UFO: Aftermath

/amzing gane. While made in the style of the Original Xcom series, Ufi: Aftermath offers many unique differences. One being that you can "pause" the gameplay. This allows for a more tatical experience as it allows you to better plan your moves and attacks. The next difference is that alot of the weapons actually exist. This makes for a unique challenge as the squad members are all better at different weapon types. All in all a great game that everyone should at least give a good try.

..... but not for the HUUUUUUUURRRRDUUUURRRRHUUURRRHURRRRRDUUUURRRRHUUURR difficulty. I personally find a good 60% of all games I try ruined by such. This is MOST DEFINATELY one of the worst offenders. Worse still, it only hits after you have already invested a lot of time getting to the game's mid to end stages. With every mission the difficulty doubles for the next. So by the 8th mission, you're seeing 255x difficulty than the first. So by the 30th mission..... well, get my drift? Add to that the terrible UI, and horrible dark, low gamma GFX (you cannot set gamma neither) and the fact everything is so tiny on the screen. It's a difficulty cluster clusterfuck. Such as shame as the game is very atmospheric, and the selection of toys you'll get to wield is truly excellent - much better than the first XCOMs and UFO:AS and AL that came after this game. True, a lot of the various items are "superfluous" though. The surreal little UI videos are a nice touch. So a promising title, spoiled by Altar Interactive's typical "pissing in the gamer's face" difficulty. DO NOT play this on anything other than "easy". That's a joke, "easy" is NOT "easy", but I have completed it on that. On "normal" and "hard", it's a pisstake. Do not expect cheats neither. There used to be a comphrensive, useful selection. ALL are removed in this version. Loads of "trainers" but I do not trust those.

Great game compared to Xcom should be played

These modern-ish appearances from the X-Com[US] / UFO[EU] series were a massive let down when they appeared. Most people loved the original old versions and prolly got exited about these, but on playing them you'll notice how amateurish the visuals look, and the game is of the same low quality. On the upside the box artwork looks fantastic.

I know how badly you want a modern day successor to X-Com. Believe me, I've been there. This one isn't it though. It looks OK on paper but not a single thing rings true to its predecessor during game play. Bad graphics, terrible voice acting and an ill-advised real time combat system make the game largely unrecognizable. Try one of the open source remakes (notably UFO:AI) instead while we wait for a commercial alternative.