Fans of the squad-based tactics genre are in for a treat with the rare launch of these two major titles recently. OO GIN LEE pits the hardened veterans of the Gears franchise against the human-alien squads from XCOM to see who comes up on top.

XCOM: CHIMERA SQUAD

I have a tough choice to make. Should I send Crawford, Blueblood or Patchwork into the fray of battle? Crawford is a demolition specialist, while Blueblood is a gunslinger who can fire a powerful shot from his pistol that takes out multiple enemies. Patchwork, the tech mistress, can command her drone to electrify enemies and reprogram robots to commandeer them. And they are just the human operatives.

There are also alien allies such as Torque, a snake that spits poison, bind enemies with her grip and wields a submachine gun. Or Verge, the skinny, mind-controlling Sectoid that turns enemies on each other.

Welcome to XCOM: Chimera Squad, the latest game in the turn-based tactical franchise which puts you in charge of managing a team of 11 operatives - humans, hybrids and aliens. Your goal is to keep the peace in the utopian City 31, where its citizens live side-by-side with beings from outer space.

The game starts with the assassination of the city's mayor, and your team needs to investigate three potential rogue factions that might be the culprit behind it. Unlike earlier versions of the game where you have to focus on searching the globe for alien threats, all the action here is focused on the city you have sworn to protect.

You start with four agents and will hire more later. The game is essentially a series of missions whereby you have to send your four best operatives to kill baddies, save scientists, sabotage the enemy's evil plans and more. The focus is in the turn-based combat, where you have to make use of the capabilities of each agent to succeed. As you win fights, you will earn three resources - cash, intel and elerium - needed to upgrade your equipment, improve your economy and unlock new technologies.

I really like that Chimera is almost totally focused on the battles. Each agent gets two action points every turn. Moving, shooting, reloading and throwing a grenade will typically cost you one action point per move. However, once you use a combat action, your turn ends. So you can move and then shoot, or reload and then shoot, but you cannot shoot and then move. Neither can you throw a grenade and then shoot.

The key strategy then is to make full use of your action points and plan how to upgrade your agents so that they can pull off more attacks during their turn.

For example, the shotgun-totting ranger Godmother has a skill that lets her get three action points on her first turn. But it would be useless unless you have a gun accessory called Reflex Grip which stops her turn from ending after she shoots. That means Godmother can shoot three times, potentially taking out three enemies instead of one.

With Crawford, you earn skills that lets him use his grenades with impunity. Because some grenades do not cost action points when thrown, I could effectively throw three grenades and cause mayhem to a whole group of enemies in a single turn. Verge the psionic alien is my favourite. He looks weak at first but his ultimate power, called Puppeteer, lets him control a whole bunch of baddies. There is a Chinese saying about borrowing someone else's sword to kill the enemy - Verge must have been a Chinese general in his last life.

Apart from combat, you need to spend time figuring out how to stop the city from falling into anarchy. To do so, you need to earn resources to invest in building city infrastructure to strengthen the economy. When you unlock the Scavenger's "black market", you will be able to access the best equipment that can change the tide of battle. They include epic guns with names like Endless Brevity and Lonely Herald, which can take out even the toughest baddies with a single shot.

Having played all the XCOM franchises since the original game in 1994, Chimera is definitely one of my favourites.

FOR

- Amazing hand drawn graphics

- Deep character customisation

- Focus on combat

- Very affordable for a quality game

AGAINST

- I could unlock only 8 of the 11 agents in one playthrough

- Occasional bugs and crashes

- No multiplayer option

SPECS

Price: $27.90 (PC only, via Steam)

Genre: Turn-based tactical combat

Rating: 9/10 (ST Tech Editor's Choice)

GEARS TACTICS

My ego was shattered when I failed in the second mission of Gears Tactics. That was when I sat up and really took it seriously.

This turn-based tactical combat game has many similarities in gameplay to the XCOM series, the other heavy-hitter of this genre. The similarities include getting close to the enemy and flanking to improve your chance to hit, and staying behind cover to reduce the enemy's chances of hitting you.

But there are a few key differences. For one, each soldier is limited to three action points per turn in this game, whereas XCOM gives players two action points per turn, though this means the winning play for both games is the same - find ways to get more action points.

It is heavily focused on a military tactic called overwatch, in which one unit supports another while the latter is attacking or executing combat movement. Your squad of four will be heavily outnumbered and you will need this tactic - by switching to the Overwatch mode - to win.

In this mode, your counter-fire will interrupt your enemies' action and stop them in their tracks. If you must attack, make sure to go in with chainsaws and bayonets blazing. These two weapons will usually kill the enemy with a single strike - unlike shooting with guns, which can take two to four hits to kill one tough monster.

Enemies don't always die immediately. Sometimes, they go into a "downed" position. Don't kill them immediately - you need to "save" these downed enemies and wait for their reinforcements to show up at the scene. Then, when you execute them, all your soldiers get an extra action point and - therefore - more moves to wipe out the enemy.

These melee attacks reward you with some gory body-dismembering graphics when you execute or chainsaw the enemies, literally in half.

Also, when you have upgraded your Vanguard and Support heroes, which are the ones with the bayonets and chainsaws, you will be able to reduce the cooldown time of these melee skills and even get a free attack.

There is a decent storyline behind Gears Tactics. The evil baddy Ukkon is creating minions and you need to find and kill Ukkon. You start with two soldiers and have to find and hire new recruits and heroes to fill up your roster. There are five different classes - sniper, support, scout, heavy and vanguard - with each having a different weapon class and skills. You get skill points to build your skills tree as you level up your soldiers, whom you can customize to make them more focused on specific disciplines based on your play style.

The other way to make your soldiers more powerful is to find better equipment such as armour and gun upgrades to enable more skills and buffs for your soldiers.

The graphics are amazing and worthy of the Gears Of War franchise, with triple-A cutscenes and voice animations. Kudos to Microsoft for making its first squad-based tactics game a decent one.

But after playing for 30 hours, I started to find the action repetitive. There are just too many side quests and it felt like rinse and repeat. Looting for gear upgrades was awesome at first, but became meaningless after a while as there are just too many of inconsequential gear upgrades to manage. The only game-changing items to collect are the very limited legendary ones.

Unlike XCOM Chimera, which focuses deeply on precise battle moves, Gears Tactics spends more time on storytelling and it feels like you are exploring vast areas instead of trying to take out enemies in a confined space.

It depends on what makes you tick. For me, I struggled to keep playing Gears Tactics and found myself going back again and again to XCOM Chimera.

FOR

- Worthy first Gears Of War tactical game

- Triple AAA graphics with movie-like cutscenes

- Some innovative combat mechanics

- "Thrill" of dismembering baddies with chainsaws

AGAINST

- Differentiation between different classes is not strong

- Too many repetitive missions

- Too much of inconsequential gear upgrades to manage

SPECS

Price: $74.90 (PC, via Steam) or free with Xbox Game Pass subscription; Xbox One version to be released later

Genre: Turn-based tactical combat

Rating: 7.5/10

Oo Gin Lee is a former tech editor of The Straits Times and a die hard fan of the turned-based tactical combat game genre