UFO: Afterlight

If I had to sum up in one word what this game throws at you, it would be "odds." The odds of your survival are ridiculously slim, and the game truly brings out the feeling that the Earth colonists were sent to Mars woefully unprepared. It has all the makings of a truly epic game, including the fact that combat can be truly unforgiving at times. While you can usually win any given mission by killing all the opposition, many times that just isn't feasible. Case and point, one one map, my soldiers were literally outnumbered 5 to 1 (yes... there were 35 enemies to my 7 troops) and all I needed to do to win was kill their leader to succeed. My team narrowly managed to escape, spacesuits hemorraging air, chased all the way back to the extraction point under heavy fire - truly an exhilarating experience that not many games I've found today still deliver. The best part - I didn't HAVE to leave; it was simply the wiser of two possible choices, either of which could lead to success. The game graciously allows you to save at any point, compensating for the extreme brutality that you will be subject to during your ill-fated attempts to terraform Mars. While the game has only a few good, solid plot hooks and twists, they're involved enough to grab your attention and make you wonder how you didn't see that coming in the first place. The game mechanics are fantastic, the tactical gameplay is astounding, and the options for customization - both in armament and in characters - is impressive. Whether you're a die-hard X-Com fan, a follower of the UFO series, or just someone who enjoys a good strategy/rpg, this game is a must-have.

UFO Afterlight is the sequel to both Aftermath and Aftershock, but apart from a reappearance of the Reticulans this game bears little resemblance to the predecessors. The game plays on Mars and you are trying to terraform Mars into a habitable world of the ten of thousands of people in cyro storage. The primary antagonists in this story are the "Beastmen" with some other roles for Reticulans (2 kinds), Robots, and ... green Martians xD The tactical side of the game feels like Aftershock/Aftermath, but the strategical side of the game is a re-design of Aftershock. The squad you start with initially is the squad you have to play the game with ... there are 3 new human characters introduced, and some aliens characters that you can play with. This makes the use of robotic drones in some missions a welcome addition. The game is similar enough to Aftermath and Aftershock to allow players of those games to quickly jump in to the game, but different enough to not feel stale. Good purchase, but somewhat low replayability.

You'll like this game, if: - you liked the most recent XCOM but looking for a more complex XCOM/UFO game - you like strategy games generally - you like squad-based strategy games with RPGs elements such as Jagged Alliance, Fallout Tactics Afterlight is "more" real time like XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Let's say there is an enemy attack on one of your territories you have e.g. 3 days to react. In the mean time you can keep on training or squad (which takes time actually), keep on with the production and so on if you need to do so. The opportunity of the attack doesn't vanish if you ignore it just to do one day more of research or you need additional time for producing a item (that is instantly ready in XCOM: Enemy Unknown). Also your scientists and technicians you take on a mission (which is quite a good idea because of some bonuses) are not available at your base and since getting to an attack spot needs a bit time it is important to manage well your base, squads and as well as the equipment. In combat it reminds me a lot to Jagged Alliance. You just can't spray and pray on an enemy if one of your squadees is in line of sight because the travel distance is actually calculated instead of simple numbers on hitting a target or not hitting like in the latest XCOM. The odds are showed to you so you know what are the chances of hitting own soldiers, in such case, or the enemy. The combat system is very transparent and is comparable to Jagged Alliance Back in Action (pausable real time with each individual plan for any squad member). I don't want to bad mouth the newest XCOM. I still love it and it features much better graphics, innately better customization possibilities for your soldiers and it is more user friendly (interface, micro- & macromanagement) and feels just "more modern". This games got me hooked right from the beginning that many games aren't able to nowadays so you probably should get it.

It's a pretty good game - like Aftershock and Aftermath, it's generally a good game with some flaws. It's seriously hard when you first play it. Like, "oh my god, why are we all so dead" hard. Get used to using the "run away!" strategy and trying to turn it into "grab stuff / blow stuff up THEN run away". Once you figure a few things out unfortunately it can get very easy. "Gee, are these guys trying to fight back?" easy. Don't worry, though, that won't last; be prepared to have your confident approach turned into an "oh god run away" rout when you've settled nicely into your invincibility. Repeatedly. This game doesn't just match bigger health bars with bigger guns. It has multiple interesting opponents and game events, each of which require different strategies and different squad-level tactics. Relationships are fluid(ish). It has somewhat of a story, and it's quite fun. The engine is very memory hungry, but if you have enough RAM to throw at it then it'll work very well indeed. You'll probably find yourself playing this save-and-load style, at least at a mission level, because your pool of squad members is finite and very shallow, there are many missions, and death can be sudden and gruesome. It's plenty fun.