Obsidean

The excuse this game isn't X-Com, and that there is a copy right does not cut it for me, because that's bull. How many games can you name me that has the same idea of the Geoscape, the interception of UFO craft, the research, and development, the arming screens etc of squads, EVEN DOWN TO THE VERY LAST MISSION of building a space craft to attack the Alien home installation is RIPPED straight out of X-Com. X-Com had the exact same idea and final mission as Aftermath copied, only a little different. So don't tell me this game isn't X-Com. That's not an excuse. A game that is trying to mimic another game 10 years old, and resulting being less in depth and less od quality than the one that started it all just isn't acceptable. If this game was trying to improve upon X-Com, it didn't come close. And as for copyrighting, that's balony. Already half of this game is a complete copy of X-com, yet you're going to tell me in-depth systems for example making your actions have results on funding and country support, or having a more engrossing and better presented storyline, having destroyable terrain, morale, better tactical system, sounds etc, etc would result in legal action? That's ridiculous, you can't copyright or own the idea of something such as this. This is why I see this game as more of the Poor and Lazy Man's version of X-Com. Now I will say again, this is not a bad game, but it simply does not do anything in terms of improving or at the least equaling even slightly, the original X-Com. And that is a disapointment.

What a disapointment. I feel like I wasted my time with this. This game literally has NO story, and nothing really driving it. I remember in X-Com, it had a long story, and throughout the game the story would be driven, with movies, lots to read, etc. In this game, the story moves through tiny little text boxes that open up once in a blue moon, with less than a paragraph of text telling you "Blah blah, we found a secret ship, we need to get it". Lame. Then after all the work, I beat the game, and I get greated with a lame ass 1 minute movie of some stupid kids reading a book and then looking up, THE END? Give me a break. I had so much hope for this game, how could they go so wrong with it? The Real-Time system is ridiculous, making it frustrating to sepparate troups and monitor them sepparately. Not entering building, and not even destroyable terrain at the least takes away all the enjoyment of attacking downed UFO's by blowing off the walls, etc, etc. Literally no ambient sounds, or sounds whatsoever. X-Com had great ambient sounds, footsteps, doors opening/closing, Aliens breathing heavily. Aftermath is like playing a silent video, with brief annoying tabbering by troops using the same repeated tacky voices, and the brief sounds of gunfire. And lets not even get into the ridiculous difficulty, and lack of feeling like your are gaining any actual edge or improvement through research against the Aliens. This game is simply a huge disapointment to me. And don't try to tell me this game isn't X-Com, that's bull, it's quite obvious this game is meant as an X-com clone, and it's whole creation from the very beginning was this. I just can't understand how they could get it wrong. I mean it's not like they even had the task of developing any new ideas or systems, as X-com created the basis and idea 10 years ago. How hard would it have been to just followed the same idea as the game that started it all, but simply intorduce the technology that has advanced over this time to it? These guys had everything at their finger tips, everything, yet they completely butchered the game and turned it into a bastardized version that couldn't hold a candle to the original. I guess I'll wait another 10 years. In UFO Defense, X-COM was funded by the governments of the world, and if you failed to protect them well enough, they would decrease their funding and eventually ally with the aliens. It added a lot of depth to the game and forced you to think more seriously about your behavior. If you failed to actively combat the aliens in a certain country, or failed to adequately protect its citizens when the aliens raid a city, the government of that country would respond accordingly and hamper your ability to fight in the future. Aftermath has nothing of the sort. In X-COM Aliens built bases from which they would launch attacks, which you could raid. And their bases didn't have the same pathetic stock layouts as Aftermath's. When you raided an alien base in X-COM, it was full of alien shit you could blow up and/or steal for your own use. Another thing I believe I left out is that in Aftermath, when you're performing an extermination mission of any kind, you don't have to actually kill all of the aliens. I suspected this was true, but didn't have proof until I was in a mission where I hit my kill quota while there was still an additional alien in sight. I was allowed to end the mission without dealing with it. Isn't it a bit silly when your goal is to clear an area of an alien threat and you don't have to kill all of them? If you were going to set up a base of operations in a bunker full of aliens, would you leave any of them alive to surprise you later when you're on the toilet? In X-COM, when the aliens decide to raid one of your bases, they would send a UFO - which you could intercept and destroy, saving yourself the raid. Or you could shoot the incoming UFOs down with base defense batteries. Speaking of base raids, one aspect of Aftermath that is clearly ripped straight out of X-COM is force deployment during an alien raid. In X-COM, if the aliens managed to get a force to one of your bases and enter it, the facility's personnel would be the only people available to defend it. And they would be scattered randomly throughout the base, as if they'd been caught by surprise. Good for immersion, good for realism, good for tension because you have to fight alone or try to re-unite your squad while dealing with the incursion. Force deployment is also random in Aftermath. However, it makes very little sense. If a base is raided that has none of your armed personnel at it, shouldn't it be lost immediately? You can let an alien raid in Aftermath go unattended to for several days before you lose the base. Who's holding them off, scientists with clipboards? And why in Aftermath are forces randomly deployed to defend a base, when they arrived there by HELICOPTER? Shouldn't they all enter at the same point? X-COM may be ten years old, but its gameplay is very logical and detailed. If gameplay of that quality can be created with decade-old technology, Aftermath has no excuse for failing to equal it.

Advanced seems to suck too. Shoots slowly, and also seems to do jack shit on a lot of things. I guess I'll just forget about using em.

Tested again on another mission. Shotties and Rifle worked fine on those flying Fish things, but then I tried both weapons on a Firetick, and once again did ZERO damage. What's the deal, are these enemies invulnerable to Plasma?

For some reason the Plasma rifles and shotguns I developed don't seem to do any damage. Now keep in mind, I did cheat when I developed them using the FINISHRD cheat. But I don't see how using that would have anything to do with the weapons not doing any damage. I let my soldiers (5 of them) all unload entire clips from their Plasma shotties, and rifles into a grey, and it didn't do a sliver of damage. Yet when I switched to say a Plasma launcher, it worked fine, as well as any of the other weapons. It's just the plasma rifle and shotgun in particular that won't do damage. What's wrong?