UFO: ALIEN INVASION (Freeware)

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UFO: ALIEN INVASION is a squad-based tactical strategy game in the tradition of the old X-COM PC games, but with a twist. Our game combines military realism with hard science-fiction and the weirdness of an alien invasion. The carefully constructed turn-based system gives you pin-point control of your squad while maintaining a sense of pace and danger.

Over the long term you will need to conduct research into the alien threat to figure out their mysterious goals and use their powerful weapons for your own ends. You will produce unique items and use them in combat against your enemies. If you like, you can even use them against your friends with our multiplayer functionality.

'UFO: Alien Invasion'. Endless hours of gameplay -- absolutely free.

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The game engine is based on a heavily modified version of ID's Quake2 Engine. This doesn't mean that 'UFO: Alien Invasion' is a modification or even a total conversion of Quake 2. It is a stand-alone game and doesn't require Quake 2 or any other program to run. All you need to play UFO:AI is a computer running Microsoft Windows or a supported version of Linux, and the installer from our website.

Our updated engine has modern OpenGL graphics and special effects, increased texture resolution, hardware-accelerated clipping of map layers for toggling between levels, a new animation system for player models, powerful artificial intelligence, and many other exciting features.

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Holy Cow!!

Anyone else seen this before? I found out about it on Gamespot:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...ion/index.html

It also has it's own web site:

http://ufo.myexp.de/

Looks very much like UFO: Aftermath, the craptastic game made by the same people in attempt to be like X-COM. Hopefully they will make Alien Invasion more fun.

See this thread created just a few weeks earlier about X-Com type games.......

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=80839

Oops... Thanks...

The main problem of this game is that objects cannot be destroyed.

So you cannot use tactics like open a hole on a wall or destroy the fence which is protecting the alien ... which IMHO is the best of the old xcom games.

Good point, it was such a useful tactic in XCOM:UFO and gave yo a sense of the seriousness of the situation... I remember after playing for a while, with certain aliens in opposition you would simply blow up the building rather than send people in to invesigate. Or simple create a new and safer enterence to that UFO...

Blow a hole in the wall, throw in smoke, rush in you men and let them take up positions so they had loads of AP's left when the smoke cleared...

That was the whole point of bringing in a squad member with rocket lauchers; to blow crap up and clear a path for your squadies with stunrods and laser rifles.

I only ever dabbled in the old XCOM games- rented it once, back in the days when you could actually rent PC games. :dizzy2:

Regardless, I'm definitely checking this one out. I really appreciate all the effort these guys go through to create open source, OpenGL games like this. :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

back in the days when you could actually rent PC games. :dizzy2:

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That was a mistake, being able to rent out PC games. The vast majority of said games (such as Cannon Fodder) could have been copied directly to the hard drive and play it without the CD, so you effectively bought a game for the price of a rental.

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Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae

That was a mistake, being able to rent out PC games. The vast majority of said games (such as Cannon Fodder) could have been copied directly to the hard drive and play it without the CD, so you effectively bought a game for the price of a rental.

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But the hard disks weren't anywhere near as big as they were today, so storage was sometimes an issue (i.e., you couldn't do that with tens and tens of games), playing without a CD could also be an issue because of copy protection, the Internet wasn't so popular so you couldn't find "no-cd" stuff so easily... so I don't think it was too big of an issue.

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Originally Posted by Blodrast

But the hard disks weren't anywhere near as big as they were today, so storage was sometimes an issue (i.e., you couldn't do that with tens and tens of games), playing without a CD could also be an issue because of copy protection, the Internet wasn't so popular so you couldn't find "no-cd" stuff so easily... so I don't think it was too big of an issue.

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Most of the games back then didn't need the CD to be played. And if they did, it usually contained about 200mb or less. CD protection back in the old days was pretty poor.