XCOM 2 may be Digital Trends’ favorite game of the year so far, but Firaxis’ third-person strategy game isn’t without its problems. Namely, the game’s Advent soldier enemies speak to each other in this screechy, throaty, garbled tone and it’s impossible to tell what they’re saying. (I just want to know if my opponents are having as much fun as I am. Is that really too much to ask?)
Luckily, Eurogamer writer Johnny Chiodini compiled clips of the Advent soliders’ “dialogue” and took a stab at translating their exclamations and exchanges. The resulting Bad Lip Reading-style sound bites in this video… Well, they’re just strange, and, once you hear them, it might be hard to take the Advent seriously.
“Toucan Safari!” One soldier cried as he or she was riddled with bullets. “You’re too rough for Tom,” another yelled across the battlefield.
In case you haven’t started XCOM 2 and aren’t familiar with the narrative, Advent is the global puppet government representing alien invaders that have taken control of Earth after the events of the series’ 2012 reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The Advent’s soldiers have become the basic unit of the alien occupying force that the player’s XCOM human resistance fights throughout the game. Whether through voice modulation or some more nefarious process, these seemingly normal human beings have been made to sound more like the alien masters they serve.
And all of that context helps make the decision players make feel really intense, right up until the moment the enemy commander yells, “bit of old vinegars.”
XCOM 2 is available now on Windows PC, Mac and Linux.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?