Jolt Country

There are now about a dozen games named "UFO." All of them have a colon after the O. It's the hot thing to do -- putting colons after your names satisfies everyone involved with naming the game, thanks to the almighty franchise. Warren Spector made a game that somebody wanted to call "Invisible War." A decent enough title. But whoa! It's now "Deus Ex: Invisible War." JUST. LIKE. THAT.

But at least it was a sequel. I love these games that are not sequels that still get the colon treatment. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Oh! Oohhhh, I say! I was going to ask for Disgaea as a gift, but I don't want that one, I want the Hour of Darkness non-sequel.

UFO: Alien Invasion is an attempt at re-making X-COM. So far, nobody has been able to do it right.

UFO: Alien Aftermath needed a patch and got terrible reviews everywhere.

Silent Storm was set in World War II. No aliens! Aliens are necessary.

Jagged Alliance has graphics that are just unplayable.

Jagged Alliance II is ... well, actually, it's excellent.

That brings us to Alien Invasion.

Alien Invasion is being created by Germans using the Quake II engine. For those whose ass is not in the know, anybody can make a game using the Quake II engine these days. You need to buy a license if you want to sell it and so forth, but the engine itself is quite free to play around with.

There's no destructable terrain in Alien Invasion. This automatically makes X-COM the better game. It will probably never be bested. But Alien Invasion certainly looks nice enough:







Like with all games, I'm positive about it because it hasn't been completely released yet. There is a tech demo that I plan to download and play as soon as I have time. I can't find the thing's release date, but hopefully it will be a nice spiritual successor to one of the best squad-based tactical turn-based combat games ever made.

There's this other one I heard of called "Laser Squad Nemesis: That Game Jonsey Never Got".

This looks like a game I could attempt to beat you at. Let's try that.

Wait! Shit. DirectX has officially dropped the Voodoo series since DX9, but fortunatley this will of couse use OpenGL. I hope I can get it running, atleast vaguely.

So, UFO Alien Invasion is still around and kicking and people say it's awesome.

Let's have your TAKE.

http://ufoai.net

UFO: Extraterrestrials apparently came out recently, and that's the hot new UFO game people are playing, modding and loving. What's your TAKE on that, Pinner?

I dunno. Gamespot says it BLOWS.

So I'ma just try out the free one which everyone says rules.

Gamespot is worthless. The guy who reviewed it doesn't like squad-based tactical warfare games. He usually reviews sports games. Take it from me, someone who used to play a lot of sports games: anyone playing them now, regularly, of his own free will doesn't have anything important to say about anything.

So what do YOU think of UFO:AI. If you like it, I'll give it a shot.

It didn't work on my machine, and there was no documentation, and it sucked and it blows and I hate it. And I love squad-based tactical games.

(Actually I'm pretty neutral toward squad-based tactical games.)

Whoa. Neutral?? Don't be neutral.

Have you played Space Rangers 2 yet? It's not a squad based tactical game, but I think you'll like it. It includes many different genres, including text adventure!