XCOM 2 is a great game. But getting at that greatness has proven a little more difficult for some players than others, thanks a series of technical problems that make little-to-no sense.
Loading screens are a little long. But in a bizarre twist, you can mash the caps lock key to skip them. Why? Who knows! There are similarly mysterious reasons behind the fact that this trick works most of the time, but may occasionally crash the game. So, you know, skip loading screens at your peril, I guess.
There’s also that bit where the game occasionally hangs a bit too long–sometimes WAY too long–between animations or during enemy turns. And there’s a mod for that! If it’s an easily moddable problem, why was it in the game in the first place? Well, that’s the million dollar question of modern game development.
Firaxis issued a hotfix for the game earlier this week aimed at addressing crashes and performance issues, but just like your sharpshooter’s 95% sniper shot, their attack flew wide of the mark for most users.
“I can honestly say that we didn’t know it would be this way at launch,” says project lead Jake Solomon in an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun. “Maybe this is damning on me, but I’m sitting here talking to you now on the laptop I use to play it on, and I didn’t see these issues. We didn’t catch this stuff in compatibility testing. We’re fully, fully accountable for the product in people’s hands, so we certainly take responsibility for it. To people who are suffering them, if they’re frustrated, I’m as frustrated and more.”
I’ve hit none of the more egregious technical problems in XCOM 2, but either the loudest people are the ones with something to complain about, or I’m an outlier. Possibly both! In any case, we’re waiting (im)patiently to see if the game can overcome its technical issues to be the excellent follow-up it probably is.
