A highly addictive game that is, in many ways, even better than the classic X-Com series. A pity it crashes sometimes.
The interface is relatively complex and takes some getting used to. Many retail boxes do not include hard manuals but rather use a PDF file. However, the manual warns you away from it, saying that it may spoil the game for you and that the interface is relatively intuitive. I managed to figure out the game on my own but I'm a fairly advanced computer user. The most complicated part is the squad pathing. Your squad members sometimes refuse to take orders and this is frustrating if you don't know why. Sometimes they'll do this because they've been knocked down and haven't fully gotten up yet and they'll ask for orders a second or so before they're ready again. However, usually they're just trying to prevent running into each other. Creative use of the alt and shift keys (to replan from scratch or stack additional orders respectively) seems to take care of most of that. It's very cool to see your squad members run up, crouch, aim, and start laying a withering hail of bullets all over those alien baddies. Running at normal speed looks the most realistic of any squad-based combat game I've ever seen, and this is why the real-time execution actually seems to pull off squad-based combat better than the original turn-based ones.
The strategic combat outside of the game seems to have a number of talking heads continually bombarding you with information you may or may not care about. However, you can actually fully customize which events have them speak to you, which ones pause the game, and which ones show up on the log. So if you get tired of hearing every time your squad member is moved to a hospital ward then you don't have to. Despite the inability to build multiple bases or shoot down UFOs, the strategic game is actually pretty advanced and interesting, and includes a number of embedded cutscenes as certain events transpire.
Perhaps the worst part of this game is that it does tend to crash. On some people's systems more frequently than others. For me, the frequency is about once every two or three hours of play. Fortunately, the game performs autosaves at the start of every squad mission, so significant progress loss has yet to occur. At worst, I once had some reoccurring lost graphic model data that was lagging down the tactical combat and preventing a certain battle from being completed. However, I was able to save during the tactical battle and reload the game to finish the mission.
I'm not kidding about that "highly addictive" comment. I picked this up on Sunday expecting to get some work done at home before getting heavily invested in the game. After installing it and sampling the gameplay a bit, I found myself riveted to the game, and I haven't been able to get any work done at home for a few days now. Afterlight has that "what happens next?" drive that makes it very difficult to put it down.
When you consider that Gamespot reviewer Brett Todd had also slogged his way through the previous Aftermath and Aftershock, essentially three heavy refinements of the same game, his giving Afterlight a 6.5 surely indicates there's something shining through here.