There’s so much more to say. I want to share everything that’s happened, want to talk at length about how critically wounded soldiers can be accidentally killed by a grenade even as a medic is closing in, about the special council missions that offer great rewards at great risk. We’re talking disarming bombs in a power station or rescuing a UN official, pinned down and under fire on a huge concrete bridge that looks like Godzilla just stomped on it.

I’ll finish by saying that my biggest concern has completely evaporated. I wasn’t sure how different the game would feel on each playthrough, whether it would be as replayable as the original. I’ll need to answer that when I’ve got the full game and spent almost two decades with it, but I’ve started from scratch at least ten times in the last week, and it’s felt like a different experience every time.

When I wrote about Crusader Kings II back near the beginning of the year, I said this: “If it doesn’t wind up being among my very favourite games of the year, spectacular things will occur in the next ten months.” Well, CK II will still be up there, but XCOM really is something spectacular. With all the burden of expectation and doubt, it manages to be both a hugely respectful reimagining and, all ties ignored, one of the best turn-based tactical games I’ve played in, well, forever.

Jim: I think I had no real expectations from XCOM, because I felt sure – unfairly – that the time of me being gripped by turn-based tactics was gone. The last time I can really remember it was with Laser Squad Nemesis, which was by the gollops themselves. But this has really knocked me over. I can’t stop playing it.

Adam: I’d already played a little before this preview code came along, but had really only seen the tutorial. I was worried the whole game might be quite directed, no real freedom of choice. And the way that the cutscenes and dialogue build up a narrative does suggest that, but it’s not the case at all. As my words yesterday probably gave away, I’m in the same state as you. I really can’t stop playing. I’m one of those people who installs X-COM on a computer before just about anything else, so I instinctively want to tell everyone who liked the original – ‘hey, be happy, it’s OK, this is a very good thing.’ Of course, it won’t please everyone but I really can’t think of a better turn-based tactical game of recent times. And the strategic side is no slouch either.

[...]Adam: I thought the same at first – there seems too much of a gap, but I’m much better at the game than I was four days ago. Classic isn’t just punishing, there are ways to succeed…at least most of the time. Longish story here – I had a mission recently where I hadn’t seen any aliens for about ten turns, which was making me clench my brain in a sort of nervous anxiety. Then I heard noises inside a grocery store. I sent a sniper up a drainpipe and onto the roof opposite, an assault guy with a grenade to the back door and two support troops went through the front door. There were six sectoids inside and they were all dead before they could take a shot. Three down when we entered, then they ran for cover and we finished them off. That is a hell of a good feeling. I love my sniper. And I am done talking about how good I am.

Jim: I am not very good.

Adam: Tell a story about not being very good. They are always good stories.

Jim: I don’t think any of them are very interesting, they all involve me doing completely idiotic things like sending my sniper to take cover behind an burning (and about to explode) car. I’ve done a lot of that sort of thing. I should mention, actually, how much I have enjoyed the general destructibility of everything. Knocking a wall down to make your way inside a structure has a certain robust satisfaction to it.

Adam: The sound design is strong in that aspect as well – when a building is burning it will creak and make shuddering sounds. Have you met mutons?

Jim: Yes, I just encountered them.

Adam: They quite regularly level entire buildings just to get at one half dead XCOM member who is limping back to the Skyranger.

Jim: They certainly killed me up. You know, combat aside, actually, the thing that made me coo most sincerely was the base screen. I am a sucker for cut-aways and cross sections of things, ever since I was a small child, so that base screen… Well, it did psychic things to me, ensuring my adoration for all time.

Adam: I used to draw shit like that in my maths books at school, anything with graph paper in that I could get a sense of scale with.

Jim: I got my love of architect from a children’s book in which a mouse created modernist homes for other animals, all illustrated in a cross-section cut-away style.

Adam: This sounds like the greatest book.

Jim: It’s a lost classic. But yeah: in XCOM that base screen is just a marvel.