XCOM's development team has told us the objective of their next mission. It was not to destroy an alien relay, rescue VIPs from a hot zone, or board a crashed UFO. Instead, it was to watch a movie with friends at Marvel's Midnight Sands. It was a Western, as the Eastwood-esque character portrayal on the TV suggested, but the plot of the movie turned out to be unimportant.

The movie night was just an excuse to have an in-depth conversation with a new teammate named Nico. Her mother is a benevolent sorceress who murdered her children, and my mother is the demonic goddess who banished me to a cold grave in the late 17th century. Nico's psychic powers are like brightness in the face of trauma, and he is determined to give me the full history of the film: "First of all, you should know that the glowing briefcase is a metaphor.

Thus ended my first night in the Abbey, the picturesque fortress where all the action of Midnight Sands unfolds. With a classical painting hanging on the stern wall of my room, a plush bed for my hellhound Charlie, and the reagents for the library cauldron neatly removed from the eerie grounds, I had long since settled in. But dozens of hours later, I have not stopped packing my bags with my magical, radiological, and vampiric roommates. This is a surprise I still haven't gotten over, and one I haven't stopped appreciating: Firaxis' big-budget contribution to the Marvel Universe is a downtime simulator as dedicated as a turn-based tactics game. And despite the studio's expertise historically skewed toward the latter, Midnight Suns is equally accomplished in both areas.

In retrospect, the film can be traced back to XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, the last project directed by Jake Solomon. Back then, Firaxis emphasized the bond between soldiers in shared techniques and introduced a trio of supervillains more derisive than similar to Midnight Suns' big bad Lilith with her reptilian nobility. This developer's newest offering doubles, or even quadruples, those elements. It's all about integrating more closely than ever with your teammates to take on a nemesis that won't go down even after repeated beatings in rooftop arena battles. Hydra's minions are just the stage set for all this relationship drama. They pick up whatever is handy nearby and smash through the chops of Sabertooth and Crossbones.

When I interviewed Solomon late last year, he described the combat in Midnight Suns as the opposite of that in XCOM. By that he did not mean that the conflict is resolved in the form of an a cappella chorus, but rather that the studio has rejected its reliance on probability as a tool for tension and emergent storytelling. The only time a percentage number appears on screen is the one moment when an enemy is slammed into a New York sinkhole or abyssal vortex for an insta-kill (special points to Firaxis animators who don't reveal the result while flailing their hands at the very last minute). At every other point, "Midnight Suns" uses deterministic calculations like those in "Into the Breach" to show exactly which heroes will be under the debris Venom throws next turn, and how much damage they will take in the process, but the mysterious The mysterious element has been eliminated.

The numbers being given in advance make it possible, and indeed desirable, to calculate the outcome of the entire turn before the turn begins: if a team of three heroes can K.O. all the enemies on the board before running out of plays, that is the end of the match, and they can buy gifts for their friends or renovate the monastery. It is an early victory with a bonus of gross, the currency used to buy or renovate the monastery. If not, the next turn, and the turn after that, more goons would flood the screen.

However, one rarely feels drowned. Throwing your opponent into an exploding barrel with Ghost Rider's flaming chains or hitting him over the head with a bundle of New York newspapers gives you a chance to work on your fresh Hydra body. On the other hand, you can also knock a lamppost over a key henchman and chip away at your opponent's health bar until you score the final knockout that ends the match. The potential to weaponize the environment in these long, bloodless fisticuffs in a cramped arena gives "Midnight Suns" a hardcore WWE feel; Firaxis has clearly spent many hours conveying the impact of each clash, and the golden age of audiovisual FX equivalent of a bright red capital THWACK in a comic book.

While the clarity, immediacy, and satisfaction inherent in this setup are welcome, the combat in Midnight Suns is still far from intuitive. The main reason for this is the confusing relationship between the arena, the concrete space in which all combat takes place, and the hand of action cards drawn from a pre-selected deck that contains all the possible abilities of the three heroes. Every time you play an attack card, such as Spidey's Web Throw, the character automatically moves on. But if you're not careful, that new location might fall within range of an AOE explosion that is scheduled to detonate on your next turn, for example. These nasty consequences can always be seen when selecting cards, but it takes a little time to understand the importance of proper character placement.

However, the combat never gets boring. This is partly thanks to the various combat objectives and sub-bosses, but mainly because, and I cannot stress this enough, the time spent in combat is likely to be less than half of the game. Every time you encounter the climax atop Avengers Tower, there is an evening spent thinking about the interpersonal effects revealed in the latest plot and feeling depressed.

The abbey is like the Normandy of "Mass Effect" set in the gardens of a stately home. Certain characters are often in specific locations related to their areas of expertise: Blade oversees weapons training in the yard; Tony Stark and Doctor Strange combine magic and metallurgy in the forge; Peter Parker and Ghost Rider are in the store, a cavernous garage They are hiding. However, all of the registered characters are present on the map and scattered throughout the monastery, and can be sought out for Bioware-style conversation or invited to hunt for mushrooms on the grounds.

As Carol Dunbar says, "All work and no play gave birth to Ultron." But there are strategies for social life as well. Not to sound too Patrick Bateman-esque, but each chat is an opportunity to steer the statistics in your favor. If you study your peers, you can see what activities suit them and what responses move them. Parker likes reassurance and keeping his hands busy, while Stark appreciates a lavish gift and a bit of backlash to his agitation. If you gather enough affection through conversational breadcrumbs (and use compliments sparingly), you can unlock the team combo, the most powerful attack on the battlefield. Alternatively, you can stop schmoozing and focus on stacking conversation options along the lines of "light" or "dark," and stack the battle rewards that way.

What "Midnight Suns" most resembles "XCOM" is the level of interaction between the combat and base layers. If you train with Ghost Rider in the yard, you can draw an extra card in the next fight. If you take him on a mission when he feels left out, your friendship may level up. Strange tools brought back from the field can lead to new cards in the deck or research breakthroughs to keep up with a powering up enemy. If there is a difference in tone, it is that there is no fear of falling fatally behind the power curve - here, the challenge automatically adjusts to the level of heroes on the field. Firaxis has found room for a new level of warmth and familiarity.

Fitting for a game that has friendship at its core. It may seem like a good idea, but Marvel's expanded cast is rarely more active than in Abby's after-school clubs and compulsive play. Instead of talking vacantly to each other across a blazing skyscraper, some of the characters are familiar and some are unknown. They find solace in each other's company during difficult times or complain about Tony's installation of a state-of-the-art coffee maker in his haunted lair.

Abby's scenes are frequently explored and endearingly silly. What other game can say it stargazed with Stephen Strange?"

I learned more about his values and regrets in these two minutes than in more than a dozen multifarious adventures. The mass of contradictions that is the personal history of Marvel characters is left quietly to explore commonalities and for comic effect.

Like Nico, "Midnight Suns" wants to barge into your room, pull your arm and drag you to the party. Whether that is what all strategic directors want is not certain. But if you could treat Firaxis on its own terms, you would surely be dazzled.

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