UFO: Aftershock

There are certain times when I am in the mood for a really good strategy game. While playing various real time strategy games gets the juices flowing, what I am talking about is a game that really makes you think and try to stay about three steps ahead of your enemies in order to be victorious. Many times I plug in a few of my favorite turn based strategy games to get my fix, but when I heard that I was going to review UFO: Aftershock I wanted to see what it was about first. I found out that a couple of years ago a game by the name UFO: Aftermath was released with a decent amount of praise. How does this latest game stack up? Read on to find out more.

The story of this game takes place one year after the events of UFO: Aftermath. In that game aliens wanted to take over the planet Earth and turning it into a large supercomputer, and they succeeded in doing so. Since this is the case, the Earth has been covered in biometric “goo” with the humans living above the planet on a floating island called Laputa. This game has you take charge in locating all of the aliens that are threatening our planet and killing them, so it will give the planet a chance to heal. In order to accomplish this huge mission you will have to unite various factions living on the Earth. Are you up this heavy task of leading various soldiers into the fray in order to reclaim Earth once more? Hopefully you are because the fate of this planet is in your very hands.

This game is two games in one. On one hand players will have to constantly maintain their global operations. Meaning that they will have to build up their bases, obtain resources, build up your army, and maintain diplomacy with the surrounding factions. In this way the game is very similar to many strategy games that are currently available. Just like in other strategy games the key to victory is making sure that they have a strong economy in order to purchase the necessary upgrades in order to become victorious over your enemies.

Then on the flip side of the coin, players will go on tactical missions where they will take the cream of the crop of your army and complete certain objectives. Also these units can be leveled up similar to an RPG, so the more you use certain units the better they become. Players will be able to purchase a variety of upgrades from weapons, various abilities, and many other things. What players really need to focus on is making sure that when you are in a mission that each player has a specialty that will compliment the other characters. If you are able to do this it will be beneficial because you will be prepared for any situation that you might stumble upon. These two different forms of game play really meld well together and provide gamers with a good time.

Instead of having the usual real time or even turn based in this game, it has something called Simultaneous Action System. Here is how it works, first you select characters and tell them to go to a certain place, and they you press the “play” button. If an enemy is encountered while you are traveling to this certain place, the game will pause. This allows you to create a strategy on how to effectively take out this enemy without taking much damage yourself. When you set up how you want to deal with this enemy just press the play button once more and see if everything plays out the way you wanted it to. This system works really well here and is a nice change of pace from other strategy games.

A thing that is a pain in many RTS games is that once you start a new mission you will have to always create a new base of operations. This means that you will have to build and research technologies that you had several moments ago in your previous mission. This game does away with that, by having one base throughout the entire game. Once you build a certain building or research a certain technology you will have it for the rest of the game. This means that you can concentrate on your strategies to beat the aliens instead of building up a strong enough base of operations to be able to endure their attacks, aka being on the defensive instead of the offensive.

One thing that I really didn’t like about this game was the camera. Many times it seemed like I was fighting the camera more then the enemies. Many times when you are planning an attack it seems like the camera becomes alive and had a mind of its own and doesn’t obey your instructions. You tell it to go to a place or rotate and it seems to do the opposite giving players a more obtrusive view of the action. This becomes very frustrating while you are playing because your fights should be against the alien invaders, not the camera.

The graphics engine for UFO: Aftershock is pretty decent. Up until recently, strategy games were known to not have the best looking graphics around, because it was all about the game play. Everything in this game has a really nice look and feel to it. The character models and the various locations that you will be traveling are pretty nicely detailed. The problem with this is that when you compare it to some of the other strategy games that have recently been released or are on the horizon this game can not really compare to them. Even though this is the case, the developers did a nice job with the various lighting and character animations that really make this game smooth looking.

Just like the graphics the sound department for this game gets the job done, but really doesn’t add any “zing” to make it stand out above other titles. All of the sound effects that you will hear during the course of any game are really generic and has a been there, heard that feeling to it. Also the music fits the game, but never really tries to capture the players hearts as they play through the game. Finally the voice acting is pretty decent, what really hurts here is the lack of variety of statements that the characters will say. This gets pretty annoying while you are in the midst of battle, other then that nothing is really wrong with anything with the sound, it is just average.

UFO: Aftershock is rated 16+

The system requirements for UFO: Aftershock are:
AMD/Pentium 4 1 GHz
512 MB of RAM
Windows 2000/XP
DVD-ROM
DirectX 9.0c
4 GB of Hard Drive Space
Keyboard and Mouse

Gameplay: 7.0
The game plays quite smoothing and getting a chance to prepare for anything is nice, and helps you set up a decent strategy with the global. What really kills the game here is the camera seems to have a mind of its own, and doesn’t like to do what you tell it at times. This is a real killer, even though the gameplay is “stopped” in order for you to make a move, it is still no fun having to fight the enemy as well as the camera.

Graphics: 7.1
The graphics for UFO: Aftershock are nothing spectacular yet they are not bad either. This game has a tendency to just go with the flow in many areas and this is how the graphics portion was treated as well.

Sound: 7.2
The game sound effects, voiceovers, and music are all just average. Nothing really stands out here.

Difficulty: Hard
UFO: Aftershock is really challenging even on the easiest setting. The game does not cheat, but it really puts player’s patience and strategy skills to the test while you are playing it.

Concept: 7.0
There is nothing revolutionary or even evolutionary that was done with this game. It sticks with what has worked in previous games and continues on. This is not really bad in any sense, but it is a shame nothing new was added to really make this game go over the top.

Overall 7.2
If you are aching for a good and highly challenging strategy game, then look notfurther then UFO: Aftershock. Even though this game has some flaws, this game will keep you entertained and thinking for hours on end.