Woot!

[pauln1964]

Amazon order turned up at work today.

Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star to go on the reading pile (alongside the latest proper size paperbacks from Lindsey Davies, Laurel Hamilton and Sue Grafton).

UFO: Aftermath to take over my pc time (once I've finished Terror from the Deep, though I may give the rest of that one a miss).

And Penny and I are likely to be spending a lot of time with the DVD player and the fifth series of Babylon 5.

On the subject of decent TV SF, haven't yet got round to watching Saturday's Dr Who but caught the trailer for the next one last night. I knew what that was in the darkness as soon as I saw its lights glowing, but there was still a definite frisson when it was revealed.

Comments

[raselhague.livejournal.com]

Is Pandora's Star part of the Reality Disfunction series?

Mmm.. UFO Aftermath.. that's what I've been doing.. never enough time to play it though. :(

[pauln.livejournal.com]

Nope - that's Reality Dysfunction, Neutronium Alchemist and Naked God. This is different world and has a "concluding part" coming at some point.

Nearly all of PFH's stuff is worth reading though. Fallen Dragon, I particularly enjoyed.

[raselhague.livejournal.com]

Ahh.. Aha. I have those books, but haven't read them yet.

Fallen Dragon is an excellent read. I may just have to read it again sometime soon.. after this Simon Green Deathwalker book.. :)

[raselhague.livejournal.com]

I meant Deathstalker of course... (*blames B5*)

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Terror From the Deep isn't a bad game. Though it would be nice if more weapons worked above water...

[pauln.livejournal.com]

It would be nice if the version I've got didn't randomly crash all over the place - including on the first alien turn of every above water mission.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I much preferred the first game - Enemy Unknown - TFTD didn't really add a lot in terms of game-play (moving through water was exactly the same as moving through air) and some of the missions (specifically the Ship Terror Raids) were basically impossible to survive without losing significant parts of your X-Com squad. Far better to land on the ship and take off again, or just chose not to take the mission and accept the hit in PR.

And X-Com: Apocalypse was just plain poor ...

Which one is Aftermath?

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Aftermath. If it's a development of Apocalypse, though...

[xavin.livejournal.com]

"...some of the missions (specifically the Ship Terror Raids) were basically impossible to survive without losing significant parts of your X-Com squad..."

Really? I don't remember them being particularly deadly. Though I do seem to recall that taking tanks along was a bad idea (they wouldn't come through to the second stage and I think may even have been a bug which meant they then counted as having been destroyed).

My main issue with those missions was the fact that the last one or two aliens left after you'd slaughtered there mates would panic and hide - and be absolute buggers to track down so you could finish the mission with a win.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

YMMV - I found that in the first 5 ship missions I did, the usual sequence was:

Turn 1: X-Com - get half the squad out of the transport.

Turn 1: Aliens - kill the visible X-Com soldiers, having moved from cover so there was no chance of them seeing you coming.

Turn 2: X-Com - get someone out able to take a shot at the alien. Fail.

Turn 2: Aliens - see Turn 1.

And so on.

The first ship missions, where your soldiers couldn't shoot straight enough and the aliens had serious amounts of armour, put me off the game. I could waltz through the Terror missions on land, and the ship retrieval missions, but the ship based terror missions used to destroy me every time.

[pauln.livejournal.com]

Aftermath is from a company called Altar Interactive, not by Microprose. A number of people on my friends seem quite enamoured with it, mab69 for one.

Folks may also be interested in UFO: Alien Invasion, which is "heavily inspired by" the X-Com series.