Now for Items, one of this game's haziest design concepts.

This is kind of a common problem to games with a catchall category of Assorted Things That Don't Fit Into A Predefined Box, admittedly, but this game still stands out a bit for how much Items are not only a hodgepodge in general but are inconsistent about basic points like whether they're a fully passive benefit or an active ability you must manually use to get benefit from. It's also probably the most frustratingly 'game-ified' component of the game's design, where all Items simply eat a shared slot with no other implications, regardless of whether it makes any sense for Item A and Item B to be incompatible with one another. Enemy Within adding Tactical Rigging so your soldiers can equip two Items ablates this some, but doesn't truly eliminate the 'why do these eat the same type of slot?' jank.

On to specifics, though.


Frag Grenades
Cost: Free, unlimited copies
3 damage in a radius of 2 tiles, destroys terrain objects and skips accuracy checks.

The default Item for when you don't have anything else to equip. That's kind of an interesting point, because most games would've opted for something with a passive stat benefit rather than a limited-use active effect, or had it so you started the game with nothing to equip in the Item slot at all.

Tactically speaking, Frag Grenades serve two primary purposes: clearing out Cover so your other units can get more accuracy and a high chance of a crit, and doing guaranteed damage on targets. Keep in mind Frag Grenades destroy Alien weaponry held by Aliens they kill, with not even Weapon Fragments remaining. (This applies to Rockets, for that matter) Being too happy with explosives can hamper you in the long term. However tempting it might be to lob a Grenade into a cluster of Sectoids for a mass instant-kill, you should generally run through your other options first.

Oddly, I get the impression the developers imagined the Frag Grenade as more of a tool of direct destruction of your than a supporting tool, but its capacity to destroy Cover en mass places it firmly in the camp of supporting tool -using Grenades to clear out Cover will bolster the accuracy of follow-up shots and on average increase their damage on successful hits, too. (Due to the crit chance bonus for firing on a target not benefiting from cover) It's not like the Frag Grenade does any more damage than your basic Assault Rifle unless you hit more than one target, and since direct kills are punished by loss of Weapon Fragments, the mechanics directly discourage using explosives as a solution to enemies being alive.

That said, do note that the Frag Grenade isn't very good at terrain destruction, with many objects being durable enough to survive a Frag Grenade. Also note that plenty of objects are simply indestructible, with no real feedback from the game about what can and cannot be blown up; you'll mostly just have to memorize what's indestructible and what's not. That said, I should explicitly note that anything that can be stood on is impossible to destroy that part, even if the game has to leave it floating in the air in response to its ostensible supports being annihilated. Climb points like pipes are also indestructible, and generally anything that can't be cleanly destroyed one tile-length segment at a time will also be indestructible no matter how fragile you'd expect it to be realistically.


Alien Grenades
CostL N/A (Steal it from Aliens, or perform the Foundry Project to have unlimited free copies)
5 damage in a radius of 2 tiles, destroys terain objects and skips accuracy checks.

The better Frag Grenade, simple as that. Thankfully, the game understands this, though it's unfortunate that the Foundry Project that replaces Frag Grenades with Alien Grenades is basically redundant in the original game, as capturing one of every Alien nets you 3 (Researching Alien Grenades uses up one, otherwise it would be 4) when you can only deploy six soldiers in a mission. The Foundry Project is a bit more meaningful in Enemy Within, since Tactical Rigging ensures 2 Item slots on every soldier, meaning 12 Alien Grenades is the maximum you'd hypothetically need and even just two Heavies doubling up on Grenades means you want 4 of the things. Additionally, the Project benefits Mecs, who can't make use of captured Alien Grenades at all, making the Project worth considering even if you're very capture-happy.

Note that stolen Alien Grenades aren't used up just because you threw them at an enemy in a mission. I consider this an acceptable loss of realism to smooth out the gameplay, honestly, even though it's realistically absolutely absurd. Managing stolen Alien Grenades in the original XCOM was a nuisance, and you had to be very Grenade-happy to actually burn through what you looted, generally speaking, so overall this entry's dynamic is both fairly faithful to the real game experience of the original and yet more meaningful (And less annoying) of a gameplay mechanic, since you have to go out of your way to loot more and can more clearly say how many people you can outfit with your stolen Alien Grenades: one soldier per stolen Alien Grenade.

I should also call attention to how the Alien Grenade is massively more effective at demolishing terrain than the Frag Grenade. Generally, if something can be destroyed, an Alien Grenade will destroy it. Note that this fully applies to the grenades the Aliens are carrying, where a Muton chucking a grenade at your soldiers will only not leave them vulnerable to follow-up shots if either their Cover is indestructible or if the Muton aimed the grenade so it didn't actually touch their Cover. This is one of several reasons why grenades on your enemies are very, very dangerous.


Arc Thrower
Cost: 35$ (10$ on Easy difficulty)
Stuns at roughly a range of 2 tiles (This is a sphere centered on the user, and can go up or down, but cannot go through solid terrain), demanding the target has 4 or less HP to be valid. (Chance of success increases as HP decreases, being 49%/70%/80%/80% for 4/3/2/1 HP) You cannot carry two Arc Throwers, and they can't stun robots, Cryssalids or Zombies. EXALT soldiers are valid targets, but they commit suicide when stunned. Can be upgraded to work on up to 7 HP (Becoming 49%/70%/80%/90% for 7/6/5/4 HP, with 3 or less HP being a 95% chance of success), upgraded to "hack" (mind control) enemy robots, and upgraded to repair friendly robots for 6 HP per use, including Mecs. (These all run on its core set of charges) Has two charges by default.

Goodbye Stun Rods, we've phased out the complicated and tactically deep Stun mechanics/damage type for a random chance of downing the target permanently (But it's not lethal, honest) that demands you use up your valuable Item slot on it and has a limited number of uses presumably because the developers are terrified you'll harvest all the aliens. Or something to that effect, I assume.

The only nice thing I have to say about the Arc Thrower is that being short-ranged rather than melee is an understandable decision given how the movement mechanics have been completely overhauled. The non-capture utility effects you can upgrade onto it? Gimmicks. Dumb gimmicks that have very little use.

I can kind of understand why they made capture mechanics so limited, since otherwise the only thing preventing you from immediately transitioning to mass Plasma weaponry would be the time it takes to research them, but I'm not a fan regardless. The fact that the Arc Thrower is always only a chance of downing the target particularly irritates me. Really? Even when they're at 1 HP? Even when it's upgraded? Why? What possible design purpose could this serve?


Combat Stims
Cost: 50$, 15 Alien Alloys and 1 Berserker Corpse
Can be used twice in a mission (Not affected by Deep Pockets), granting the user an increase in Will for purposes of Panic resistance, +3 Mobility, halves incoming damage, and renders the soldier immune to crits for two turns.

Bafflingly, using Combat Stims ends your turn immediately. I have no idea why the creators thought anybody would ever want to use this. When I first learned of it and assumed it didn't consume your turn to activate it, I thought it sounded like a niche, but powerful item. This? This is essentially unusable. Worse, the requirement of a Berserker corpse places it as only being available in the latter portion of the game, where there's going to be a lot more competition from other items for the slot -if you could realistically use it early game it might at least be worthwhile over Frag Grenades and Nano-Fiber Vests or something, but as-is by the time you can get it you almost certainly have vastly better items for the slot.

Also, it's a bit pricey. It's also the only payoff for Berserker Autopsy in the base game, and Enemy Within adding Neural Damping coming from the Berserker Autopsy isn't much of a payoff either, but this is a minor hurdle thanks to South America's "We Have Ways" continental bonus making all autopsies and interrogations instantaneous. The fact that it's an incredibly bad item not remotely worth the resources that go into it is the real problem.


Medikit
Cost: 25$
Can be used to restore 4 (+2 with a Foundry Upgrade, for a total of 6) HP to an ally, stabilize a dying ally, or clear Poison on an ally. (In all three cases, the ally must be within 1 tile of the user) The holder cannot be Poisoned. Only one may be held by a soldier at a time.

Return of the Medikit, only now health mechanics are dull and boring so the Medikit itself is dull and boring. I do like the touch that the holder is immune to Poison, even if it contributes to Thin Men's Poison gimmicks being less meaningful than you might expect.

The fact that, aesthetically, it's this weird spray mist is honestly puzzling. Was it simply an easy thing to animate? It's honestly a bit distracting, conceptually. Why is this a single-target effect when my troops spray the mist so liberally? And why is it called a Medikit, when it's not a kit at all?

It's also very frustrating in the context of this game's approach to equipment; if you have only one soldier carrying a Medikit, and then that soldier goes down and starts Bleeding Out, you can't have someone else grab the Medikit and Stabilize them, nor is there are special-casing to resolve this type of scenario, like an ability for using an ally's Medikit directly if they're nearby and it has a charge.

I'm also always frustrated by its range. The game's preview circle for showing how close you need to be to heal an ally is noticeably larger than the actual radius you can heal people from, and in spite of the spray being animated as traveling more than a full tile out, you can't actually heal 2+ tiles out. Cover distribution is also often awkward for trying to get soldiers close to each other for a heal without leaving one of them extremely vulnerable to a flank, which is... not great.

Still, later in the game when soldiers surviving shots is more common and especially ending up Bleeding Out instead of dead being more common, it's a good idea to bring a couple of Medikits, especially in Enemy Within where Tactical Rigging lets you fit a couple Items on your team more easily.


Mind Shield
Cost: 150$, 10 Alien Alloys, 30 Elerium, and 1 Ethereal Corpse
+30 Will.

The in-game description implies the Mind Shield applies specifically to defending against Psionic attacks, but it's not -that Will applies to everything. Unfortunately, the Mind Shield is not very relevant -if you can build a Mind Shield, you're probably at the end of the game, as it requires an Ethereal corpse. In all honesty it's main relevancy is making multiplayer balance dumb by being 1/10th the cost of a Psi Armor while providing a bigger Will boost and leaving your Armor slot available for something actually good. In single player though, there's not much reason to acquire one, let alone actually equip it on somebody. I guess if you've got the spare Ethereal Corpse, you might as well build one for the Volunteer?


Nano-Fiber Vest
Cost: 20$
+2 HP

Your basic item for bonus HP. I'd rather have a Frag Grenade 90% of the time, honestly, but 2 extra HP isn't bad. There's a decent argument to be made that it's better to pass out Nano-Fiber Vests instead of Medikits in the early game, when your Medikits are only 2 more HP in total, don't help soldiers at all if they get killed in one shot, and won't reduce or potentially eliminate infirmary time the way a Nano-Fiber vest does.

I've always found it vaguely confusing how this is basically a piece of armor that goes in the item slot. I guess it's meant to represent that it's a vest you're wearing under your armor? But that just raises questions about why it eats the item slot, rather than being a Foundry Project that's two free HP for your troops. I can sort of hand-wave away most of the items competing with each other as a simplification, but it's genuinely confusing to me that Nano-Fiber Vest eats the item slot. It's also kind of representative of how Foundry Projects, in general, are a bit disappointing to me -I quite like the idea of a concrete improvement as we implement what alien technologies are based around greater knowledge being a thing, but there's precious few Foundry Projects to improve your soldiers, and Ammo Conservation is the only one that improves your generic soldiers without regard to their exact equipment. The Foundry seems like a bit of missed opportunity to raise the player's minimum starting state in a way that's flavorful and not based entirely around how loot is normally indestructible in this game. The Total Loss Second Wave option, or something like it, could've been the default rule, with Foundry Projects that boost your soldiers' capabilities helping buffer players against severe casualties.

Alas.


Chitin Plating
Cost: 85$, 15 Alien Alloys, 4 Chryssalid Corpses
+4 HP, 50% damage taken from melee attacks. (ie Chryssalid and Berserker attacks) In Enemy Within, also provides immunity to Strangulation.

A more advanced HP increaser. If you've got one and you don't have anything better in mind for your soldier it's a good catchall option. In Enemy Within it's also valuable for protecting against Seekers, though whether you should build it is complicated by the fact that Needle Grenades also use up Chryssalid corpses. In the original though, you might as well build a few Chitin Plating with your piles of Chryssalid corpses. Even in Enemy Within, it's still a really good idea to build a few, if only to protect your Snipers from Seekers and the possibility of melee aliens sneaking up on them.

I honestly have no idea what the graphic is supposed to be representing. Are you wearing chitinous shoulderpads? Is it meant to be a a close-up of an individual segment of the stuff, which we're supposed to assume completely covers the armor? It's a very puzzling graphic.


SCOPE
Cost: 20$
+10 Accuracy. Can be upgraded via Foundry to provide +10 Crit. Neither boost stacks with the Pistol's Foundry Upgrades that provide the same.

Honestly, the only reason this strikes me as relevant at all is because a Squadsight Sniper has pretty much nothing better to do with their item slot, as they don't need increased durability, will rarely get use out of tossing Grenades of any kind at the enemy, etc. Enemy Within adds in Seekers, at which point Chitin Plating or a Respirator Implant if you haven't gotten to Chitin Plating yet can be appealing for said Snipers, but Enemy Within also adds Tactical Rigging, at which point your Sniper is back to "Well, why not". Otherwise? The item contributes nearly nothing. The fact that people use it is more a commentary on how ridiculously good Squadsight Snipers are than on anything else.

I think the graphic is meant to resemble a scope, but honestly it looks like a gun designed by someone with no ergonomic sense, or an extremely bulky flashlight meant to be carried like a briefcase, which is ridiculous. I honestly wonder if they repurposed a graphic originally intended to represent something else, especially since the SCOPE has a similar aesthetic to the gear you steal from aliens -the blue/grey/silver color scheme is mostly reserved for advanced gear, with the relatively ordinary human stuff mostly being brown. Admittedly, this is meant to be some kind of advanced aim assist, but... I dunno. I still suspect it's a repurposed graphic.

Enemy Within additions

Flashbang Grenade
Cost: 35$
A single-use Grenade-style weapon, but instead of damaging enemies it imposes temporary penalties to Movement (-50%) and Aim. (-50) Doesn't work on robots and "advanced psionic aliens". Has no effect on allies.

An interesting idea, though I'm a bit skeptical of its utility.

That said, I should point out that -50% Aim is more impactful than it really sounds like thanks to Cover. Say you've got a Classic difficulty Outsider hanging out across from your soldiers who are all sitting in Partial Cover. By default, this Outsider's 80 Aim will end up a 60% chance to hit your soldiers thanks to the +20 Defense from the Partial Cover. If you Flashbang the Outsider, their base Aim drops to 40 and now the Partial Cover is knocking them to 20% accuracy; thus, Flashbanging them reduced their real hit rate by 2/3rds, not 50%. If instead your soldiers are all in Full Cover, the only reason the Flashbanged Outsider can hit at all is because the game forces accuracy up to 1% if it should be 0% or less.

Notably, things tilt a bit more in the Flashbangs favor when facing more elite enemies and backing yourself with Defense boosting. A Muton Elite on Impossible has a full 100 Aim: if your soldiers are all in Skeleton Suits and in Partial Cover, by default that Muton Elite has a 70% chance to hit, but if you then Flashbang it, that drops to only a 20% chance to hit. And just like my prior Outsider example, if your soldiers are instead all in Full Cover, the only reason it can hit at all is the 'pity' accuracy of 1% minimum.

That said, I'm skeptical of the Flashbang's utility because so many things are immune to it, and many enemies that are susceptble to it have an effect for just ignoring accuracy checks. That Muton Elite might waste their time firing shot that probably misses, yeah, but they can just as easily decide to just chuck their grenade instead, rendering the Flashbang completely irrelevant. A Thin Man can just spit a Poison cloud, and Thin Men are an evergreen threat in Council missions. A Heavy Floater can also just chuck a grenade.

It has some potential utility as a weak Overwatch counyer, I guess, where you chuck it at an Overwatching enemy oo minimize the odds of them hitting? There's no possibility of them just ignoring it at that point.

Even then, there is always the risk they hit anyway, so I'm not fond of relying on the Flashbang simply because the RNG really can just ignore that you used it.


Gas Grenade
Cost: 35$ and 2 Thin Men Corpses
Grenade that Poisons all enemies within its blast radius for 1-3 turns, and leaves a Poison cloud behind that will Poison units that enter it. Poison does 1 damage per turn and imposes a -20 Aim penalty. Has no effect on robots, Thin Men, or Mecs. Requires 2 Thin Men corpses.

Finally it actually matters that there are enemies immune to Poison! But not much, because Gas Grenades are dubious. -20 Aim is... not a lot, and its best-case scenario on damage is equaled by Frag Grenades, except Frag Grenades do it instantly. And consistently. And destroy Cover.

Like the Flashbang, I appreciate the idea but think the execution needs work. The fact that your own soldiers will happily walk right through Poison clouds even if they're not immune also gives it frustrating backfire potential that is a huge nuisance to avoid...


Ghost Grenade
Cost: 200$, 25 Elerium, and 4 Seeker Wrecks
Grenade that cloaks allies until the start of their next turn. Units attacking from under cloak get a +30% bonus to crit chance. Has no effect on Seekers, soldiers with Mimetic Skin, or soldiers in Ghost Armor. Requires 4 Seeker wrecks.

Stealth for everyone! A big problem with it is that Ghost Armor and Mimetic Skin tend to invalidate it. Mimetic Skin is particularly guilty of this, as its competition (Bioelectric Skin) is nice, but not amazing like Mimetic Skin is, so Meld costs is the main thing that will tend to dissuade you from installing Mimetic Skin into everyone. This... is less of a limiter than it might sound, and Ghost Grenades are astonishingly expensive to buy.

Still, it works on SHIVs and Mecs. If you have trouble keeping your Mec(s) alive, it might be worth carrying a Ghost Grenade so you can save them in an emergency.


Mimic Beacon
Cost: 50$
Can be thrown like a grenade, and is treated by Aliens as X-COM presence -they will seek it out as if they're hearing X-COM soldiers. Aliens already in combat are less likely to be fooled. Has 2 charges, and each Beacon lasts 2 turns.

It's difficult to say exactly how useful this actually is. Theoretically it can be used to bait an Alien pod into advancing into your mob of Overwatch guys? I don't know how well it works in practice though -what's its range limit, exactly? Will it "pull" Aliens that are inclined to sit tight? These are important questions I cannot find answers to, and AI is always tricky to make predictions about.

It also bothers me a little that Aliens can potentially be fooled by a Mimic Beacon that's actually in their line of sight. As far as I'm aware, the smarter Aliens aren't protected from this...

I can see some potential for combining it with stealth to let you find a pod without activating it and then bait them into Overwatch fire? That could be cool. I'm a little doubtful of it as a practical strategy, but the idea is cool in theory, at least.


Needle Grenade
Cost: 40$, 5 Alien Alloys, and 2 Chryssalid Corpses
A Grenade that does 3 damage in more than double the radius of a Frag or Alien Grenade, but instead of destroying cover is blocked by it.

A Frag Grenade, but with a wider strike zone... and unable to touch Cover... and in fact blocked by Cover.

Worth considering, in spite of how I just talked about it. It's easy to forget that "double the radius" actually works out to about four times the tile coverage, not twice the coverage, for one, and for two enemies tend to avoid clumping so tightly a Frag Grenade can catch all of them but aren't nearly so wary of being within a Needle Grenade's radius of each other. I quite like the Needle Grenade overall, though I wouldn't be surprised if it would benefit from some tuning. Probably its biggest flaw is that Alien Grenades having better damage will tend to shunt it aside at some point.


Reaper Rounds
Cost: 30$
Provides a 20% crit bonus against organic targets for Conventional (ie basic) weapons, but doubles the range penalty. Has no effect on Pistols.

Why. Why would anyone make this. What's even the point of this item? I'd rather carry a Frag Grenade -clear their cover and damage them in one go. You get a 50% crit chance against enemies out of cover, regardless of what weapon you're using and not only without doubled range penalties but in fact wiping their cover makes them easier to hit. Chryssalids and Ethereals are the only organic enemies that don't make use of cover, too, with Ethereals being far, far too late-game for Reaper Rounds to be relevant (You'll probably be transitioning to Plasma, or already done doing so, by the time your first Ethereal appears. You'll certainly be at least Laser-tier for everyone) and a 20% chance of more damage is extremely dubious against Chryssalids. I'd consider Reaper Rounds questionable if they were free, and they aren't. The only point in their favor is that you don't specifically have to research them -Experimental Warfare unlocks them as a bonus.

I really wish this had instead been an early-game Foundry Project. It would still have been weak, but it would've actually been worth considering. Alternatively, if Reaper Rounds were outright a +1 to damage, or had a really exotic effect like lowering the target's Mobility, they would've at least had a clear niche, even if they were a bit underwhelming. I really just... have no idea why this was thought by anyone to be a good enough idea to suggest it in the first place, let alone survive playtesting to reach the final product.

Oh, and for reference, the doubled range penaly does in fact make Sniper Rifles suffer worse penalties for getting too close, even though the in-game description seems to imply it only worsens the long-range penalty Shotguns suffer. For that matter, this does mean Reaper Rounds don't have a disadvantage on LMGs or Rifles, beyond, you know, consuming an Item slot on an underwhelming effect.

Probably the most frustrating thing to me about Reapers Rounds is that once you're fully past Conventional weapoons, they become a dud investment you did in fact have to pay money for. This admittedly applies to Armor and weapons technology, but those consistently have higher impacts and furthermore they're 'free' for the soldier's equipment loadout: an Assault replacing their Conventional Shotgun with a Scatter Laser isn't giving up anything of substance in the process, where slotting in Reaper Rounds is in place of any number of other, much more useful Items. Most egregious is the SCOPE: once you've completed the immediately-available Foundry Project for causing SCOPES to give 10% crit chance, suddenly they give half of Reaper Rounds' benefits, but for any weapon (Including your Pistol!) and while also still giving +10 Aim. This isn't a far-off thing; I'm not talking 'oh, once everybody has their endgame kit'. This can happen before your first Terror mission, potentially.


Respirator Implant
35$
Cost: +2 HP, immunity to Strangulation.

Invalidated by Chitin Plating. Invalidates the Nano-Fiber Vest. I have no idea why the developers felt the need to make this. Particularly puzzling is that you can easily encounter Chryssalids before you encounter Seekers (Chryssalids are guaranteed in early Terror Missions, of which you are guaranteed at least one every two months, while Seekers can't show up in the first month no matter what and have a low chance of spawning in a mission even once they enter the rotation. More simply: you will see Chryssalids in month 2, where you only have a chance of seeing Seekers in month 2), so the respective research requirements of Chryssalid Autopsy for Chitin Plating vs Seeker Autopsy for Respirator Implant means it's not particularly unusual to have access to Chitin Plating before you have access to the Respirator Implant.

To be fair, the Respirator Implant costs less than half the money Chitin Plating costs, has no corpse requirement to produce, and doesn't use Alien Alloys... but honestly, it's probably smarter to save money for Chitin Plating, rather than wasting funding on Respirator Implants. Money spent on stuff you expect to replace in the near-to-mid-future is probably wasted money. Tactical Rigging doesn't help the issue -if for some reason you want to maximize the HP of a soldier, Chitin Plating+Nanofiber Vest will have the same result as Chitin Plating+Respirator Implant, but for less money. You basically need to be short of Chryssalid corpses to seriously consider the Respirator Implant, full stop, and that's basically only going to be an early-game issue, if it happens at all.

The fact that it's labeled an "implant" bothers me, as well. If it's an implant, why is it so easily added and removed from soldiers? Also, why does it eat up the item slot, instead of being a permanent upgrade done at the Cybernetics Lab or something?

---------------------------------

Items... I'm less thrilled with than with Armor's design. The original X-COM's approach to inventory was overall more complicated than necessary and was often a giant pain in the butt to interact with, but I feel this entry goes too far in the opposite direction, simplifying inventory to the point that it's just not an interesting component of the game at all. Worse, I feel some of the items -Reaper Rounds and Nanofiber Vest in particular- highlight what a missed opportunity Foundry Projects represent.

See, in the original X-COM, one of the issues with the game design is that so much of your improvement is in the form of your soldiers leveling their stats -and only a few points at a time- that "stumbling" (suffering some casualties) can turn into an uncontrolled downhill slide where the fact that you lost some of your most elite troops leads to you losing more of them the next time you fight some aliens and so on, with rookies equipped with the latest and greatest gear just not enough of an improvement to give you room to recover.

So when I first learned of Foundry Projects, I was sort of imagining you'd get a few things like a universal HP upgrade, a universal Aim upgrade, maybe a universal Mobility upgrade. Stuff that meant that late-game rookies weren't so far behind early-game elites, so that even a full squad wipe didn't literally knock you back to the stone age. Gear in this entry is normally impossible to lose, and that serves the purpose instead... but it's honestly kind of distracting how it doesn't really make a lot of sense, and, again, feels like a missed opportunity regardless. Among other points, the closest you'll ever come to improving the Aim of your troops is making the Officer Training School upgrade that means all rookies are auto-promoted to Squaddie, and thus to a class, instead of needing to go on an actual mission.

Next time, we cover Gene Mods and Medals.