How would you rate UFO: Aftershock?

[Slaughter]

UFO: Aftershock has been out for quite some time now, so it's time to rate it. Please add comments about your rating, as a poll in itself isn't all that useful.

 

Pete, any chance of getting the poll back up at the front page?

[Accounting Troll]

I'm not sure about the comparisons to X-Com in the poll options as opinion is mixed on some of the games in the X-Com series.

 

I gave it 9/10. I've spent most of my leisure time playing Aftershock over the last month despite the bugs, and I regard it as well worth the money and time I put into upgrading the RAM and graphics card on my PC so it would be able to run the game.

 

 

 

*CONTAINS SPOILERS*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strong points:

 

The storyline. I really can't wait to see how the various factions fit together. It's like one of those mystery stories involving a house guest who solves murders in his spare time.

 

The weapons and equipment. Being able to compose weapons and build drones for specific functions really adds to your tactical options.

 

The sound. One or two 'professional' reviewers have complained about the sound, although I enjoy having a cultist screaming defiance shortly before he gets blown away by a couple of soldiers with really powerfuol weapons. And the graphics leave you in no doubt that the Wargots are bad news.

 

Entering buildings. The ability to enter or climb buildings was something that I missed in Aftermath, and implementing it in Aftershock greatly increases your tactical options.

 

Non-linear gameplay. For the most part, the game does not force you to conduct set missions in a specific order.

 

 

Weak points:

 

There are not as many new transgenants as I would have liked. It would have been nice to have had more transgenants species appear as the game develops, and perhaps give them the ability to attack from uncontrollable provinces.

 

The storyline does not allow you to wipe out the cultists, at least not until very late in the game.

[Slaughter]

As I haven't finished the game yet, I really should wait with rating it. Since I've played close to 100 tactical missions however, I'll have a go.

 

I give it 8. There are so many good sides to this game! The training that makes your soldiers special, customizing the weapons, huge research tree, base building and so on.

 

The reason it will not get a full score is lacking enemy AI, somewhat repetitive tactical missions (whey you played 100 of them...) and a few other minor issues. Bugs were also bad, but I'll not let that affect my rating, as most of them are fixed now.

[Mikal]

Pooh! Can't get my vote to work. It's all part of Slaughter's cunning plan to move peeps from the UFO AS forum

[Slaughter]

You can't vote? And yes, I do my best to steal people over here

[Pete]

The only reason you wouldn'tbe able to vote if you're logged in is if it's already had a vote from you. There's no other explanation. Are you sure it definitely didn't take your vote, or might it have hiccuped and counted your vote and you thought it hadn't?

[Kaarna]

Aftershock shure looks alright, but it's too heavy for the amount level of graphics. I think loading times are too long and with eycandy at max it seems impossibly slow. They reccomend a 1Ghz Intel and I've got a ~3Ghz AMD equivalent + double the RAM it wants and a fairly new vidcard (9800Pro), so I'm a bit dissapointed to say the least.

 

Also, there's a few flaws in the game, I think. For example, now your teammates are more worried about inflicting friendly fire and thus won't fire if someone's in their way. This new feature wasn't taken into concideration when deciding to keep the movement system the same. What I mean is, that your soldiers (when moved as a group) always fall into formations where around 1/3 soldiers can shoot, because the others are in his way. A formations option would be nice, I'm not going to enjoy moving around 7 soldiers all individually every time I want to move them once I get further in the game.

 

There's one addition which I think is pretty useless and that is the possibility to select where on the battlefield to drop your pod as it doesn't seem to offer any real advantage.

 

I think the movement system isn't also quite as strong as in the Aftermath as soldiers accept routes but all of a sudden when a small stone is in front of them they can't figure a way around the stone and simply stop. The route planning system seems to hog a lot of resources as well.

 

I downloaded the patch and didn't notice any improvements, since I really didn't play the game unpatched as I got the game after the patch was released.

 

Character responses in the game continue along the lines of Aftermath, meaning that they're annoying. I just wonder, what is the purpose of adding a voice to the game that replies to every command like a seven year old with a bad attitude. The music's pretty good though. There's a bit of early console music mixed into modern day game music there.

 

But there are definately some interesting features added, such as mild base building and the modding of weapons and extra races. And once again, the story seems really interesting. The only reason I'm going to attempt to play the game through is that I payed good money for it. I should've gotten COD2

 

I gave Aftershock a 6 in the vote.

[Mikal]

The only reason you wouldn'tbe able to vote if you're logged in is if it's already had a vote from you. There's no other explanation. Are you sure it definitely didn't take your vote, or might it have hiccuped and counted your vote and you thought it hadn't?

 

 

I know any vote I made had not been counted as I would have been the only voter for the chosen score at the time.

[Gungadin]

I voted 5 in this poll. I now played it with the patch, uninstalled in a fit of rage and now give it 3/10.

[Kaarna]

Now as I've moved forward in the game, I've noticed the quality of my gameplay experience has come up a notch. I think it's because my own units perform better and so I get less "Hit That... from Here??" -type remarks. Also, now more of the game's finer details are coming out, such as the significance different trainings, better weapons and more interesting enemies.

 

I'm sticking to my original scoring, however. The beginning's learning curve is way too steep and nothing can take away the absolutely ridiculously annoying unit responces.

 

Also, what the UFO series has already mastered is replayability value. Right now I'm doing OK and making good progress in the game and I'm still thinking that I could start over, just to get those school floorplans researched a tad earlier!

[Cpl. Facehugger]

It merits a seven. It was very fun, but I really didn't like the lack of powerful endgame weapons. I ended up just using the same XM8s and M60s that I'd been using throughout the game, in addition to a token warp rifle to deal with the foe that shall not be named.

 

Also, I really don't like the direction that they took with the story. SPOILERS FOLLOW:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Highlite to read.

I mean, what the hell? Instead of humanity being killed to make a god-machine, we were killed off so that a giant space ameoba could reproduce? It cheapened everything I fought for in Aftermath.

 

That being said, the story was good, in the mechanical sense, but its actual ending was a major letdown for me.

 

For me, the sounds and voices weren't too bad. (Well, the cultist human and cultist psionic voices were pretty bad, I admit, but they usually don't get to finish since I pop their heads with my Barrett.)

[Azrael Strife]

I voted 5. Not a bad game at all, but not nearly good enough to keep me playing it.

I'm disappointed they took out those little nice details Aftermath had, like the voices in different languages ("Gley") and the variant cities/environments depending on the geographical area, that rocked.

[Space Voyager]

I voted 6.

 

It may seem a low grade (especially for a fan) but now, looking from a distance, I can safely say that if the game was more weapon balanced, crashed less and had the darn loading times fixed, the rating would be much higher. Around 8-ish. At least.

[shagpuss]

I voted 6 also, it wasn't as exciting or as "new" as aftermath, it didn't have the WOW factor for me.

 

Oh and the looooooong loading times.....yawn

[DPG]

6 for me. It felt like aftermath.2, with no real sense of a whole new game. It was also incredibly slow and clunky to load, with an outdated graphics engine and poor normal missions. I think the publishers made them rush it out to make some cash. New one looks very good though.

[ERISS]

8. If Aftershock did not crash so often, maybe I would put 10.

[Thunder_Gr]

7 for me. It is more complex than Aftermath. Unfortunately they dropped some of the good points Aftermath had. Some of the mechanics are annoying(radomly losing bases after some point without even a notification is bad. And, no, it is about the "last cultist base" thing. It is way after that). No random maps. Playing the same maps over and over is quite boring. And I do not count the bugs and crashes in the rating.

The amount of modability is another one of the good points. The stupidity of the pathfinding is one of more of the bad. Aftermath had a much better pathfinding handling.(There the soldier would just wait for the others to move on and the continued walking, not just cancel the movement...)

Nowhere near X-COM though. They could have done much better.

[Snaphaan]

I haven't finished it yet but here's my take so far...

 

I gave it a 8. Well, maybe 7 but let me explain...

 

I loved the 'feel' of Aftermath. The way they cheated with their visuals (Graphics) like using HEAVY Post processing on screenshots actually left the game with a kind of blurred gritty and hard-core feeling (Glossary displays showed distorted and noisy video's of items and creatures - very nice!). They should have taken that further and made the game darker, more sinister. Aftershock is nice looking but looks too plastic... I have trouble taking the story and world serious.

 

Next. I can't really blame them since I believe they had a heavy deadline but they could have used the same tactical mission generator mechanics (or whatever) in Aftershock, meaning certain buildings and terrains correspond to certain regions.

 

Also, they should have used some tech tree. It helps a player better visualise his current development state. It's a bit strange getting used to...

 

Overall though, it's a great game that can't really be rushed when you play. And I'm not the hard-core type that wants to finish it over a weekend. The repetitive side of missions are not that so bad as some of the balancing problems... which has been fixed.

 

Anyway, all in all a great game that's really underappreciated.Gamespot 4.0!? Mmm, X-com fanboys can really get like some modern gameplay inquisition. "There is only one god and it is X-COM... " - grow up people.

 

I've got some skills with 3D packages and ideas for modding that I hope to impliment - if it's possible. Depending on how much can be modded...