Does anyone know when exactly these go on sale? I've been checking GOG but I think they go up on Flash deals when it's the night/early morning for me.

Only UFO: Aftershock is in a flash sale. It went by ten hours ago.

Last night - I know because I stared at it. I've already grabbed a few games and I let it slide - I'm now regretting it and waiting for it again - worst part - it was up with Knock, Knock and I should have grabbed both - "No you already bought a few and have a nice chunk of games to play" - today "Damnit why, why!"


Can I actually use this thread to get a rundown on Aftershock though? I almost made one yesterday. From reading the reviews here it SOUNDS like Aftershock incorporates a lot of what made XCOM great - free form base building, multiple bases etc. Looked like the first game was more "stripped down" and I didn't get a vibe one way or the other about the 3rd game.

But ... does this one (Aftershock) have UFO interceptions? Manufacturing? How many soldiers can you take into battle (on the screenshots I saw a "Squad Building" screen - it looked like you could kit out 4 squads of 7 - but all the battle screens looked like they always had 7 soldiers). I ask because the game looked like I'd like to be at 7 per battle, not jumping between 4 fully loaded squads. Finally (I know!) how does cover play out in realtime? If I plop a guy down behind cover and have him fire, does he walk out from behind it? Shoot around the corner? Is cover part of the game or does it not work in the Real Time framework?

Thanks for all the help - I know these games are cheap but I still don't like to buy something if I'm going to play it for 10 minutes and it's not my cup of tea.

No. You are in a floating base and you are attacking ground. Yes. And multiple workshop types needed, depending on what you want to manufacture. Your energy factories won't produce armor, and your medical factories won't produce ammo. 5, 7 with upgrade. If you need to evacuate someone, one spot must be free. You can set up different teams/loadouts (one to capture, one to assault, one to evacuate for example) Assuming he has line of fire, he will fire over cover. Depending on what cover you have, you may not have a line of sight, thus your shots will most likely hit the cover. Your soldiers won't move without you ordering them to do so.

Thanks much for the rundown JMich. I understand the purpose of squads now, thanks - surprisingly that's a relief to hear - as much as I liked loading up a Skyranger in XCom, the thought of having 21 - 28 guys running around in realtime was scaring me ;)

I'm a huge XCOM franchise fan and I own all 3 UFO games from GOG as well however I have only played the first one - UFO Aftermath a year and a half ago for about a week. The game had a very strong XCOM influence but with much more modern graphics and gameplay. One of the things I liked about it was that it is turn based, but you can queue up multiple actions for your whole team, groups of soldiers, or individual units then command the game to execute your orders and the game will automatically run in pseudo-realtime which makes gameplay progress much more quickly however if anything happens unexpectedly such as an alien appearing from nowhere suddenly, the realtime mode instantly pauses to allow you to have a choice to abandon your currently queued commands entirely, or to modify the commands given to any particular units and then unpause to continue. In practice this gives you all of the benefits of turn-based play strategically but without the snail-pace of an expert chess game as game progression happens much more quickly in the heat of battle or just wandering around exploring.

I found the game to be a very good rendition of the type of game play XCOM games are famous for, but enhanced and improved in some ways. XCOM fans should like the UFO game series as well IMHO, however my mini-review above is for the first UFO game in the series and not the second game which is what is in the flash sale. I presume the gameplay in the 2nd game is similar or better but I have not played it yet personally so I can't say for sure.

Hell, when I played UFO Aftermath it was on an ancient PC with a Radeon 9800 Pro video card and the game had messed up graphics that suggested to me corrupted video memory although no other games experienced this. I was unable to prevent the graphic corruption which was a combination of random pixels missing and appearing black, and grids of parallel lines of black all over the screen as well as some audio problems (oddly not unlike audio problems the original XCOM game had in MSDOS). Nonetheless with these two problems I was able to play the game for a week and enjoy it a fair bit without the rather serious graphic problems affecting my enjoyment too much. It would probably have driven someone else nuts though. :) The problem in the end turned out to either be the video card having bad RAM, or the video drivers being buggy as I tested the game on the new machine and it ran flawless.

Anyhow, if you're an XCOM diehard I imagine you'll like the UFO game if it is as good as the first one was for me.

HTH

From the reviews I read here on GoG was that the first game had excellent tactical combat (good to hear you affirm that!) and the second SEEMED to be on par with the first in terms of combat (I'll have to reread to make sure as your glowing review of the first is making me hope they didn't rework combat too much). The draw for me, for 2 was that base building / management looks like it was improved. I know there was another thread about this (1 vs 2 vs 3) but for the life of me I couldn't find it - hence why I "hijacked" this one ;)

In UFO:AM you have types of bases (Military, Research, Manufacture), while in UFO:AS you have more control over what your bases have in. You can build 3, 4 or 5 buildings in each of your bases, which may be labs, factories, defense or other kind of buildings.

Thanks again - is the combat as good in 2 as it is in 1? Pretty close to one another? Though at this point it's pretty much a done deal that I'll grab this next time it rolls around LOL

And I like "custom bases" - a quirk of mine in XCOM was always building my "secret R&D facility" in Antarctica - a base solely loaded with Scientists and Engineers doing my most top secret research

I was very positively surprised by Aftershock, it is pretty complex, you can do alot of stuff and the character system is a small RPG. The realtime combat I hated at first, but after a while I realised it has a lot of depth.
The graphics are really ugly,though and the whole story presentation I did not care for. I think they took alot of inspiration for the Firaxis Xcom from this, female scientist explaining stuff and such...
Overall much much better than Aftermath.

UFO series was released in its entirety years before XCom by Firaxis.

Sadly there was one aspect present in the first ufo:enemy unknown and mostly absent from all others versions, sequels, reboots, etc : it's the mystery and dread of "first encounter".

On the original game, I was roleplaying a lot - letting the aliens fire the first shot in the 1st mission. I loved the "what do they want" mystery, and the scientific investigations on the aliens are still my favorite part. I like the "invasion" project to be slowly revealed, and the "ufology" aspect to be stressed out by the difference of technology.

So, these Aftershock, etc, games don't interest me much : they are just humans-versus-aliens tactical games, and I already have Starcraft or whatnot about this. The recent xcom games (both the tactical one and the 3rd person shooter) look like they immediately equip you with futuristic scifi material, making it too early some space age war thing. And xenonauts, while the most faithful so far, starts with earth surrounded with flying saucers - there goes the elusive "shadow war" feeling of the first game.

So, beyond all their pros and cons, gameplay-wise, I regret that the one thing I loved most about about the original game (that kind of traditional men-in-black investigation and response to an occult threat) is absent from all the games inspired by it. They all kinda miss the flavor point that was making its appeal to me.

Enough ranting, back to ufo. Still many episodes ahead...

That reminds me of a number of years ago I discovered the game "Battle Realms" and was showing it to friends when they came over and just about everyone said "looks like a bit of a ripoff of Warcraft 3", and I had to point out to them that Battle Realms came out an entire year or more before Warcraft 3. :)

Yes of course, that is what I was trying to say. They=firaxis. Gyess I could have phrased it better.

Way to point this out! I never really thought much about it but you're right - the mystery and slowly revealed plot added a ton of character. Even the coloration of the interface and that ominous music added a sense of creeping dread. It's one of those things I didn't realize the newer games lacked; but there's something to it that makes XCOM XCOM and stand a notch above.