🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, roid wrote:

> "Mark Morrison" <drdpikeuk@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:9l4qnvs9vc2fl8fka5f34vhq0fn96ossj3@4ax.com...
> > Ufo Aftermath is floating around on some of the binary groups, if you
> > want to try before you buy (since thee's no demo).
> >
> > If you DO enjoy it, though, make sure you buy it so we'll see
> > expansions and/or a sequel, OK ?
> 
> i wanna hear about how it plays.
> first ppl to play it, pls pls tell us all about how fun it is. :)
> 
> 

There are a good number of reviws doing the rounds at the moment, so 
I'm not going to add to 'em, however in the absence of anything 
showing on here I thought I'd give my initial views on the game after a 
few hours playing over the weekend:

+ Lots of research
+ A Fair number of aliens
+ Large number of weapons (most of them fairly similar though)
+ Good range of mission types
+ biiiiiiiiiiiig levels.
+ pretty graphics
+ good start/stop play system (but possibly not to everyones liking, I 
  found it easy to setup decent manouvers and see them happen in 
  "real-time" but when things go pear shaped it's quite a pain to get the 
  guys to do what you want!) 
+ easy to setup decent tactical manouvers and see them play out.
+ ok-ish character development, and easy to get attached to characters[1].

- dumbed down Geoscape (very little point to it, other than a pretty way 
  of passing time between missions tbh)
- unable to enter building :-(
- annoying view controls
- easy to get your troops to max out their stats
- Unable to rename troops[2]
- Pain in the arse troop management.
- No terror missions (although that is explained, what with pretty much
  everyone being dead /already/)
- No economy so no cash management (same reason as no terror missions)

Overall though, the game really is *fun* - the Pros do outweigh the Cons, 
by a significant margin. However it does remind me more 
of Abomination (if anyone remembers that[3]) more than UFO:EU with it's 
focus on the tactical missions across cityscapes[4] rather than the even 
split between strategic and combat missions.

I guess the question is if I will still be playing it in ten years time. 
I'm pretty sure that the answer is no, but for the next few months I'll be 
happy freeing the world of alien scum! :-D

- Malc

p.s. apologies for any spelling, gramatical or "just plain wrong" errors.

[1] And get unreasonably upset when they die, for example in the middle of 
a huge rampage  around a military base infested with laser toting aliens,
armed with a MP5 killing alien after alien just to die by the hand of a 
lowely grey because he got a lucky shot in whilst my guy was reloading in 
the middle of a firefight. Not that I'm bitter or anything. ;-)
[2] you can change their tactical "call sign" but they are still refered 
to by their unchangable name in various bits of the game :-(
[3] Does anyone know if that or Fallout Tactics is still for sale 
anywhere?
[4] I weep for being unable to enter buildings, but I can see it being a 
decent trade off for the city size and reducing the "bug-hunt" factor.