XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Slingshot DLC Review

XCOM: Enemy Unknown's Slingshot DLC is a set of three interlinked council missions which introduce you to a new unique character, unlock some powerful technologies and provide you with some extra resources to help make your fight against the alien menace that little bit easier. The following review may have some spoilers with regards to the rewards given as a result of these missions, but it's an integral part of what makes these sort of DLC packs worthwhile you'll just have to live with it (or stop reading!).

The DLC will kick in the first time the council contacts you to undertake a task for them, at which point you are given the chance to either play the first Slingshot mission or to turn it down in favour of one of the usual, randomised affairs. If you choose to begin the DLC, there is no going back and each time you are offered a mission it will be the next in the sequence. Even if you ignore the request, you will be offered it again within a short time period.

The first mission sends you to China to meet ex-triad contact, Shaojie Zhang, who has come into possession of some mysterious alien technology. This plays out as a standard escort mission, albeit you begin with Zhang in your party already rather than having to fight your way to him and have to escort him to the Skyranger for safe extraction.

This is the weakest of the three missions on offer but serves as a taster of what is to come in terms of structure; it's a very linear affair, with a very thin map forcing you down a specific route. This is not by any means a bad thing, as it keeps things focused and tightly scripted. It's enjoyable and challenging and at the end you will find yourself facing a strong mid-game enemy with only the basics in weapons and armour.

Following the first mission Zhang will join your XCOM team as a permanent member. He's a Lieutenant-rank Heavy and as a result highly likely to be the most powerful member of your team at this early game stage. You get to choose all his abilities as normal, but as a unique character he has his own individual voice actor and appearance, and he cannot be customised in any way. While it's nice to have a powerful character this early there is little to set him apart from the pack without a special skill tree. I also found having a non-customisable soldier counters the one of the things XCOM does well, providing you a team of random personalities and letting the heroes of your game evolve naturally over time.

The second mission offered by the counsel is a smaller, tighter affair in which you have a 10-turn limit to complete your objectives as you move through a train in the narrow confines of a subway station. The added time limit forces the tension to the surface as you are forced to power ahead whilst trying to make sure you are adequately protected and avoid blundering into an impossible fight.

By this stage, I had just researched the first early laser weapons and had two squad members with laser rifles, but it's very feasible that again you will be equipped with basic ballistics and protection. This is certainly a challenging mission, with encounters with several mid-to-late stage alien troopers being hard to handle with an early game load-out. The rewards for completing this mission are unremarkable and comparable to a normal XCOM mission, but it serves as a bridge between the first act and the final mission.

Last but by no means least is my personal favourite mission, in which your, by-now more experienced (unless they all died), operatives storm an airborne alien battleship to end the threat it represents. Once again there are objectives to complete outside the standard 'kill everything' type of gameplay, but this time there is no restricted time limit.

This final mission follows it's predecessors in being a linear and scripted affair, in which you move from room-to-room in straight line clearing each of hostiles. The rooms are large and full of cover points though, and have multiple entrances, choke points and high ground so clever squad positioning and planned ambushes are rewarded. It's an extremely well designed map and highly enjoyable to play through.

Again challenge here is high and you will encounter at least one late game enemy, which I faced off against with only a few laser weapons and still basic armour. To put timescale into context, this mission occurred for me before the very first 'scripted' main game mission so it's really not afraid to throw tough aliens at you fast.

The final reward for this mission is substantial, as you will receive a huge amount of resources in the form of alloys and elerium, enough to send your engineers into a manufacturing frenzy without worrying about running out anytime soon. You also get the ability to research a couple of powerful late game technologies much earlier than usual, along with early access to alien autopsies and, if you are clever/lucky a few interrogations.

All things considered, XCOM's Slingshot DLC is not a terrible deal, but it's not a great one either. I enjoyed the missions immensely, as they were well designed and very challenging. While I felt like I had earned the substantial rewards provided ,they do unfortunately take some aspects of challenge away from the later content: With my haul I was able to get earlier access to plasma weaponry and manufacture enough weapons and armour to outfit a whole squad almost immediately. However, as good as the missions are, at the end of the day there are only three of them and they are unlikely to keep you busy for long.

For these reasons, while the Slingshot DLC missions are fun enough they don't add enough to the XCOM experience to justify a particularly high score. XCOM is still the game of the year for me and if you love it as I do this content may be worth a purchase-and-play for you, but otherwise it may be worthwhile to hold on and hope it drops in price in the future.