Up until very recently, if you'd told someone who was a PC gamer in the mid-nineties that 2012 would see remakes of both X-COM and Jagged Alliance, they'd have laughed at you. Before turning misty-eyed and staring into the middle distance while alternately mournfully singing Oh Danny Boy and muttering something about time units, probably.

Here we are, though. Firaxis' new version of the incomparable X-COM is due later this year, and last week saw the release of Back In Action, a remake of 1999's turn-based strategy game Jagged Alliance 2 and the first new, official game in the series since then.

There have been expansion packs, there have been multiple abortive attempts to make Jagged Alliance 3, there has been an unofficial sequel (Hired Guns, The Jagged Edge) and there have been oh-so-many mods. Back in Action, though, is a re-imagining of the second game's tale of hired mercenaries liberating a fictional country from its despotic queen. You play the essentially unseen commander of these mercs: telling 'em where to go, who to shoot, what to shoot them with, what gear to buy and, when you can afford it, hiring new contract killers to join their ranks or replace those whose messy deaths have been the result of your poor planning.

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