[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Sombre

The entire UFO: After_____ series is basically bad. If you love xcom, JA2 etc then you can wring a few moments of false happiness out of the titles before you realise the combat isn't tactical /at all/ and the strategy side of things is a joke. Oh and the AI, balancing and pacing are all buggy and of generally low quality.

There's another recent X-Com clone that I've heard is much closer to the originals: UFO Extraterrestrials. Wikipedia article contains a summary of an article a Finnish game magazing ran about it:

The August 2008 edition of Pelit featured a retrospective of UFO: Extraterrestrials that focused on the effects mods have had on the game. Long-time reviewer Niko Nirvi, a strong admirer of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, described the original UFO: Extraterrestrials as a pleasant but visibly rushed substitute. He focused on "Bman's Ease of Use Mod 4.07 (fixed by Coasty)" as the prevailing merger of minor modifications, and pronounced it "the true successor of UFO: Enemy Unknown" that "genuinely achieves some of its predecessor's magic."

According to the magazine, the more visible features of Bman's mod are added weaponry, incorporation of the original Enemy Unknown enemies (although graphically by copying and enlarging the older game's sprites), improving AI and rebalancing the game mechanics by changing them towards those of Enemy Unknown.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO:_Extraterrestrials