As the name suggests, this package of extra-terrestrial goodness contains three games from the classic UFO series. These are UFO: Aftermath, UFO: Aftershock and UFO: Afterlight (we're still waiting for UFO: Aftershave, where the aliens hover above world capitals in their giant motherships and proceed to drown us in Brut).

Testing out the first game of the trilogy, we were fair taken back to the heady days of the nineties and the X-Com series. UFO: Aftermath wasn't so much inspired by X-Com as cloned from it, featuring very much the same recipe of base expansion, research, intercepting UFOs and investigating crash sites once you've shot them down. Half the game is spent on the strategy map, on which you direct overall operations, and the other half in the 3D tactical combat engine where the various battles against the alien menace are resolved.

Naturally, Aftermath wasn't a complete clone; it abandoned X-Com's strict action-point driven, turn-based combat system in favour of a more flexible, semi-real-time approach. What all that hyphenated guff means is that the game basically plays as an RTS which you can pause at any time to plan your squad's moves in detail. Obviously, the graphics were streets ahead of X-Com, although by today's standards they're pretty ropey.

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While Aftermath's tactical battle system still holds up okay, striking a reasonable balance between depth and accessibility (although erring on the side of the latter), the overarching strategy element where you direct your forces across the Earth is very flimsy by contemporary measure. There's an impressive RPG system of character development for your troops, but the choices you make in terms of base building, manufacturing and research are pretty limited.

Luckily, the series addresses this superficiality in the sequel Aftershock. Here you've got to plan which countries you invade, with each being worth a certain amount of resources that are used to support the bases you construct. Supply lines have to be linked and there's a substantial amount of economic juggling to get your teeth into. Diplomacy is also introduced, with various factions you can interact with, trading resources and recruiting new troops from their ranks. This all makes for a much more compelling game.

The combat is fine-tuned too, with a less clunky interface and extra attention to detail, such as the inclusion of noise icons (which mark the position of an enemy your soldiers can hear, but can't see). The graphics are souped up as well, and they're actually pretty decent with all the details turned on full. Multilevel maps make an appearance here, although this introduces some issues with the isometric camera views, which is a bit of a shame.

In the third episode, Afterlight, the visuals are brought fully up to modern standards (not surprising as the game was only published earlier this year). One of the biggest changes is that the war is transferred to the surface of Mars, where humankind is fighting to establish a foothold after fleeing Earth.

The strategic side of the game is bulked out even further in Afterlight, with RPG classes being introduced so you've not only got soldier characters, but technicians and scientists as well. The latter two can be used in field combat (for example, a techie can repair a grunt's damaged spacesuit) but are also needed back at base to work in manufacturing and research. Bases are realised in more detail and you're responsible for not only building facilities but making sure they're adequately staffed too.

Diplomatic matters have been given some added spice to boot, although the downside is that with all this tacked on the game becomes a little more convoluted as a result, with multiple interface screens and fiddly bits which aren't immediately intuitive (the tutorial isn't brilliant, and that doesn't help either). Having said that, there's an undeniably impressive depth to this final outing.

Without doubt, this is a very worthwhile bundle of strategy games, although Aftermath shows its age rather too readily. The package also comes with some extras, such as a poster, postcards and some bonus art on the disc, and all the games are patched up to the latest version, as you would hope.

Aftermath looks old and lacks depth, but the other two games are full of wholesome strategy goodness. As with all compilations, whether you'll want to fork out depends on how many of the games you've already played, but certainly for those yet to experience any of the UFO series this represents very good value for money.