**spoilers ** Is there more than one game ending?

I just finished the game (that last 6 days with nothing but starghosts was so damn annoying), and a thought occured to me - I never even came close to losing the game (only time I even lost any guys was at the beginning, when a flatster ate one). Is there any way to lose the game? And, if so, do you get a little fmv?

Bored with **spoiler**, **major spoiler at the end**?

**spoiler** = starghosts, of course.

I stumbled upon this little gem while being bored having to go into a mission, kill 5-10 starghost units, and that's it. Let's face it, those guys aren't any fun to fight, and win my award for 'most uninspired visuals within UFO:AS'. Maybe if they didn't look like basic geometric shapes, they'd be a little more intimidating... Even the Wargots, who look considerably like predators, are still fun to fight, just 'cause they go flying all over the place.

So, I noticed that if I ignore the starghost attack, the territory reverts ... to mutant control! Which means, instead of fighting basic geometric shapes, you can fight reticulans and mutants. This is especially fun if you've already taken over the world already and have no more mutants to shoot... ::sniff::

Of course, this is prior to the reticulans crash landing and the "second wargot ship" showing up. From what I understand, the starghosts eventually do something with your territories other than revert them back to mutant control...

First thoughts

Well, I finally found a copy of Aftershock, after scouring a large number of local game stores. A local EB World had ONE (!) copy. Of course, they had about forty copies of "Quake 4" and "Shiny Plastic First Person Shooter 44 Volume 3".

So, no problems with star force.

It's kind of annoying that you can't get the dudes in the cutscenes to quit yapping.

First mission: My squad goes for an abandoned factory complex, we get ambushed by a bunch of morelmen, brainmen and flatsters. Poor "Eddie" or whatever the guy's name was got eaten. Sigh...

Ok, so here's a question: Why are the default uniforms rainbow-colored? Is it only the tie-dye hippies that made it onto the Laputa? Or is it my graphics card?

So far, I must say I'm very impressed with the game. I actually saw a heavily-wounded guy try to run away when my guys gunned most of his buddies down, also it's pretty cool that unconscious guys will get back up occasionally. Also, I like the fact that you can replace guys that you lose fairly easily. So far I haven't gotten a chance to use any serious tactics yet, but I'm sure that'll change.

[AS] CD or DVD? Also, starforce question.

Hi guys

I'm considering keeling over and buying Aftershock (regardless of my dismay over StarForce and the fact that everyone and their kid brother seems to be able to find a fatal crash or gamebreaker bug in the game). Does it just come on DVD or is there a CD version as well? When I built my gaming rig, I didn't put in a DVD drive (tight budget constraints).

Now, normally, this wouldn't be a problem, as I just make an image of the DVD using alcohol or whatnot on my other computer, then transfer the image over the network to the gaming rig, mount, install and crack it as usual, then play.

However, since Aftershock uses StarForce, I can't really do that (drive emulators + StarForce = bad).

So, if it comes on DVDs only, then I'm hosed until I can get a cheap DVD drive. However, if it comes on CDs, or I get a DVD drive then I still have my other problem -

Given my description of the setup I use, it's fairly obvious that I have Alcohol and DaemonTools on my gaming rig. I'm familiar with the general principle I specified above, but my question is: In order to run AfterShock would I have to completely uninstall the two pieces of software? Or do I just need to disable drive emulation?

Finally, while typing this post, I had this idea: does StarForce run only when you're trying to run the game, or does it run when installing as well? i.e. could I just do what I usually do (DVD -> ISO -> Network -> Mount -> Install) then disable/uninstall the emulation software and run the game?

[AM] Major slowdown

So yeah, I'm doing the "Russian Base" mission(hard mode), and getting slaughtered as usual by about ten grays piled up on the main gate. You know, the one with a little guard shack on the outside and two guard towers on the interior. Anyway, so, instead of sending my poor schmoes in to get slaughtered, I decide to just toss a bunch of incendiary and napalm grenades over the wall. At first, everything is going fine, I'm hearing alien screams and whatnot, and then, the game just basically halts. So, I quickly pause, and scroll around to see what's going on.

Basically, anywhere within a screen of the "affected" area, scrolling and any sort of clicks take about 5-10 seconds to register, so I can barely select my guys or issue orders or anything. Now, normally, this shouldn't be happening, since I'm running a p4-3.2ghz, with about a gig of ram and a Radeon 8600. The hard drive isn't cycling at all, either. Of course, I've got the latest drivers and all that junk.

This only happens when I'm deploying large amounts of incendiaries/acid grenades, and only against grays. By "large", I mean that I've got about 3 or 4 'burning' at the same time.

So, anyone else run into this problem? Anyone fix this problem?

As an aside, indirect fire is your friend, when dealing with superior gray technology.