Having trouble flanking alien squads? Equip a skin mod that makes one of your Assault members nearly invisible in high cover. The augments help diversify your options on the battlefield and open up new strategies that weren’t available in last year’s game. With it, any soldier can receive biotic implants, granting them a variety of superpowers such as the ability to jump to previously unattainable heights, sense unseen enemies, and emit psionic feedback on any alien that tries a mind meld. The most important addition is a currency system called Meld. Both layers of the game are highly rewarding in their own right, and Enemy Within cleverly adds to both. If you played Enemy Unknown, you’re already familiar with XCOM’s dual nature: You alternate between commanding a squad of soldiers in turned-based combat and managing your limited resources to defend against alien invaders. The game was so finely balanced that I thought adding to it would disrupt its strategic flow, but Firaxis has released an expansion that slides between Enemy Unknown’s cracks, filling in some gaps I didn’t even realize existed, further diversifying the tactics without disrupting XCOM’s delicate balance. Its deep strategy and intense firefights required careful scheming, but putting a bullet through the last invader’s overgrown skull was one of my favorite moments of 2012. Last year’s reboot of the XCOM series was a masterwork.

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