UFO:Aftermath Review

[Slamz]

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.

[Grieve]

I'll have to try this, sounds good.

For anyone wanting to try (kinda) multiplayer X-Com, I highly recommend Laser Squad Nemesis, which is by the Gollup brothers (who originally wrote the X-Com games, and before that Rebelstar back in the early 80s). LSN is about as addictive as games get, is very cheap (or even free, if you don't mind playing just one race), and has a hugely loyal cult following.

You can send a challenge to <!-- e --><a href="mailto:paleblackness@yahoo.com">paleblackness@yahoo.com</a><!-- e -->, if you want to give the trial a go. They Greys have just been added as a fourth race, and they rock the house (mind control! teleportation! cloaking devices!)

http://www.lasersquadnemesis.com

[Powerflux]

I remember playing UFO Defence back in '96 or something, it's kinda like Fallout right?

[Grieve]

FYI, Grumples:

"Will Laser Squad Nemesis become like the X-Com games? The answer is yes, and more. We are currently developing an AI system for LSN which will be better and more sophisticated than the AI we developed for the X-Com games. We are also developing a massively multiplayer game for LSN - something which X-Com lacked. We are also planning to build a more amitious single player experience reminiscent of the first X-Com game (aka. UFO: Enemy Unknown) with a 'geoscape' world view, RPG elements and resource management. X-Com was just the beginning - LSN is the future."

http://www.lasersquadnemesis.com

[Slamz]

Alas poor Ron, we hardly knew ye.

So I was really bored and started playing this game again. I never have finished a full game and it looks like I'm going to lose the one I'm on now.

Anyone who's ever played any X-Com can probably relate. Or maybe not, because I think it's more possible to lose a game of Aftermath than a game of UFO Defense or Apocolypse.

Alas, the aliens are whooping my ass now. I've lost so many bases (and troops) that my engineering department can no longer keep up with the demands. Gone is the elite armor and most of the better weapons, I'm getting down to ghettosville and having to bust out the guerilla tactics, like heavy use of smoke grenades and shotguns.

Luckily my first big win in a while was handed to me by Ron, scourge of alien scum along with the help of Wolfgang, who was wearing the last elite suit of armor I had left.

So my team is defending my base that's come under attack by those damn greys. I've assembled the troops in a room filled with lots of boxes that's a good spot to use my ghetto shotguns -- gotta get into close range combat, I can't outsnipe these bastard aliens anymore.

I have one guy tossing smoke grenades from one side, the rest of the team is bushwhacking the aliens as they stumble out of the smoke on the other side and Ron is crouched behind a box with his RPG launcher, looking for a clear shot.

Smoke-boy runs out of smoke and grabs his shotgun and wades into the smoke. I figure the smoke will clear, there'll be an alien or two left and I'll pop em with shotgun blasts to the head.

Smoke starts to clear and the shotgun guy finds himself standing in the middle of about 5 aliens. Gets one shot off and gets shot all to hell. Of the 4 teammates that were bushwhacking the aliens from the other side, only 1 is still standing: Wolfgang and his superarmor. Of the other 3, 1 is dead, 2 are incapacitated and there's a whole gaggle of aliens standing.

Could'a gone bad right there, incapacitated agents usually get finished off in short order but Ron is a terror with an RPG. As soon as my wayward shotgun guy got killed, Ron let loose while Wolfgang sprinted to the far end of the room to try and provide a distraction. Poor alien bastards didn't know what hit em. Musta killed 6 aliens right there with two or three RPG blasts, Wolfgang finished the last one off with his assault rifle and was able to medkit the incapacitated agents to save them. First glorius victory after a long chain of humiliating defeats.

Unfortunately, during another base defense mission a little later, Ron, Wolfgang and the rest of the team met their untimely end. This time Ron was equipped with a super rocket launcher made with alien technology and wearing a suit of his own super armor and died firing hot flaming death into the flanks of the alien bastards. Wolfgang himself almost died early on but got picked up, carried out, patched up, handed a shotgun and sent back into the fight by a teammate during the battle. Unfortunately there were just too many aliens for my ghetto weaposn to finish off and all hands were lost.



Ahhh, good old X-Com.

Tonight I think I'll see how many RPG-troopers I can round up and try to stage some kind of comeback before they sweep me completely off the planet. They've already taken almost all of South America, stopped my progress in Europe and are now pushing on me in Asia and North America from both sides, having taken me out of the north pole.

I've got a slim chance if I can make a new push in North America!



Too bad there's no multiplayer. This game could be like the ultimate match of Risk.

[GreenTurnip]

I was addicted to X-Com: UFO Defense and then after that X-Com: Terror From The Deep. Finished both of those. TFTD was a bit drawn out... but the original rocked.

Felix and I used to play it together way back in the day when we were in college together.

We still have fun remembering the story of Mikael Awesome. We used to name our guys in relation to what skills they were really good at. Sonya Greatthrow for example had awesome grenade throwin skills. Good range and accuracy, etc. So Mikael Awesome was by far the best guy in our crew... was great at everything.

So we are in the middle of this Terror Mission where the aliens attack a town. One of the harder types of missions in X-Com 1. We were doing ok... finally cleared most of the aliens out of the town... but there was this one alien left... we couldn't find the bastard. Somehow it manages to incapacitate 2 more of our guys... and we are thinking 'oh shit, how many more are out there?'

Finally we catch a glimpse of this guy. Turns out he is on the third floor of this aparment building taking pot shots at people. And of course, its Mikael Awesome who sees him. One problem. we are 2 buildings over on the first floor. Somehow he sees the alien though and has a shot on him. Felix and I say what the hell and take the shot... even though we think that its a snowball's chance in hell we are going to hit.


Up three floors, through four windows... headshot = dead alien.

Turnip/Felix 1 | Aliens 0

It was a glorious day in gaming!

[Slamz]

Ah yes, I think Veraphim remembers "The Punisher". I don't normally rename my guys unless they really start to stand out, and The Punisher was always that one last guy left alive with 6 aliens to kill and kept pulling it off. He used that one weapon that looked like a grenade launcher with the circle of tubes and fired explosive bullets. Tended to set him on auto-fire and just spam explosive death. Most agents had crappy accuracy on full auto but he'd been around so long that he could hit better with full auto than some guys could do with an aimed shot.

It's always a sad day to lose a guy like that. (Poor old Ron.)

What makes these games great are those little moments of triumph where one agent pulls off something when you thought you were doomed.

I forget this one guy's name because ultimately he died anyway, but during one mission, the smoke grenade was clearing again, down to my last 2 guys, down to ghetto weapons, this one poor bastard is standing there once again expecting 1 or 2 aliens to appear out of the smoke as he's standing there backed into a corner with his H&K MP5-PDW.

3 greys pop out right in front of him, nose to nose.

Full auto, he mowed all three of them down with his submachinegun. SMG's can be quite nasty, even against alien armor when you're only having to fire from 1 foot away.

[Veraphim]

Ahhh, yes. The Punisher was The Man!

I thought it was one of those auto-shotguns with the ammo drum that he was using and could choose stuff like explosive shells, AP shells, standard beebee type shells. Could have been an alien gun though, I wasn't familiar with what all was alien and what wasn't.

[Slamz]

Yeah, that was it. Auto-shotgun.


Last night I started to turn the tide on those alien bastards with heavy use of RPG's and other explosives. Unfortunately I lost the entire team trying to assault an alien base. Luckily "Deadeye" had just been promoted and was out for training, so at least I'll have one veteran to lead the new team.

I still need to get this alien archive data out of a secret Russian military base but the aliens whoop my ass in about 2 minutes every time I go there.

Stupid aliens.

[Sigmire]

lol this thread is funny to read.

[Hoofhurr]

hehe ya I like it.

[Slamz]

Goddamn alien punks.

I had a great comeback streak going after some research gave me a "demolition device" based on alien technology. I had one built and tried it out and it turns out that it's basically a very heavy, 10-shot super-shotgun. Only has like a 5m range so I have to use smoke grenades and close-quarters combat and agents have to kneel to fire it AND they can't run while carrying it in-hand, but it'll kill anything in one hit. Great for indoor base defense missions though I still won't be able to get into that damn Russian base because half of that is outdoor combat.

But if you decide to try out this game, let me give you a hint: you will eventually find suits of "heavy armor". I advise not using these at all, because eventually you will find some awesome heavy squad support weapons that only heavy armor can use. The game implies this early on but I didn't know just how cool these heavy weapons would be, so I squandered my suits.

I got this great big machinegun turret last night. It weighs a ton, so you have to have that heavy (mechanized) armor to use it, but it's pretty damn cool. The animation is of your guy carrying this huge folded thing of metal and when you tell him to kneel he puts it down, unfolds it into a big machinegun turret and sits in it. Stick that thing where it has a lot of room to fire and anything that comes in sight gets blown the hell away. Coolest X-Com weapon ever.

Too bad my guy got ambushed and I ended up losing that whole mission and thus the machinegun turret. Luckily I can make similar railgun turrets, but I don't have any more heavy armor suits and I can't build them. Gotta hope I discover some more when I take over another base.

The alien bastards made a big push last night, assaulting 3 bases at once. Lost one (that one), won one and went to bed before trying #3.

Luckily I now have the killer team of Brainiac and Destructor, invented out of desperation for mission #2 because I'd lost so much gear in mission #1.

Brainiac has high psi-ability. Using this alien device, he can mind control the greys. Sometimes I mind control one and have him shoot his friends or blow himself up, but if he's alone and not equipped for suicide, I'll have him throw his weapons down and merrily skip into the range of Destructor's demolition-shotgun. It does like triple their hit points in damage, so I always envision them as being turned into a light smear on the far wall. Sometimes I have to mind control them 3 or 4 times to get them in range, but The Power of the Brainiac Compels You!

Meanwhile the rest of the team is doing the old bait-and-shoot trick from another direction. The fastest runner goes out looking for enemies, makes sure they see him, then runs back. They greys come looking for him and walk through a doorway into my shotgun ambush.



Man, I've had a bad run of not being able to enjoy singleplayer games anymore, but X-Com still rocks.

[Veraphim]

Yeah, too bad it's not multiplayer. It would be great.

[GreenTurnip]

OMg... I would be so jazzed if they made a head-to-head multiplayer version of an x-com title. A Co-op mode would be cool as hell too. Over team speak you could do some cool multi-pronged attacks.

[Zeel]

Mikael Awesome... The name brings a tear to my eye.

Such good times playing that game. I actually tried to get it to run again but the speed was totally whacked and I couldn't find any clock limiting software that would work properly to slow it down.

I never did buy Aftermath. Looks like I may have to go see if it is on sale... all this nostalgia is getting to me.