Ok XCOM fans, let's be honest for a minute. What is so terrible about an xcom game that isn't a TBS? especially since you get to play as Special Agent John Doggett.. err i mean William Carter?

This game is a lot better than a lot of people would want you to believe!

So the story starts off with a grizzled special agent, who lost his family and ends up getting pulled into somthing bigger than him. All of the characters here aren't anything new in Military or retro scifi, but they don't need to be. What makes the characters, world and story help standout if the interactions you have with the characters through dialogue. The dialogue does a great job at building the world, progressing the story. Though the two characters I really liked were the pilot and POW. The setpieces and environment on all of the levels are actually damn fantastic. It's a pity the game is so linear, because they would've been lot of fun to explore. Who knows maybe a open-worldish XCOM will be next! Then again cover based shooters being linear is nothing new.

The combat itself is decent. You have basic cover based shooting, which isn't anything crazy, but the battle vision, or whatever it's called adds a layer of strategy you don't normally get from these types of games. You always have 2 other agents in your squad and you command them by pausing the game and giving them orders. it adds a nice layer to the combat that helps you control the battlefield a bit more.

Now how is the story? It's actually quite good. It starts off with the typical, we gotta fight back and save our planet, but the game really adds in some interesting elements, like the Sleepwalkers. Then near the mid and endings of the game, some interesting twists get thrown in! The story was engaging all the way through, but the final acts definitely ended with a bang and the game didn't go out with a whimper, like most modern games do nowadays. One thing the story and ending might do, especially since it ties into XCOM EU/EW is it may add some confusing things that seem contradicting. The only thing i could see that would be a like that would be the outsiders in this game, they're actually flesh and blood, yet the Outsiders in EU are synthetic. The games were in production around the same time and probably just didn't notice that little thing. If you don't like to think about the worlds you explore in fiction, then you can easily say the two contradict each other, but if you think about it for a few minutes, you realize it actually expands the universe quite a bit and gives it a lot of depth. Overall, if you play games just for the story, this would be a great game to play!

Did this game do anything wrong? It did, but nothing too drastic. The game is pretty linear, but you do get to explore the base a bit, which is cool the first few times, but it gets boring after 2-3 times. The quests in base are few and far between and don't have any interesting scripted events, except in certain areas you'll never go into again. There definitely could've been some more interesting side quests. i also would've loved to explore the maps that were designed, instead of being forced to go one way. being a 3rd person cover based shooter, the shooting part of the combat wasn't exactly riveting. It wasn't bad, by far it wasn't even close to the worst this genre can offer, but I wish the shooting part had more impact!

Now the Hangar DLC I still haven't played and will update the review once I have.

is it replayable? I think so. Give it a few weeks or so, up the difficulty and make some different choices, as you do have a few, although they're limited. But you do get different endings if you pick different characters in the final act!

At the end of it all, the game is a solid 7.5 out of 10. The story and dialogue is fun, the levels are fun. If you like retro scifi, XCOM, X Files or just SciFi in general and love a decent story, go ahead and enjoy this game, shame free of all the "Die-Hard" XCOM fans who are just mad this game isn't TBS and just don't like it because it's different. The game is enjoyable and it really is a pity that it got so much hate when released. Because it's certainly a fun ride. The game has a decent length of time for the story, especially if you aren't one of those people who just do the main story line and do no exploring whatsoever; how boring is that anyway. First play through took 16 hours with a decent amount of exploring, but I did know I missed some thigns due to scripted events. Go save the world agents!