Have Anyone Played Ufo Aftermath?

[shadowamazon]

This is my first post, so i'm not sure if i'm in the right area.

Have anyone played UFO aftermath? This game is not directly related to X-COM but it's obviously a knock off. everything is basically the same, you shoot down alien craft, then you send out your team to mop up the floor.

 

I think it's an excellent game, cuz it's so similar to the original X-COM, but for some reason, i can't recapture the same feeling as if i was playing the X-COM.

When I play X-COM, i feel as if I am in the game itself. I am one of the team member who is fighting the alien. I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that when i was playing X-com on my 14inch monitor, i had to run the game in 600X400 resolution. Everything was big like they are right at my face, while this new game runs at a nice 1280 resolution, i can see a whole lot more. however i feel so distant from my team. Feels like I 'm an outsider looking down the earth, and controlling these little heavily armed men and women, instead of being one of them.

Anyone have any idea what I am talking about?

 

I still enjoyed that game very much, I like the new game mode. Which freeze the time when an event is taking place, you can plot out your next move then unfreeze to a real time mode. It's a good combination of both real time strategy and turn-based game.

 

Anyone have any thoughts about this game?

 

http://www.ufo-aftermath.com/pages/headquarters.html

 

oh yeah by the way, aliens in this game sucks. they are stupid, slow, suicidal. and plain ugly.

 

some alien actually tried to run around the block and shoot me from behind.

"Die you stupid half-life-AI-Wannabe-shoot-me-from-my-behind alien"

[Breunor]

There's been some discussion of this in the UFO:Aftermath forum, I'm moving this thread there. Just browse around the forums a little and you'll find threads of interest.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

oh yeah by the way, aliens in this game sucks. they are stupid, slow, suicidal. and plain ugly.

 

some alien actually tried to run around the block and shoot me from behind.

"Die you stupid half-life-AI-Wannabe-shoot-me-from-my-behind alien"

Do you have the 1.3 patch? That makes the sneaky aliens (not the mutants) alot more tactically inclined. That, combined with their unbeatable weapons makes the later missions almost impossible.

[Guest drewid]

Feels like I 'm an outsider looking down the earth, and controlling these little heavily armed men and women, instead of being one of them.

Anyone have any idea what I am talking about?

That is really interesting.

I've not played aftermath, Would you mind answering some questions about it for me please.

Do you recruit your squad or pick them from an already defined pool?

Do their skills develop?

Do they get Injured, and have to be healed out of combat to recover?

How big are the figures on the screen compared to x-com, as a percentage of screen height?

 

What are the other differences between the games in how you develop and deal with your troopers?

 

 

Sorry to ask so many questions but this is one of those things about games that I'm really interested in.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

1. You don't recruit your squad. New squadmembers just kind of show up every once and awhile.

 

2. They level up as they complete missions and kill stuff. Then, you choose one attribute to level up (Ex: Stregnth, it increases HP, HW skill, and Throwing skill)

 

3. They get injured, but if they don't lose any more than 3/4 of their health, they don't have to spend any time in the sick bay. If they lose 3/4 or more, they have to spend several days in sickbay before they can be used again.

 

4. The game is at a higher resolution. Thus the men appear to be smaller, but that is what we have a zoom button for. It lets you get right up next to your men, so you can see their individual features.

 

5. Your soldiers will do nothing without you telling them. They won't return fire on an alien for example.

 

6. There are two... unique recruits that you get fairly far into the game.

 

7. The soldier voices suck. Fourtnately you can turn them off.

[j'ordos]

Well, my problem is that there's a limited pool of recruits, no taking a few (expendable ) r00kies with you to scout ahead, because your new personnel only appears piecemeal. That makes your initial soldiers all the more important, loose even one and you loose a third of your operatives for the remainder of the first missions. Despite that I still have trouble getting attached, as indeed the voices do more harm than good. One good thing though, later on the new soldiers you get are, though not as good as the ones you have from the beginning, more experienced than rookies, as if they have seen combat against the aliens in another group. That way, when you do loose a soldier, it's not insurmountable to replace him (just don't loose 10 )

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Also, you can delegate missions that you don't feel like doing. This is probably where the more expierenced soldiers come from later in the game (somebody has to do it, right?)

[mad menno]

This game is based on the tactical missions the rest sucks. If you like the shoot the bad allien part of X-com you will like this game.

 

Tactical missions.

+points

1. Nice graphics but not that great if you look at other games.

2. Alliens look scary again (you remember the pink spitter from apoc.? )

3. Every action you do costs time and is animated.

4. A lot of different guns to blast the alliens back in space.

5. A lot of different damage types.

6. Kill the final allien won't be a problem. You have to find a certain number of alliens and you won't find them in the 2 square toilet on the othersite of the map

 

-points

1. no turn-based but only realtime with pause.

2. Can't prime grenades they just blow on hit.

3. I got the idea alliens won't move till they see you.

4. You can't go up or down.

5. U can blow up some stuff, but nothing big like half a building with a det pack.

6. Stunning is not needed go easy on the allien till it goes down.

7. No fatal wounds and morale.

8. Sucky controlls.

9. AI of squad sux when in small rooms/corridoors

 

Geoscape

+points

1. It looks rounder.

2. You can deligate missions

 

-points

1. No base building, make it millitary so you have your team and interceptors there and you can land and reequip squad switch team. Or make it engenering for development and manufacturing or science for research.

2. No finance, you have a couple of unlimited items the rest you must find in tactical mission, that means you find a nice.... let's say sniper and you can't make or find bullits for it . weapons/armor you research can be made

3. Soldiers only get better by killing alliens and level up at end of mission where you give them 1 attribute and with enough attributes you can train them further in base. They won't get a specialty, at the end they just rock in everything.

 

 

Well atleast it's a bit like X-com thats why i play it a lot. but i like financing and building my base and weapons also. I want to have more in the game then hire people give them a weapon and kill alliens. But i guess thats what Xenocide is for

 

Greetz

[Xracer]

Hey well i have played the game wasn't too fascinated by it, but it was an offspring of X-com so i could not go without playing it.

 

I've not played aftermath, Would you mind answering some questions about it  for me please.

 

Do you recruit your squad or pick them from an already defined pool?

Ok, well you do not get to select recruits from a pool as you did in Apoc, and do you get to order recruits like X-com: Enemy Unknown and TFTD.

What you get is what they offer you there is no freedom. Of course you can fire them but your men power is so low that you do not dare loose a man, just because you don't want him.

 

Do their skills develop?

Yes, Skill do develop, you have 2 ways of improving a soldier skill.

The first one and obvious is to send them into battle and let them earn battle scars.

The second one is through training, I do however like their idea of training, BUT i thought you could focus on an individual and make that individual an expert on that field.

They don't do that you can only train once on a certain field and that is all she wrote. Kind of taking the whole "create custom specialized units" idea out of the picture, Eventually all your soldiers will have trained in all fields basically having the same skills, rather disappointing, little things i liked in X-com was the ability to rename units, that is gone in this game, you can only change the call-sign, not the real name of the soldier.

 

Do they get Injured, and have to be healed out of combat to recover?

Yes, Units get injured and you can do field recovery as you were able in previous games, the only difference is that, a unit has to recieve certain percentage of damage to go into a medical bay once it finish a mission, but a problem i saw with this was, that if one of my units got knock down and i went and healed that unit to full health and it will finish the battle with out receiving more wounds it will still go to the hospital for a very long period of time, which seemed kind of retarded, since that unit was fully recovered by the time it went back to base??

 

How big are the figures on the screen compared to x-com, as a percentage of screen height?

The units are smaller due to the higher resolution you are playing in but you do have the zoom option which is nice. the animation of the units is also nice, you can see a unit actually unfold and assemble a sub-assault weapon, of course this takes a long time and by then your units might be dead!!!!!

 

What are the other differences between the games in how you develop and deal with your troopers?

Other differences i came to hate about the game was the R&D

I didn't like the idea that you can only work on one project at a time.

You mean to tell me i have 10 Scientific bases and i can only study one item at a time!!!! same goes for manufacturing.

Another major things was the intercept mission, you can only tell your fighters attack/retreat, there is no such thing as a scout mission or recon mission you cannot tell a fighter to tail an UFO until it gets support. Your weapon load out is not up to you to decide.

The bases well you do not know what is in them until you get attacked. There is no economics, no micromanagment of your resources.

All in all i think it was rather disappointing.

The only good points i like about the game is the actual interface, it is clean the soldier inventory was nicely done and it used tabs which save space, so you have a few different things in the same page. The R&D screen, it was ok nothing out of this world.

 

Oh one things i was forgeting is the whole game thing, the real time with pause was different and it takes a little while to adjust, of course i think you have to turn off almost every event alert so that you can have a game that flows nicely. Didn't like that the camera was centerfixed there is no panning "I think that is what is called" by that i mean you cannot rotate the camera around your units. Maybe is just called rotation . Also maybe there should be more perspectives to the camera.

 

Well that is all i can remember for now i will see if i can find other things i don't like about the game

[Exo2000]

This game is based on the tactical missions the rest sucks. If you like the shoot the bad allien part of X-com you will like this game.

 

Tactical missions.

+points

1. Nice graphics but not that great if you look at other games.

2. Alliens look scary again (you remember the pink spitter from apoc.? )

3. Every action you do costs time and is animated.

4. A lot of different guns to blast the alliens back in space.

5. A lot of different damage types.

6. Kill the final allien won't be a problem. You have to find a certain number of alliens and you won't find them in the 2 square toilet on the othersite of the map

 

-points

1. no turn-based but only realtime with pause.

2. Can't prime grenades they just blow on hit.

3. I got the idea alliens won't move till they see you.

4. You can't go up or down.

5. U can blow up some stuff, but nothing big like half a building with a det pack.

6. Stunning is not needed go easy on the allien till it goes down.

7. No fatal wounds and morale.

8. Sucky controlls.

9. AI of squad sux when in small rooms/corridoors

 

Geoscape

+points

1. It looks rounder.

2. You can deligate missions 

 

-points

1. No base building, make it millitary so you have your team and interceptors there and you can land and reequip squad switch team. Or make it engenering for development and manufacturing or science for research.

2. No finance, you have a couple of unlimited items the rest you must find in tactical mission, that means you find a nice.... let's say sniper and you can't make or find bullits for it  . weapons/armor you research can be made

3. Soldiers only get better by killing alliens and level up at end of mission where you give them 1 attribute and with enough attributes you can train them further in base. They won't get a specialty, at the end they just rock in everything.

 

 

Well atleast it's a bit like X-com thats why i play it a lot. but i like financing and building my base and weapons also. I want to have more in the game then hire people give them a weapon and kill alliens. But i guess thats what Xenocide is for 

 

Greetz

 

You -can- produce more weaponry later on once you've researched the alien weapons and their ammo. NEVER send one man to investigate a crashed UFO, even if it's a small one.

 

On the subject of delegation, you are merely a taskforce, not the commander. So you can delegate mission to the other commanders. I do this a LOT because it saves my precious marines. BTW, if you want a good mod, check out "Rebalance" on ufo-aftermath.co.uk(or .com) when it's back up. Sadly it was hit by some stupid people and it's gone down. Happened to have the best mod integrater ever. A nice little piece 'f software called "ALPine". It applies ".alp" files to Aftermath.

 

Reasons to get Rebalance:

Jackhammers (automatic shotguns)

Sawn-off's (sawnoff shotguns)

LOTS of new AR's, as well as new 'nades and so on. Stun Gas, Incendiary, Poison Gas, you name it. There might be Smoke 'nades, but it's been ages since I played.

 

And aliens do move whilst you can't see them. Use of the console to reveal everything proves that the mutants just kinda lope around where they spawn. The aliens search around for you.

 

Oh, and I actually like the voices. I'm somewhat attached to Malcolm. He always makes me laugh.

Edited September 1, 2004 by Exo2000

[Cpl. Facehugger]

With the 1.3 patch, the aliens get new death screams. And with rebalance, you get a horde of new weapons and equipment

[Exo2000]

Like a Jackhammer.