Even though I'm old enough to remember the original X-Com I had never bothered to play it, nor any other of that type of game.
So I'm not sure why I decided to buy this one as my first impressions from seeing a few screenshots were not that good, but hey what the heck me thinks a bit of compulsive buying isn't that bad, or is it...?

I won't bother going over the premise of the game or how much it is, or not, like X Com (as I didn't play it) so at least when I do play this one I have no preconceptions on how it should play.

My first impressions were - oh dear what I have I bought, but I thought that since I had just bought it I might as well work past those first impressions, not that I'm a eye candy freak that denounces a game unless it has the latest and best in both visuals and sound, a good job with this game if you expect pure eye candy then move on, but you can become conditioned to expect a big impact at the start of any game.

Well this game for me just grew on me. To say that it is addictive would simply not be doing it justice. It is just totally compelling and oozes that feeling of 'just one more turn'

The balance between the tactical combat map and the strategic world one is perfect and whilst there are a few issues that should have been picked up during this games long and drawn out development the smartest move, conscious or not I'm not sure, is that the creators of this gem did was to make it almost totally moddable.

Pop over to...
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/ufoextraterrestrials/add-member-review.html
or
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=440
and see what I mean.

This is where the game really does get its polish and so the roughness that is there in its original form is almost completely gone allowing the game to shine as the diamond that it is.

I look forward to a patch to address some of the issues that have already been resolved by some ingenious fans over at the above forums but if a patch could also allow the game to be more supportive of mods along the line of Oblivion, where multiple mods are possible at the same time, or a mod folder that means the base files are not needed to be altered that would be great.

A VERY big pat on the back from me to Chaos Concepts for making this game and an equally big pat to those modders that have more than helped to give this rough diamond a bit of a polish.

BTW - My score would be 8.5 as the original game but 9.5 with using mods - for some reason I'm having a problem placing my score here.

So my final score - 9.0

AWESOME game.