UFO: Afterlight
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Description
"...but none of those games come with anything half as involved or absorbing as Afterlight's amazing strategic layer." - Eurogamer
"A great game that you'll find yourself unable to step away from because you have to research one thing more, or expand to one more territory." - StrategyInformer
UFO: Afterlight is a mixture of squad based tactical action and global strategy with the gamer controlling the actions of elite ground troops, and the running and construction of an intricate network of interlinking bases while collecting resources.
UFO: Afterlight takes us to Mars, where a human colony has been built with the help of the Reticulans not long before the events of UFO: Aftershock took place. Mars base is self-sustainable and provides all the necessities for survival of humans on a foreign planet, mainly breathable air, water and food. Although the people inhabiting this colony have the technologies and knowledge required for their further development, basic survival is their major concern. Their only activity is the research of a nearby excavation site, which proves the existence of an ancient intelligent and highly developed alien civilization.
The player will enter the game when the research drastically affects all Mars inhabitants. New and unexpected enemies appear in the form of robots, built centuries ago by the unknown aliens for their protection, whose purpose is to eliminate any traces of other civilizations on Mars.
Humans on Mars now have a good reason for their own development, even though not knowing yet that the planetary self-defense mechanism might not be the worst awaiting them, and that their unintentional opening of hyperspace gates will bring an even bigger enemy right to their door. After all attempts to contact the Earth Laputa fail, the colonists are left with no other choice than to fight the enemies with their own means, or be annihilated.
Customer reviews
85
UFO: Afterlight review
RoKkie | Jan. 27, 2013 | See all RoKkie's reviews »This is a decent strategy game in the vein of Xcom. At first the controls can be a little non-intuitive, but you get used to which mouse button to click and it all comes together. The strategy side is quite good, although it can be annoying at first when people always invade your territory. I noticed a few bugs, like I didn't receive a certain tech at some point. I enjoyed it overall though. Worth a purchase if you were a fan of the original.
70
Not as good as the earlier ones
Cooberstooge | Aug. 28, 2012 | See all Cooberstooge's reviews »Being a long-time fan of the UFO series, I went into this one expecting only improvements. What I ended up finding was backwards design, buggy AI, and a strange departure from much of the series roots.
The AI have a nasty habit of getting the stupids right during key times in battle, and have more often than not cost me the game - I'd rather it was me doing the screw-ups. Soldiers ignore your orders where mere seconds ago they hung on your every command, and sometimes pull a Rambo and run headlong into the enemy. I ended up grabbing a mod after my first run through that improves the AI massively.
Graphically, for the age of it, the game looks quite good, and it's got the cool cartoony vibe so familiar to those of us who play Team Fortress 2. There's never been any lag for me during play, and the one crash was caused by me alt-tabbing out to check on something.
If you don't mind the dumb AI, and are fine with modding a title before even really getting into it, I'd say UFO Afterlight is a decent purchase.
65
The 3rd that missed the spot.
dawe | May 16, 2012 | See all dawe's reviews »After playing the 2 earlier games my hopes where high for this game. The first turn off was the cartoony graphics, it felt out of place, made me feel like I was playing som childish flash game. The tactical battles handle real slow, maybe it's the martian atmosphere, but it never got to me. The stategical aspects did have some shiny moments, as when your crew have multiple roles of a soldier and a scientist, terraforming and building mines etc.
This game fails to live up to its predecessor, badly. I give it 65 as I like the genre,
85
A quite nice strategy
newn | Aug. 11, 2011 | See all newn's reviews »This game can be RTS while it can be a tactical game. It can be paused. And it should be paused, because it's also a survival game! I liked these two facts, because that's what made it different from other strategies. Of course there are a lot of weapons, stuff to research, etc. which is also great. In other words - this game is full of nice features.
The game's graphics is outdated and sounds aren't too good. However if you don't care about that and like oldies as myself - it's a nice game to play. I played it for a few hours when I first got it about a month ago - it's fun, a lot of enemies to shoot, so it's a lot of action. By that said, I think that it is worth those 10€. It will give you at least a few nice hours of survival experience. Though you can wait for a discount if you really hate spending on old games, but I think it's worth what it costs.
80
Strategy fest.
GAMERamble | Aug. 8, 2011 | See all GAMERamble's reviews »I'll be honest I only purchased this game because I was a huge fan of old X-com games. This game sounded like an update and while it never really reaches the same level of awesomeness it is definitely worth playing. You get a lot of content for the price and the game will keep you busy for ages so if you are a fan of the genre then you can't go wrong with this one.