bowles

Well, techincaly no, it's nto part of the franchise. but.... somehow..... it does seem strangely familair..... almsot as though the developers had the Xcom series in mind when they made these games?? And, with the name and everything......... My point is that the programmers clearly wanted to create a game in the tradition of UFO:Enemy...., but they felt that the management aspects would detract form the overall appeal of the game. What i want to know is what the fans think - should there be mroe management? I say 'yes'.

I was trying to play on a 'if he dies, he is dead, no reloads' basis, but when my ENTIRE TEAM started getting wiped out by plasma rifles etc. etc. (this is before the russian mission - just on UFO retrieval) i had to reload. Why play whe you know u can't win?

I think that one of the main reasons this game got a mid 70s score is not fundamentally because it is a bad game, but because it failed to do what a remake should - take its predecessor to the next level. Indeed, as I have stated in another post, in many ways it is rather dumbed down. the graphics are far superior (as though that mattered) and i do like the semi-real time format, but in so many other ways it is a retrograde step. I.e. all the things we miss - buildings with multiple floors, great management game etc. etc. I love this game, and it is fun to relive (in a way) the enemy unknown days. this is just not full immersion in the way that UFO was. That is why it only got 70% scores. I think it should be noted that a direct remake of Enemy Unknown with better graphics - i mean direct, including plot and aliens - would probably have been looking at mid to high eighties score, even if it did nothing new. A remake which took enemy unkown as a starting point and added form there - including some of the great points we have seen in this game - would have been looking at low to mid nineties.

Most fans of Xcom and TFTD will probably feel the 'strategic' and 'management' aspects of the originals have been dumbed down considerably in Aftermath. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, but I found a lot of my fun in the original xcom from these aspects. Like not using grenades on an alien spaceship, because you wanted to maximise the value of your 'booty'. Or selling alien corpses. Or setting up engineering facilities, just to make weapons to SELL! Aftermath feels much less hands-on, much less in depth. You can't choose which team will fly to an engagement, which plane will be dispatched to down which craft, you can't design your own bases, you can't research or develop more than one topic at once. Why has the game been dumbed down like this? At times it feels like the magaement is a dispraportionately minor aspect of the game - and that really this is just a tactical squad based game. What i liked about Xcom was that it was two great games fused together. This is one fantastic game and one, frankly, rather shallow game. Please don't get me wrong - i love this, and i think it is a fabulous addition to the XCOM series. And i don't agree with all the comments made (I like the fact you see a brief description of an alien before you start research, for example. Thats realistic. People don't walk around with their eyes clsoed and their brains unhooked until you order them to do research!). Please psot your views on the 'dumbed down' management, and how it can be improved here. PS I also love the new 'theme' as I am a big fan of zombie movies, and this game feels like a computer version of 'day of the dead' at times. Great!