XCOM: Enemy Unknown update enables 1080p movies, fixes hair madness

My favourite XCOM cutscene is the one that triggers the first time you shoot down a UFO. The camera switches to the control room where your officers jump up from their banks of computers and whoop in a display of joy fondly known as the "NASA Clap." I reckon NASA have been hamming up their control room applause ever since Apollo 13 hit cinemas in 1995 but that scene is still imprinted on our collective consciousness, and now you can enjoy that imprint in XCOM at shiny 1080p resolutions thanks to the patch that landed this weekend.

The update also contains a few fixes according to the Steam patch notes . The sniper's "squad sight" ability that lets him pick targets based on allied sight lines has been optimised, apparently. Which might make that a much more appealing skill tree pick. There's good news too for XCOM's robots. "SHIVs that are damaged will no longer become unusable."

There is a bug in XCOM that afflicts dying soldiers with sudden baldness. It's as though their hair has been shot off, which in the case of the retro XCOM haircut, is no bad thing. It doesn't look like that has been resolved but a bug in which haircuts penetrate dense fog. This is essential stuff, Commander. We must maintain optimal fashion levels in the face of the poorly coiffeured alien menace.

• Various visibility/hiding optimizations

• Multiplayer text chat support (J to activate)

• Mouse 4/5 will switch soldiers in the Barracks

• ESC hides the movement grid if you do not want to commit to a move while it is activated

• Squad Sight ability optimization

• Fixed issue when equipping two grenades with Deep Pockets.

• Fixed Rapid Fire sometimes consuming too much ammo.

• SHIVs that are damaged will no longer become unusable.

• Fixed some hangs/soft crashes in tactical combat.

• Replaced software cursor with the operating system cursor to reduce lag and framerate dependence.

• Fixed rendering bug which causes some soldier's hair to appear as if it is rendering on top of environment fog.

• 1080p movies are now used at all times on the PC.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.