USC: Counterforce

I tries this game during the beta and its interface drove me crazy. I hoped it had been refined since but it's... incredibly frustrating. Mouse button use is entirely confusing which is compounded by the game's tutorial which blocks actions until you select the correct one. It is so unintuitive that I found myself rage clicking within the first 10 minutes trying to get things done. I just can't play this.

Die Idee des Spiels an sich, ein modernes X-COM ist gut. Die Umsetzung ist in Teilen auch gut gelungen. Die Atmosphäre ist sehr düster und es finden alle Kämpfe auf engstem Raum statt. Zu Beginn jeder Mission müssen die Einheiten ausgerüstet werden, die kann entweder mit den knappen Nachschub-Einheiten getan werden, oder aus EInzelteilen zusammengebaut. Das Geld welches man im Spiel verdient, kann hierfür leider nicht benutzt werden, es dient nur dem Basenbau als auch dem Ruf-Kauf mit Hilfe der Deodontith-Kristalle. Passend zur Ausrüstung ist der Schwierigskeitgrad knackig, schon auf der Standard-Stufe sind die Kämpfe sehr forderndund die prozedural generierten Maps teilweise so gestaltet, das es keinen Weg zum Ziel gibt, sondern dieser u.U. freigesprengt werden muss. Der begrenzte Platz der Marines, gemeinsam mit den verrauchbaren Gegenständen machen es nicht einfacher, sondern sorgen im Gegenteil dafür das gesucht werden muss, welcher Marine welche Gegenstände hat. Gerade wenn im späteren Spielverlauf fremde Basen geplündert werden, ist die Ausrüstung bei jedem Marine verteilt der noch Platz im Inventar hat und es beginnt ein munteres suchen wo was zu finden ist. Die teilweise fehlende Hilfe erleichtert den Spielverlauf nicht, im Gegenteil. Es gibt verschiedene Möglichkeiten Gegner zu besiegen, entweder einfach töten oder aber einfrieren. Ob es hier einen Unterschied gibt, oder aber die Gegner einfach nur auf verschiedene Arten beseitigt werden hat sich mir noch nicht erschlossen. Auch ist der Basenbau anders als gewohnt. Hier werden keine fertigen Gebäude gebaut, sondern in jeder Karte kann die Basis nach belieben angepasst werden. Da jedoch auch Energiegeneratoren gebaut werden müssen, welche alle eine unterschiedliche Reichweite inkl. verschiedenen Output haben wird es auch hier komplex da jedes Gerät innerhalb der Basis Strom braucht. Dies gilt auch für die Scanner, welche die Gegeng nach Feinden scannen sollen. Nur entweder funktionieren diese anders als gedacht, da 3 aneinander angrenzende Basen keine Feindliche Horde im Angriff auf die mittlere Bais feststellen können, oder aber es fehlt an Strom oder anderen Punkten welche sich mir mangeks Information nicht erschließen. Der Detailgrad ist in allen Bereichen sehr hoch, allerdings ist die Umsetzung überall recht schlecht erfolgt. Z.B. können alle Waffen mit bis zu 3 Upgrades ausgerüstet werden. Allerdings werden nur 3 Upgrades gleichzeitig angezeigt obwohl die Liste bestimmt ein gutes Dutzend möglicher Upgrades beinhaltet. Da es auch keine Zusammenfassung zu den Stats einer Waffe gibt, ist hier Rätselraten angesagt. Das gleiche gilt für bis zu 5 Munitionsarten pro Waffe, bei denen Teilweise nicht einmal die Kosten angezeigt werden. Da einige gegen verschiedene Munitionsarten immun sind, stellt sich mri auch die Frage warum man vom günstigen Standard abweichen soll. Da je nach Waffe 3 Stapel Munition drauf gehen, von denen jeder Stapel X Einheiten umfasst welche separat gekauft werden müssen, geht das zumindest am Anfang gut ins Geld. Ein weiteres Beispiel für gewollt und nicht gekonnt sind die Fraktionen. Hier steigt und fällt gefühlt willkürlich die Zustimmung. Wenn ich Basen errichte und Deodontith fördere womit ich auch mehr vom Planeten kontrollieren, sinkt die Zustimmung der USC. Wenn ich Upgrades oder Prototypen kaufe, steigt die Zustmmung, fällt aber mit jeder Runde, welche Ingame-Zeit nur 3 Stunden enthält, wieder ab. Bedeutet wenn ich die Boni einer Fraktion in der X->ten Runde besitze, kann ich sie in X+1 schon wieder verloren haben. Alles in allem ein ungeschliffener Diamant, er macht zwar in Teilen Spaß, aber viele Bugs verderben einen diesen wieder. Zumal die Hardware-Anforderungen für ein Indie-Spiel ziemlich hoch sind und die Spielzeit RL gefühlt die gleiche ist wie Ingame. Alles kostet enorm viel Zeit, obwohl die Karten sehr klein sind.

This ain't it, chief, needs more time in the oven. At the time of writing there hasn't been any major updates since launch so I presume it wasn't financially viable for the studio to continue development, but don't take that as gospel it's just my thoughts. Either way I wish the devs good luck.

I went in with no knowledge about this game. I just got hooked by the fact it's supposed to be turnbased and looked pretty nice, It's pretty straight forward in the tutorial and when you hit the real game you are in for a ride of pain :) It took me almost 3 hours to complete the first mission. But it sure was rewarding. But try it out at easiest difficulty first not at hard like i did. I really like the game and I will continue to play it. Recommended if you are a true turnbased nut and doesn't mind some ass-wopping on the way to glory.

I love this game, it's super rewarding setting up your entire squad and then watching them fight aliens and knowing you set everything up to happen the way it did. It would be great though if you could set the same weapons and skills for multiple units at once rather than having to go around every unit individually which takes a lot of time.

1) Performance issues on a machine that is way above recommended specs. 2) No developer support post-launch, so issue 1 is going to stay. 3) Repetitive missions. 4) Poor campaign pacing. Great idea, lousy execution. I am still going to play it for a bit, probably. But i don't think it's worth the asking price.

I'm not sure why the mixed reviews on this game, its really quite good it brings the older style of strategy games into having a nice actually usable UI which is where they were always lacking. there can be a lot of different effects going on at the same time in battles like acid, bleeding, on fire ect which you have to keep and eye on and there is too much loot to be a hoarder and bring everything back, you have to pick and choose but i like it.

Another game with a terrible interface. Making it unplayable.

6.5/10 XCom-like TBS in space TLDR: the game is for the uber-hardcore TBS nerds, though much of its difficulty comes from cluttered UI design and poor onboarding. Visuals are polished yet the top-down perspective is just a unfortunate choice. Patient players might still want to check it out at a discount Good: + it has the XCom/JA2 formula at its heart + pretty UI graphics + very nice music + a lot of small interesting stuff like pushing/pulling objects, fully destructible environments, jumping over poison puddles + if you like complexity, it's a very complex game - if only this complexity was introduced gradually and not all at once So-so: +/- the story is too verbose. Just to start the first mission, there is a whole Zoom call with half a dozen characters involved. And nothing interesting is actually said. I mean, we hate that already at our jobs, so games should not try to replicate that. The game desperately needs humor or some kind of life to it. But no, it's just too serious about itself, and you can even see it from the guy on the game's Steam banner. So serious! You don't mess with this guy! +/- the tutorial is long and detailed. The white arrow pointing where to click should be animated because it's often hard to locate it. Still, much of the tutorial is just text, and you forget most of it later. The amount of stuff this game has to teach is just way too much. Instead, the game should have introduced its mechanics more gradually. As it is now, you go thru a whole academy and then, in the very first mission of a campaign, face the whole game's complexity like an impenetrable wall. That's not how even hardcore games should be designed +/- attacks have very small action point cost, so in some cases a character can perform 7-8 precise shots with a sniper rifle in a single turn! Cmon, that's just unrealistic. Also, the enemies are usually bullet sponges. +/- weapons have geometry-based range patterns instead of a circle. So, often an enemy is just 3 tiles away but you can't shoot at it! The only other game where I saw this was Gorky 17, and it was a rather simple RPG-TBS with only 3, sometimes 4 characters in your team. This system doesn't fit the uber-detailed XCom-like simulation here... +/- it's often hard to see which tiles are passable and which aren't, where your soldier can see and walk. There are 3D terrain objects used here but they don't match the tiles all that obviously, also due to dynamic 3D lighting. Maybe this game should have been 2D, with clear pixel graphics +/- while walking, characters have annoying micro-delays at every tile while moving Bad: - top-down view is pretty bad. In fact, I can't recall any successful TBS game with such a view. Even Jagged Alliance 1 had it slightly from the side. Dune 2 was an RTS game almost without infantry, and already C&C and Wacraft 1/2 had units shown at a slight angle. Battle Isle - didn't have humans, just tanks. Templar Battleforce - a bad mobile game that no one should want to copy... With the top-down view, soldiers feel anonymous, too much alike (can't even tell females from males). Soldiers get visually lost in the surrounding gray-ish ground. Small aliens similarly look like gray blobs, with little character to them (big ones are okay). There are boxes that you can shoot over and those that you can't - the difference is impossible to see from above. All this would require a proper 3/4 view angle. Just imagine how crappy JA2 or Fallout 1/2 would look and play in this top-down presentation! - the UI is designed according to the principle "show max amount of stuff possible that the screen space allows". This results is complexity akin to that of controlling a nuclear reactor. The irony is, most of the data shown on the screen you don't even need most of the time. For example, the whole contents of a character's inventory are shown at the bottom as if at a quick action panel (but what is ammo then doing in the quick action panel?). Stats of shots of a weapon are always shown (should have been visible only when you're targeting a weapon). Character stats like resistances and front/rear armor could all go into a character info dialog that you'd bring up with a right click. Tooltips are incredibly long and pile in just about everything possibly related to the thing - to the point that you just don't want to read them - inventory management is counter-intuitive. E.g. to load ammo into a weapon, the most natural way is to drag the ammo item over a gun. But here it's right clicks on buttons. It seems that the dev found out that players were confused in the playtests, so they have those "right-click to equip, _THEN_ right click to load ammo" sentences revealing their frustration with player stupidity. Just don't re-invent obvious designs that have been tested over decades... Put up a ragdoll with slots and a backpack, and it would all be obvious to anyone who played an RPG game before, and the tutorial would shrink a bit - there is a 3D overlay that shows the "1st person view of the selected character" - carries no information and only adds clutter - no tutorial for base management / room construction (I found an encyclopedia article on it hours after I've kinda figured it out thru trial and error) - can't order soldiers to swap places. Which is kinda important cuz most maps are very tight here, and your melee soldier can span in a back row inside an elevator for example - there is a huge encyclopedia, even with videos, that explains many things. But in my first battle I couldn't find an answer to the simple question: how can poison be cured? Can it be? One article says soldiers can "heal themselves". How? I spent all medkits yet the soldiers were still dying. Encyclopedia needs a "search" function like the one in Civ 5. Though again, I'm pretty sure that with a tighter design about 30% of those explanations would not be needed at all [table][tr][th][i]I'm a Steam curator, you can [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43946907-Friendly-Nerd/]follow me[/url][/i][/th][/tr][/table]

[h1] 密集恐惧症的拟物化UI [/h1] 操作特别烦，大半时间都在配武器上了，物品栏加个拖动会？非得按鼠标点击然后再点击去取消，微动寿命都没了。 任务程序化严重，一开始难度曲线就巨高，场外养成对难度的缓解程度很低，等于开局的装配就够通关了，毫无玩下去的动力。