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UFO: Aftershock

Score: 89%
ESRB: Teen
Publisher: Tri Synergy
Developer: Cenega
Media: CD/1
Players: 1
Genre: Strategy

Graphics & Sound:

UFO: Aftershock comes in two parts. The first is essentially one big GUI where you manage numbers. The second part of the game is the tactical area where you give orders to your troops in hopes of completing various mission criteria. The GUI is well laid out and the menus are easily navigable. What’s more, a lot of the interface boxes can be resized and relocated. While it doesn’t have the depth of customizability that some games do, it certainly does help.

The tactical part of UFO: Aftershock is pulled off just as smoothly. This part of the game takes place in an isometric 3D world, but you have control over the camera angles and can view the various levels and height on the map. The graphics here are also very nice; detailed characters on a detailed map with plenty of variety is what you’ll get here.

The inverse is true of the sound. The effects, for the most part, are ok but lacking in variety. The voice acting, however, is awful and far too redundant when you are on a tactical mission. Your troops tend to spout out the same couple of annoying lines over and over again, saying things like "Do I have to do everything?". This is simply a bad execution all around.


Gameplay:

UFO: Aftershock picks up years after UFO: Aftermath left off. The survivors of the horrors that the aliens subjected the world to are now banding together in small factions. You, however, are in control of a Laputa, a space station that is orbiting Earth. From the Laputa, you conduct raids and manage your Earthly belongings.

UFO: Aftershock can be paralleled in a lot of ways to X-Com. At first glance, it may even seem to some that it’s an exact replica of the golden oldie. However, upon closer inspection, UFO: Aftershock’s differences come out, some for the better, some for the worse. The biggest difference is in the linearity of the game. Where X-Com was very much a free-flowing environment, UFO: Aftershock takes a more linear approach.

When you begin the game, you are given a set of missions that you must complete in order to advance. This does not happen throughout the game, but this initial rigidity in the missions was kind of a turn off. However, they do help to establish the story and help the player integrate themselves into the game.

UFO: Aftershock is mainly based on territory acquiring and resource management. The entire land mass of Earth is divided into provinces and countries. You can explore individual provinces (i.e. invade with a tactical squad) to gain more resources. Each province provides one of three resources, and the more provinces you control the better your ability is to maintain these resources.

The resources in the game are used to build structures at your bases on Eatrth, construct tracks between the bases to keep them linked, and to research and produce equipment for your squad. Maintaining your squad is the most important aspect of the game, despite the fact that it shares half its time with the resource management aspects.

Fitting your squads is a very intricate process. First you must recruit new troops from factions on Earth. There are three types of troops you can recruit: humans, cyborgs and psi troops. Each have their own unique abilities, and each is meant to be used in accordance with the various types of missions. After you have some troops, you need to give them some equipment and send them on their merry way to Earth to take care of whatever problem is at hand.

UFO: Aftershock is lacking somewhat in this part, as you can only have up to five people in your squad at once. This limits the tactical portion of the game to you controlling a small amount of people, whereas X-Com gave you control of troops numbering in the teens. Despite this, it is still a challenge to direct all five of your troops around at once.


Difficulty:

The tutorial in UFO: Aftershock is the least effective tutorial I have ever seen. It gives you little direction, and you can find out more information more quickly by referring to the instruction book. On the plus side, jumping right into the Campaign is easily accommodated, as the beginning missions serve as better tutorials than the actual tutorial does. The rest of the game is really a simple premise, but one that demands attention and some micromanaging to achieve success.

Game Mechanics:

The deepest mechanics come with the tactical mode in UFO: Aftershock. Here, the game is neither turn-based nor real time. It can be likened to titles such as Baldur’s Gate or Knights of the Old Republic, where you can pause the action, issue commands, and then watch how it all unfolds. You can also issue commands in real time, though this method requires a lot of precision and won’t be used too often.

You have a lot of control over your units here, just as you did in X-Com. You can equip them with all sorts of human and alien technology, set their stances, rate of fire, see their line of sight, and even give them close combat commands. The gameplay will pause depending on a number of circumstances, like if your troops spot an alien, and there is an easy option menu that you can customize to handle these pause moments to your liking.

Despite the fact that the game throws a lot of information and control options your way, it is all easily navigated thanks to an extensive array of tooltips. Just about everything you think should have a tooltip has one, leaving you free from the burden of flipping through the instruction book. Without these tooltips, the game would have been much more of a chore to work through.

Despite its minor flaws and its slow start, UFO: Aftershock is still a very fun game to play. For some, the act of taking their tactical squads down to Earth might get tiresome, but for those who enjoy planning out strategies and then tweaking them on the way, there isn’t anything much better than this (except for X-Com). While it’s a more rigid game than X-Com and doesn’t allow you to do some of the things that great title did, UFO: Aftershock is still a game that X-Com fans should check out. Even if you’ve never played X-Com, there is still plenty to be had from this title.


-Snow Chainz, GameVortex Communications
AKA Andrew Horwitz

Minimum System Requirements:



Windows XP/2K, 1 GHz Processor, 512 MB RAM, GeForce 5700 or Radeon 9500, 4 GB Hard Disk Space
 

Test System:



Windows XP, 2.4 GHz Processor, 1GB RAM, 256 MB GeForce 6800 GT Video Card, 160 GB Hard Drive, Cable Modem Internet Connection

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