Squads are also smaller, but more customisable, making the loss of any of them devastating-a trend that's largely been continued. XCOM is a reimagining of a series that was already acclaimed, but with a more cinematic and character-driven bent. It didn't quite have the same impact, however.
I say 'arguably' not because there is any doubt that this has been a fantastic decade full of smart, tactical battles, but because the extremely slick Frozen Synapse came out in 2011, a year before XCOM, and was just as impressive.
There was a lull, certainly in attention, after the '90s, but then XCOM: Enemy Unknown came along and lit a fire under the genre, arguably kicking off the decade of turn-based tactics games, which I never would have imagined saying at the start. There have been few moments over the last decade where I've been far from a grid full of little soldiers duking it out turn by turn.
