Meneliki

Not a bad game, but I do prefer Aftershock. AL has the edge in production value, but it is severely lacking in tactical depth. In Aftershock it felt like my victories were a result of clever tactical planning, whereas in AL it just sorta felt like i was dragging my squad around the map, shooting everything. The lack of clear indication of where my squaddies can and can't see(i.e. LoS mode) was irritating, most of all. The special sight modes were cool, but I didn't feel like they were integrated properly. I'm seeing enemies i shouldn't be able to see and it wasn't immediately clear why. Also the values in the cfg files were screwed, i was hearing aliens from WAY too far away. Modded that myself to fix. Anyway, long story short, Line of Sight in AL was completely messed. There also wasn't any real tactical depth to the Geoscape part of the game, either.Conquer territory, build stuff on it. Next. Seemed to leave alot to be desired. Lastly, the combination of art style/sound on the weapons made them feel cartoony and not terribly dangerous/violent.. Why did a chaingun firing sound like a silenced SMG? lol Anyways, all in all, it was a good game. The playthru was 25-30hrs so it was interesting enough to keep me playing. I also didn't find it terribly difficult, either. I've seen ppl post on this forum that its really hard, or they're having issues with the Beastmen.. personally, i didnt. they went down fairly quick for me. I've also just beaten the new XCOM game, which I loved but again I didn't feel there was a tremendous amount of tactical depth beyond "Where should I move this guy and who should I shoot at?" Also, I've been playing a bit of UFO: Extraterrestrials. I'm loving that one. Decent tactical depth. Brutal and unforgiving, but that makes the victories all the more satisfying. It is, however, a shameless XCOM rip. All the other "XCOM homage" games like AL/AS etc take the formula and put their own spin on it. UFO: ET puts no spin at all. It's literally a straight remake with a different name. Still, it's fun and I'd reccomend it. Anyway. AL score IMHO: Visuals: 3/5 Sound: 1/5 (lame weapon noises and that old lady(Ute?) drove me nuts lol) Gameplay: 3/5 (not tactical enough) Overall: 3/5 Just my 0.02 -Meneliki

No problem! I find that games like this require a little bit of your imagination; without it, it's a fairly stale stop-and-go, emotionless experience... but if you use your imagination a little, it becomes very fluid, very tense and full of excitement and emotion. It's in that spectrum that what happened in my game felt like something straight out of a movie: She infiltrates the alien base intent on destroying a valuable artifact, she sneaks past the guards.. plants the explosives.. and is confronted by a light-sword wielding alien intent on killing her and diffusing the bomb. She's forced to draw her own newly aquired sword, fight off the alien and defend the explosives, escaping the blast radius JUST in time.. sprinting back to the LZ and making a fighting withdrawl with her companions in the nick of time. It's even better than a cool movie or a cool book because it's interactive.. you didnt just see it happen or read about it happening.. you made it happen.. you were a part of it. It's memorable moments like this that make gaming worthwhile.

After playing (and loving) UFO: Aftershock, i found the transition a little difficult. My biggest beef is the inability to use the old "LoS" mode which clearly showed you where your troops could see and where they cannot. What we have without it is enemies popping out in open fields seemingly without reason. I find it takes alot away from the tactical depth of the game since using tight tactical movement plans is all but worthless. Anyways, ive been playing Afterlight despite this and i got to the point where i decided to attack the Martian home base. The mission was to destroy an object deep within the base. Here's how it went down: The squad breached the entrance to the base and quickly took down the entrance guards with silenced weapons. One of the guards had a strange light sword on it's corpse. The base appeared to be very heavily defended so it was decided to send a stealthy lone operative in to destroy the target. Samantha was selected due to her speed and expertise in setting explosives. She'd always been handy with a knife, so she decided to take the new lightsword with her, just in case. She set out to get the job done while the rest of the team stayed behind to keep the exit zone safe. Samantha did her best to avoid attention and made her way to the objective. She climbed the last spiral ramp and found her target. Just as she was finishing planting the explosives, she heard the sound of a light sword behind her. She wasn't going to escape without a fight. She drew her own lightsword and prepared to do battle with the martian swordsman: http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m259/Meneliki/SabreDuel_zps227c5bd3.png She narrowly defeated it(and wouldn't have were it not for "Major Toughness" which allowed her to stay concious with with her healthbar all in the red), exhausted and wounded, she dove to the floor and barely escaped the blast. She picked herself up and ran: http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m259/Meneliki/Escaping_zps208acec2.png Apparently the martians had caught on to the plan and had sounded the alarm. The defenders at the exit were swarmed by angry martians, but were determined not to leave without their comrade: http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m259/Meneliki/DefendingExit_zpsd39ad666.png Samantha made it to the exit not a moment too soon and with a furious fighting withdrawl, they got into the UFO and returned to base. ========== Cool scripted events in games are nice, but the truly great moments are the ones that ARENT scripted, and happen purely by circumstance. just my little AAR. Thanks for reading. Meneliki