The game does a good job of drawing you in. Good, but not great. The production values are pretty nice, but they really needed some polish. Most of the actors from the series provide their signature voices. Duchovney and Anderson are in their usual form, which is to say they’re entertaining albeit monotone. (Sweet Shub-Niggurath! I forgot how listless these two were!) The secondary characters (those particular to this production) do not fare so well. While not achieving ‘R E’ levels of awkward dialogue, there is some dodgy line delivery going on here. Aside from the voice acting, the audio for the game is spectacular. Employing signature pieces from the show- as well as original orchestral works- the ambient music is totally impressive. The sound effects are pretty nice as well. Moaning zombies have been done better, but not very often. The in-game graphics are quite good. The backgrounds are simply beautiful, and the character animations for both players and enemies are quite impressive. However the cut scenes are a little iffy. Moving textures such as clothing are seriously lacking in detail, and facial animations totally off. No really, when these folk talk, they just look awful.

While production values are a mixed bag, play control is where the game collapses into a big stinky pile. Ass-horrible controls are pretty much standard issue for survival horror games. Even the brilliant ‘Silent Hill’ series is pretty wonky when it comes to gameplay. At first, ‘X’s’ controls may seem pretty similar to ‘SH’s, but as the action drags on, you’ll notice little differences. The game requires pixel perfect character placement in order to interact with your surroundings or even pick up items. Using the melee and firearm attacks is very iffy. There’s no guarantee that you’re going to hit what your aiming at, and the inability to do a quick turnaround means that you’ll often get clubbed from behind. The AI on your enemies is unimpressive. They mostly just try to rush you, then smack you down. In addition, kicking enemies to death in order to preserve your scarce supply of ammo is utterly tedious. While well pickled in the usual survival horror-clichés, ‘X-files’ does avoid a couple of pitfalls. For one thing, there are no asinine puzzles. What brain teasers are present are pretty straightforward, and solving them requires more thought than random fiddling. (However, this can be a double-edged sword, as the game practically leads you by the hand from goal to goal.) The game also avoids the crutch of limited inventory space, used so frequently by lazy designers as a way to increase game length. The awkward controls and pinpoint-specific item targeting discourage exploration. To make matters worse, there aren’t that many goodies to discover, and what items are there (even crucial objects) are easy to overlook due to the cruddy interface. Added problems include invisible walls, a myriad of unopenable doors, and spastic camera angle transitions. (And I would like to have word with whoever decided that it’s impossible to run with both hands full.) Toss in a whopping number of interminable load screens, and it seems like the game is actively trying to dissuade you from playing it. This world is just no fun to run around in.

This is a shame, as the game makers did a damn good job when it comes to plot and atmosphere. The game features two intersecting story lines, one for each agent, each divided into three two-act “episodes”. The first episode of the game is nice enough, and provides the majority of both the game's action and scares. Being chased around a gray drizzly town by the living dead is just ducky. The second act takes place in mental asylum (further shades of Silent Hill) and features music a bit reminiscent of Goblin’s work on ’Suspiria’. The second episode varies by agent. For Scully, it’s a stealthy spy mission, and for Mulder, it’s, well, just odd. Pretty cool either way. The third episode takes place in Russia near the original Tunguska blast site. The first act is set in Siberia, and features some lovely snowy backgrounds. (It put me in mind of John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’.) The final act takes place in a sunken orthodox monastery, festooned with creepy icons and gargoyles. Very nice.

Normally I don’t go for plots involving aliens, but this one is delightfully grisly. It uses the whole space invaders shtick as a Lovecraftian springboard for some seriously eerie happenstances. Hard core fans of the show will most likely be delighted to see so many of the characters and settings from the series showing up in the game. However, the plot never gets so Byzantine that the casual viewer would become lost (and the player’s manual features a nice little backstory on each character).

Ambience is well-crafted, but most of the “scary” scenes lack subtlety. Stumbling across mutilated corpses is disturbing enough, we don’t need constant sting cords to tell us that this is supposed to be a bad thing. There are also some cheap zombie jumping out bits to keep you on edge. (And yes, the game does resort to spring-loaded cats.) The problems mentioned above, such as sh*tty camera angles and constant load screens do tend to take you out of the gaming experience, but the atmosphere is neat enough if you can get into it. Oh, and when playing as Dana Scully, you get to do autopsies. Autopsies are fun!

‘The X-files: Resist or Serve’ is an apt tribute for fans, and not a bad little survival horror. But for the casual gamer, it’s pretty weak. Certainly not a must own title, or even a pressing rental. It can kill a weekend or two, but don’t bother going out of your way to play it.