Ah yes, the UFO series. "Spiritual successors" to the XCOM series despite the combat systems beingdifferent enough for it not to matter.
Aftermath was the decent, above average first in the series, then came the mind-numbingly boring Aftershock and the third in the series, Afterlight, is clearly the best so far.

Skip to the bottom for aa summery

The Story
Set after the events of the previous 2 games, a peace treaty forces a colony of humans to leave earth and land upon Mars. Entombed in the "Mauseleum", most of the colonists are cryogenically frozen, with a small selection of Soldiers, Scientists and Technicians awakening before the others to terraform the planet to make it inhabitable for the thousands of frozen humans. Things are of course, never as easy as they seem because your plans are slowed by the security robots left behind by the ancient departed Martians, the Reticulans that attacked earth have set up a colony on Mars too, and you can ally or attack, things get worse, as a portal at an excavation site activates and creatures known as "Beastmen" appear all over the planet, another group of Reticulans, more powerful then the first, show up and claim to be the leaders of the race and the ones who attacked Earth are renegades, and will only ally or make peace with you if you break any existing treaties with the "renegades". Finally, old martian activities begins to surface near a crator and it may seem that the ancient Nartians haven't disapeared entirely at all.

The Good / How It Improves the Series

Technology
In Aftermath and Aftershock researching was a pain, you where never quite sure exactly what you where researching, and what you were actually going to gain from it. So you'd want to make guns, you'd do your research first. After researching "Small Arms" you discover that the research was only the theory behind the concept of small arms, which lead to you having to research the practical applications of small arms, then blue prints for small arms, then actual small arms production. By all that, you for somereason only know how to make a 9mm Pistol.
Great, that took ages, and all I got was a pistol.
Afterlight says " that, these are scientists and technicians, I'm sure they understand concepts like reverse engineering".
Afterlight actually does research right, it gives you a wide slection of possible techs, and each one is labeled well enough so you can actually make a reasonable assumption about what you will gain from the research. You will be able to produce basic rifles and pistols early enough in the game. Ammo will be your main problem so remember to start mass producing that as fast as possible.

Combat
Afterlight has the same combat system as the previous games, while annoying in its aspects, the system feels slightly more accessible and streamlined (once you have customised your Pauses). Combat has a whole new level of danger now as well, the martian landscae is uninhabitable for human life, all soldiers go into the field with space suits. If one of these are ruptured in combat then he will lose health over time, which leads us into classes.

Class / Staff / Base System
Your basic classes remain, You have your Soldiers, your Scientists and your Technicians. SOldiers fight, scientists think, and technicians make things. However, Afterlight includes split Classes, you will have some personnell who have two classes, the most useful being Soldier/Technician or Soldier/Scientist.

You can get Technician/Scientist, but its a redundant mix. Without a soldier class, he will always stay in base (unless in one of the construction vehicles, but that still counts) and that means he will either be using his technician skills, or his scientist skills, never both at a time. This means that he only improves his skill in whatever is being used at the time. You will only ever use this class as either a tech or a scientist, trying to use him evenly will result in a team of expert scientist or techs, plus this extra dual class fellow who sucks at both.

The Soldier mixes work, because only scientists can get medical training which allows them to use medkits in the field (or if they're in the research lab, gives a bonus to the speed of any medical class researches) and only technicians can get suit engineering training, which allows them to repair breached suits (or if they're in a production factory, a bonus to the speed at which new suits are produced). These classes are equally capable at become great soliders aswell.

Geoscape/Map
The map is probably the best of the series so far, in that you feel you have a real impact in how it all changes.
After the required research is done, a number of improvements can be built in each province, inlcuding mines (if a resource is present), Radar Stations (which adds more time for you to react to enemy invasions) and Terraforming stations. I believe there may be a few more, but I have not played the game all the way through, you will read later why.
The Terraforming is great, because it has an impact on the wider strategy of the game.
As the Terraforming gets better, there is a graphic change in it all, water and grass begins to appear on the geoscape aswell as in the tactical battles.
Each province has a certain environmental hostility to it, represented by a number. Each type of suit has a protection number which shows the maximum environment it can survive without the user being hurt over time. Large scale terraforming actually lowers this level which is great, because the heavier, more combat protected suits have a lower Environment protection then suits which are specialised for dangerous environments. You will no lnger have to give your soldiers inferior protection from enemy weaponry just so they can actually survive walking around.

Diplomacy
This is a cool, new feature, that works better then what was tried in Aftershock. You won't be doing a great deal, but let me tell you, when you have to choose between fighting the Renegade Reticulans, and the newer ones, you will relish the ability to stab your former allies in the back just to get the new guys off of yours.


The Bad / What Has Not Been Improved

Difficulty Curve

A few years ago as part of a highschool assignment on the theory of games, we (a group) had to make a board game, which will be played by the other members of the class, and us there game. We affectionally called our game "Frustration Station" as we found it amusing to create a trivia game with questions so rediculous, that it included multiple choice questions such as "What colour is better: African, Scottish or Indian?" and university level maths equations we had to look up on the internet.
The difference between Frustration Station and UFO Afterlight, is that atleast we
a) gave you multiple choice, so you could still fluke it
and
b) had the common decency to make it rediculously hard throughout the whole game, rather then making it start of reletively easy then out of no where BAM we hit you in the dick with a rusty nail.
Afterlight does this, much as the previous UFO games did. They start of easy , then go to a normal difficulty. Then, suddenly, new ememies are introduced, and you soon realise that your weapons suddenly suck, and they have armour peircing, uraniam tipped, paralysing psy bullets dipped in the poison of Australias most venemous animals.
You s.

But, there are two other annoying difficulty problems that still exist from the prvious series:
Dependence upon elite squads. If you had multiple squads of soldiers in any of the UFO games (excluding this one, you aren't given enough for multiple squads, barely enough for a full squad) you will have to swap between them so they both get experiance, but by the time you hit the magic difficulty spike, they're only just not tough enough to make it through most encounters.
So you're forced to use one squad the majority of the game, creating tough, hard as nails veterans who once they hit that difficulty spike, are only just tough enough to make it through the missions.
God forbid one dies, you're forced to restart the mission, otherwise you're going to be replacing that level 22 minigun with extra toughness with a level 1 retarded monkey, who'll get knocked out in one shot, if not killed. This can make things extra frustrating.

Enemy Agressiveness
: You will reach a point where territory expansion becomes very, very slow, as you start to run out of chances to to attack provinces. The enemy attacks you, you repel the attack. Ofcourse, your soldiers are heavily wounded, so must remain in hospital, by the time they're healthier enough to go onto the attack, you get invaded again.
Damn, wouldn't be such a problem if you started off with a larger surpluss of soldiers.

Pathfinding
Look, if you've played the previous UFO games, you already know what I am talking about. It hasn't been fixed. If you haven't, well. Lets just say you thought Total War and movements in the city where bad. You aint seen this.

Environments
While its nice to see the terraforming make a change, and while I genuinly love some maps, you loose the interiors and size of the previous two games. Most of the maps are played on the exterior, with the occasional small building. When your base is attacked, you protect it mostly from the outside.

Summary

Afterlight is undoubtedly the best of Aftermath and Aftershock. The graphics are the nicest (except for the robots) and the stylisation works well. The gameplay is certainly smoother and friendlier, with research and production now making a little more sense. It still has its pitfalls however, with the difficulty spike still occuring, aswell as your reliance on elite squads. The large maps and interior maps of Aftermath and after shock are sadly missed here (except for those annoying, cramped missions where you had to go into the Reticulan ufo's).
However, all the grievances could be ignored, if they'd just fix the god damned pathfinding.

Gameplay 7/10
Replayability 7/10
Graphics 9/10
Music/sound 8/10

Overall, 7/10 An above average, mostly fun game.