Oreolus

Hello all, long time lurker here. Finally decided to toss in my two cents. Let me say I have really enjoyed this game. Pete's review pretty much hit everything I thought about this game, but I think my biggest gripe, aside from a couple bugs, is the music. It just doesn't add any tension to the game. In fact, the most worried I get is the first few months when you are scrambling to get sattelites up. If the music would just be more ominous I think I could almost say I liked this more than the original, instead of say that while it does great in some areas it lacks in others. I understand the need for balancing and the forcing of having to make a crap decision on what country to offer aid, but, for me anyway, it doesn't really add anything but annoyance. After a few missions, if you delay researching the story items you can pretty much stay ahead of the aliens as far as threats go. What countries you can keep from turning all boils down to how lucky you are in the first few months. Whoop dee doo. In battles, I haven't really ran into any oh crap moments that weren't bug related (i.e. aliens walking though floors and showing up elsewhere). Chryssalids gave me that oh crap feeling after they turned a civi into a zombie for the first time. After I killed that zombie and that was all there was to it I laughed. No fear of them after that. Seeing the same battlescapes over and over makes it rather easy to figure out what is coming up and doesn'help. I know something is going to be around the corner or int he building. I do enjoy the different missions types, even if in the end it's kill all the aliens on the map to move on. I apologize if some of that looks like rambling. Few drinks into the night and thoughts tend to run together. All in all, I really enjoy this game, I just wish they would have made music to go with the setting.