Well, I've installed the game and will make the occasional comment as I descend into madness. I know I'm a bit late into this - I've been slowly going through a few games I have backed up to play. (The last game I tried being Worms 4 Mayhem - a bit of a disappointment, has a lot of additions, but doesn't seem to be as much fun as the earlier Worms games. But I'm digressing.)

These notes may sound like gripes, but hey, these are just first impressions.

- The manual scares me. I like detailed manuals, but for some reason the manual turns me off. I guess it's because it was probably because I was going "Yes, yes, I knew that, get on with it. No, no, I don't want the backstory. Why is there so much text? Why all these definitions?" all the while flipping through that. I'll get round to it - some day.

- Started off on the middle difficulty. Is this a bad idea for someone new to this game? I'll soon find out.

- You can't skip all the talky bits. I can read faster than the talking heads can take to enunciate - very slowly - but it won't let me skip through it. As you can probably tell, I already hate the talky bits.

- Everyone seems to have thick legs. Baggy legs all in rage in the future, I'll bet. Nothing wrong with that, mind. It's just something that seems to stick out.

- What's wrong with your soldier audio responses? They complain all the time that they can't hit their target - right after killing it. And why did I get a "What, again?" the very first time I selected a soldier? Why are they so negative? Am I just an annoyance to them? Argh, they are most incorrigible.

I'll probably switch the audio responses off. They just won't stop talking. At least in the X-Com games your soldiers didn't talk back at you. Continuously.

- The pauses. Even in Aftermath, I seem to switch most of the auto-pause options off. The continuous halting slows the action down considerably.

- The Reticulan laser cells have certainly become compact. Quite like that, but being your first weapon, these are obviously your initial stop-gap weapons. Unless, of course, they've changed the weapon progression from Aftermath's 'the next gun is even better' weapon system.

- In the Geosphere, there's just too much information clutter at times. I'm just a simple person and like simple straightforward and non-flashy interfaces. There's often too much information on the screen, and the various screens don't seem to be very intuitive. But then again I've only just started, and the game unlocks more things as you go along. I'll somehow manage to figure out how to start research on things other than new departments.

- The Laputa - a mobile base. I like this idea. Oh yes, I like this very much. Don't care that much for the drop pods though - but they're certainly an improvement over the somewhat static troop deployment locations in Aftermath.

- No one said you had to move the Laputa to start investigating new areas. Or maybe I missed that bit. In any case, I was wondering why nothing was happening for a few days.

- You now have resources. The multiple resources and resource line building reminds me of empire building games like Civilization and Alpha Centauri. I suppose it's better than having limitless resources like what happened in Aftermath. Naturally, I've started running out of high tech resources.

Doesn't sound like I've made a very good start, have I? Well, I've only started, and it'll take a while to get used to everything. Perhaps reading the manual first would help things along too. Must figure out how to cue several of the same type of item to build.

The game does seem promising. The Aftershock Geosphere management is certainly much more elaborate than Aftermath's overly simple system (which felt like a bit of a let-down for an X-Com fan).

- NKF

The manual was very much aimed at people who hadn't played UFO: Aftermath before they saw Aftershock. When I brought Aftershock, I simply kept the manual for when I ran into a new concept.

There is a way to skip the talky bits - I think it's multiple presses of the escape key, but I'm not certain. I wouldn't advise it the first time round because there are some important clues in what the various characters are saying. They have a llot to say for themselves in the first few days, but later on they will restrict themselves to when there is an important development in the game or you complete a key piece of research.

Baggy legs? I hadn't notcied that. Maybe flares are back in fashion or everybody spent hours on the exercise bikes trying to prevent thei leg muscles from withering away in a zero-G environment because they hadn't noticed that the Laputas have artificial gravity.

Some of the voice acting isn't so great, but at least we can fiddle with the sound. You'll love missions against the Cultists if you go back to the default sound options though.

Virtually the only pause action I retain is for when somebody spots a new enemy. A lot of the critics hated Aftershock because they never found out that you can do this

Your first research priority should be to get in the position where you can manufacture human assault rifles and ammunition; you won't be able to scavenge that much from the battlefield this time round and your stash of Reticulan energy cells won't last forever. Assault rifles are relatively more powerful in Aftershock than they are in Aftermath.

Don't forget to read the track laying tutorial over at the official Aftershock forums. The manual doesn't really explain that you only need to connect your base provinces up to the main base in Germany, constructing as few tracks and sea lanes as possible. A connected base automatically collects resources from the resource provinces in its region as long as they are under your control.

I read through the in-game tutorial, and got what I needed from there. Never read the manual. Let us know what you impression is when you played some more.

I've put in a few more hours, and have decided to restart. The highlights of my last three hours:

- Load times. They're slow. Slow, slow, slow. It's such a shame that the missions seem so simple when you think about how long it takes to load them up.

- Game crashed twice. Aftermath only crashed once during my entire run through the game. This does not bode well.

- These flat mutant thingies. I'm really starting to hate them. Appear to have very tough hides.

- Do Morelmen cause physical damage while you're standing next to them and they look as though they are doing nothing? (Or is this a poisonous attack of some sort?)

- My first weapon factory seems to be taking forever to build. (Edit: No, I meant the weapon research facility. I'd accidentally built another factory rather than the lab. No wonder it was taking forever for me to be able to start researching anything....)

- I really appreciate having a cyborg and a SPAS-12. Nothing else seems particularly effective at the moment or I don't have any ammo for the newer machine guns I've picked up. For some reason the SPAS-15 (or whatever number it was), doesn't feel as effective as the SPAS-12 for general combat.

- Found a map with an old reticulan ship wreck. The scale in Aftershock looks so much better than the scaling in Aftermath. Aftermath's ship interiors were a prelude to a serious case of claustrophobia. The darker lighting effects does the place up quite well too.

- My equipment seems to be disappearing. I lost my whole set of browning knives, two suits of light armour and helmets, some weapons, plus all my med kits. All from soldiers in the med-bay too. I was wanting to transfer the equipment over to some of the new soldiers I'd hired. Very odd indeed. Does equipment perish over time? This happened a few missions back, and has just about forced me to give up. One cannot stand up to a cultist attack with only one shotgun and a near empty reticulan laser rifle.

Ah well, a fresh new start with a little more insight on how the game works will help.

- NKF

Did you patch the game? I heard that it was most annoying to play without it, as it crashed a lot and had tons of bugs like disappearing equipment and such.

Agreed, the patch solves a lot of issues, including the dissapearing equipment and (some) of the random crashes. Sadly, it doesn't do anything about the long reload times.

In Aftershock, Morelmen have evolved the ability to spit acid at your soldiers, and the acid attack applies continuous damage over a number of seconds. You don't want a morelman to get too close this time round.

You aren't the only one to find flatsters a little too powerful to deal with in the early stages. At close range, switch over to burst fire as it increases the chance of a critical hit. A critical hit knocks the target down for a few seconds, leaving it helpless until it can recover. Use a knife to finish off an unconscious flatster to save on ammunition.

Things will get a lot easier when you can manufacture assault rifles and the ammunition to go with them

Okay, even through dodgy dial up, I managed to get the patch, and it has actually improved the game speed a little bit. Even the loading speeds, exept the reticulan ship wrecks. Those are still long enough for me to go and make a sandwich. This worries me, as I'm sure there are bigger and more complex maps ahead. They could've gone with the old two-parter maps to lower the amount of information that needed to be loaded.

Unfortunately, the patch nullified the extra three hours I'd put in during my second attempt. So I have in actual fact repeated the game three times now. So, nothing much to report except that your initial weapons seem better balanced now.

I think the manual needs an index.

- NKF

Well....The two-parter are still there....They are just a lot more rare....
What are your machine specs since it takes the time to make a sandwich to load a mission? It takes about a 30 to 45 seconds on my beast of burden....

My Laptop rarely takes very long to load the maps...

Let's see. A 2.4ghz celeron, 768 megs ram, some sort of GEForce-like card with 64 megs memory. FX something something. Looks impressive to me, but is as fast as an inert brick when it comes to recent games.

It's actually a few minutes for me. Plenty of time to create several really lazy banana squash sandwiches. Not that I spend all my time making sandwiches! I've been doodling on bits of paper or reading a book. Better than drooling and staring off into space as usual... ah, never mind.


- NKF

Going a bit of topic here.
Slaughter's laptop must me a little mobile monster.
My current config is a Intel 3,0 Ghz 830 Dual core with 2G's of RAM along with A Geforce 7800 GT with 512 MB of ram.
It sounds and looks like a lot. Even if I got all some 50-60 backgrounds processes running all the time. Everything from Setpoint to antispyware software.
I might have been setting my map loading times to high but it feels like those 30-45 seconds.
Something has to be done to it....*Pulls out a pair of jump start cables and start opening up the computer case*

@NKF: Well, the Celeron isn't the best for games from what I understand, and the GeForce card might be a little small. Still, it should be sufficient to run the game decently. Maybe it would help to turn off some graphics options?

@CG: Nasty rig you have . My laptop is almost two years old, so I'm not even close to that. I have:
Intel Pentium M "Dotan" 1.7 GHz.
1024 MB Corsair RAM (PC 3200)
60 GB 7200 RPM HD
ATI Mobile Radeon 9700 128 MB

I can't remember exactly how long it took loading the missions, but closing in on 45 seconds sound very long.

Now that we are on the subject of loadtimes....
I timed my latest one to 35 seconds....

My load time for a retilculan ship wreck goes way beyond that. It goes for a minute or two once it hits 85% or so. I'm just going to have to find other things to do during this time.

Well, a few more hours put in and here are more thoughts:

- I just noticed before logging off for the night that your troops actually become politer as you go along. I wonder if this is a soldier level thing? Hmm. In any case, they're a lot more agreeable at the moment than they were at the start. I kind of miss the ethnic voices with their accents that you could bend a tire iron around.

- I'm disliking the fact that your production batch sizes are fixed and you can only queue one instance of any particular manufacturing project. I'd like to be able to make a few hundred bullets in one batch, or produce a few suits of armour, or whatever. It's depressing that the project has to be restarted every few hours. Or have I missed something?

- Had my first encounter with the cultist. They appear to have some very nice equipment. Every time I attack or get attacked by them, I seem to get something new in storage. Be it a weapon upgrade, or a new weapon.

- The edge of the maps really should extend a bit further, or should the maps should've been constructed so that it's very clear that there is nothing of interest there. During a cult raid on one of my bases, I got into a situation just near the large transport vehicle where I wanted to quickly move behind a nearby container only to strike the hidden edge of the map. Having a lot of assault rifle bullets flying at me a the time, it proved to be quite inconvenient.

- 7 days to the alien ship landing... should I worry?

- I keep making mistakes that I know I shouldn't be making, like sending off scouts by themselves, or not giving orders to units that are near a firefight that could use the extra rifles.

- Someone made a comment on this forum that psionics aren't all that great. I've started using them, and have found them to be quite useful. I especially like their ability to sense nearby units with minds, like Morelmen. I'm sure there are a lot of other support abilities that they'll be able to provide once my psi labs finish their first couple of projects. Will probably have to construct a couple more labs.

- During the missions where you have to locate someone and escort them back to your pod I came across a human with commando lvl 3 training and a katana. Apparently the skill for 3rd level commando is to give the unit a burst of speed to get into melee attack range. Does this only apply when you target a unit with a melee weapon, or is this speed active all the time?

I'll leave it at that for now.

- NKF

Hehe, yeah . When you start a production, you'll notice two small buttons at the queued item, + and -. Give them a try


"It's the final countdown..."


Doesn't matter what your target use as far as I can remember.

Yes, I find the management screens so cluttered that I yearn for the simpler, boring but functional, interfaces used in games like UFO. More is less.

- NKF

[minor spoiler]

pack yer team wit' big guns and start praying, 'cause the first encounter with Wargots is quite shocking the first time you play. They've got a lot of firepower, but they're a little clumsy with it. They move at a decent speed, so you should have only your fastest soldier scouting for them. Try to lure them in tight spots and take them down with tha' SPAS 15 on burst mode. This trick works well until you get MGs and sniper rifles(), at which point they become more or less target practice. Good luck.

Another week, a few more hours put in, and more comments:

- I've finally encountered the wargots and was a bit disappointed with my first meeting with them. Don't get me wrong, they're trickier as they appear to move in packs (unlike the other riffraff that's been available), and they've got some nice weapons on them. But having a pair of 9mm smg's gun down three Wargot soldiers in rapid succession, it doesn't leave me with the sort of fear that I was expecting of them.

- Wargots have very Predator-like heads. It's the dreadlocks.

- The Wargot heavy armour made me panic at first - until I pointed my automatic weapons at them. They certainly take more of a beating.

- There are way too many labs and manufacturing plants.

- There appears to be a lot of areas on the map that can't be explored. Will I find out why later on?

- I've started producing cyborg implants. Was it a wise choice to plug strength arms and legs onto my cyborg ranger? Also, the infrared eye implant appears to be quite the catch. Not sure if there are any cold enemies out there, but so far it has been very reliable when supported by a psionic.

- 3rd level commandos are just sick. A single commando and a katana can take out quite a lot of enemies by themselves. Reticulans in particular fall way too easily to them. They're not too shabby against lone wargots either. Is it worth combining commando and ranger together? Does it work with heavy armour?

- The wild reticulans have finally rediscovered bio armour and their plasma launchers. They don't scare me like they used to. Perhaps it's the way the plasma ball arcs high into the air and stays in the air long enough for you to walk away before it drops with a poof. I'll have to wait and see what sort of damage they do.

- I just noticed. 3rd level medics can raise the dead? I want one. I really want one.

- Raiding cult terroritories seem to have capture missions as default. A lot. It's not too bad as I've been lucky enough to get a psionic with heroic psi skill that's very handy with the reticulan psi stinger doohicky, but it does get quite repetitive.

Oh, and I timed the load time for the larger reticulan ship crash sites. After selecting the drop site, I went to the sink, filled an electric kettle and switched it on. I then proceeded to put some tea bags into a pot and then went to sit down and wait. By the time I heard the kettle switch off, the game started about a minute later. As you can probably tell, I simply loathe the ship crash sites.

Okay, so it wasn't a conventional nor is it an precise method of timing it, but it still gives you a rough idea of what I'm up against. It's bad.

Perhaps its time I tune up the system.

- NKF