UFO: Aftermath

You may have heard it's supposed to be X-Com. If so, it fails in this regard. Ignore that. It's like a child of the X-Com series, expressing only some genes from that parent but mixed with a great deal else. First off, the game's atmosphere is lovely. From beginning to end it has a brooding, even haunting feel, with admittedly perhaps a few too many greys (ha!), browns and flat colors. (The sequels address this nicely, but each color scheme is also thematically appropriate to its game, so they differ in tone and atmosphere.) Second off, the gameplay differs from the X-Com series in most measures, and is fun in its own manner. Imperfections. This game could use some modding, and in fact mods do help. Pacing, equipment acquisition and difficulty spike and change based on sometimes very odd triggers, sometimes making your second playthrough very different (and, in my experience, oddly much more difficult.) The game can be cruel by design, occasionally. Odd tactics are encouraged, some missions discouraged by the difficulty of attempting them and high chance of expensive manpower losses. Rockets. In general, you'll rack them up and find them almost hilariously useless. High damage, certainly, but they're slower than molasses in January. Anyway, if you enjoy games where you pause a lot, the map's clear but its occupants are obscured, attention to detail is important and the atmosphere is brilliantly executed, you'll like UFO: Aftermath. You'll probably enjoy replaying it, as well.

If you wished that X-Com had dozens more varieties of earth guns in it, could be played in real-time to move faster, and had way more variety of aliens then this is the game you want to play. It's got various armors and guns that deal and protect against various kinds of damage, meaning that your loadout will sometimes be different depending on which enemies you expect to face. It's got a real-time strategic interface that is easy to use and yet provides some tactical challenges (But you have to tell your soldiers to 'walk' instead of 'run' at the beginning of just about every mission). It has a story that is reasonably well fleshed-out and that affects the game events in interesting ways. And your soldiers will gain levels and compentency in different skills that affect their performance (until they die horribly, but that's squad tactical games for you!) There's little in this game that makes it stand out except that for years before the new X-COM games, this was the only series on the market filling that niche. I had fun playing the whole series a few times, and if you like X-COM and other similar games, then you'll probably like this one, too. Now get out there, soldier, and kick some alien butt! Pros: Good weapon sound effects, weapon and armor variety. Good variety of enemies, challenging gameplay that is usually not unfair (except for balloon fish in base missions). Cons: Amateurish voice acting, mediocre tutorial, no in-game help to speak of, soldiers default to "running" which is definitely not the most generally useful stance. Lots of missions - pretty grindy in the mid-game.

Game seems quite addictive at the beginning but repetitive missions, unbalanced gameplay and a feel of lack of purpose throughout the game makes me feel that I rather wish to go back to original Enemy Unknown. What's more - this game rather poorly copy original idea stripping down fun stuff like customizable flying ships along with multi squads and base building not to mention that this bland version is so horrific in terms of graphic that even original looks better compared. What really finish this title is poorly done voice acting that seems that authors wanted to make it sound funny. It doesn't, so you actually don't feel like commanding an elite ufo killing squad but a bunch of poor comediants. I really wanted to enjoy it but after several evenings of play I feel that this game is rather boring. I'm really surprised that some people give this game high rating simply out of nostalgia. Good game is a good game, no matter if it has 10 or 20 years. This is not a good game. Trust me, I still play roguelikes.

Ok, just for the record: this is NOT XCom/UFO. And I see that many reviews are from disappointed fans of the first two games. Still, this game offers alot of atmosphere and tactics. The world is post-apocalypse, so different from XCom1/2 aswell. At the beginning, you are not a well-funded world-wide organization to kick the aliens, but you are struggling for the survival of the human race, fighting rather with M16 than with laser-rifles. I liked the post-apocalypse setting, the tactical combat and I really liked to train and improve my soldiers.

Finally a version of X-Com story that is accessible to masses. Due to the pausable real-time mode of tactical gameplay, with QuickSave/QuickLoad functionality, the game can now finally be enjoyed without being so stressful as the former X-Com games. The high-res graphics makes everything easy to observe and understand, controls are top-notch and tactical options are good enough to allow for, well, "tactics", without overburdening player with thousands of factors. As for the atmosphere, the intro movie is spooky enough, and once the biomass starts growing out of nowhere and devouring your bases, you will be scared. The thrilling dog fights between your jet fighters and enemy ships is cool to watch and there are even some tactical options available during it; the landscapes, enemy ship interiors and human base interiors are varying enough so as not to become repetitive too early, and the destruction in cities, growth of biomass in countryside and the appearance of extra terrestrials are all atmospheric enough. Personally, I have no regret that this game replaced the former X-Com series, which always felt too difficult for me. If anyone wants to have a really easy time playing, then I can only suggest my very simple and quickly accessible tactics: Equip everyone with sniper rifles and give them enough munition for it (20+ rounds). Since sniper rifles have great range, you will be able to take out most enemies from safe distance. This way, the game becomes good for "Casual gamers".