexus