Review: UFO Afterlight game

Is there life on Mars? Apparently there is, if UFO Afterlight is anything to go by. In fact, the third title in developer Altar’s strategic trilogy sees the remnants of the human race inhabiting the Red Planet after Earth itself was conquered by an alien race.

The game is a mixture of squad-based tactical action and strategy on a global scale as you try to make Mars a nicer place to live. All the usual strategy game elements come into play; resource management, technological research, diplomacy and, of course, combat.

For some reason, Mars also plays host to a lot of evil robots who seem intent on spoiling the humans’ colonisation plans.

It’s quite a good set-up for a strategy game, but rarely does UFO Afterlight live up to its promise, with a number of niggling issues seriously spoiling the fun.

Graphically, for example, Afterlight looks several years old compared to many other games of this type. Sure, the game’s scale is big, but the cutesy cartoon style and basic-looking environments, buildings and vehicles leave a lot to be desired.

Appalling dialogue doesn’t help matters much, either. Badly translated speech starts off being an amusing quirk of the game, but after several hours you’ll soon tire of the spoonerisms and baffling turns of phrase uttered by characters during play.

Action switches between the planetary overview, where you can plan your missions, and close-up situations that require your undivided attention. This is fine in theory, but the developer’s attempt at blending real-time strategy with turn-based gameplay and even role-playing elements (you can ‘level-up’ characters, for instance) makes for a pretty confusing all-round experience, particularly for those less familiar with the strategy genre.

With Supreme Commander just around the corner and other, better space-based strategy games already on the shelves, UFO Afterlight is unlikely to appeal to anyone other than dedicated fans of the series.