UFO: Afterlight

65

The 3rd that missed the spot.

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

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The game's graphics is outdated and sounds aren't too good.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.

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.

85

Satisfying tactical / strategic game

Plenty of different weapons and items to research, lots of aliens to kill, some great mods, good graphics, and personality, which is something lacking in some similar titles. This game concentrates on a cast of a couple of dozen characters, each individually named and voiced. Each can be used in different roles, such as soldier / scientist / engineer, and can level up in their respective fields.

Several factions exist in the game, adding a little more strategy, and it has a fairly interesting story and quite decent voicework. The environment can be mined and also terraformed, which is reflected both on the planetary display and in the missions themselves.

Tactical gameplay is satisfying; difficulty can vary quite a bit depending on skills and equipment, and of course tactics, but it's great seeing your small team move up from barely scraping by to devastating the opposition - of course stronger aliens will often be arriving, so it's never a cakewalk.

Definitely recommended.

95

a classic and a masterpiece

UFO: Afterlight is a game that will keep you very busy once you get into it.

Gameplay is split into 2 parts: Planetary development/research/production/story view and tactical battles. Both parts are real-time but can (and should) be paused by simply hitting space.

You are in command on a group of soldiers and have one main goal: to surive. Some of the soldiers are scientists, some are mechanics and some are simply soldiers but most of them are a combination of 2 of these classes.

Scientist have to research weapon techs and will continually find out more about the planet and the environment, hereby propelling the story forward.

Mechanics will build weapons, space suits, ammo and 100s of different items (all of them useful!) and they will build probes on the planet to supply the colony with resources.

Soldiers will protect these resources and can - shoot - laser - grenade - rocket launch - melee or - pistol

all kinds of aliens into pieces. Battles are fought on a tactical 3D-map by squads of 5 soldiers, RTS-turnbased-hybrid-style. You can customize your force with ca. 30 different skills and dozens of weapons and a tactical approach is required.

It's a huge game, plenty of aliens, plenty of weapons, plenty of techs and if you want to enhance the gameplay even further, you can download a mod (complete overhaul mod) that changes balance a bit and adds a bit more of everything (+ reduces the amount of alien attacks IIRC).

The game is quite old, but graphics look nice and it certainly deserves to be called a classic and masterpiece. It's one of the best tactical games available in this genre (tactical squad-based), a whole lot better than Fallout Tactics and nearly as good as Jagged Alliance 2.