Nothing else matters if they screw up the difficulty

[Jodet]

I just saw the new gameplay video's and trailers and am very impressed. This has possibilities.

 

HOWEVER.....

 

The first game was great until it got INSANELY HARD. Yes, seven Reticulans with Rocket Launchers just took out my squad in 3 seconds. When the aliens sued for peace, I said, 'sure, I'm sick of this'. So, pretty short game. The 2nd game got such bad reviews for the same problem I didn't even try it (plus I will NOT buy any game with starforce).

 

It seems every game company screws up the difficulty level, again, and again, and again. Look at the huge critical and commercial success the Wii is having. People are sick to death of games that CHEAT and beat them over the head with a tire iron.

 

I sure hope this game avoids that 'difficulty level increases through the roof' problem.

 

-M

[Crazy Gringo]

This Topic might need to be moved to General gaming discussion...

Yes I am very sick and tired of bad and cheating AI. An AI should learn to play the game like the gamer has to instead of resolving to cheating (which us humans do when then AI is cheating sometimes).

If the AI is thought properly and is able to adapt and improvise to make the most use of the situation then they might have a winner on their hands.

[Accounting Troll]

Aftermath goes through a number of difficulty increases which occur when the player progresses through the game. The trigger events are the number of bases you hold and completing certain research topics. As ther game progresses, your enemies are increasingly powerful, but so are your soldiers and aircraft. The alternatives would have been to make the game insanely difficult in the early missions or too easy in the later missions. I don't regard it as cheating to allow the other side to improve as well.

 

The alien rocket launchers are difficult to deal with at first, but it can be done. As long as a soldier isn't wearing heavy armour or improved heavy armour, he can usually run out of the impact area in time. It takes a moment to reload an alien rocket launcher, so you have a chance to shoot back. Remember that with nmost missions, you can abort at any time. This is better than losing several experienced soldiers in a mission you can't win.

 

It is now possible to buy Aftershock online and download it without the Starforce copy protection; there is a link in the Aftershock forum. Unfortunatly, it is a big download and Aftershock has some other issues including unfixed bugs and a limited number of maps.

 

If you aren't sure about Afterlight, the only thing I can suggest is to wait and see what the playing community makes of it before yuou decide whether to spend your money. A lot of the professional reviewers don't spend enough time playing a game to judge it fairly, so the opinions of the players are probably more telling.

[TYR]

The alien rocket launchers are difficult to deal with at first, but it can be done.

 

Difficulty issues can be modded easily, i do remember some bad missions with lots of rockets flying through the air but thats rather a rare thing to happen. A good way to evade this if your not prepared is either to abort the mission or hide behind corners and let them come. I usually play with lots of close combat specialists and some snipers, depending on the geography and the tactical situation you have to adapt the strategy. IF your scout is beeing bombarded with rockets right away it might be a good idea to take cover and let them come closer where shotguns end their paethic existence within miliseconds

 

As for afterlight i do not know how they made the ai, AM and AS had both a kinda bad ai if not the same, for example in 2 stage missions you can simple sit in a room and wait for them to come in one after the other, with the assault modifications installed i sometimes had like 20 reticulans lying around before i went out to get the rest of them, i do hope that they will react more intelligent in AL although thats rather just a wish like the modding tools...