Now, any opinions about the new Alien Invasion? It's an interesting project, did it get any better?
I only had a quick play around with version 2.4 a while ago, so comparisons are difficult.
First the setup:
The transparent (white) font is unpleasant to look at.
Tutorials page simple but rather uninformative. Though the intention may have been to encourage learning by playing.
Started single player game. Still that annoying white font.
No explanation as to how to leave the download (save game) screen. It was <ESC>.
Started Campaign.
No hint as to how to advance the intro <click>.
The one place where the transparent font may have been useful to see the map it's not used.
Then back to the transparent font on the first message. I will no longer mention this, but it really bugged me.
The Geoscape window was simple and easy to understand (~@:> white font) (Sorry).
Indeed, playing the Strategic game I found quite fun. Though the lack of an "Intercept" button was felt.
But the battlescape, where do I begin.
Firstly the good points. The models definitely are better that before, and move reasonably well on the screen. The indestructable terrain is not good, though it was fun to hide behind trees from plasma bolts until an alien ran round one and got a grenade launcher full of flechette in the face. The terrain itself seems rather simply "rendered" (is that the term), but works ok once one gets used to it.
But the battlescape UI seems to be an attempt to please lots of people that failed. The sheer fiddleyness of taking a shot detracts from smooth game flow. Reserve TUs for reaction fire calls up a menu (with counterintuitive colour choices in them), reserve TUs to fire another one. Fire at someone another menu, the same as the reserve for reaction with a line of fire drawn on the terran that distracts from the pleasure of the shot. Forget to switch things off and your men crawl across the board. The tooltips were useful though for learning what I was doing wrong.
In short a good geoscape game let down by the battlescape. In fact I look forward to a campaign using autoresolve for the majority of battles.
Still if it weren't for OpenXcom I'd choose UFO Aftermath for the battles. Though I have forgot about, ET and Xenonauts. Must have a quick play of those again.
Actually I might enjoy UFO Aftershock and Afterlight?
