I have decided to review each game individually so that each one has a fair trial, with a small cumulative review at the end.

UFO: Aftermath

Story/Concept
A giant Spacecraft appears out of nowhere and starts to release spores of some kind into the atmosphere. These then blot out the sun, this was called the Twilight. After clogging up the atmosphere the spores rain down onto the planet earth over a period of days most of the higher life forms were wiped out, this was called Nightfall.

A few members who were sealed underground in various places around the world at the time of this survived, now a few weeks after Nightfall the spores seemed to have lost their effectiveness in killing off the inhabitants of our planet. Now is the time to take back our planet, unite the people and take revenge on the alien race that did this.

Gameplay
UFO: Aftermath combines global strategy with small squad tactical combat in the fight against an alien invasion. It contains RPG elements that help your squad evolve into a highly trained group that has all the necessary skills to deal with the alien threat. Much of the game is spent researching and manufacturing items that you have salvaged from corpses, lost human bases or researched and created your own human alien hybrid technology. The other most significant part of the game is squad management, dealing with what skills to increase, training to give and weapons to equip to get the job done with minimal losses to your team. You also build new bases and have to choose whether to have a military base, research base or a manufacturing base. If you have no research bases then you can do no research and the more you have the quicker it gets done. Military bases are where your team is housed and it’s from here that your team is sent on its savaging hunt.

Control System
Everything you need to control your troops or maintain and upgrade your bases with new technology is all done by clicking on various icons on the HUD that are located around the outskirts of the screen. Moving involves clicking on who you would like to move and then clicking on where you want to move them to. You set up plans on where you would like your team to move off to and then hit the play button on the top left of the screen and watch the actions pan out. If something significant happens such as spotting an enemy the game automatically pauses to allow you to modify your plans to incorporate the new information.

Graphics
The graphics do a fantastic job and considering that this game is actually 4 years old it certainly doesn’t look that dated. They are very good for this genre, even though graphics do not matter for this game it certainly adds to the atmosphere. A vast majority of this game is actually manipulating the things on your bases and as such there is not really the emphasis on the graphics compared to some of the other titles that are on the market today. But even then when you are actually involved in a tactical mission the post apocalyptic setting is really shown in the empty cities that are full of old cars and rubbish on the streets. The UFO’s themselves are nothing like what you would expect they are so…. Alien. There is none of that shiny metal that could almost be a square aircraft that was in the X-com series, these craft are organic in nature and certainly the developers did a good job of showing this whilst still keeping the designs of the craft believable.

Multiplayer
There is no multiplayer option for this game.

Longevity
The game lasts a long time as you try to research all the available technology to give your squad the edge they need to deal with the alien menace. I could happily sit here for weeks and play the game on its various difficulties that really make you change the way you play each time. For instance I prefer to research and develop the best technology I can before going on a single mission just so that I have a fighting chance. This may be bad as you may miss out on some of the easier tactical missions.

Score
I award this game 8/10. I really enjoyed playing this game and only a few minor camera issues stopped this from scoring higher.