Not as good as the original X-Com, but the best remake to-date
WHAT'S GOOD
* Faithful to the original game's style of game play - a mix of sci-fi strategy and squad-level tactics
* Soldiers can usually be saved when wounded and/or incapacitated. This eliminates the original game's problem of one bad mission destroying all of your experienced troops
* The evolution of weapon types is largely faithful to the original game (based on what I've seen so far)
* Good variety of aliens with various abilities
* Soldiers and bases can be renamed (although this is less intuitive for bases than it could have been)
* Ground assault missions seem to have a nice degree of variety in terrain, enemy unit placement, enemy tactics, etc.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER
* Intro video is not reflective of the game to come - it shows space combat away from a planet, while the game places ship vs ship combat over the planet
* Voice acting in the intro video sounds like a "B Movie" - and not in a good way!
* Theme music is only marginal at creating the appropriate game atmosphere
* No way to reserve action points for opportunity fire when plotting moves
* Action points required for weapon use can only be determined by clicking on the weapon
* No separate Medic skill - seems unrealistic
* Base placement within a region seems to be automatic
* Changing equipment and reloading weapons costs no action points (although some people may actually love this in practice, it's not very realistic)
* I have yet to determine if troops can be placed anywhere besides the main base
* Since the idea seems to have been to remake the original game, I'm not sure why a fictional planet was created instead of using Earth
* Graphics are disappointing. While considerably better than the original, when compared to how graphics in games have advanced over the years, UFO:Extraterrestrials graphics only represents a baby step forward.