There are better ways to unveil a video game than to delay it for a year. Similarly, to withhold it from the press, make it belatedly single-platform and reduce its retail price can be somewhat disquieting to the consumer. Between them, Sierra and developers Black Ops ended up embracing all of the above options. With the series over, only a pessimistic fraction of an audience now remains to examine The X-Files: Resist or Serve.

Over nine years The X-Files came to represent an enormous landscape of science fiction; it paid homage to almost every significant artist and work the genre has ever seen, threading this vast imaginative resource into its own world of trash-horror, soul-searching, paranoia and conspiracy. In signing on to give Chris Carter’s opus video-game form, Black Ops assumed responsibility for translating this delicate, loved and often very subtle property. In succumbing to such a variety of marketing pitfalls they haven’t provided the best in first impressions.

Never let it be said, however, that video games are bound by rules or precedents; as far as the series faithful should be concerned, X-Files: Resist or Serve actually delivers. Clearly based on an insightful checklist of essential ingredients, this is as faithful an adaptation as anyone could have hoped for. Those fantasies of marching Dana Scully into erotic peril while Fox Mulder abuses his inclusive library of glamour movies have at last found an outlet. With a story and dialogue penned by series writer Tom Schnauz and voiced by a healthy ensemble of original cast members, the game even captures those persistently elusive qualities of wit, drama and intrigue.

Staged across three two-act episodes, players can follow two interweaving paths depending on choice of character. Scully’s game is a more cerebral blend of puzzles (autopsies included) and investigation, while Mulder enjoys a blend of dry irony and gun-ishment. Shrewdly plotted, both paths meander wildly from one location to the next, soaking up as much X-Files atmosphere as possible. From the trailer-park town of Red Falls to the Siberian wasteland of Tunguska, the game strikes a great many chords en route. A cable-car descent towards an isolated asylum, a black-oil infested ghost-town, underground caverns and military facilities awash with secrets – these are the kinds of dark places that the series made its own. Apparently the game transpires within the series’ seventh season, and its storyline does indeed fit. References to themes, images and events elsewhere in the series are littered through both your updated notes and the levels themselves. Impressively, much of the back-story is even given case numbers that refer to actual episodes – a neat touch. The overriding question for many, however, will be what remains when all of this alluring detail is stripped away. The answer, typically, isn’t simple.

Resist or Serve is a survival horror title by developers who have never made one before. They’ve impressively restructured many conventions of the genre to suit The X-Files, but there are some that have clearly proven troublesome instead. Much of the game is agonisingly familiar. Somewhere between Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil and Alone In The Dark, here is a game that sometimes takes more than just inspiration from its predecessors. The system for handling inventory and weapons, for example, is essentially that of Resident Evil, the only noteworthy difference being an unlimited number of item slots. Analogue-controlled torch-beams and night vision are a couple of the game’s more welcome tricks, less welcome being the tendency of characters to ‘snag’ themselves on scenery and the excessive precision required when picking up objects. The compromise between good or bad becomes a lingering feature of the game’s engine – seldom frustrating but only because the action never pushes it to breaking point. It’s also a shame that the health system featured in earlier builds – each limb uniquely capable of receiving damage – never made the final cut.

It’s difficult to say whether the ‘efficiency’ of Resist or Serve is something good or bad; more challenge is to be found in the wily conservation of ammo and health, less in individual encounters. Though limited in variety, the enemies on offer (ranging from zombies and alien hatchlings to household pets and lunatics) are nicely animated and frequently provide ‘the shocks’. Nevertheless, there are no real leviathans to fear, no Pyramid Head or Nemesis (the alien bounty hunter being underused in this capacity). The combat itself is a downgraded affair that features an efficient auto-aim but a punishing lack of mobility. There’s also a certain imbalance between the timing of enemy melees and the recovery or your character – it is possible, albeit rarely so, to become trapped in a cycle of being damaged without opportunity for escape. Yet the game is still a cake-walk. It cuts down on most of the backtracking that curses survival horrors and is damn good fun for the most part, but is also short and easily conquered thanks to cautious execution. All things considered, this decision to turn down the heat is a wise one – more pressure and this neat but brittle engine would have broken to frustrating effect.

Visually, the game is perfectly adequate while experiencing occasional rises and troughs. On a par with Silent Hill 2, the evocative locales and decent facial modelling compensate for the odd shabby texture and clipping. FMV is well produced but nothing outstanding. As regards the game’s camera, it invites the same comments as the combat system – flaky but sufficient. The game is rendered in full 3D, but no control over vantage point is offered. Luckily, the view of proceedings is seldom obscured, the frame-rate largely constant. Sound in the game is, by definition rather than implementation, very good. Though the music is taken directly from a soundtrack album and the effects are a mixed bag, the dialogue is the best acted and best written that survival horror has ever seen – an undeniable achievement.

More than a self-serving series, The X Files was a digest for all that had gone before it – a camera-obscura of occult and macabre storytelling. Resist or Serve succeeds by being an extension of this philosophy, referencing and toying with survival horror as if it were an influential movie or book, framing the result as if it were an episode. Derivative and flawed mechanically, it is nonetheless a superlative tie-in. By integrating into its source material rather than paying homage, it enriches the franchise as a whole – something a great many similar efforts have failed to even attempt.