Great shooter and PSI powers with a wonderful story.
The mini summary: Aliens invade the earth and you have to fight your way through them. You learn new skills, both mundane like fighting as well as PSI powers that you gain and develop over time. The whole game has a very immersive story, written by SciFi co-author Orson Scott Card, and some nice cinematics. The cinematics set the scene and you let your protagonist go through fulfilling the objectives. This is a shooter with some RPG elements, you can play first or third person view.
The main theme of the game is winning against the evil invaders (the Seekers) and growing ever stronger in you fighting and PSI powers. The story is very excellent, the best I have ever seen in a shooter.
What is nice is that you really like the hero and the story develops both him and the other protagonists as well as the world around you. You have a lot of options so it lets you choose how to solve the levels as you take them, if you like shooting then there are lots of options, if you prefer PSI powers, then go with those. The controls are easy and well thought out (standard mouse and keyboard with good defaults).
This is a truly original game, much more interesting than Far Cry, Prey or most of the shooters I have seen in recent years. It seems they concentrate on graphics wow and forget about game play. Not the the graphics in this game are bad, they are good (Quake 4 level, but nicer color schemes ;-) The moves are really nice and add a lot of fun to the game play. The PSI powers are original, you have a wide variety so you can choose your style and it levels well.
What is bad: is not a lot. I had one or two crash-to-desktop, during game play but the game auto saves so I took up right where I started. It has less bugs than other games out there now.
What is good:
superb music score that underlines
excellent story,
lots of variety,
good graphics and cinematics, easy to use controls that let you concentrate on the game play. There is some replay value as well as there are some choices you make early on that effect how things go.
All in all definitely rates a 9.x if you like third persons shooter games with depth. Higher if you like original games with that let you decide your style, less if your aim is need to have your newest super duper machine showing it's strength.
This game is not new, so you should get it for less than $20,-. Go for it: recommended for all gamers.
-- Cheers,
Duncan