Anyone played UFO: Afterlight

I'd like to know too. I was a HUGE fan of #1, but I hated second ebcause the missions dragged out! I like short missions

I loved the origional Xcom , still the best IMO.

I have played After light and I must say the new combat is pretty good, but what lets it down apart from the bugs, is there isn`t a great deal to research and once you now the way to expand it is realy easy to win.

Also I don`t like the way certain players can only be trained in certain displines.
Missions can become a bit repetative, the enemy always follow the same route.

But overall its a good game. Wish they would re-do Xcom with all the new gizmos.

Hi!

I played all UFO-Xcom games.....and i played also UFO-Afterlight, UFO-Aftermath and so on, and so on.

Well, i don´t understand, that nobody is able to do a simple copy of the original game. So, what can i say, ...UFO-Afterlight is the best game in this "After"-series. But is not as good as the Xcom games. The fights are cool, but with the time always the same - no random maps as in xcom.

If you like this genre you should have a try - ufo afterlight is a good game, it´s worth the money - but is not so "thrilling" like xcom.

Sorry for my bad english!

Greetings from Germany
Jochen

Your English was perfect Jochen (much better than my German   )

Although graphics aren't what make or break a game to me by any means...in Aftershock they were so bad on the planet screen it felt like I spent my money on a game that was made 15 years ago...

Looking at the screen shots for Afterlight; I'm concerned they are a bit "cartoony".

In terms of gameplay: thanks for the input trembor. I think you hit on some of the things that made me bored with the other UFOs. I totally agree that RANDOM maps can make/break a game.

It is so hard to believe a game made in 1993 would be better at that than something 14 years later?!?!
Sid Meier really understands the value of the RANDOMNESS to make games fun/replayable.

I never been one to truly enjoy games where you go from point A to point B and pick up the shield, kill the big monster...cut screen to cheesy movie...rescue princess...etc etc. Planned out set campaigns are fun at times, but never long lasting...

Give me a game where you say: Here is the randomly generated world/universe/town/galaxy...whatever. Here are the "rules", if you will and then "Go do whatever you see fit". Ten turns in your game is completely unique everytime.

Final Fantasy and the ilk try to embrace this philosophy by having many branch points per game...but it's just not the same...

Same....absolutly the same to me!!!!

Well, so it´s no wonder, to meet in this forum! Galciv is one of my favourite games - why? - random maps, events....always new again, in every single game!

Jochen

I'm keeping UFO: Extraterrestrials in mind. It's not made by Altar/Cenega and it appears to be a lot truer to the XCOM series. Unfortunately I don't have time for yet another game so I probably won't pick it up for a while yet.

I've been playing UFO: Extraterrestrials for about a month and it's the closest to the original X-com that I've seen. It's literally a copy of the first x-com. There are also a few excellent mods that take the experience even closer to the original. Graphics look dated and the developer seems to have abandoned the project after the first patch, but if your itching for original x-com action you should check it out. It's a shame the devs seem finished with it, but no one can expect the same kind of support we get from Stardock.

Well if there are issues that need patching and the developer's abandoned it, I think it's not worth the current £15 price tag. I do not need another Aftermath/Aftershock

UFO:Extraterrestrials doesn't look that good to me and I wouldn't buy it without a demo. I've read mixed reviews/thoughts on the game and if the devs have abandoned it, that's not a good sign, and there likely won't be a demo. Maybe the price will come down in a few months - I'm not that tight, but I still can't see spending premium title money on a game like this right now.

I also prefer the SAS movement/combat system from the UFO:Afterxxx series way more than pure turn based. Turn based is less realistic and much more of a pain to manage.

UFO:Afterlight is very good. I like it a lot. It has tight graphics and gameplay. The base management, research, character development and interaction are better than ever. The game has a good UI, particularly in tactical. But as with the others in this particular series, you do a LOT of missions and it can get to be repetitive. AL is also a bit more solid in that you don't feel like it needs a lot of patching love. They've done one patch for it so far and I've yet to see word of any others. I think they might be doing an expansion for this one though.

I thought UFO:Aftershock was pretty good too, but yeah, unfortunately Cenega/Altar are horrible about post release support. Aftershock badly needed another patch or three and it never happened. A lot of Afterxxx players prefer the post-apocalyptic setting of Aftershock to the Mars theme of Afterlight too.

The other disappointing thing about the UFO:Afterxxx series is that the AI is generally lacking. Enemies basically just start on the opposite side of the map to you and will eventually come to you or you can usually easily find them. The enemies don't use much in the way of tactics or anything, or so it seems.

I was a huge XCOM/Microprose fan and I don't recall Microprose being overly stellar in support either. I do remember that at that time most of my favorite games were by Microprose.

Buggy games with mediocre/crappy AI seem to be a common theme in this genre, which is too bad, since I love the squad based tactical type of gameplay.

Silent Storm was a decent game, but it too had horrible AI and terrible post release support.

I'd love to see more games like this made - I'm hoping Jagged Alliance 3 happens and is true to its predecessors.

Well I just looked on Play.com today and they've lopped another fiver off the price. I don't know whether that's because of poor sales or to compete with another outlet's price.

I know that XCOM had its share of bugs (like the difficulty level bug) but the level of support given was appropriate for that era, when internet access was not as widespread as it is today. Today's consumers demand an appropriately greater response to critical software flaws, so I don't know why some developers are failing to budget enough time and money post-release. I don't see the point in developing something that will become a glorified coffee cup coaster.