metalangel

Hey, if you DO go to Cydonia with all your starting equipment, don't your guys gasp and die in the unbreathable Martian atmosphere when they land? I mean, they're wearing (as my friend put it when he got the game) pajaymas, not even the body armour of proper soldiers (no helmets?!?) so what would stop them suffocating? Oh, and of course the player needs an advantage in these games. What I'd like to see is a game where the player has the numbers but is against few and powerful foes. Or is that what UFO AFTERMATH is like?

PSI is way too annoying early on, when you're still weak, having your people sent berserk is damn annoying... but yes, later on, making the aliens perform tricks is hilarious, the group picture thing for example is genius, I would have thought seeing how many you could blow up with a single high-explosive would be fun

Surely X-COM *needs* its own recyclotorium in Superhuman, to dispose of the massive amount of corpses (human and alien) it's generating? Since the war started, I bet there's been a massive increase in hot dog and donner kebab meat stocks in Mega Primus :devil:

Could you imagine what the ship-mounted fusion cannon on the Lightning would do to the map? (hint: KABOOM) I don't use HWPs nearly as much as I should so it doesn't matter to me if I can't take one, that 'elite squad' thing sounds like a good plan, though.

If I recall, the Lightning's hatch is only one space wide, that is, only wide enough for a human, it doesn't have a proper egress ramp like the Skyranger and Avenger. The Lightning is a fairly crude craft, it wipes its mouth on its sleeve and crushes beer can into its forehead.

LOL I guess they went to Gung-Ho Police College. Or maybe all those layers of fat make them resistant to damage and infection? Never seen a policeman who wasn't a lardass... The whole 'fight armies of infected loonies' thing was soo cool, why did they have to ruin it with all the cyborgs/giant aliens crap? Also, being infected with rage must suck, all that vomiting blood and never reading a book again. But - why did they sleep during the day? It was RAGE, not photosensitivity! Why didn't Serena and Obnoxious-Guy-Who-Gets-Macheted-Quite-Deservedly not head for Southend or something, nick a boat, and ESCAPE? I mean, it's not that far, did they not own cars? Etc.

Genius! Do they really get mad, though? I raided Marsec loads of times (gradually piecing together suits of their armour, well before it went on sale) and their guards once fired a rocket launcher or something... well, something blew up, at least. Nobody cared. Also, Mind Shields WORK? How? I've got a warehouse full of the damn things, I wanna try them!

The same way Gordon Freeman can swing a crowbar with lethal force underwater. Well, if you consider a speaker, if it's facing you, you'll hear it a lot better than if it's facing away. Just keep refining that using technology that cannot be explained. In fact, just imagine your molecules being vibrated apart, so you disintegrate much like Scratchy did after inhaling the microscopic Itchys. Maybe an executive came to see the game and demanded to know why, if they were underwater, and were employing 30 artists, why there were no 'god damn bubbles' coming out of the soldiers. Then again, there's bubbles everywhere in the game. Right, the fun ones now. You should be more worried that you were rescuing a resort composed entirely of overweight men wearing nothing but grass skirts. Fnarr. And besides, if you can shoot an alien five times with a magnetically-hurled uranium slug or SONIC DETH BEEM!!!!1 I really doubt someone's Desert Eagle will inflict much more than mild discomfort. Well, in Abomination, on your missions in the infected city you often come across the National Guard or the cops who'll help out. YES, that's REAL sensible. It's 28 days later, everyone is either dead, hiding, or infected, and you decide to stay on duty. Protecting whom from what, exactly? Coppers are so stupid. Nope. Greenpeace seems to be in a competition with Amnesty International to see who can be the first to 'condemn' everything that's ever existed, ever. Well, given you're WALKING on the seabed, I'd wager you're weighted to not float away. But of course, this begs the question: WHY do we need alien technology to invent a device for propelling divers upwards? Well, presumably you COULD do it, but since they were bsaically doing XCOM:UFO again only with nicer graphics, fiddling the interceptors in-game would have been too much hassle. Not from the lobsterman, but the amount of melted butter you'd need would guarantee health problems

If you like that sorta music, buy a 'chill out' CD like Chilled Out Euphoria - one of the best CDs I ever bought, used to slump drunkenly to bed to it all the time. Anything in your local music store's 'ambience' section might be worth considering... only problem with ambient stuff is that the tracks are really long and it's only when it's in the background and you catch yourself noticing it do you start to appreciate it.

Errr.... I'd imagine there's some kinda cursor which jumps to hotspots on the map, or something. Only way you could really do it on GBA, PSX might support the mouse though (which I have, it's great for Die Hard Trilogy!)

Well, the idea was that... maybe, just maybe, there might be an intact UFO sitting somewhere where water had not reached the power core, and the elerium was still humming happily to itself. As for the bases, just think of Sealab 2021, laugh, and forget about this silly 'dissolving' thing, bignutz.

Yeah, click on the base the people and vehicles are stationed at, then drag the agents into the vehicle... simple! They stay asssigned as long as they don't come back from a mission injured. Of course, they always do, meaning when I need to do an investigation, they just take whatever's sitting in the garage

Am I alone in thinking I wouldn't be to happy underwater in a base where the walls would wobble if I poked em? :o

That's a pre-release publicity shot... I have a copy of PC Power (shudder) that had that pic in their 'review' of the game... presumably the idea was that if you had a vehicle in for repairs when your base was raided, it would be sitting there as you fought. It looks DAMN COOL doesn't it?

Natural selection will, eventually, sort them out, no matter how much you coddle them, they'll let you down. Ones prone to panic/berserk/MC will run into the line of fire and die. Serves 'em right for signing up.

Questions... So, once they've gone over to the aliens, there is absolutely no way of getting them back? Even if you level their buildings? Even if an Overspawn or UFO levels their buildings? And... what's to stop you taking the artifact in question (assuming a soldier can carry it) into someone's backpack and then ordering them to 'go to building' the research base? I suppose I could just go over and try this myself, but surely there won't be any need for a taxi...

Apart from innumerable real-time grenade bouncebacks in Apoc (rookie completely screws up throw, 'nade hits low ceiling or wall and bounces back into rookie's face just as the timer explodes) I once carefully primed a incendiary grenade, took careful aim, and threw my laser rifle at the alien. Ooops. Or I sent a badly, badly injured soldier on an investigation by mistake, so three seconds into the battle, she just fell over and died.

Maybe he liked the rectal probing (hey, who's to say aliens don't have butts and we wouldn't probe THEM for a change?) he got when captured so much he snuck aboard the Skyranger, and then dashed off into the crashed UFO and lay down so he could be captured again? :dontgetit: Errr, anyone ever had a mission where on the first turn something burning inside the crashed ship explodes and takes out the one survivor? Just wondered if that ever happened...

In the original game, the explosions do indeed have skull shapes in them. I'm positive. The TFTD explosions are just bubbly. Just a nice cream soda. :angel:

The bases are probably mostly submerged and tethered in place with... something... with only a single module (the access lift) above the surface (so people can get in). So while they are floating, they're floating in the same way a submarine floats (ie: no on the surface but not grinding the sea floor either). As for keeping the water out, you just have to pressurise the base. Or you can use a diving bell-style technique. If you've seen Waterworld, you remember when Kevin the fishguy takes the bitchy woman down to see the ruined city? Like that! The aquanauts likely use something (or a development of) 'Oxygene' which was developed by the US Navy. It is the stuff from the Abyss, it works under the principle that while your lungs can be crushed at a huge depth due to the pressure, liquid can't be compressed, therefore lungs filled with breathable liquid would survive at any depth (so long as you didn't mind the sensation of inhaling liquid for the first few seconds). If you're wondering why your ears don't get crushed (if you ever go swimming, dive more than 10 feet and your ears will start to hurt!) you just use the old scuba-diving trick - hold your nose, hold your breath, and try to blow out through your nose - your inner ear's pressure will equalise. It's also worked for me during the descent in an airliner

Heh. The REGULAR GameBoy is the most owned system, a lot of people out there still make do with the old B&W and Color systems. Thing is, while you COULD port something, doesn't mean you should! Some stuff would work well - they are considering porting Elite to the GBA (in fact, someone has, so I reckon they should do an offical port of Frontier, but anyway) and that would work... because all you need onscreen is a 3D view, and maybe a few gauges. Everything else could be done in menus. But then you have UFO. If you show the tactical battles too close, you won't be able to really judge the relative positions of your guys to the aliens. Draw them too far, and you'll have little grey smears vs. your little blue smears. Also, don't forget MEMORY. A reason a lot of these games work well on PC is the PC has buttloads of RAM. Console designers never give their systems enough RAM. There is a port of Transport Tycoon to the PSX, a direct port of the code. Except, because of memory constraints, the map is about a third the size of the maps in the PC version. And (and this is the kicker) it runs DEAD SLOW. It chugs. Years DRAG by. So, I stuck it in my PSX emulator and... it ran at full speed, just like on the PC! While it worked, it didn't work well. It was clearly a case of them being able to port it, but they definitely shouldn't have.

I asked this question in another forum (creepy!) I decided I'd either want to work for Sensovision or... get this... as the guy who has to sit in the computer controlled delivery truck because of 'personal interaction laws' or whatever. I mean, imagine the computers in the future! You don't have to drive, you could hook up to the internet and play on the truck's computer all day, whatever games were hot at the moment (Duke Nukem Forever probably comes out in 1st quarter 2084 ) The question I had was this, and I did mean it in the most sickening, fanboyish, fap-fap-fappin' over Infested Kerrigan way: would you date a Hybrid? Granted most of you would want one with hair, but imagine the (sexual) possiblities of psi! Sure, you'd be ostracized by some but who cares, no-one else's bird would have big, black eyes! My concern was: are there beer and ciggies in the future?

How about saving a standard loadout for my guys? All my troopers get two stun grenades, two AP grenades, two smoke, one incendiary, one medikit and one disruptor/disruptor cannon. This would not only be good for equipping recruits but also save time when the BASTARD ENTROPY GUN hits my poor guys yet again... I don't mind being hit so much as having to drag/drop EVERY SINGLE CUNTING PIECE OF EQUIPMENT off and then back on again every time I get hit... it only adds insult to injury that the missile HOMES IN on you! Your guy runs around the corner, thinks he's safe and then ooh the missile came round the corner too, right up the bum :dontgetit: I swear, I'm getting the editor and editing the damn thing out of the game altogether, the shields don't help because the aliens just spam the damn thing like a demoman in TFC

I almost feel cheated by that ending! Apart from the terrible Resident Evil voice acting ('My... GOD! We... lost... him?'), the dire script (could this be a trap? We kicked their ass!!) and the shortness... it hardly closes up the loose ends, does it? What happens to the aliens now? Do they all just lie there and slowly starve in the hostile environment of their barren dimension? What will happen to the city now that all this new technology is available to John Q Idiot? Will the disruptors keep working now that the other dimension is f**ked up? And I hate the camera room commander... damn pushy desk jockeys, I'd just hand him the controls and say, "Here, you're so much better at it, YOU switch it to camera 4 and pan it left." :devil: Also, Pete, if they're typically English, surely they're on their fag break while those who are non-smokers are forced to continue working?