UFO: Aftermath

The Good
When an old strategy gamer hear about a new game based on the early 90s UFO series it makes someone to try it or try it and I feel the need to say that meeting features on this title that I didn’t saw for years was a pleasure. In contemporary days is very hard to find a TBS instead of a RTS (in this game you will find a mix, but closer to TBS)

I found many reviews to focus on the fact that the graphics are strongly disappointing for a modern game and base their ratings on it, well they are right that even the isometric 2D view on the original games are still better that the present 3D but I disagree on nuking a game just because the graphics.

The plot and story play are well executed and the technology tree and base management are ok. The enemies are ok despite the fact that the transgenants are very easy to eliminate.

The RPG-like soldier development is one of the strong sides on the game, enjoyable, as well as the variety on armors, guns, grenades and similar.

The Bad
There are many minor flaws that as a player, I can allow, but the mayor flaw in this game is the unbalanced, non-escalated difficulty.

I will tell my story with this game, I start playing and finds it a decent game while I am advancing trough the learning curve (a little long) at one moment the difficult is ok , but suddenly I need to beat the “enter a crashed UFO missions” and here my problems begin. I found that it will be better if I restart my game (now that I know how to play it better) and develop further my technologies and my soldiers so I can beat this reticulans (the main raze) and continue advancing. In my second game I did better and managed to beat these hard missions, so far, the game is ok, I like challenging games even very hard games and using a few save and load do not bother me.

SPOILER I continue advancing by playing every non-plot missions and fighting for every experience points when I come to the third plot mission, the one where you need to secure an item so you can build a ship to reach the moon for the final mission and I found it impossible. I believe that some fans will negate this but for the average player this mission is frustrating, I could try, right, but saving, loading and replaying every min for 10 hours isn’t my idea of a good game experience. Therefore, I gave up and either I quit or cheat… SPOILER

I rarely come to one of these options but after expending not a few hours at least I deserve to know how the story ends so I cheated (third time on my life since I dislike it) for the last 20 mins just to reach the final.

The Bottom Line
I will give an advice to any original UFO games lover that this game, while isn’t better that the original and despite the fact that you will find many similar features, can be very frustrating. However, if you can live with it, go ahead, UFO aftermath is a nice try.