I’ve owned every title in the XCOM franchise. I’ve played XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Windows rigs, my Mac, PS Vita, and, on my iPad. I won’t relate the shameful number of hours that I’ve spent on these games: It makes me sad to think about it. But, for some reason, I can’t tear myself away. I’ve been playing XCOM 2 since it was first released. When I got tired of the main storyline, I loaded up the Long War 2 mod. Perfection.
As it’s been a few years now, I’ve been hoping/waiting for a portable version of the game to play on plane flights or on the couch with headphones when insomnia gets the best of me. I assumed that it’d come to iPadOS, first. I was wrong: it came to the Nintendo Switch. On the morning of May 29th, I downloaded it on my lunch hour and started playing it, that night. I’m still playing it, between hits of Kentucky Route Zero and Borderlands 2, and working on my novel. However, in close to a month, I haven’t been able to finish the game on my Switch.
XCOM 2 keeps freezing up in the later stages of the game. Around the time that I’m equipped to take down a third Advent base, the software tells me to go and pound sand. If it crashed, I’d be less frustrated than I am. But no: instead, the game hangs up, mid-turn, leaving me to wonder whether or not it’ll get through the crunch or leave me closing the game down once again. I’m not alone: there’s a lot of online chatter about how glitchy the game can be. I’m hoping that it’ll be sorted out in a future patch (remember when games shipped and they worked, right off the bat? Good times). But there’s no guarantee of this. It’s a shame: while the graphics have been dialed way the hell down from what you’ll see playing it on a well-specced PC, it still looks great and, right up until it’s ‘fuck you’ moment, plays well and loads relatively quickly.
It’s a shame: for me, the Nintendo Switch is a port machine: I’d have never have been able to play The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt or The Outer Worlds without it. Too bad that what I was hoping would be my favorite port is such a mess.