And so Aftershock arrives full of intent and glistening with a cheeky look in its eye and a year’s worth of interesting conversation. It’s the gaming equivalent of the female ‘best friend’- nice on the inside, but not the most aesthetically pleasing example of its genre.
The game follows on from the ‘bad’ ending of the 2003 game UFO: Aftermath. You play as the human race intent on recapturing Earth from the evil aliens who are using it as one huge playground. With recent title such as Rome: Total War showing just how impressive modern strategy games can look you’d have thought ALTAR Interactive might have decided to polish Aftershock up a little. They haven’t, but fear not as thankfully the gameplay stays intact.
Oh we know it’s naughty of us to criticise a game for the way it looks but there’s no getting away from it, the game looks dated. Thankfully the mixture of the squad based strategy, mixed in with a bit of base building and a splattering of RPG’ness is as addictive as ever.
There are heaps of options and it’s certainly not a game you’re going to finish overnight as you plough your way through the missions intent on taking back what is rightfully yours. You’ll find yourself playing deep into the night with the dreaded ‘one more turn’ syndrome that you only find in the best games, but ultimately you can’t help but feel that had the graphics been improved to the standard of an average 2005 game we’d be looking at a 90+ score rather than the one given below.
If you loved the previous game then you’ll lap this up lovingly. It’s got everything that made Aftermath so good and then some, however, for the rest of us who aren’t part of the hardcore fan base you will need to look past the poor interface and dated graphics before you can find the true beauty underneath. Stick with it and you’ll certainly have an enjoyable experience, I’m just not sure how many of us have got the time the game demands is put into it.
Good, but could be so, so much better
