I had seen this game listed on Good Old Games for a little while before I purchased it. It looked neat and had good reviews, but I wondered how truly in depth it could be tactically and had otherwise heard nothing about it prior to release on GOG. Finally, I took a chance and purchased it. I was not disappointed. The missions themselves take place on a 2D top down screen resembling a building blueprint. You place paths and waypoints for your squad to follow. I usually like to try to plan everything before I start the mission and then sit back and watch my squad execute my plan, however you can control them in real time and have the option to pause the game if your plans began to unravel. This is almost next to impossible on later missions, however, as the locations get larger with more rooms and hostiles with more things that can go wrong. There are multiple individual missions in addition to the campaigns. These allow you to get familiar with the basic mechanics and scenarios in the game. They also give your squad experience, allow you to unlock various upgrades (armor, weapons, tools, etc), and doctrines before you start the campaign. Doing this allows you to progress through the campaign a lot easier as you will start with better gear (for me, armor was an important upgrade). The scenarios included defusing bombs, rescuing hostages, and simply clearing out buildings. These take place in multiple locations such as harbors, apartments, airplanes, and ships just to name a few. Next is replayability. There is a random mission generator and an editor. This helps to ensure a lot of content and should keep this game entertaining and varied for a very long time to come. The game's visual style is fantastic, unique, and, at least in my opinion, will likely age very well, still looking good years from now. The developers really did a great balance between the most important game play and graphics. In short, this is an excellent game and well worth the price.
There are many reasons why I enjoy this game. First, the campaign is varied. Missions take place in a variety of locations with a variety of objectives, from a research facility on a frozen moon orbiting a gas giant, a mining facility, a planet covered by a single living creature, to infiltrating and demolishing a hydroelectric dam. There are even a few missions where you get to set up defenses such as force fields and sentry turrets to hold off your enemies, something I had yet to see in a FPS at the time. In between missions, you are usually free to wander about your ship and talk to your crew. This was a neat addition that I also really hadn't seen in a game at that time. During this time, you get information about your crew, events that took place before the game, weapons, and enemies. It also provides a rest period between missions, even though you can go straight to the briefing and start the next mission if you wish. As far as graphics and sound, I feel this game still holds up well. The story is decent and the game runs well. I haven't noticed as of posting this any bugs or glitches, even after playing through it completely twice along with many more replays of my favorite missions. All in all, I would recommend this game.
