Update: XCOM 2 see deal XCOM 2 - PC $23.99on Green Man Gaming IGN's 2016 Game of the Year.

There’s an air of white-knuckle desperation about XCOM 2’s post-apocalyptic setting, and it only enhances the tension. Taking place 20 years after humanity shockingly lost the war we played in 2012’s excellent XCOM: Enemy Unknown, we’re now fighting to overthrow a decades-long alien occupation of the planet. It’s a very thematically appropriate scenario for a game about taking four to six-person squads into battle against initially-superior alien forces, and a great backdrop for these unpredictable, tactically deep, and addictive battles.

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Above: Watch some XCOM 2 gameplay.

“ You need to have a backup plan, or else you can’t complain when you’re dead.

Just like before, XCOM’s high-stakes turn-based tactical combat dares you to become attached to your customizable characters (I made most of IGN’s staff in the character editor) knowing that on any given mission they could be permanently killed off because of mistakes or just bad luck. As with Risk, Monopoly, Warhammer, poker, and anything else involving chance, XCOM 2 is a game where you can theoretically do everything right and still lose to bad rolls of the dice, but on the whole a good player will generally come out on top. Deciding when and how to upgrade and use each soldier’s abilities, then crossing your fingers and hoping they’ll make their clutch shot, creates non-stop suspenseful, triumphant, and tragic moments.

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Above: See an XCOM 2 Retaliation mission.

“ You can’t count on anything, but you will get something.

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Not being dead on your first game is one thing – you almost certainly will die as a result of walking into countless unknown traps, especially if you play above the normal difficulty (as I mostly did – normal, or “veteran,” is a cakewalk for anyone who knows XCOM). But one of XCOM 2’s biggest strengths how it resists your efforts to fall into repetitious patterns. By comparison: after the first real-world month or two of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it became apparent that anyone who intended to play it for that length of time would have a base build order down to a science, know exactly what to research when, and memorize the best routes through the pre-built maps and have an idea of where enemies would appear on them. XCOM 2 defeats most of those assumptions by introducing randomness throughout its campaign, so that you can’t count on the route that took you to victory one time to deliver you to the same results the next.The same goes for the high-quality procedurally generated maps, and a good variety of mission types. Without knowing ahead of time where an objective will be or the location of the enemy, you’ll attack and defend, extract or kill VIPs, and blow things up. Some missions have turn timers that force you to make risky moves, or to make a hasty retreat. I can’t say I ever had a mission where I lost because the map wasn’t fairly laid out (though I definitely had some tough-to-cross stretches thanks to my use of explosives).

Above: Watch an XCOM 2 trailer.

“ If the Shieldbearer isn’t disabled, he’ll give every ally around him an energy barrier.

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And because you start most missions in concealment, keeping your squad hidden while you set up a lethal ambush is a new and different kind of challenge with a potentially big and cinematic payoff. Concealment is an interesting concept, in that it’s basically XCOM 2’s aliens telling us, “Go ahead: take your best shot.” It’s a simple system at heart: when you start a mission, the enemy doesn’t know you’re there until you get within a certain radius, or you open fire. And usually it is simple, unless you dash ahead without looking (as I’ll admit, I sometimes did). If you exercise caution, though, you can set all but one of your squad into Overwatch mode around a group of enemies, then hit your highest-priority target and watch as your squad (hopefully) dissects the enemy in a beautiful slow-motion slaughter that suffers none of the typical Overwatch penalties.

Above: We play two missions with Firaxis.

Plus, when you take out two of the three aliens in a group, the last one is sometimes smart enough to retreat and group up with another nearby group. That’s fantastic, because not only is the AI displaying a rare will to survive, it gives you another thing to think about when engaging: leave no survivors, or the next fight might be harder.