Thoughts On UFO Afterlight?

Started by Darkspire, January 23, 2014, 03:48:18 PM

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Darkspire

January 23, 2014, 03:48:18 PM
Went into Maplins to pick up some supplies and they had a bargain bucket with some PC games in and I picked up the UFO Trilogy for £1.99  :)

Played the first one years ago and found the difficulty was a bit on the crazy side towards the end, I believe they fixed that and the second one I tried a few years ago, although good I never really got into it and I have just installed Afterlight and I am rather impressed, read the GFX were a bit on the weak side, IMO they are really good if you crank it up, it is 7 years old so it runs very well, loving the fact of the one base, very limited crew which leads to some serious micro and planning to get anywhere, overall pretty impressed, makes a change from Distant Worlds.

Had a search on here and I could not find a thread so was wondering if any Grogs had any useful sites, thoughts etc as the game forums have gone the way of the Dodo.

Darkspire
Trying to prove the existence of God with the Bible is the same thing as trying to prove the existence of Orcs using the Lord of the Rings books.

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bob48

#1
January 23, 2014, 04:32:28 PM
Bloody hell. We have a Maplins by the Metro Centre - I'll have to see if I can find time to nip down and have a look. I had no idea they sold games!
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Greybriar

#2
January 23, 2014, 05:14:51 PM
I'm glad you posted about UFO Afterlight. I purchased the three games in the UFO series at GOG.com thinking they were part of the X-COM series (which I already owned the retail versions of) and haven't even installed them. Now I've got three more games on my gaming plate.  :P
Regardless of how good a PC game may be it will always have its detractors and no matter how bad a PC game may be it will always have its fans.

FarAway Sooner

#3
January 23, 2014, 05:43:28 PM
I played the demo and liked it but never got around to purchasing the game.  It's on my shortlist of prospects from GOG, though.

I remember reading some reviews where people liked it.  They suggested that it went from a cake walk much of the way through to being brutally hard near the end.  I think there was a fairly active modding community for it at some point, and at least one of these mods got good praise for addressing some of those difficulty issues.

I too liked the limited number of crew to work with, I liked the mystery surrounding the story arc (what happened to life on Mars, anyways?), and the opportunity cost of fighting versus producing (e.g., you could send a Scientist out in your rover but he wouldn't be able to do research that turn).  All led to a nice flavor of suspense during the early game turns available in the demo.

son_of_montfort

#4
January 23, 2014, 10:40:18 PM Last Edit: January 23, 2014, 10:41:51 PM by son_of_montfort
The UFO series is a strange strange series of games. The story is a bit impenetrable, and Afterlight starts in media res, if you will. Your people were ferried to mars following a cataclysmic "infection" of the earth by this mutagenic goo that wiped out most of earth's life and then receded. The culprits were a group of "greys" called the Reticulans. In one of the better parts of the series, the story continues that some humans were saved by blasting off in to space and living on orbital platforms. In that one, you play people waking up on the Laputa, and fight mutants, aliens, and cultists to try to find out WHY the Reticulans dropped the goo on Earth. I only mention this one because you interact with the Laputans in Afterlight once you get to a certain point.

Afterlight has a better story, IMHO. Your group is a number of humans who were transported to Mars by some "good" Reticulans and are attempting to colonize. The production values and voice acting is hokey in the extreme, but I actually very much enjoyed the game. You basically attempt to "conquer" the planet and terraform it, upgrading your tech along the way. Be warned, the game is actually quite difficult and the difficulty ramps up unexpectedly in the mid game.

I liked it, but as a guilty pleasure. It is pausable real time, rather than true TBS, so more like X-Com Apocalypse than X-Com. But it isn't that bad as you can queue up orders when paused, then hit play and pause as you please to fine tune. It is worth a $10-15 price. I would buy it on Steam, however, as the retail disc likely has the aged and evil Starforce DRM software on it.
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Darkspire

#5
January 24, 2014, 03:03:34 AM
QuoteI would buy it on Steam, however, as the retail disc likely has the aged and evil Starforce DRM software on it.

The retail DVD is patched to 1.5, Altar patched it to 1.7 for DVD, Sprocket and Steam versions (patch available on the games official site), which amongst many other things removes the DRM. The Steam version as per usual is laced with DRM, go with GOG or the Revival Trilogy DVD and then just patch to 1.7, the DRM is not on the DVD from Revival, no disk needed after being installed, just needs the update.

Darkspire
Trying to prove the existence of God with the Bible is the same thing as trying to prove the existence of Orcs using the Lord of the Rings books.

Darkspires's Distant Worlds File Repository

Nefaro

#6
January 24, 2014, 08:11:01 AM Last Edit: January 24, 2014, 08:13:38 AM by Nefaro
I wanted to enjoy Afterlight but the change from the previous game's grittier graphics to the new bright pastel cartoonish ones always rubbed me wrong every time I started.  The second one in the series was a high point for me but it had it's own issues.. one being repetitive mission maps.  The sound was also an issue because the weapon fire volume was linked with how far away from the sounds origin point the camera was.  So if you weren't zoomed right up on your characters when they were firing, the shots would be pretty damn quiet.  Oddities of that nature.  :-\

Now that we have Xenonauts, I don't plan on playing the UFO series again.

SgtRock

#7
January 24, 2014, 12:44:48 PM Last Edit: January 24, 2014, 12:55:23 PM by SgtRock
There were 3 UFO After-something games, the first was bad (missing too much(, the second was good with some mods, third I never got beyond the demo due to the color scheme of a preschool for 3 year olds.

Demo are still out there, just google

eyebiter

.
#8
January 24, 2014, 03:58:01 PM Last Edit: October 24, 2014, 05:27:26 AM by eyebiter
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