aliens

Author Topic: UFO: Alien Invasion  (Read 24978 times)

Offline SenniTrebor

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #15 on: July 01, 2014, 09:20:17 pm »
Three days ago version 2.5 was relased, two years after 2.4.

Here's changelog:
https://ufoai.org/wiki/Changelog/2.5
Downloading now. Might look at free orion as well.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #16 on: July 01, 2014, 11:42:06 pm »
Downloading now. Might look at free orion as well.

Better not. It's your choice of course, but I thought it was absolutely horrible.

Aurora is a great 4X game, but only for people with waaaaaay too much time. :)

Offline SenniTrebor

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #17 on: July 02, 2014, 05:00:52 pm »
Better not. It's your choice of course, but I thought it was absolutely horrible.

Aurora is a great 4X game, but only for people with waaaaaay too much time. :)
Checked it out, that's me. Thank you for this referral

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #18 on: July 02, 2014, 05:19:32 pm »
Checked it out, that's me. Thank you for this referral

You're welcome. I'd be happy to discuss it sometime.

Now, any opinions about the new Alien Invasion? It's an interesting project, did it get any better?

Offline SenniTrebor

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #19 on: July 03, 2014, 04:45:31 am »
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?

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #20 on: July 03, 2014, 04:35:37 pm »
Thanks for the review, it was quite informative.

As for UFO: Aftershock, it is widely believed, and it's also my opinion, that it's way better and more mature than UFO: Aftermath. It is simply a superbly designed game, not overly flashy but extremely fun to play, combining complexity with smooth gameplay. Certainly in my top three of all times.
Also, I find UFO: Aftershock way more enjoyable with Okim's ACM mod, thought it may be too frustrating for a newcomer (those Cultists are gonna f*ck you up).

As for the next game, UFO: Afterlight, it's certainly very good, but many people disliked its stylistics. It's way more cartoonish.

Offline SenniTrebor

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #21 on: July 03, 2014, 07:59:52 pm »
TAs for UFO: Aftershock, it is widely believed, and it's also my opinion, that it's way better and more mature than UFO: Aftermath. It is simply a superbly designed game, not overly flashy but extremely fun to play, combining complexity with smooth gameplay. Certainly in my top three of all times.
Also, I find UFO: Aftershock way more enjoyable with Okim's ACM mod, thought it may be too frustrating for a newcomer (those Cultists are gonna f*ck you up).

As for the next game, UFO: Afterlight, it's certainly very good, but many people disliked its stylistics. It's way more cartoonish.
I am curious as to what is your third. I am assuming OpenXcom is one of the other three.
And why is ACM mod frustrating. I think I'd have to try it on vanilla first.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2014, 08:01:47 pm by SenniTrebor »

Offline Sturm

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #22 on: July 03, 2014, 11:41:21 pm »
Three days ago version 2.5 was relased, two years after 2.4.

Here's changelog:
https://ufoai.org/wiki/Changelog/2.5
That's just sad.

Thanks god for openxcom.

Offline wsmithjr

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #23 on: July 04, 2014, 04:12:16 am »
As for UFO: Aftershock, it is widely believed, and it's also my opinion, that it's way better and more mature than UFO: Aftermath. It is simply a superbly designed game, not overly flashy but extremely fun to play, combining complexity with smooth gameplay. Certainly in my top three of all times.
Also, I find UFO: Aftershock way more enjoyable with Okim's ACM mod, thought it may be too frustrating for a newcomer (those Cultists are gonna f*ck you up).

As for the next game, UFO: Afterlight, it's certainly very good, but many people disliked its stylistics. It's way more cartoonish.

I have all these games but have only done much with Aftermath.  I've never finished it and usually fizzle out when the game starts kicking my butt all over the map.  Maybe I need to learn to pick my battles better, or something.  I tried a mod that sounded really good, but after several tries in very early missions where my entire squad was wiped out within seconds of spotting the first transgenant, I gave up on that.  Started vanilla game up again just recently to see if I fare any better this time around.

Never gave Aftershock much of a chance due to my "need" to play things in order.  That and the controls seemed to throw me off but that could just be because I never put much effort into it because I felt I needed to play the earlier game first.

Afterlight, hearing from many that it was the "best" ... I don't know what it is but I just can't figure it out.  Something is just not clicking for me about the interface and how soldiers/scientists are managed and the like.  I've tried a few times but never got anywhere with it.  Could also be party due to similar issues with Aftershock.

One similar game I haven't seen mentioned is UFO: Extraterrestrials with the B-Man mod (the Gold version is the mostly the same but with some copyrighted features removed).  I tried it with the Combo mod but it made some weird changes to the game that I didn't care for.  It seemed a case of "too much of a good thing".  I really like it with the B-Man mod, though the game can get quite dragged out due to the need to research Commanders to progress in the tech tree.  B-Man allows you to increase the frequency of commanders appearing, so that can help with that issue.  Still, I've never finished the game ... but actually not finishing games is not uncommon for me as I guess I get bored and move on to something else for a while and then cycle back eventually, which I have done again recently.

Made the mistake of trying to play UFO:Extraterrestrials without the B-Man mod just to see what that was like.  PAINFUL!  Don't even bother if you're tempted.  Just get the B-Man mod and don't look back.  That said, I did have to disable the original XCom aliens as it made the game much more difficult for me.  Looking forward to UFO: Extraterrestrials 2, but not sure if that's vaporware or not at this point.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #24 on: July 04, 2014, 11:51:21 am »
Made the mistake of trying to play UFO:Extraterrestrials without the B-Man mod just to see what that was like.  PAINFUL!  Don't even bother if you're tempted.  Just get the B-Man mod and don't look back.

Let me correct it for you: ;)

Made the mistake of trying to play UFO:Extraterrestrials without the UNIMOD just to see what that was like.  PAINFUL!  Don't even bother if you're tempted.  Just get the UNIMOD and don't look back.

B-Man's mod turned a poor game into an average game. UNIMOD was built upon the BMan's mod and made it into a great game. Its full list of features can be found here.

Offline SenniTrebor

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #25 on: July 04, 2014, 12:54:18 pm »

B-Man's mod turned a poor game into an average game. UNIMOD was built upon the BMan's mod and made it into a great game. Its full list of features can be found here.
Thank you once again, you are so helpful. Still on Aftermath combo mod 3.3. Good game, the similarity of the missions do detract from the game.

Offline SenniTrebor

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #26 on: July 04, 2014, 01:04:50 pm »
I have all these games but have only done much with Aftermath.  I've never finished it and usually fizzle out when the game starts kicking my butt all over the map.  Maybe I need to learn to pick my battles better, or something.  I tried a mod that sounded really good, but after several tries in very early missions where my entire squad was wiped out within seconds of spotting the first transgenant, I gave up on that.  Started vanilla game up again just recently to see if I fare any better this time around.
post out of order.
Thank for the info. I better stop "talking" about this to avoid highjacking this thread.
Sorry @Solarius: How do you quote 2 people in one post?
« Last Edit: July 04, 2014, 01:08:14 pm by SenniTrebor »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #27 on: July 04, 2014, 01:29:20 pm »
post out of order.
Thank for the info. I better stop "talking" about this to avoid highjacking this thread.
Sorry @Solarius: How do you quote 2 people in one post?

  • Quote one person
  • Ctrl+a
  • Ctrl+c
  • Close without posting
  • Quote another person
  • Ctrl+v
  • Ta-dam! :)

Offline SupSuper

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #28 on: July 05, 2014, 12:23:44 am »
You can also just enable "Quick Reply" and every Quote will just get added without opening a new page.

Offline SenniTrebor

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Re: UFO: Alien Invasion
« Reply #29 on: July 06, 2014, 05:01:05 am »
You can also just enable "Quick Reply" and every Quote will just get added without opening a new page.
  • Quote one person
  • Ctrl+a
  • Ctrl+c
  • Close without posting
  • Quote another person
  • Ctrl+v
  • Ta-dam! :)
Well thank you both.