🚀 go-pugleaf

Ok, I adored, and still do, X-COM: Enemy Unknown as one of THE best ever
games.
SO I was hoping for something as good.

Ok, *most* of Aftermath is pretty good, but it lacks, hm, a certain degree
of "fun", of humour even, that X-COM had. The aliens aren't really
frightening, and, alas it's hard to really zoom in properly to see thinsg in
detail.

I actually preffered "Abomination" to "UFO: aftermath", if any of you have
played that older game. Worst thing, and one that desperately needs to be
fixed, in Aftermath, are the *CRAP* voices for the soldiers, 9/10 of them
ARE SHYTE! Pardon the French and caps, but omfg, they really get on your
nerves :/ The redneck is kinda fun "I got the bast'rd!", but the rest,
especially one of the Germanic characters (the one who goes "DUH" a lot,
know who  I mean?) make the game a pain to play. Dull, tired, boring and
totlaly NOT in character. You are fighting aliens and carrying enough
firepower to take out a stadium full of neds, and what do they say? "Plan
completed"...*sigh*. They could, and should have added lots of snappy bits
of chat, some humorous.

It is a pity there's no buildings you can enter/blow up ala X-COM, that, I
thought was one of the most fun parts of those greta old games: nuking the
crap out of buildings ot see if you'd get one of the little suckers with the
area of effect. Or standing on top and sniping form them.

Range of weapons is silly...why the oddly short ranges? I can agree with
setting the *accurate* ranges way short for gameplay and semi-logical
reasons, however, assault rifles have ranges of *hundreds* of yards, and a
sniper rifle in a marksman's hands can hit pennies at 100 yards.  And one of
the dumbest things in the entire gaming world shows up again: the silliness
of giving different weapons with almost idential characteristics differing
stats. An H&KG3 and an FN-FAL fire the same bullet, from almost the same
barrel length, so guess what? There's practially *no* impact difference EVER
between same calibre weapons with similar barrel lengths. An H&K MP5 mm
submachine gun is, for the poor sod who gets hit, the SAME as an UZI
9mm..The H&K though is a more accurate weapon and has a larger magazine, so
if you wish, you could add in acuracy and magazine loads as factors, but the
damage is the bloody same!.(the UZI's is less likely to jam well, older
versions of those weapons anyway, so that can be another factor perhaps).
  A similar point to this is that *anti-tank* weapons like RPG-7s, LAWs and
so on, have very small blast radius, but if they hit a living creature the
damage would be catastrophic. They are not Anti-personnel weapons unless
they actually *have* anti-personnel warheads (there is one for the RPG-7 but
it's kinda rare), that's why many folk have fortunately survived attacks by
terrorists etc using RPGs..very small blast radius. Again, "Abomination" did
a better job with that: massive target damage and low blast damage.

Alien UFO interiors are way too cramped, it's so hard ot zoom in to see
detail that close..a free floating camera ability or a perpective cam that
can zoom in crisply would have helped a lot. The "Greys" are sort of reddish
so WHY call them "Greys" for Pete's sake? That's silly! Aliens lack really
interesting attacks (so far anyway), that make you go "Bloody hell
fire!"..ala the chrysalids in X-COM.

So, UFO: Aftermath gets a 7/10, would have been 8 if not for the voices. It
is actually fun, but not what it could have been. I think if the developer's
had done jsut a few extra tweak it would have been a classic: voice actors
and quality really do make or break such a product; ability to zoom in
clearly and see personnel and aliens in detail at your leisure; not been so
stingy on weapon ranges; slightly /more defined/crisper visuals; and making
the enemies do really gross/frightening things.

I hope the producers continue and make a sequel/patch/further games. Got
some nice touches, and it isn't bug ridden to hell like many of the
"corporate MORONS in suits" have forced creators to release before they are
finished.

-- 
Silverblades Suitcase
www.silverblades-suitcase.com
I'd rather be a Fool who believes in Dragons,
than a King who believes in Nothing

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