It is time to save the world from aliens - again. "Wait a minute, didn't I save the world in XCOM: Enemy Unknown?" Turns out none of us did, as XCOM 2 makes into canon the ending that humanity failed the final assault, and now the Aliens have taken over the planet.

While it's a seemingly odd approach for a sequel to tell all its players "you lost," XCOM 2 manages to cleverly weave this into a new story. The new attitude works, possibly even for the better, as this is a better game all around.

XCOM 2 is a near-perfect strategy and RPG experience that does everything a sequel is meant to do: It improves on what came before it in almost every way, and distills saving the world (again) into a nearly endless scalable package that can appeal to a wide variety of players. And mod support from day one ensures a high amount of longevity for this game's community. With the performance issues mostly smoothed out (thanks Feral!) and more patches coming down the road, there's no reason to not be playing XCOM 2 right now.