Always wanted to play this failed/forgotten game which basically fell between the cracks of gaming history following Firaxis' much more succesful XCOM reboot, and got around to it last week.

Left a review on Steam if you're interested, but the short version is basically: it's not bad, it's just not very good either. Shouldn't have called it XCOM, but otherwise the game is interesting enough in its setting and atmosphere. I picked it up for 2 euros, so my expectations may have been low though. I can imagine feeling really scammed if I'd paid 15 euros or more for it...which is a feeling I definitely didn't have about the Firaxis XCOM which was worth every cent. So yeah, take it with a grain of salt.

I liked the first part of the game. The black tar thing was creepy enough. The second part was underwhelming. Overall there have been worse xcom games.

Yeah, they were going well in the beginning with the black goo thing and the mind controls and terraforming...and then it feels like there is a whole middle part missing before you strike back and win the game. I'm not saying that every story should follow the old "beginnings of the hero - all seems lost middle part - redemption/victory of the hero" pattern exactly, but at least create some sense of drama or overcoming. This was like...omg we're fucked, we can't do anything to oppose this relentless alien invasion (2 days later) wait, we found a way to travel to their world and blow everything up and stop them from ever coming at us again, game over. Ok then.

Yea, I played that game a while ago. Agreed... it wasn't terrible, but it could've been better. I didn't feel like I was ripped off, at least.