Customer Reviews

UFO: Extraterrestrials - Chaos Concept

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Well, there's no doubt in my mind that this is a major XCOM clone. If you enjoyed the original you'll love this game. Although, I still think XCOM Apocalypse is better. Basically, the game is played on a map where you see continents and a UFO appears and you have to shoot it down. AFter it's shot down you send your ground units into kill/stun the aliens and capture equipment. And of course, there's loads of science to research and build. Half the fun is arming your units with the aliens weapons and killing them with it.



However regular gamers will definitely be turned off by how unpolished this game is. The resolution is set at a low level and cannot be adjusted by the menu. The graphics are barely any better than the original XCOM.



You can't control your aircrafts when you send them to intercept the UFOs. They'll basically just follow it and shoot or they'll just hover in the same place and shoot one another.



Also, your units can't die so there's not really a big loss that you feel when your unit gets blasted by a UFO. And recruitment is automatic which might be a turn off.



It's a clone to XCOM but it just lacks the soul that Microprose put in the games.



PROS:

XCOM Clone down to small details

Great assortment of weapons and research to do

Killing UFOS with their own weapons!



CONS:

Piss poor graphics especially in the main map

Difficulty level is all over the place. Sometimes the first UFO ground mission contains like 20 aliens sometimes 5.

Rather unpolished game and lacks heart

You can't kneel or allocate time for flash hits or aimed hits - they're automatic

First and foremost, this game fails to compare to the original X-Com series created by Microprose. Normally, I like to review a game as it stands without such comparisons, but the game box itself essentially claims to be an X-Com sequel. But it doesn't even come close.
All the great complexities of the game have been butchered. First, the "base" view is very simplified. You cannot hire new soldiers (They just appear over time), you have unlimited storage, and new bases that you build serve little purpose except for more hanger space and detection. Research and production only happen at the main base. Basically, I felt that the base view is far too simple and dumbed down.
The tactical combat itself is, at its core, not that bad. Still, it also suffers from being dumbed down somewhat, as your soldiers cannot die and the AI is bland and boring. When you shoot down a UFO, it appears in the tactical battle completely unharmed, with all the aliens clustered in and around it. Taking advantage of the surroundings would make the battles more interesting and challenging.
Further, there are occasional crashes that force you to replay battles or go even further back in time thanks to the disturbing lack of an auto-save feature, which makes a whole lot of sense for this type of game. This is just another example where the development team cut corners.
As is, the game isn't really worth playing, except perhaps for the nostalgia of the original. But there is one saving grace, and that's the modding community.
Thanks to various mods, the game can be changed to play more like the original, with various bugs fixed and poorly devised game elements changed. Even this sloppily created game has some potential thanks to the efforts of these modders!

Overall, I'd say this : Save your money. This game as shipped is below average at best. If you do buy it, go through the effort of installing mods...its worth it!

Out of the box, this game is a fairly enjoyable but imperfect X-Com clone with several improvements over the original, but almost as many flaws.

However, do a Google search and download and install the BMan/Coasty mod, (after installing the patch 2 from the UFO:ET official site), and it becomes an *ABSOLUTELY SUPERB* unofficial addition to the X-Com series. Using the BMan/Coasty mod, (I'm using 4.07 from memory which I believe at the time of writing is still the latest version), along with the recommended other downloads of the enhanced graphics and the true night fix, this game is the first worthy successor to the original X-Com.... no small feat, many have failed.

The whole game dynamic is change using the mod so that the progression of the game feels like the original X-Com, the research tree makes more sense, the missions play better, your soldiers can now die again, the UFO's can sustain damage upon crashing killing aliens on board like the original, at the start of the game the soldiers are better equiped and not useless, etc. etc. There are literally hundreds of quality improvements using the Bman/Coasty mod, that had the game actually been released with an adapted version of the mod built in, this game would have been an instant classic without doubt.

If you enjoyed the original X-Com/UFO games then do yourself a favor and buy this game ---- just make sure you get the official updates from the UFO:ET website, and the Bman mod too. You'll love it.

It's no exaggeration to say that this game along with the free Bman/Coasty mod is as close to a perfect modern X-Com as we will probably ever see. The modded game will provide quite literally months of gaming enjoyment.

Great game for those that enjoy squad-based, turn-based strategy. For those who were a fan of the original X-Com or X-Com: Terror from the Deep, this game will feel very familiar, but with new tech, new storyline and updated graphics. UFO: Extraterrestrials is MUCH more fun with bMan's Ease of Use Mod.

Having said all that, graphics are a little dated and the game is a bit buggy and unbalanced straight out of the box. I don't consider these major drawbacks since the graphics are still better than the original X-Com, although it lacks some of the original's style. The bugs and balance are largely resolved with the official patches.

As others mention, the vanilla game represented a decent attempt at a clone of the much-loved original, albiet with some bizarre bugs/omissions which had a negative impact on the nostalgia factor. However, modders have been working almost tirelessly since release to build up on the game, to the point where as of writing it now plays like an enhanced modern remake of the original.

review: 4 stars for good effort on original, 5 stars if modded.

--

More detail on the mods, update for 2011 for new players:

You can purchase either this version or the GOLD version which is available, and mod them to exactly the same final position. The GOLD version is an official release which incorporates the modding work of bman and Coasty, but strips some elements from the game for licensing reasons. This version is the original older release, but the current mods work the same way with either.

After bman/Coasty's work got the official release in the GOLD version, another user Grayfiend took up the job of building the mod, and it is his 'UNIMOD' which the majority of users now play with. You can find this mod very easily by searching the internet.

For total newcomers to X-COM, the original is still a great place to start. You'll need to run it through a free program called DOSBox. However, equally I'd recommend purchasing UFO:ET for a modern experience. It might be best to start only installing bman/Craft's mod (you can find this by searching) since it is more simplified. If you purchase this version, mod it using bman/Crafty's 4.07 mod. If you purchase the GOLD then you wouldn't need to mod it further (but you would lose some content).

Grayfiend's UNIMOD is quite advanced for new users but is still highly recommended for numerous fixes and additions to the core game - and if you are a turn-based strategy veteran or simply brave (!) then you should give it a go! Buy this OR the GOLD version, it doesn't matter.

Hope this helps, please comment me if you like, keep the UFO:ET/X-COM spirit alive!

After reading reviews on the game from various forums I decided to give the game a try. I never played this game in it's original content but rather installed mods immediately. I found the game extremely similar to the old X-com (only with improved graphics and more technology options). I have over 40 hours invested in the game and have found it very enjoyable. I would definately buy the game again if I had to do it over.

Gameplay takes place on a made up planet for no real reason I could see.

Grafix are pretty bad.

You can kneel but there is no prone.

Fairly buggy.

One of the worst features is you must click on your equiped weapon every shot you take at an enemy, it gets real old...you will do this about 40-60 times per mission, and the is a near limitless number of missions.

Same old stuff...There are one or two enemy types I dont remember being in xcom, but they were in latter games.

The AI is very poor.

Bad translations into english in the UFOepedia. They took everything else from xcom, why didn't they just cut and paste the english text from xcom into their game?

Sounds are basicly the same from xcom. The music is ok.

Horrid outdoor grafix scale, example: trees in the game only seem to be a a maxium of 6 feet tall.

I am very pissed that there was no demo on the Chaos Concept webpage. I would not recomend you buy without a demo to see if you like it***

Overall it is a novelty game (which should have been freeware imo) strickly for dihard fans of the orignal xcom.

A good replacement for X-Com: UFO Defense. It has changes that are good and some not so good. I wish that you could recruit soldiers, and maybe a cheat for more funds since you run short of both, even on easy. I'm one of those who wish that X-Com would be brought back to run on Vista, even with no changes to it otherwise. I still have my 486 just to play X-Com occasionally. This is a fun game as it is, just could be a little better. I've had no problems running it on my Vista computer.

I feel bad saying it, because I hate to be negative about someone else's work, but this game does not carry the weight that a semi-remake should. In the original, there were subtle differences that were important. These traits are *not* in UFOET: 1)the characters died with gender-specific screams. 2) reloading a weapon or moving an item took time 3) the characters actually died instead of being incapacitated for the remainder of the mission. 4) the global map was intuitively navigated in two ways with a right or left click. The loading time between missions and during alien turns in UFOET is really slow. Other parts of the game come across as sluggish as well; I could blame my computer for this, but since the game is not graphics-heavy, and many that are play fine on my system, I feel that UFOET should not be coded in such a way that it requires this amount of power.

X-Com was harder, sometimes to a ludicrous degree, and this contributed to its quality. It's not until the stakes are high and the goal is lofty that a game is truly interesting.

The music in UFOET is good.

Excellent game. Very few bugs, very clean. Basically an x-com sequal. Alot of people use the Bman mod and like it. I found the mod added bugs and crashes to game. But if it works for you it does add alot to the game. But even without the mod, game was alot of fun. Ending could have been better, kind of anticlimatic. Would have been nice to continue playing with your troops after you win (you can do this with Bman mod)