Just over a week ago, news broke of XCOM: Enemy Within - a very orangey expansion to Enemy Unknown . The accompanying video, in true XCOM tradition, showed a shadowy guy saying things in his Serious Voice, with nary a hint of gameplay footage to back it up. As with the moon landings and the inner workings of Pat Sharp's Fun House, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was protected by some vast government conspiracy - y'know, if it wasn't for this brand new trailer chock-full of the stuff. It's entitled War Machines, and true to the name it shows off the expansion's new bio-engineering and robo-mech-suit features. There is also a lot of alien-punching. If Will Smith happens to be watching: that one's all on you.
Several of these technological advancements are thanks to a "newly discovered alien substance", which you can slather all over your soldiers to "augment them biologically". Oo-er. There's talk of this procedure, and the cybernetics-based mech suits, requiring some sort of sacrifice - an evocative thought, but it's not clear if that actually means anything in gameplay terms (your PSI-enabled troops in the first game didn't come with any disadvantages, after all). For now, all we can see is a sort of energy headbutt, and a fair bit of mech-on-alien melee action.
To find out more about XCOM: Enemy Within, augment your coffee table with the latest issue of the mag .
Ta, Polygon .
