Critics and fans throw around the term "tactical shooter" to represent any kind of game that somehow mandates that you think about how you shoot. Disintegration is one of the few that literally blends core real-time tactics mechanics and first-person shooting. It isn't a unique mix, though the balance of the two styles feels different from what we've seen over the years. The strategy is rich and demanding, even when the AI can't quite live up to its responsibilities. The shooting evokes all the good things about turret sequences--mainly the feeling that you're a really big gun and that there's always more stuff to shoot--without the restrictive boredom that comes from being on-rails. The strength of those parts, and the ways you constantly switch between them, build up an intense field-commander fantasy.

In the single-player campaign, you control Romer Shoal, the gravcycle-flying commander of a robot special forces squad. As "pilot," you are their scout, artillery, healer, and whatever else your team needs you to be. And yet, while it sounds like you're holding all the cards, your team can defeat enemies quicker as a group than you can alone, so you need them to do most of the trigger-pulling. So your most important role is shot-caller: You tell them where to go and who to shoot. If you're careless, they get overwhelmed and everyone dies. If you don't anticipate and react to the enemy's maneuvers, they get overwhelmed and everyone dies. If you… I think you catch my drift.

So, as Romer, you are constantly in motion. As the team leader, you have a lot of responsibilities, and you need to switch hats often--pointing out new cover, shooting healing beacons, calling on each of your two-to-four bots on the ground to use their special abilities. Monitoring the skills, which include armor-weakening concussion grenades and fields that slow enemies down, is especially important. With a small team that's often fighting off much larger numbers, timing and syncing these skills is an essential means of getting the upper hand. Across the board, though, you constantly need to be present, focused on the task at hand, while maintaining a wider awareness of the battlefield. Managing all these tasks and keeping your proverbial finger on the pulse of the battle gets the adrenaline pumping. It can get overwhelming at times, but it's ultimately rewarding, as you come out of each victory knowing that it was your orders that won the day.

Critics and fans throw around the term "tactical shooter" to represent any kind of game that somehow mandates that you think about how you shoot. Disintegration is one of the few that literally blends core real-time tactics mechanics and first-person shooting. It isn't a unique mix, though the balance of the two styles feels different from what we've seen over the years. The strategy is rich and demanding, even when the AI can't quite live up to its responsibilities. The shooting evokes all the good things about turret sequences--mainly the feeling that you're a really big gun and that there's always more stuff to shoot--without the restrictive boredom that comes from being on-rails. The strength of those parts, and the ways you constantly switch between them, build up an intense field-commander fantasy.

In the single-player campaign, you control Romer Shoal, the gravcycle-flying commander of a robot special forces squad. As "pilot," you are their scout, artillery, healer, and whatever else your team needs you to be. And yet, while it sounds like you're holding all the cards, your team can defeat enemies quicker as a group than you can alone, so you need them to do most of the trigger-pulling. So your most important role is shot-caller: You tell them where to go and who to shoot. If you're careless, they get overwhelmed and everyone dies. If you don't anticipate and react to the enemy's maneuvers, they get overwhelmed and everyone dies. If you… I think you catch my drift.

So, as Romer, you are constantly in motion. As the team leader, you have a lot of responsibilities, and you need to switch hats often--pointing out new cover, shooting healing beacons, calling on each of your two-to-four bots on the ground to use their special abilities. Monitoring the skills, which include armor-weakening concussion grenades and fields that slow enemies down, is especially important. With a small team that's often fighting off much larger numbers, timing and syncing these skills is an essential means of getting the upper hand. Across the board, though, you constantly need to be present, focused on the task at hand, while maintaining a wider awareness of the battlefield. Managing all these tasks and keeping your proverbial finger on the pulse of the battle gets the adrenaline pumping. It can get overwhelming at times, but it's ultimately rewarding, as you come out of each victory knowing that it was your orders that won the day.

As some of you know, I’ve been working on a big videogame for almost 2 years now.

In totally unrelated news, you should all watch the PS5 launch event on Thursday. — Antony Johnston (@AntonyJohnston) June 9, 2020

"Gone With The Wind’ is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society. These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible. These depictions are certainly counter to WarnerMedia’s values, so when we return the film to HBO Max,  it will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions, but will be presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.  If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history.”

You're hunkered down behind a beaten-up truck, bleeding from a chest wound. You can hear the labored breathing of one of your squadmates over the comms. Nightmare, as the team knows her, is unconscious at your feet, but you can't think about that right now as a horde of zombies comes skittering around the corner. You take aim, the first of your targets weaving erratically in your field of vision before you blow its brains out. You repeat this twice more and as the horde advances yet again, you hear a shot ring out and a bullet zips past your ear, splintering the helmet of an ADVENT soldier who had a flamethrower at the ready.

The sniper, Rat King, holds up five fingers--minutes until evac arrives. Another member of your squad, Outrider, drops cloaking and picks Nightmare up to take her to safety as the sounds of more Lost ring out in the distance. It takes seconds, in the end. With the Commander's voice in your ear, you pull the pin on the frag grenade and chuck it, close enough to clip the rampaging horde but also to light up the truck that you're taking cover behind. This resulting explosion will finish you, but allow everyone else to make it to safety. After all the hard choices the Commander has had to make, your last thought is the hope that this has been easy in comparison.

XCOM 2 Collection on the Switch is an ambitious port, full of those excruciating choices and richer for it. Firaxis Games' alien-massacring hit has become a bit of a household name when it comes to strategy games. Even though it's infamous for its Russian roulette-style approach to combat probability, the impact that XCOM 2 has had on the genre as a whole is widely accepted, making this one of the more highly-anticipated ports of legacy franchises to Nintendo's flagship console. Unfortunately, the full experience is too performance-intensive for the Switch to let the title's tactical magic truly shine through in this latest iteration.