'Real-time XCOM' is a pretty good pitch, and that's what Red Solstice 2: Survivors seems to promise, as we saw in the Future Games Show. You control a squad of soldiers fighting mutants on Mars, ordering them around in real-time—although it does seem like the action slows down a little when you bring up the command wheel. There's also a co-op mode that lets up to eight players work together, each controlling an individual soldier.
There's a strategy layer too, with technology to research and upgrades for your troops, who can all have different loadouts of weapons, tech, upgrades, and abilities. And you've got six classes to choose from: medic, assault, recon, heavy, demolition, and marksman.
That multiplayer mode sure seems like a big draw. It looks frantic, like you've zoomed-in on a squad of StarCraft marines defending a bunker from a horde of zerglings and then taken individual control of them. Let's hope they have a better survival rate than those marines usually did.
Red Solstice 2: Survivors will be available on Steam from June 17.
