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39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good X-Com Game, March 15, 2004
I have a hard time seeing how someone can like X-Com and not like this.The play-style is similar to X-Com: Apocolypse in that it is semi-realtime. I find this acceptable because it greatly speeds up gameplay and really puts more tactical decisions in your hands rather than relying on automatic reactions during the enemy's turn, as happened in UFO Defense. I also like that the missions frequently have more defined goals than just "kill everything". I distinctly remember some X-Com missions taking me over an hour just trying to find the one last alien hiding in a closet somewhere. Aftermath missions tend to be more specific (you don't have to kill everything) and even the "kill everything" missions only have you kill about 90% of the enemies before giving you the option to declare it a success (presumedly your backup troops will do the mop-up after your elite team does the majority of the work). I also personally appreciate the pacing of technological advancement. The one thing I never liked in X-Com games was a shortage of real-world weaponry and what you did get was replaced by alien technology almost immediately. In Aftermath you have a great variety of normal human weapons and the desire and ability to replace them with alien weapons occurs much slower. Furthermore, if there is a type of mission you just don't like doing, you can "delegate" it to the regular army. It will be resolved automatically without the use of your team. Obviously you want to use your team where success is vital, but if your team gets shot up or you just don't like to do scouting missions then you can delegate and still have a chance of success. Another change is that you can't enter buildings on a map. When I heard about this I thought it would suck, since entering structures was a predominant feature of X-Com games, but it's really not that bad: where X-Com would have an "urban" map that consisted of a small map and one big building, Aftermath has "urban" maps that consist of city streets and many buildings. Having to enter them would be a time consuming and unnecessary distraction. In the instances where you do need to enter a structure (such as a crashed UFO), it's done as a two-part mission: part one to secure the exterior, part 2 takes you inside. The only thing I can think of that I really miss is in these crashed UFO missions: In X-Com, the crashed UFO had battle damage, including some of the alien crew already being wounded or dead. In Aftermath the ships all seem perfectly intact on the inside with no wounded or dead crew. (I guess the aliens invented better surge protectors and shock absorbers.) One bit of cheese is that you can abort a mission at any time and any upright team members are automatically extracted. This is useful but cheesy: In UFO Defense you had to make it back to your ship to extract your team, in Aftermath you can hit "abort" whenever you want and extract your team in unrealistic circumstances, like just before a big missile is about to kill everyone. But still, overall it's a great game. Where Apocolypse was really taking X-Com into a ridiculous direction with crayola aliens and a bizarre futuristic setting, Aftermath goes back to the roots: guys with machineguns fighting horrible aliens. (Well, eventually you get machineguns, initially you're fighting with pistols, shotguns and grenades! (Hint: Grenades are your friend.))
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