Smurf

Bug. Unless you type in the d/t in each save slot or use a numbering system for each save.

Good. "High Styles : Interior Designs" "PhoeniX COMpany : The Missing Link" - Credit to Chryssalid_Victim for spotting that one.

In an infinite universe the game is called all these things. Daisy Sees the City: From Close Up Scabs: They're Great for Picking At Traffic Polution: The Alien Solution Anymore that you can add?

I agree with nearly all the points that Obsidean made. Although I think that the story is reasonable just very poorly presented. I imagine that someone spent a long time thinking about the name and presentation of the game and that someone wasn't the one who'd have to pick up the pieces afterwards. While 'UFO'!='X-COM'; in a lot of people's minds they're pretty much interchangeable, especially when the game style is very similiar and the packaging is designed to highlight that (yeah I know the old one about judging books..). As most people don't have a mental database of games names against developers it's almost guaranteed that we're are going to confuse the two and expect bigger and better than X-COM, and why shouldn't we? Like Obsidean said, it's been a few years. When I first realised that it wasn't the same and was actually a step backwards (from my point of view) I was dissapointed and it's difficult to enjoy a game after you get hit by a big initial dissapointment as you just keep finding faults with it rather than positives and let's face it ALTAR haven't helped themselves by making that bit easy. Personally I think that 'Daisy Sees the City: From Close Up' would have been a better title to avoid that situation, although I would have still bought it after seeing the feature list on the back. I just wouldn't have expected as much from it. It's difficult for me to believe that it's not an intentional spin put on the title by their marketing guys. But then so what if it is, they did their jobs, and I was sold to. Next time I'll know better. I didn't appreciate the influence that Atari had on the situation until now. That's interesting..although somewhat annoying.

Well said. My experience exactly, only with more bugs and less exploding monitors. Also wondered why I was being told that there were 'high styles' around all the time. Never found any.

I preferred the natural selection approach up until the Aliens starting packing stuff thats a bit more substantial than their early pea-shooters. Then I went for the fated hero thing, seeing as the alternative was the less attractive grisly mess. You'll see what I mean.

My bad. Sorry. Play the demo a lot.

Perhaps a new smilie should be added to the site to replace the word 'bug'.

The aliens actually are really stupid. They run in a straight line towards you as soon as the level starts. Most of the apparent tactics they use like grouping and ambushes seem to be more related to the having got stuck on scenery on route. Do their actions become more intelligent when they get rocket launchers? No..they just become stupid aliens with rocket launchers. The tactics are exactly the same..right up to opening fire on you when they're stood next to you. It's lucky for us that we discovered that bit of research that told us how society driven they are isn't it. Otherwise we might have just assumed it was poor design. :angel: On the other hand, having played a few games like RTCW: Enemy Territory, they might just be based on particularly astute observations. I have no oppinion about your intelligence or lack thereof, just don't let them do it again.

@Zowrath. Were you wearing the special rose tinted specs at the time? If not then then the only explanation is that I got all your bugs...and about five other peoples as well.

Yeah, sorry I'd been mainlining rant and had run out of steam (for a bit). It's always good to know where people are coming from on forums, otherwise you end up spending all your time telling them stuff they already know. Oh dear..bet you knew that. ??? Thanks for the link, all my moaning about Aftermath has reminded me what great games the X-COM series were. I think I'm going to need to regress a little and dust off the CD. Damn, I'm probably going to need to dig out the ripped jeans, stop washing and start smoking again to get that authentic atmosphere. As for ALTAR and Aftermath; I have a little more sympathy for them after having read the dev. diaries. It's pretty frustrating though to see so little advancement in a genre that's needs it so badly. OK..I'm going to stop before the shirt rips and I turn green.

If as you said you completed all of the of other titles then the chances are you'll be comparing it to them and may well be very dissapointed. Don't know, I've had the game for a week and have stopped playing now until the games is patched properly (it is REALLY that bad). I don't want to spoil an otherwise reasonable plot with my experiences of the large number of bugs and design flaws. Personal choice and I'm not recommending it to anyone else. Good advice to play the demo. I'll be downloading it or getting it off of PC Gamer anyway as I am curious as to how they're going to present it in a way that isn't going to scare potential customers off. So I'll let you know how they compare.

I enjoyed Apocalypse above all the others simply because it had so many facets and levels of depth to it. I've never played a game since that allowed so much flexibilty when it came to how you play tactical missions AND they even managed to solve the great real time/turn based divide intelligently. The idea of having to protect the other factions bases or gradually lose out on sources of valuable equipment was and, so far as I know, still is unique. It's also one of the few games I ever went back to after completing and then cheating hideously and still found enjoyable. :inlove:

Another damn fine conspiracy theory crushed. :alien2: Thanks for taking the time to reply so thoroughly . Both the site and forums are very good, which is always a nice thing to see.

Ok I agree with what you said up until then, the chances are that they won't change it a great deal and perhaps we'll have to wait until they or more likely someone else does it in another game. However, they have already gained financially from me and you and all the others and as the work is significantly below the quality that was expected by quite a lot of people I would expect them to remedy that. Well the thing about small and independant studios is that they're small and independant and therefore a bit more flexible about how things are done. They exist because they take the risks that the big boys won't and their games either become innovative, outstanding successes and the company goes on to fight another day or shoddy efforts which eventually puts them out of business. At the moment this one falls into the latter although they are patching like demons so it might still make it. Personally I hope they do. Erm..the one thing that this game isn't is original. Almost every aspect of the game that I've seen so far has appeared in other games. That doesn't make it bad as that happens a lot. But it doesn't make it original either. I'll give them credit for the car with legs though, although for some reason that reminds me of a Terry Pratchet character. I think that if 'half-baked' is the worst word used about the game then they should probably consider themselves fortunate. 'Half-Baked' is one of the nicer words that I use after my team has been wiped out for the sixth time by rockets because I hit the space bar to freeze the game a fraction of a second after the computer has already done so for some other reason. In fact it normally falls about half way through a long and descriptive sentence full of words which are not so nice. Which getting back to the topic is what I would also like Them to look at. It would be good to break down the pause options even more than they have done so that we can choose exactly what we want to be stopped for as some of the choices enable the irritating notifications as well as the useful ones.

I'm with Terror and Systems. They're all spot on points. Zowrath, adding extra elements to a game falls well within the scope of most games companies patches, so why not this one. Especially seeing as the underlying game engine is so simplistic. To be honest it looks like the game was released before it should have been and any company that does that should expect to invest a lot in post-release development otherwise there won't be a second game because nobody would bother buying it. Some other things that I would like to happen: - Get rid of the portraits and info sections on the tactical section. They're utterly useless and don't add anything to the gameplay. - Replace them with decent controls as mentioned in previous posts. - Allow more than one type of fighter to be produced, rather than upgrading one basic model. - Allow more than one type of transport. Sure helicopters are great, but you wouldn't use one to fly to the other side of the world. - Allow the bases to have specific funtions rather than just the general Military/Build/Research choice that you have now. - Bring in an element of resource management with supplies of items dependant upon their country of origin being under your control rather than a global economy that simply couldn't exist under the scenario that is presented. - At least make some attempt to allow interaction in the ufo downing sesssions beyond when to hit the button to retreat. Even if it does mean getting rid of the flashy animated section (although I liked that anyway). - Its almost a given that a game that has tactical levels representing combat allow you to: 1. Stand on top of things for a better view and longer shot. 2. Go into things to hide and heal. 3. Lie down behind things to for cover. 4. Climb/Jump over things to aid progress. Those are just basics. Let alone the dozens of things that could have been added to make combat more interesting or realistic or just fun. Anyway, the developers should read this thread and at least consider implementing a few of the things listed on this and previous posts if only so that they can feel good about the fact that they're not ripping off an intelligent and loyal user community with the half-baked effort that they actually released.

Seems like a good idea, especially seeing as I've already noticed a few copies flying around the filesharing networks. Seeing as there's no obvious copyright protection, not even a serial number to enter, it may well turn out to be the programmers main source of income.

So just a quick question to Pete and Slaughter. Do you think that appearing in the credits to a game might bias someone's oppinion of it slightly? Just curious you understand.

Try playing an online first person shooter and then suggest to your other team members that they shouldn't fire until the team leader says so...even if they're being shot/eaten/beaten. Even if they agree to it then the chances are that the first time they meet a member of the opposite team it'll spontaneously turn into a remake of that scene in Aliens where the guy in the truck commands his marines to not open fire. While a button to start firing at will would be good, what would be better would be a button requesting them to stop firing, so that specimens could be taken, while mowing down anything that moves. They're soldiers in a barren wasteland for goodness sake, it's not like they risk hitting an innocent bystander is it? And even if there are a few humans left running around a city somewhere, if your guys can't distinguish between them and a car with legs then they've already lost as the aliens have been plying them with psychedelic drugs.

As an obvious after-thought: Don't rely too much on the demo being representative of the level design as it's fairly safe to say that they will be using pre-generated (and probably hand-made) levels that minimise the problems that appear in the real ones.

When the definition of 'too far' is the other end of a narrow corridor, or the other side of a closed door, or around a sharp corner then I don't think it is insane to expect a little bit more from the player-side AI. I agree that there aren't many good pathing algorithms, but then you don't need many. You just need one and they're not using it. There are a whole range of solutions that have been presented over the years to get over the kinds of problems that I've seen while moving the characters and rather than refine them they've opted to just ignore the problems altogether. Why should I have to bother plotting a route through the messily designed levels when I only to have to replot it over and over again when it gets cancelled after meeting an alien or when one of your guys decides that his teammate is a wall and runs off in an unplotted direction (surely they should just come to a halt and wait a second or two). That it happens at all is bad enough but when you realise that they must of known that the movement algorithms were that bad and STILL designed the room templates with one square wide corridors and obstacles that can't be negotiated without manual intervention then I just think it's plain sloppy. In response to Pete: Yes the levels are huge, but that's BECAUSE there aren't multiple level buildings. After all, how else do you add tactical complexity to a game where the main characters feet are glued to ground level? They can't even climb onto a car or a roof to get a better view of the surroundings. You can't ambush properly because the aliens are treated as looking in all directions and why bother anyway when all that most levels require is for you to sit still and wait for them to all come running blindly down the corridor to get massacred by you team. They had to make the levels huge otherwise each map would be over in less time than it took to load. As to finding them, surely it's not to difficult to concieve of an alien scanner, after all they've only been used in just about every sci-fi film and game since star-trek. So you think that would be too easy or cheating? Well let's face it they must all have them since they magically know exactly where you are even after you move to a completely different location after killing one of your opponents. I don't see them benefitting from them much. It would at least get rid of the problem with the occaisional bad guy who gets trapped behind a bit of fence or in a toilet(strangely almost always miles away from where you've slaughtered all the others) forcing you to wander around aimlessly for ten minutes until you find it. I am curious as to what you think is simply brilliant because I'm fairly sure it's not anything in the tactical missions and there isn't a lot else to the game. Basically, don't buy it until after you've tried the playable demo that'll be released next week. But of course the chances are that if you're reading this then you already did. Poor you.

Only one complaint? I have about 30 and I'm still working on the list. What were they smoking when they designed the tactical missions generator? The thing creates levels that are so difficult for the characters to navigate that they get all confused and run off in random directions and everyone gets slaughtered. Same goes for when you get to a door(and there's a lot of them) and because they can't all get to the door at the same time, to open it, the back row peels off and tries to get to it from the other side. Which means that unless you're really careful you're left with two or three guys walking into a room full of bugs while the others are getting stuck at another door in a random section of the map. At first I thought the complete lack of player-side AI was an interesting way of involving you in the battle as you would be forced to micro-manage squad tactics. But after about two minutes of playing you really start to miss all those little things that have appeared in every tactical shooter since 'Syndicate' was released ten years ago. For instance, your team stands at a junction and you order them to fire on an enemy at the end of a corridor. Woohoo..some of your guys'll fire; some won't (depends on the range of your guns) which is fine. If whatever you're shooting at walks towards you (and they always do because the bad guy AI is appalling) then you would expect the remaining soldiers who were out of range to gradually start firing as it approaches but sadly not. Oh and no doubt while it's limping in your direction another bad guy will walk out of a door half way down the corridor and slowly wobble towards you in full view of everyone of your soldiers. Will a hail of bullets cut it in half?..erm well no. If you're not careful then in about ten minutes it'll have reached you and be knawing at your ankles. You have to explicitly retarget troops when they see a new enemy or for instance when they're out of sight behind a lamppost; even though every other team member has successfully targeted and engaged. In fact that applies to every situation where you actually have to do anything other than take a direct line of sight shot. Your guys won't even move to an adjacent square in order to get a better shot. None of this would be so bad, if the tactical levels were just a minor facet of the gameplay instead of the focus. Unfortunately they're not and while the strategic world map viewpoint is a nice idea and fun to play with it's just not enough to balance the dread of having to manually steer half a dozen blind and deaf dolts through an alien base. Has a single one of the nine programmers or twelve play testers(according to the manual) actually played a game in the last decade? It doesn't feel like it. Sorry for the rant.

Your guys struggle to navigate their way around waste bins in the street, let alone multi-floored buildings. You can go into bases which are generated as a standard map but once you've seen the mess that the level generator makes of them combined with the random walks your characters take on route to their destinations, you'll be happy to avoid them whenever possible. A real shame about that. By the way don't expect destructible scenery on anything like the same scale as Xcom: Apocalypse(if you played that) as that was more sophisticated (and fun) than Aftermath by a long shot.