Xenopurge perfectly captures a very specific trope

I’ve played several hours of Xenopurge and, in those hours, I’ve fought desperate battles for survival, rescued VIPs from the clutches of evil aliens, collected troves of information necessary for the war effort, and killed hundreds of xenos.

And I have no idea what the enemy looks like.

There’s a trope in many sci-fi movies: an operator sits in a command center, usually with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, watching soldiers’ bodycam feeds and tracing their progress on a digitized map — the soldiers are usually represented by blue dots — with growing horror, watching as, one by one, the soldiers’ blips disappear. Think of the “that’s inside the room” scene from Aliens.

That is what Xenopurge is — you’re that operator. You’re not the boots on the ground, you’re the controller in a situation room watching the distant action unfold on screens and readouts. And, more often than not, you’re the one watching as each feed cuts and is replaced by a KIA stamp.