NIGEL BOOKS, ex accountant turned sword-wielding bad-ass. If you need an enemy base infiltrated,
he’s your man. Rushing B on Dust2? He’ll go first. Tax-return’s deadline looming?
You know who to call! Welcome to Xcom. At its best, the series is
a hugely rewarding tactical master-piece. Its playtime is filled with important and
meaningful decisions you must make as you struggle to balance short-term risk and survival
against long-term reward. You can finely tune your squad of soldiers and when it all goes
right, there’s little else in gaming to compare to it.
The other 99% of the time it’s a horribly frustrating, unfair RNG-fest where EVEN IF
you plan for all occasions. EVEN IF you correctly predict what the enemies are going to do,
they’ll still dodge your shots and murder your best people in a series of unfortunate
events. XCOM2 is a harsh mistress. It’s about risk,
heart-break and sacrifice. You get some soldiers who always miss the easy shots. You get others
who panic just when they’re needed most. And -once in a blue moon- you get others,
like NIGEL BOOKS, who hit their shots, perform their actions and who heroically carry the
rest of their team on their shoulders. It’s people like him who you rely on to single-handedly
carve victory from the pumpkin of defeat. Between missions, he’s an understated kind
of fellow with a dull sounding backstory. But don’t let that deceive you. The moment
he steps foot into the battlefield, NIGEL BOOKS becomes the man that all men would like
to be. And that most women would like to be with.
And also some men.
Allow me to introduce you to XCOM! All of your people do their moves, then all of the
enemies do theirs. Repeat until one side wins. Ideally, by the time your last person fires
their shot, all visible enemies should be dead. And if not, clench your butt cheeks
and prepare to be invaded! So this is the nice, easy, beginning tutorial
level. I must defeat these 3 soldiers, so I’ll start by grenading them down to low
health. To ensure I kill this enemy before his turn,
I need to get as close to him as I can, preferably while still being behind cover, like so. So
at 84% chance, this shot is likely to hit. The shot missed, and now it’s the enemy’s
turn to move. He has chosen to fall back to behind cover, and to shoot at me.
Luckily, he misses as well! And the car my person’s stood next to is about to blow
up. So I’ll just rush his position and to shoot
him at point-blank, in the face, since this should guarantee I hit him.
And I missed again. So that’s pretty much XCOM in a nutshell.
The game hates you, the probability is a lie and after you lose your best people, you’re
going ragequit, spending the rest of the day seeking people out to rant about how unfair
this game is. I don’t care what people say- the game’s
rigged against you. You need… a hero. Which is where NIGEL BOOKS COMES IN!
I can’t remember when he first got my attention. Maybe it was from a brave, successful melee
attack. Maybe it was his facial nonchalance in the dropship on the way to a tough mission,
as the rest of the team embraced for their demise. Or maybe it was stuff like THIS, on
the way back from said mission. Or maybe it was how he outperformed himself
in OPERATION: WAR KILLER. Or in OPERATION: HAMMER MOTHER.
OPERATION: WITCH GIANT. OPERATION… FORGOTTEN GLOVE.
OPERATION: KNIFE WALKER. OPERATION: HALF-DEAD GEARS.
OPERATION: SWEATY PRIEST. Or simply OPERATION: MASSIVE TERROR.
Whatever it was, I began featuring him in every mission I could to aid in spearheading
my efforts. He’d get the best kit first, which gave
me joy to see his quiet satisfied nod at some ridiculously overpowered, futuristic weapon
of mass destruction protruding from his arm. He’d give it his all, every mission. Seldom
letting me down.
But these are just normal missions, with limited stakes. On these, you can lose the soldiers
you deploy, but upon failure you’ll return to your ship to carry on with whatever you
have left. As long as you have your ship, you’re fine!
Oh no. Being shot down by a UFO is a big deal. A once-a-campaign, special last-chance kind
of mission. And if you fail this, it’s GAME OVER.
And to make the situation even worse, it came at the worst possible time- most of my squad
– Nigel included- were still injured from previous missions. Would they still have what
it takes?
What a mission this is. It ups the stakes and gives you new-found respect for all of
your soldiers as they fight tooth and nail to keep the enemy hoardes at bay for just
long enough to buy you time to beat the objective. The goal is to destroy this alien dildo thing.
And the way it works, everybody’s given their chance to shine- especially since it’s
the one mission in the game that isn’t restricted to a certain number of soldiers. It’s a
really dire situation and by far the most fun mission in the game.
Of course it was Nigel Books who managed to take the alien beacon out- with his sword
no less. The ship was saved- now everybody needed to get back to it, or else they’ll
be lost forever. And to make things difficult, endless alien reinforcements poured in to
hamper their efforts and to pick off the stragglers. But NIGEL BOOKS clearly didn’t plan on being
one of them! Everybody made it back to the ship and it took off.
And Nigel Books finally maxed out his stats, choosing a powerful REAPER move where he can
string kills together… making him the ultimate melee unit! Not that I learned how to use
the attack until the next play-through. He continued fighting and racking up kills
for a number of missions.
But every story must come to an end, and I eventually reached the last campaign objective.
He and two other squad members I had grown to rely upon did the infiltration mission.
It was a flawless victory! Not a single point of damage was inflicted on them- though you
may find that hard to believe from this clip.
And then it was onto the final final last mission ever, which involves a series of arenas
with butt-loads of aliens, and then onto the final room.
In this room are 3 of these enemies… as well as infinite normal ones. Kill the three
special enemies and you win the game. But it’s easier said than done since each possesses
ridiculous amounts of health, dangerous attacks, and they teleport to hard-to-reach spots whenever
they’re hurt whereupon they quickly heal back up again. I managed to kill the first.
But that’s when it all started going wrong! Nigel actually missed a shot!
Then one of my teammates attacked her mind-controlled friend with an automatic melee attack.
And then a she tried to shoot her friend back again.
And then one of the bosses used a blue sphere attack on pretty much my entire team, getting
them down to low health. Then the other boss shot Nigel’s health
down. With my turn, I managed to get both bosses
down to low health- but they would only go and regenerate it all again… unless somebody
rushed in to finish the job. But doing that would likely be a death-sentence. IF ONLY
we had somebody brave. Some one who would fearlessly sacrifice himself for the greater
good! Yup, NIGEL BOOKS went and did that, storming
in and killing the second boss. But that’s when I made two TERRIBLE mistakes.
Firstly, I didn’t use REAPER, which would have let him kill both bosses in one move.
And second… I knew he couldn’t run far enough after his attack to get to safety.
I decided to opt for cover, not realising that this blue sphere -ONLY PRESENT IN THIS
FINAL MISSION- would hurt him when it imploded moments later.
…and he died. Or, more specifically, started to bleed out. Given my weakened squad’s
state, and the dozens of aliens swarming my position, I prioritised killing the final
boss, which another squad member managed and the end animation triggered, where the place
started to collapse and everybody had to escape… leaving Nigel to his fate.
Poor Nigel Books. The final casualty of my playthrough.
…OR IS HE?! NIGEL BOOKS, against all the odds, somehow survived this encounter, seen
limping around in the background during the final cutscene.
NIGEL BOOKS, the hero of my playthrough, lives to fight another day.