(Read the ESCmag interview with Altar's Jiri Rydl.)

Aftermath begins in the present. Mysterious spores fall to Earth and kill off much of the population. Other people are mutated into horrific creatures. Only a lucky few are left alive and intact; these survivors band together to form the Council of Earth. It's up to you to lead the Council to victory against the malevolent aliens behind the spore attack.

The game is divided into two phases, the geosphere and tactical missions. At the geosphere, you'll direct research and manufacturing, as well as expanding territory and taking on enemy UFOs. Tactical missions are squad-based, with up to seven soldiers working to fulfill a variety of objectives.

Yep, it all sounds familiar. But try mentioning that earlier series to folks involved with this one (or indeed, any of Aftermath's diehard fans) and you'll get slapped around. Let's just say Altar has done proud by that earlier series and has no need to avoid comparisons. I found Aftermath just as engaging, if not more so in parts.

Anyway, the first few days in game time will be very tough. Especially since the game defaults to its hardest difficulty level and can only be changed by changing a config file. (A patch now corrects this problem, among others.) The Council is armed only with conventional weapons, and has just a couple of bases. In a nice touch, Council forces can be directed toward taking missions, but their odds of winning depend on how many tactical missions you've won in that area.

Tactical missions can range from scouting an area to bringing back unconscious enemies to capturing downed UFOs. Every so often, you'll be able to capture new bases and expand territory. In fact, Council forces can do this as well; wait too long to tackle a mission, and they'll give it a go.

These tactical missions are in paused real-time: The action runs in real-time, but stops with a push of the space bar. It also stops when an enemy is sighted, when each soldier has completed its action, when a group has completed their action - there's a lot of pausing. This can be streamlined on the options menu, thank Heaven. Otherwise, gameplay is simple, and almost entirely driven by the mouse. Right-clicking directs the soldiers to move or fire on an enemy (or, really, perform almost any action).

Combat can get fast and furious, even with the many pauses. It can also be pretty difficult. Even later in the game, enemies' technology keeps one step ahead of yours, which means you'll need to think about strategy rather than going in shooting. Soldiers can be trained in various skills - they level up based on combat experience - which means you can tailor squads to certain missions. Unfortunately, only seven soldiers can be on the squad at a time, and you can only send out one squad at a time to complete missions.

Research is just what you'd expect: Capture creatures and technology, and you can research them and use that knowledge against the enemy. I'm torn on the ability to look ahead and see what technology you could research in the future. On the good side, you can see what it takes to research certain technologies. On the bad side, that takes some of the fun away - I like to be surprised by cool new tech.

Manufacturing is sort of lumped with development, which is fine. That is, you can research the principles behind new weaponry, but then you've gotta switch over to manufacturing to develop and then build the new weapons. I guess my biggest beef with both research and development is that all research or manufacturing bases pool to work on one technology. It'd be nice to have each base working on something different, developing multiple items and pooling by choice.

Graphics are good. Tactical missions are conducted in 3D, which makes for some fun camera angles. The backdrops for these missions, at least in urban settings, are amazingly detailed: Smoke billows, flames lick at abandoned structures, bodies lie where they dropped. Unfortunately, the camera swirls at certain points - sighting an enemy, for example - and doesn't "snap back" to the player-set angle. That can be disconcerting in the middle of battle. Sound is nice, with ambient music playing the background. Soldier's voices range from okay to hilarious; I'm fond of one who sounds like Rowan Atkinson's character in Rat Race -- it's impossible to describe otherwise.

Aftermath really is quite fun. Hell, one of the reasons this review has taken so long to write is that I can't stop playing. Fans of squad-combat games and that other series will eat this up, and rightly so. I'm looking forward to Altar's follow-up.