Rave

That's the problem, no attack should be justifiable. Just respond in a manner you'd wish someone to respond to you. You know, lead by example. I don't like the way he approached the issue either, but there's a limit to how far and aggressively you should criticize another for sharing their opinion. Also, your belief that UFO: Aftermath is a "good" game is just an opinion, and not necessarily shared by others, which you'll have to accept and deal with without getting upset. Hell, there are people who don't like Starcraft, or Quake, etc... they aren't wrong, just odd. <--- joke Anyhow, I believe I put together some opinions that could be discussed...why don't we talk about that? - Rave

Okay, I'll bite: Telkanes - Your response is just as bad as his. You attack him simply because he doesn't elaborate on his dislikes for the game. Please don't. Nothing but civil, right? Anyhow, on to the points: 1) Small/Bad Maps: The maps vary in size depending on the mission at hand. Some of the maps are very large. I remember when I started playing this title that the maps were, for the most part, considerably larger than I remembered from the old XCOM games. 2) No Base Building: This was a huge disappointment for me. I derived a crazy amount of enjoyment from customizing my bases and configuring them to be easily defensible (is that a word?). I'm a bit let down that this wasn't in the game. It really did add an extra level of strategy that made the game that much better. 3) Can't Enter Buildings: Disappointed in this, too, but not a big deal. Hunting down that last alien was a pain in the old games, although I liked the option of sticking a sniper in a window on the top floor of a building. 4) You Can't Blow Any Walls: Well, if you're into that sort of thing that's your business, but this is a public forum. Dirty SOB! *Ahem* There ARE destructable walls in the game, but since you can't enter buildings you can't blow a hole in them to enter them, either. See #3. 5) Can't Open Anything But Doors: Crates, boxes, lockers? Huh? Why would this matter in the slightest? I guess sometimes you could find something cool in them, like a nice weapon or something, but everything you find on a map you win you get anyhow. I don't see this as much of a problem. 6) Aliens Are "Stoopid": Yes, they are. More time should have been spent on AI, but the team that built the game seem pretty new to the deal, so hopefully this will improve with a patch/add-on/next game. The aliens in XCOM weren't all that bright, either. Personally, I feel that LoD should have been implemented in the graphics engine and better models created that would scale down for slower systems. As it is, the models are pretty poor and the textures/skinning, to put it bluntly, suck. I was worried about the graphics of the game from the first screenshot, hoped they would get better, and they didn't. Oh, also I would have liked to see a "level" adjustment. Even without buildings you can enter this would have been helpful for the weird maps that have a very high elevation and cause the camera to spaz out. - Rave

I'd like to see limited view range for appropraite creatures, and an option to change facing. This gives more opportunities to sneak up on bad guys, and more opps to be snuck up on if you aren't covering properly. This was one of the coolest things about XCOM. - Rave

Um...okay. I saw some other posts about checking/adjusting the difficulty of the game after you'd started using the default profile...turns out I had been playing at the hardest difficulty the entire time! Jeez...no wonder the aliens kepy kicking my butt all over the place. I turned the difficulty to easy and it was a breeze...will probably change it to medium/normal for a happy medium. Do you get different amounts of experience depending on your difficulty? - Rave

While I'm really enjoying Aftermath (after finding and fixing the difficulty setting...was set to Hard! No wonder I kept getting slaughtered!), I still feel that Enemy Unknown was the best of the breed. I wish someone would open up that source code and make it compatible with 2k/XP. I loved the comic book artistic stylings, the base building, the research, etc... I loved the way the armour (wait a sec, I'm an American...make that "armor") looked. You could go into buildings, too, which I thought was going to be possible here but it isn't...bleh. Also, didn't we get "alien scanners" in Enemy Unknown? I miss those! lol. - Rave P.S. To this day I LOVE the opening "cinematic" for Enemy Unknown!

RedBear, I've been doing all of what you suggest. The only think I can't do is use heavy machine guns or other heavy armor weapons you recommend because I don't have them to use. - Rave

Getting incredibly frustrated. I've tried for hours to win the defend base mission against these damn Greys, and I have yet to succeed once! I've killed no more than 8 of them prior to having my team wiped out. One of the biggest problems I have is that these damn rocket launcher Greys will come into sight, I'll have 4 of my best soldiers waiting against the walls for him to appear (2 on each side of the doorway) and even though he drops in the first volley he still manages to get a rocket off at one of my pairs of soldiers!!! WTF? This usually takes out at least one of my guys, and this really weakens my front to the point that I can't kill the rest of the greys streaming through the door fast enough that they don't get more missiles off. I'm at the point where I'm about to stop playing the game entirely. I don't really feel like starting a new game and hoping I get better luck with random equipment finds, or research opportunities, or whatever. This game has just become so incredibly hard out of nowhere that I'm just about done. That's poor design, imho. There isn't even a way to adjust difficulty as far as I can see, and I don't want to resort to using cheats...hell, the games not going to get any easier...what am I going to do? Cheat through the rest of the game? Not fun. - Rave (or Rant)

When I'm storming a UFO I usually make sure all my guys entering the UFO have MP7s with plenty of ammo. I usually leave my heavy unit outside as it's too slow to do anything but get in the way. So I'll sweep the UFO with two squads of three using MP7s. For outside I'll give them Assault Rifles or Sniper Rifles. They can drop them or move them to backpack if they're too encumbered once inside the UFO (you'll just get them back after the mission if you're successful). - Rave

Getting Psi-controlled isn't as much of an issue as getting owned outright by their weapons and rockets. Lord. Oh, and to the first reply...yeah, I did set up an ambush. Apparently I set it up at the opening they were ALL coming from! lol So I get 8 or so Greys mad-rushing into the same room as my guys. I've tried dropping smoke and all that, but for some reason after a round or two they can see through it and start slaughtering my guys, even though most of my guys can't shoot back through the smoke. I've had guys set up to either side of the door they come through with 900 dmg shotguns and MP7s and I still get rocked. lol. Pulling my hair out over this one. - Rave

***WARNING*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR THOSE THAT HAVEN'T PLAYED MORE THAN ABOUT 15 HOURS! . . . . . . . Okay, I've been playing all weekend when suddenly the games gets more difficult by many orders of magnitude. All the Greys are now using rocket launchers, Psi control weapons, and some sort of weapon that kills my troops in one or two shots (maybe three if they're in Sun Armor). In short, I'm getting my butt handed to be on a shiny silver platter. I've tried everything from MP7s at close range ambushes to repeating grenade launchers, to acid grenades and incendiary grenades, to big-boy shotguns to etc, etc, etc.... I must have played this particular base defend mission at least twenty times last night and haven't come close to not getting wiped out. I've taken no more than 4 Greys out before my squad is wiped out. HELP! - Rave