UFO: Afterlight is on its Way

Turn based combat games are not for everyone. Most people tend to go for the real time strategy games like Rome Total War and the RTS genre has been growing leaving turn based with a smaller fan base. The UFO game type franchise has been around for a long time. It started with the XCom series which was developed by Microprose (of which I was a big fan of Terror from the Deep - Wikipedia). UFO has been influenced by the X-Com series and attempts to be the "spiritual successor" to these games. The series incorporates base and resource management along with Turn based combat. There has been a recent announcement that the next installment of the UFO franchise will be released early next year.

I purchased UFO: Aftershock when it was released last year. I installed and played it in the first week and then uninstalled it. I wasn't unimpressed with the game, but just was too busy to get involved with a complicated game. After thinking about it for some time I decided to reinstall the game. Like I said before, Turn Based combat is not for everyone. It is slow and very time consuming. The more people you control the longer the combat takes. You have to be prepared to do a lot of saving and replaying in order to get the results that you want because the combat will not necessarily play out the same way twice.

After playing the game over the last week and a half I have restarted it three or four times. It has taken that much time to come to grips with the base and resource management. The game allows you to acquire technology then research and develop it yourself. However, this is a time consuming process and depends completely on what resources you control. To this end I feel that the game is somewhat unbalanced. The resource management side of the game is too difficult to control. Resources are consumed far too quickly and are very hard to come by. This then limits all of your manufacturing and research operations which then limit your future activities. There is a lot in this game. A lot of technology to research and develop. A lot to think about as you play and decide what is the most important thing to develop based on your limit resources. Thrown in on top of this you have to attack and defend provinces as you expand your own territories.

The combat in the game is relatively well done, however, I felt that the maps could have been a bit bigger. The maps in Fallout Tactics were a lot bigger from the start, however, Tactics didn't have all of the resource management side of the game either. They have incorporated an experienced based system for your team. This allows you to recruit members from different factions within the game, level them up and then provide them customized training in specific skill groups. There is a great deal of different weapon types to select from as well. With traditional projectile weapons to alien inspired laser weapons and psionic based weapons as well. You can develop these weapons and also customize them with modifications.

Otherwise, this is an enjoyable game if you are prepared to put a lot of time in to it. If you play UFO: Aftershock for half an hour or so every now and then you really won't feel that you've achieved much with the game. It is something which can take up large chunks of your time.

The other thing about this game is that it is developed by an independant publisher, Altar Interactive. With the announcement that the next installment in the UFO franchise will be released early next year it may be worthwhile hunting down a copy of UFO: Aftershock to get yourself ready for the new release. I'll definitely be looking out for Afterlight when it comes out. From what I understand they have modified some of the resource and base management side of things to simplify the process for simpletons like myself. It's good to see that a small independant developer is prepared to continue a game format which is popular to a cult following of people. Most of the major developers are not prepared to release turn based games because they just don't generate the revenue of MMOs and other types of games.

UFO: Aftershock Webpage