UFO: Aftermath
Skip · Strategy · 2014
The verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $3.99.
- Length
- 22.7h
- Value
- $0.18/hr
- Reviews
- 78% positive
Watch this gameOne email when it is worth buying. Your call on what that means.
Get one email when UFO: Aftermath is worth buying.
One email per game. Unsubscribe in a click.
Minimum on the Steam store: 123 MB of memory, 32 MB GeForce2, 1 GB of storage. Windows only.
UFO: Aftermath is a 3D isometric, tactical strategy game with a rich and compelling sci fi story.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $0.59. That was November 2019. 70 discounts in the 12 years on record. They run about 80 percent off, roughly 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 13 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 7 weeks.
Value puts it in the top 19 percent of the games it competes with. It is cheaper than 72 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 67 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Aliens: Dark Descent ($39.99, scores 64) beats it on value, while it beats The Red Solstice ($0.99, scores 30).
The main story runs 22.7 hours. Doing everything runs 46, 2.0 times as long.
What players say
UFO: Aftermath is a video game from my youth. I vividly recall playing the demo from a UK Strategy Gamer demo disk on my 13th birthday. I loved it so much I bugged my mum that I wanted to buy the game with the money I got as a gift for my birthday. We went to several stores and I still remember finally seeing that box art on the shelf of a Harvey Norman... The rest was countless late nights trying to learn the game...
Unexpectedly interesting xcom-like project, that can both surprise with its mechanics combined with unusual ideas and annoy player with quite poor/old technical condition. 1024x768 resolution and some other downsides, including hard 'setup' process to just start playing the game - make it challenging to enjoy. I also think that UFO: Aftershock (sequel) might be a better entry point as they made a lot of work on...
Don't buy Moronic publisher decided to slap a launcher that's actually a crapware ad on top of the regular exe, and as a result it's not longer possible to play the game through Steam on windows 11 DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
UFO: Aftermath scores 48/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/292160/ufo-aftermathThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 20, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.