XCOM's free Second Wave DLC available right now!

If you are looking for some adventure this evening, why not boot up XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Firaxis today released the second DLC for it, a free pack known as the 'Second Wave' DLC. The addition is available for all platforms and gives you 16 new and different options when starting a new game, all of which change up how the game is played.




The first DLC for XCOM was Slingshot - a set of story based council missions which was not particularly well liked by most - given that story is generally not considered particularly important in XCOM. Second Wave on the other hand, gives you a variety of mutators, designed to do things like change the way a soldier levels up or make things even more difficult.

Jake Solomon, the lead designer on XCOM: Enemy Unknown, explained to Polygon that the list of mutators (first discovered by modders back in October last year) were designed by Firaxis during their "Mutator Fridays" - a regular occurence during the XCOM development wherein Firaxis' developers designed small modifications (known as mutators since the days of UT99) to change the gameplay experience. Only four of the mutators are available from the beginning - four more become available once you complete the game on Normal, Classic and Impossible. The mutators available in the DLC are:

• Unlocked from the beginning.


• Damage Roulette: Weapons have a wider range of damage.


• New Economy: Randomized council member funding.


• Not Created Equally: Rookies will have random starting stats.


• Hidden Potential: As a soldier is promoted, stats increase randomly.


• Unlocked after completing the game on Normal.


• Red Fog: Combat wounds will degrade the soldier's mission stats.


• Absolutely Critical: A flanking shot guarantees a critical hit.


• The Greater Good: Psionics can only be learned from interrogating a psionic alien.


• Marathon: The game takes considerably longer to complete.


• Unlocked after completing the game on Classic.


• Results Driven: A country offers less funding as its panic level increases.


• High Stakes: Random rewards for stopping alien abductions.


• Diminishing Returns: Increased cost of satellite construction.


• More Than Human: The psionic gift is extremely rare.


• Unlocked after completing the game on Impossible.


• War Weariness: Funding goes down over time.


• E-115: Elerium degrades over time.


• Total Loss: Lose all soldier gear upon death.


• Alternate Sources: The power source cost to build facilities increases dramatically.

Second Wave is available right now on the PC version of XCOM and should be available by the end of the day on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. If you haven't grabbed XCOM: Enemy Unknown yet, you should - as I explained in my review it's a different game to the original series, but it's worth playing. If you have played it, are you going to check out some of these mutators? I know I'll never see the last four, but what about you? Let us know in the comments below!