10-19-2003, 06:56 PM
This game rocks. It's what I've been doing all weekend.
It's strictly single player, though, so it's not a long term game but definately fun if you liked the old X-Com games.
If you're not familiar with X-Com, it's an overhead-view squad based tactical combat game that has you shooting aliens and various horrible things that aliens seem to like to bring with them when they invade planets.
It doesn't follow the X-Com story, though. In this one, the game starts out pretty much present day and 95% of humanity just got wiped out. The strategic game has you reclaiming the world for humanity, taking it over in sectors like Risk, using missions from your team to gain hold in new territory and beat off attacks. You're basically like the Special Forces for a main earth army. The army can be told to invisibly attempt missions you don't want or can't do, so you can keep from being swamped by aliens when your whole team is laid up in the hospital for 3 days after a nasty mission.
Tactical combat is identical to X-Com:Apocolypse. It's "pausable real time" rather than purely turn based like UFO Defense.
The only real difference I notice is that this engine doesn't support the indoor/outdoor terrain that X-Com always did. There are buildings, but you can't go in them. Missions are either all indoors or all outdoors. It actually works out, though, since this means you can have a mission in an urban setting and not spend 4 hours clearing every building on the map.
There's also more emphasis on modern day weapons rather than almost instantly upgrading you to alien technology, which is the one thing I never liked about X-Com.
I'm not sure if this is by the people who did the original X-Com, but it's a great facsimile. X-Com games have been my one weakness for singleplayer gaming and UFO Aftermath is no exception.
It's strictly single player, though, so it's not a long term game but definately fun if you liked the old X-Com games.
If you're not familiar with X-Com, it's an overhead-view squad based tactical combat game that has you shooting aliens and various horrible things that aliens seem to like to bring with them when they invade planets.
It doesn't follow the X-Com story, though. In this one, the game starts out pretty much present day and 95% of humanity just got wiped out. The strategic game has you reclaiming the world for humanity, taking it over in sectors like Risk, using missions from your team to gain hold in new territory and beat off attacks. You're basically like the Special Forces for a main earth army. The army can be told to invisibly attempt missions you don't want or can't do, so you can keep from being swamped by aliens when your whole team is laid up in the hospital for 3 days after a nasty mission.
Tactical combat is identical to X-Com:Apocolypse. It's "pausable real time" rather than purely turn based like UFO Defense.
The only real difference I notice is that this engine doesn't support the indoor/outdoor terrain that X-Com always did. There are buildings, but you can't go in them. Missions are either all indoors or all outdoors. It actually works out, though, since this means you can have a mission in an urban setting and not spend 4 hours clearing every building on the map.
There's also more emphasis on modern day weapons rather than almost instantly upgrading you to alien technology, which is the one thing I never liked about X-Com.
I'm not sure if this is by the people who did the original X-Com, but it's a great facsimile. X-Com games have been my one weakness for singleplayer gaming and UFO Aftermath is no exception.