Combat!

Popping some caps

Combat is broken up into rounds; mercenaries, enemy troops and civilians each have a round in sequence during a given turn. Each of your one to six mercenaries has a number of action points, based on their character statistics, including dexterity and agility and the amount of equipment they're carrying. During one turn, you might send Monica "Buns" Songerguard, who has 20 action points, running to stand by that tree (that takes 10), then tell her to bend down into a crouch (2 more), and finally shoot the guard a few squares away (the 8 remaining action points). Multiply this kind of plotting times six for the number of soldiers you might fight with, times the innumerable rounds of combat, times the dozens of random fights and certain sectors you must liberate, and you'll start to see how Jagged Alliance 2 feels like a kind of very articulated, contextualized version of chess - it takes a similar level of concentration to make the right moves, and man does a game take a long time.

It's a night operation, that's why it's very very dark.

Items glow - that's nice.

But it is a thrilling long time! Your mercenaries will crouch and run between buildings, dodging bullets, lay flat and shimmy and crawl around corners, creep up on enemy soldiers, engage in gun battles by popping back and forth out of windows. The combat standby is sniping - send your women and men up on roofs and have them lay some cover down while your other units come around the sides of the building. There's so many positions and possibilities that it is possible to replay a sector 15 times and have the battles turn out differently each time. Even though I must admit I was kind of a Load-Game freak with this game (hated to see my mercenaries die you knoW), I was never bored trying a million ways from Tuesday to take the third Alma sector. You will storm prisons and hospitals, palaces and porn shops. There's even a sci-fi option you can toggle when you start your game - turn it on and you will find yourself facing giant insects in the night; another menace to from which you must save the people of Arulco. Even without the insects involved, taking measured turns shooting and walking around when your enemy is done firing can be very surreal.

How far can you crawl with only 10 Action Points left?

Watch militia run - it's even more exciting during the game.