In response to a thread I started a while back ...
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=105013&b=2
which was autolocked by it's age, I just thought I'd report back for those who were interested at the time.
Extraterrestials is a good solid game that I would recommend to any fan of the original xcom games. It's almost identical, so if you've played the first or second game, you'll know exactly what to expect. So, all I'll do here is sum up the good and bad points:
Good stuff:
- Graphics are up to date, although not at all cutting edge, but good enough to make it playable.
- Unit experience is much improved. Now you get to assign skill points when your units get promoted to specialise them (i.e. shooting, time units, reactions, throwing etc.)
- Unit leveling up seems to be easier too, so they're not shockingly crap for too long, shooting in the complete opposite direction to their target.
- Interception of craft is much better. You don't zoom into some weird interception screen now. All the craft do there combat on the main globe and you see rockets and lasers flying around and exploding, making it much easier to manage your interceptors.
- More ships and heavy weapon platforms. I've already got 4 different types of ships and 3 HWP and there's still alien tech I need to unlock to research, so I expect more.
- More weapon variety. Shotguns, rifles, rocket launchers, and the laser tree, plus chemical guns, flame throwers, huge incendiary rockets etc.
Bad stuff:
A fair amount of features have been removed, although they're not determental to the game play ...
- Research is the same, with many of the same items, although there are even more. It's a bit different as you no longer build labs and fill them with scientists you can hire and fire. Each lab gives you 10 scientists, so you need to build loads of labs and sell whole labs when you're not using your scientists. A bit rubbish, but workable.
- You can no longer manufacture stuff and sell it at a profit (only at a loss) so there's no method to make extra income. But manufacture is much the same.
- Base building is the same, except only your main base is populated. The others only act as intercepting bases and can only be defended with base defences. When they're taken over you have to retake them with your ground forces from your main base. This also means you can't do research or manufacture etc. anywhere but at your main base, so there's a limit to all of it.
Other minor changes:
- Ship weapon ammo is all free. So once you've armed a ship, you don't have to buy rockets etc. to restock it. So as long as they don't get blown up, they're good to go.
- Troops can get critically wounded on the battlefield and just get knocked out until they get back to the hospital at base. This seems to happen more often than actual death, so not sure if that's good or bad.
There's probably more, but that's all I can think of right now. Overall I would definitely recommend it to XCOM fans. At the start it feels too samey as you research the same old laser tech tree and medikit etc etc. but eventually you get onto more interesting things. The environments are also different which is nice, although they don't feel any richer than the original game.
As I said, I'd recommend it to XCOM fans, but probably not to other gamers. It's old skool and the price tag (budget) reflects it's overall quality, but the formula is still addictive if you loved the original. So far I've put about 10-20 hours into it and still happily playing.
