If you enjoyed over watching your way to victory in Xcom Enemy Unknown then Xcom 2 will be something of a culture shock. You really cannot afford to rest on your laurels when the resident alien force outnumbers and outguns you severely in the early stages. I found it surprisingly punishing on normal difficulty compared to its predecessor.

The tactical game play remains intact; there’s better mission variety, a more involving narrative, better soldier customization, randomly generated maps, a wide variety of aliens and weapons and on the whole it’s shinier, prettier and more difficult.

There’s already a substantial number of mods available on the Steam workshop so if you’re not keen on those timed objective missions (of which there were a lot) or fancy a new hat your needs will be met.

A word of caution however because the game really would benefit from some bug fixing and better optimization. No-one likes crashing to desktop Firaxis; not even the aliens.