UFO: Alien Invasion (525Mb)
Can’t believe I haven’t found this one before. The Internet’s a huge place, well, so is this game! It’s open source and free and totally amazing! To say this is spectacular is one heck of an understatement! It’s a turn based strategy game, and really is outstandingly good! At last we have a worthy sequel to X-Com!
“This version takes place in the future, with some different weapon types and different looking aliens, but the same premise ... defend earth from the threat of alien invasion. The turned based missions run at the same time, and you can build bases, research alien artifacts, perform autopsies, and equip your soldiers for battle, just like in the old days. Not to mention, you've got to keep the world powers happy to continue to receive funding for the whole operation.”
The graphics are excellent, but the gameplay is brilliant! It does have a learning curve of 1 to 2 hours, but this is time very well spent. You might easily spend 20 to 40 hours or much much more playing this one. I really rather like UFO: Alien Invasion!
You have to send scientists to research (and copy!) alien technology if you are going to be successful, and minimize civilian casualties!
The game is under ongoing future development and may include extras such proximity mines in future. It would be good if you could have real time battles with alien ships in 3D, but we might have to wait on this one! The present release version is stable and free of most bugs . . . except the alien ones you have to kill!
Ok, there are a few downsides. Much of the scenery isn’t destructible as the coding for this would be immense, and there is a good deal of micro-management of men and resources, eg re-arming individual soldiers and individual spaceships, watching worker and scientist stats, etc. On the other hand you might want to have two snipers with little ammo, one guy with a big gun and lots of ammo for suppressing fire, and one guy with lots of grenades acting as a mortar. And maybe a medic without weapon at all, but moving quickly? You will want to hire the best scientists and workers; assume you're not being ripped off by buying stock - you are the "first and last" line of defense, I'm sure the world wouldn't be too picky about making a profit on selling you stuff! Or would they? . . .
You’ll need a minimum 500MHz CPU, 128MB RAM free and a 32MB graphics card which must have 3D acceleration.
There is of course a multiplayer Internet and network option - but note clients have to use the same release version.
Download Here
Manual Here
Video Here
