It could not have gone worse. After the devastating attack of the Reticulans in UFO: Aftermath, you only had fifty years of rest until they once again tried to eradicate the human race in UFO: Aftershock - and that time they succeeded. Only around ten thousand people survived this desperate war and only a few were allowed to remain on a station orbiting Earth. Most of the survivors were banished to Mars by the Reticulans.
This game is the last part of a series of 3 games (Ufo: Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight). This one is probably the most mature of the three. They are definitely all worth a look.
In this game, you have to manage the human settlement on mars: train your soldiers/technicians/scientists, succeed in dangerous tactical missions, extend your base, fight off intrusions, colonize the planet, explore the technologies of four different races and build new equipment and weapons. Resources (both human and material) are scarce - so to be efficient, you have to manage a lot. All this is surrounded by a shallow but reasonable story with about 20 human characters, each with a tiny background story and their own voice output. Packaged in cute 3D graphics and a comprehensible user interface.
In vanilla, the game suffers from serious problems. The general balancing is not right. Example: after a while you get spammed with extremely repetetive tactical missions against the 'beastmen' race. Another example: The difficulty not only rises with your own technical development, but also with time, so if you are not very quick, you get overpowered by elite enemies in every mission.
So, in vanilla I would give this game a rating of 5 at most.
However, several mods were created which fixed the game!!
So, with a bit of modding, I enjoyed this game very much.