UFO: Aftermath
I just completed the game. Holy crap was that fun!! This game is like crack!
Controls take a bit to get used to, but once you have, they’re not an issue. Only one bug I found, and that’s when one of your party sees a reticulan/bad guy, the movement orders you’ve given up to that point can be reset if you accidentally click the next destination point right as the enemy is sighted. This won’t even occur to you until you get a few rifleman with super-heroic speed that you use for ambushes anyway. If you even do.
– Real player with 90.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time with Pause Sci-fi Games.
The first and my personal favorite out of the UFO: After(??) series. (I seriously recommend the “Combo-mod” for newcomers and UFO veterans, it turns the game from a good game to a masterpiece.)
A true hidden gem that even fans of the series tend to overlook.
Sadly it hasn’t aged that well so playing the game today might feel like trying to drive a car with flat tires on a sheet of ice so if that is something that would turn you off from the game then i recommend going to one of the newer games, but if clunky controls is something you don’t fear then this game will reward you for mastering it. Unlike the newer games, it’s a lot more raw, chaotic and difficult.
– Real player with 47.5 hrs in game
UFO: Afterlight
If you’re looking for a decent Xcom-esque game, then Afterlight certainly fits the bill. Although the innovations are outweighed by a number of annoyances this just means that it’s not as good as one of the most beloved strategy series, no real shame in that. It is the third in the UFO series after Aftershock and Aftermath and focuses on a human colony on Mars attempting to fend off alien encroachments. So lets see how it stacks up in various categories important to squad based tactics.
Squad Personality: B. While it lacks the customization of Xcom (if you loved this, change the rating to a D), I found the hardcoded team had enough personality to carry me through. Uta (aka BattleGranny) was a highlight but the others were distinct enough without being (for the most part) grating. This is furthered by some people having dual roles, so your scientist/soldier could be medic and your engineer/soldier could be driver/bomb disposal. Nowhere near Jagged Alliance goodness of course and unfortunately voice acting in the base was at times painful and repetitive. Sadly, the aliens you can get onto your team have limited usefulness due to their slow speed so a bit of potential variety is lost there.
– Real player with 60.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time with Pause Sci-fi Games.
Summary:
An hardcore gamer-oriented and enjoyable game for those who appreciated UFO-like games and don’t pay too much attention to graphics.
Research, characters design, story-telling, and ressource management are nice. RPG aspects are average.
Interface, tactical aspects, game balance, and graphics are desappointing (not completely bad though).
Gameplay:
- The focus is put on ressource management and research. There is a wide range of technologies to discover, and as other people already mentionned, you don’t have a ‘technological tree’ to guide you but I think it’s part of the roleplay and not a problem at all.
– Real player with 55.3 hrs in game
X-COM: Apocalypse
More than 20 years after it’s release, I can still quite confidently say, without hyperbole, that this is still one of the best games ever made. And I don’t even mean just one of my favourite games, but literally one of the best games in history. The hours I have on this are just the steam version, which is a tiny fraction of what I played back when I was on windows 98/2000 as a kid.
This game is systems upon systems upon systems. All of them working in the background, and in perfect harmony with each other. Everything you do in this game has far reaching consequences that are not necessarily simple or obvious. A decision to use serious explosives when defending a building owned by another company for example, may lead to you pissing that company off, which can change any further missions you do in their territory, can cause services to become unavailable to you, and may even result in inter-corporation wars in both the strategy and battle layers, spontaneously and unexpectedly starting up or beginning with clear hostile actions. While you can put money into deals to improve relations with some companies, others will not be your friends no matter what you do.
– Real player with 141.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time with Pause Turn-Based Games.
XCom Apocalypse is my favorite of all XCom titles, old and new. And - no, not because of nostalgia.
While I’m certainly cherish the challenge of the first two XCom games, and enjoying the tactical shootouts of the newer ones… By the terms of complexity of the gameplay, Apocalypse still has no rival. Well, maybe the first Banner Saga has something common in terms of complexity - but it’s another setting and totally another scale of events.
If you’re still wandering, what I’m talking about - it’s all of the game economics, your actions and their consequences. Yeah, the things I hate in the new XCom games for their inaptitude.
– Real player with 130.1 hrs in game
UFO: Aftershock
This game… I love this game! The beginning is a bit tough, but the mid-game is really fun!
You start with 4 squad members with average skills. They miss a lot and need to be close to their target in order to hit most of the time. As you complete missions, your squad members gain experience which will gradually increase their performance. Experience is spent on stat points which increase an array of skills which will directly and quickly benefit each squad member. When enough stats are gained, classes become available. Most classes will net your squad member a few benefits, and can be trained up to lvl 3. Each squad member can have 3 classes maxed out at lvl 3.
– Real player with 128.7 hrs in game
This is, by no means, a bad entry in the UFO saga. but it’s one I cannot recommend.
It’s a pretty solid game, with plenty of emergent storylines that will make you love the game, like the old UFO games. The fact that’s in real time shouldn’t matter, because you can always pause the game to give your orders.
There’s also an implemented class system, to customize your squad, and, while the “base building” part is less than optimal, it’s still decent, even if it’s decentralized.
So, with that much praise, why not recommend it? Well, because it’s full of bugs. Game breaking bugs at that. And most of them won’t happen until you have invested 40+ hours in the game.
– Real player with 76.7 hrs in game
Polaris Sector
Nice and deep space 4X game, definately the best of the recent releases. It also avoided a common fact with 4X which is that many features are copy/pasted beetween games, so it will feel fresh even if you’re used to the genre.
In a nutshell, it’s a bit rough but a must for every space 4X fan. It shines in empire management, elegant mechanics, diplomacy. It would deserve a bit more streamlining.
Why is it better than most other 4X?
+ Rewarding diplomacy:
Interactions pretty rational. There are many possibilities, from trading ressources (shortages are common so that’s handy), to technologies, to being able to use friendly planets as bases for your fleet or asking for a 3rd party to negociate a peace with your ennemy, or bribe them into getting into war against your ennemy (or request a bribe to help them!)
– Real player with 229.8 hrs in game
Lets get to it.
Pro:
[olist]
- A.I. (Articial Intelligence) - I cannot emphasis or stress enough of how extremely good the A.I. is. It’s probably one of the most advanced one I’ve seen in a 4x game genre. I absolutely love how it handles playing against me and handling my orders for planets, colonization, and etc (without the need to micromanage everything). Again, the A.I. in this game is just so good that it cannot be expressed sufficiently of how good it is. Even the developer of this game admits that hard is very tough for him.
– Real player with 159.5 hrs in game
The Red Solstice
I’ll skip the stuff about it beeing 8 player coop and sooo on and start talking about the stuff that might not be mentioned as often in short reviews:
The game offers multiple difficulties.. however the base difficulty is intended to be rather challenging for Players.
Which is definitly a good thing since it’s all about improving your own skill and after many defeats rewarding yourself with your very first win… somewhat darksouls-esque..
Classes:
So far there’s a total of 8 classes and depending on what the player wishes to accomplish every class has one or more distinctive roles.(Tank, Healer, DmgDealer,Scout….)
– Real player with 2514.4 hrs in game
I played this game when it first came out and I immediately fell in love with it.
It’s a slick tactical shooter. With hordes of alien zombies trying to kill you. Meanwhile your team of husky voiced men attempt to complete your objectives.
Again it’s a great game. I stopped playing it for some time and decided to get back into it and immediately fell back in love.
Great set of classes
Assault-great all rounder very good beginner class. he’s great with light weapons and rifles and he even smokes a cigar. Do you want to live forever?
– Real player with 1210.3 hrs in game
Save the Planet
I think this game was made in first class of university
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
The guard of dungeon
Terrible game. It’s like someone discovered the free edition of Unity software one day and decided to spend the afternoon playing around with it and came up with this steaming pile. “The guard of dungeon” is yet another one of those half-assed amateurish attempts at making an easy buck.
I’m starting to imagine that in some lawless third world country there are operations that force enslaved laborers to crank out these Unity asset flips. It would certainly explain the lack of quality, passion, and inspiration in games such as this one.
– Real player with 42.3 hrs in game
Deep in the Twanzein Valley in Deepest Darkest China, a small village named Xiiahu rests on the banks of a deep winding river. In this village a young boy named Huan wakes up at 3am every day to join all the other young children on their journey by bike, like hundreds of thousands of other young children to the workshops in the nearest city of Xixxiun.
Once there they turn on their assigned computers and open Unity Personal edition and start importing free assests into the latest Steam greenlight game they are working on. They need to have 6 of these games completed before 11am and ready to be uploaded for Steam Greenlight. Story, gameplay, controls, graphics, optimisation none of this matters as long as they are able to run.
– Real player with 8.2 hrs in game
Galactic Ruler
I love the way they take ground combat seriously in Galactic Ruler. In most 4x space games ground combat feels like a barely thought of after thought.In Galactic Ruler its the main focus. You can be fighting large scale invasions/wars on multiple planets/moons with thousands of units on each planet/moon all at the same time.
You can automate these wars, or manage them yourself .It really shines though, once you learn the combat and manage the wars on your own.Got a tough frontline your having trouble breaking thru ? Airdrop troops behind it and cut off its supply.Got a series of close together urban areas with garrisons you just cant manage to push thru ? Bring in the art and aircraft and bombard it ,heck level it if you have to .
– Real player with 583.3 hrs in game
//Update - Oct 10, 2021
Nearly a year has passed since my original review. A lot has changed with this game, but not enough. I speculate that UI design problems are ones the company are not aware of because they got used to it, while the rest of us struggle to figure it out. In time and with patience, you will also figure it out, but it will break the immersion continuously still. Lots of clicks for little things like loading units into transports. It’s just kind of bad design so far. I do have to be pretty critical about that.
– Real player with 42.3 hrs in game
Space War Machine
A strange blend of war strategy with some ship simulators. Some of your units are super people. Mine planets for resources and watch the forces blast each other out of space! Crazy yet interesting.
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game