The Wargamer

Take Me to Your Leader

In the mid-1990s I bought a new game called UFO: Enemy Unknown, also known as X-Com: UFO Defense. It offered something different and intriguing: control of an Extraterrestrial Combat Unit charged with defeating an alien invasion. Through a combination of strategic and tactical turn-based gameplay, players could research new technologies and weapons, upgrade their squad, shoot down alien ships, and hunt bug-eyed, skinny-limbed critters across familiar and alien terrain, never knowing what might slither around the next corner. It was a lot of game on only three floppy disks. And what’s more it worked – brilliantly, in fact. The game was so successful that it spawned a host of official and unofficial sequels, a novel and there was even talk of a movie. But then the UFO phenomenon began to fade away like a dying star, perhaps a victim of its own brilliance. Changes were made to the game system, which were shunned by the X-Com community, and publishing rights changed hands several times resulting in the franchise being shelved altogether. 

A decade after its release, developer Altar and publisher Cenega from the Czech Republic sought to revive the X-Com glory with its new title, UFO: Aftermath. Although they emphasized that UFO: Aftermath was not a X-Com remake, it nevertheless maintained the core elements of the X-Com series while updating the game engine to allow simultaneous combat to occur in a high-resolution, fully three-dimensional environment.

UFO: Aftermath met with generally favorable reactions. Inevitably, many compared it with the original and thought it did a reasonable job of recreating the spirit of X-Com. But the game’s less-than-stellar graphics and unique style of play meant that it didn’t have universal appeal. Undeterred, Altar and Cenega forged ahead to produce the second game in the franchise, UFO: Aftershock.

Boasting a new storyline and several other enhancements, UFO: Aftershock once again gives players the opportunity to defend Earth against aliens who quite frankly should know better by now than to tangle with us fellow Earthlings. Be that is it may, there is, as I mentioned, a new storyline for the new game. It involves a catastrophic biological experiment, various humanoid factions, an alliance between humans and a ridiculously named alien faction called the Reticulans and a revolt on an immense flying island called a Laputa (a term borrowed from Gulliver’s Travels and not the Spanish name for a lady of ill-repute), which the Reticulans gave to the humans in exchange for what’s left of the Earth. Sound confusing? Well, it is! But knowing what’s going on – or not for that matter – isn’t an impediment to getting on with the otherwise straightforward aim of the game: recapturing Earth territory through tactical combat missions. 

Although the game isn’t linear, it’s built around a cycle with which many will be familiar. It works like this: winning missions gives the player influence and influence is rewarded with territories, territories yield resources, which are necessary for research and manufacturing, which in turn results in better equipped troops that will lead to more victories, which translates into greater influence and therefore more territory and resources...and so the cycle continues. That’s the theory, anyway. Depending on the difficulty level chosen, this cycle may not last long. Because of the game’s relatively steep learning curve, I would strongly recommend anyone who is new to the franchise to begin on “Easy”. The game is still quite challenging on this level let alone on the harder settings. A tutorial will further help ease newcomers into the game, and after playing a few simple missions, this extra tuition can be turned off.

The game’s strategic campaign is directed from above Earth onboard the Laputa home base. From here the player can train and equip team members, launch missions, build terrestrial bases and undertake research and manufacturing.