Ultimate Space Commando

Compared to USC counterforce, This lack QOL and other refinement of the sequel. However, if you find similar idea to this and your rig can not handle the beefy requirement of the sequel, pick this. Cheaper, fit for potato PC, and if you desperately want to play USC, go pick this. A word of warning though: override circuitry minigame can be quiet the PITA, which the sequel luckily remove, but I just plain rage because there's need for games fit for working class or middle class computer, instead of needing high end stuff that the rich folks can spare. Also if whoever build this platform in first place: provide informational option instead of yes/no, but if you don't have at least an hour of testing game to know quality game, then I must choose not recommend option.

One of the best hardcore tactical games I've ever played, hands down. I'm only a couple missions into the campaign and don't plan on stopping, even with the logic puzzles for doorlocks. I also don't really mind the unique firing lanes for each weapon/firing mode. I thought that would bother me but it really doesn't.

Nothing much else to say, other than it's actually pretty insane that USC and USC: Counterforce aren't more widely known and covered/appreciated in the turn based tactical gaming scene. Amazing levels of detail and overall balance curve, especially for a solo developer. Thanks to the dev for these 2 games because usually, to get this kind of experience you have to play really old school titles that were refined for years. If you see this review, absolutely do not sleep on these games.

Demanding and full of tactical options!
The top down view is clean and allows to make informed decisions, while the AP system provides actual freedom compared to the "move-shoot" standard of many other games.
Don't expect to save the world though. The game is tough and unforgiving, x-com of old type of punishment, but it does it well.
I had fun getting eaten by aliens, burnt by friendlies or even blown up by what used to be my cover ^^
I also enjoyed Unit progression and skills, when i was able to keep my crew alive :)

Constant freezes, crashes and black screens means this gets a negitive review.

First thing first, this is a one man game. One of those that were made by a single individual. Which alone deserves some serious admiration. I mean, it's a pretty complicated game and the man invested heck of a lot of time in its development. There's one thing about such games, though. Very often, while being huge achievements for their developers, they can't give you enough reason to actually bother. Just because the developers often attempt to create a copy of something they liked. Without even asking themselves about whether the world needs something like that or not. Remember BC Kings? Aside from some help with things like soundtrack, it was pretty much a one man game. But what did that person make? He made a WarCraft clone with some Age of Empire elements in it. Remember The Signal From Tölva? It had only a few people working on it. What did they make? A freakin' Far Cry clone. I mean, I respect the fact that developers loved those games. But why wasting their time on something that was already done in better and more expensive way? Why not to make something the world actually needs right now, at this exact point of time? So, the first thing I wanted to know about the Ultimate Space Commando is what the heck it's trying to achieve.

And it turned out that Creatio 49... kind of got it. Kind of. See, the Ultimate Space Commando is a tribute to the games like the original Laser Squad (with some design elements added from other games, like Warhammer 40k and Space Hulk series). And since modern kids often think that turn-based stuff is boring and even the games that used to be turn-based become real-time nowadays (Fallout, Final Fantasy, you know the stuff), I do think that there was a real need for something like USC. And it's not like the man made an indie version of X-COM. We already have an updated X-COM. Two of them, actually. There was no real need for another one. Laser Squad, on the other hand? It was a really nice choice. So, yeah, sure. Why not? Bring it on!

Now let's see on how it's done. First of all, this review is written based on version 1.0.9.3, while the game took a (very) long time to make. Early versions didn't even have the campaign, while this one... This one has pretty much everything you may want from an indie title. It has single player campaign with the story (which sucks, but who cares about it with this kind of gameplay?), it has a freeplay mode (more than one, actually), it has multiplayer, it has hall of fame... It even has cloud saves. What else you may ask for?!

And the actual gameplay... it's totally OK too. It's turn-based, you control the squad of soldiers, you fight aliens and you should care about things like experience, stats (some soldiers will be fighters, some soldiers will act like medics, some will be hackers, etc), moral, radiation poisoning, etc. And You'll also need to care about some things between missions too. Not on the X-COM level, sure, but still. See, the game has multiple endings. And to achieve something good, you'll need to research some stuff and to beat some optional missions. You can actually ignore optional stuff here and go for the basic ending, but... let's just admit it, it's always more fun when there are multiple endings. Even though story isn't really good (well, you can't ask a single person to be both a good game developer and a good writer), multiple endings are enough to make you want to re-play this game.

Of course, there's also a bunch of cons here. I mean, aside from a poor story. First of all, this game isn't really well-polished. Sure, we didn't even hear the word “balance” when the original Laser Squad came out. We just enjoyed the game and were OK with it being a b**ch sometimes. And this game? It can be a b**ch too. In other words, you'll need to learn a few tricks before you'll be able to fully enjoy it. Like in the good ol' times. And the UI that can be pretty uncomfortable with no real need for that whatsoever won't make the learning curve for you any easier. You'll lose a lot, you'll try again, you'll change your tactic, you'll try different approach... As long as you weren't born yesterday, you know the drill. That's the fun thing about USC, by the way. It simulates the old school experience... almost perfectly. For both good and bad. I mean, sure, as an old geezer, I always welcome some old school stuff that doesn't try to make things easier for you. For example, I just can't stand when they make the remakes of the old adventures and add the easy hint system in them. I mean, why? Why do we need those? Lack of those was part of the charm! Same thing here. I'm far from asking the game for being more casual. And yet, some things from the past are better stay in the past. At least, more comfortable UI and less cheap deaths are needed here. Will all that ruin the game for old farts like me? Nah, not even close. But for the young players who don't like playing the old stuff? It can be hell. Especially since tutorial here is pretty poor.

Another thing I disliked was hacking. Sure, you won't surprise anyone with yet another hacking mini-game. Heck, even Deus Ex series has those nowadays. It's just... it's a little bit... unpleasant and seriously unpolished in this game. It's distracting, it's annoying and it has a weird difficulty changes. Try to hack the door, fail, try again and... suddenly, mini-game becomes laughably easy. Not necessarily in that order (© 4th Doctor). Sure, you can avoid those annoying mini-games by paying for certain hacking devices (yep, money is also a thing here), but... you know how it is. Unbalanced and annoying stuff is... well... unbalanced and annoying. The missions also don't have enough variety and pretty much every single main mission here is just our usual “kill 'em all”. Optional objectives are more fun, but obviously, those are... you know... optional. And even they can't save the game from being a bit too repetitive. Like I've said, this game just screams for more variety.

But all in all, I must say, I totally enjoyed USC. Not sure if I'll ever want to return to it after achieving the best ending possible, though. The game just doesn't make enough impact on you, it doesn't have enough variety and clearly it's far from being the most polished experience out there. And yet, I totally enjoyed my experience here while I stayed. Does it worth $ 9.99? Well... kind of. Mostly out of respect to the one man project and only for the old school players, but still. Does it worth it with 50% off and more? For the old school players – totally. For the new generation – depends only on how much are you ready to suffer from the old school learning curve. One thing is for sure – Ultimate Space Commando is a pretty nice way to get some more Laser Squad-like experience. And let's just admit it, in its current state, the game industry needs more attempts like this. Dixi.

If you are someone who values gameplay over graphics and loves challenging turn-based tactics games, I cannot recommend this highly enough, especially with it being so very cheap in the sale at the moment. I haven't gone too far into the campaign as yet, but I'm liking what I've played of it so far. Although the game isn't set in the Alien franchise universe, it is clear that the game takes its inspiration from it. And nails the atmosphere and experience, imho.

Some minor quibbles are that turns can take quite a while to resolve if there are many aliens on the map (and I've a powerful rig), plus your commandos cannot switch positions with each other if adjacent, something I'd have expected to be possible.

The graphics and ui are functional, old-school style. Sound and music do the job. Gameplay is tough as nails on the hard difficulty, exactly how I like it. Thumbs up!

Hint for new players : you'll actually need those rubber duckies ;p

Aliens 2 vibe.
"The Walls, there coming out a the god damn walls, argh.."

Also the legions of folks who enjoyed the old Jagged Alliance and Xcom games would find much to like in this game

A Jagged Alliance/XCom-style tactical turn-based strategy game which requires a lot of patience to fight thru the cumbersome text instructions, poor controls and the messy tutorial. 6/10

Pros:
- it's a tactical TBS, a genre which I'm a lifetime fan of
- there are lots of features in the game, so overall it's more complex than JA2 or XCom

So-so:
- to crack locked doors, there is a puzzle minigame which has too complicated rules. They could seem logical to an electronics engineer but very counter-intuitive to everyone else. E.g. a normal person would expect "true" to be the presense of electric current and "false" the absence of current. Instead, "true" is some strong current, and "false" is weak current, and there is a third state which is the absense of current. In this 3-state space you get "AND", "OR" and "XOR" operators which work in strange ways. For some weird reason, 2 "true"s together lead to failure. I guess this minigame is even weirder to programmers (like me) who are used to the boolean logic but not to its physical implementation in curcuits.
- controls barely make use of mouse over. You can't drag things (instead just click on stuff). The merc's inventory is hidden by default and comes sliding from the side of the screen, hiding the "End Turn" button. There is artificial clutter which probably comes from the desire to make the game play both on very small screens (a mobile port?) and very large monitors. In my case (1920x1080 monitor, and I chose "x1" GUI scale) I ended up with much unused space in some places and clutter in other places.
- the top-down perspective makes the game look amateurish. The sprites of soldiers are all alike and feel generic and anonymous. An isometric perspective (like in JA2 or XCom or Xenonauts) would have worked much better and give this game 10x sales. The GUI has poorly chosen colors which add to the amateurish feel. But well, it's indie game made on a shoestring budget.
- the music is space-y but too simplistic. Sounds almost like it's MIDI. Again, it's an indie game

Cons:
- instructions are very wordy (like, "walls of text") and presented as modal dialogs. Usually you'd have already forgotten what was in the first 2/3 of the text when you press OK to close the dialog and be able to try out in the game what the tutorial wants you to do. Sometimes there are even 2 or 3 such dialogs going in succession, so you surely would have forgotten most of it when you finally close the last dialog. Instead, the instructions should have been been split into much shorter sections, and made non-modal (you just see a single instructions paragraph all the time in some corner of the screen while you do what you're told). Also, the game tells you to press buttons by describing their position on the screen instead of simply highlighting them or pointing at them with arrows. Oh btw English isn't perfect in places, so even more confusion is added by minor nuances in the meaning of words or typos
- the tutorial is pretty buggy and hard to follow. I got stuck in the very first room at the step where the Alvarez merc must close the door (as it turned out in my later restarts, he needs to OPEN a door in the western wall, NOT close the one in the south wall). Btw if you do something in a slightly different order than the tutorial expects you to, the popups may start coming at wrong moments, won't make much sense and confuse you even more. Since the game is so complex, the tutorial should have made only the exact required spots on the screen clickable and lock out everything else - that way it would be easy to follow and avoid ambiguities. The tutorial ends abruptly without letting you loot any dropped items or crates, and you can't reload from the previous save.

In short, this game lacks "accessibility". The walls of text should go into "civilopedia" or something. Before buying this game, I was wondering why it isn't more popular but now I know. The main 2 reasons are: 1) poor presentation (top-down view, dark blurred sprites, even the banner on Steam looks like a stub) and 2) lack of accessibility (poor controls, messy untested tutorial).

Btw I visited the dev's website and was (positively) surprised to learn that the game was made amost entirely by a single woman programmer. I'm happy that there are women out there who would not only play a TBS game but even make one! For a single dev, this game is an achievement! I hope that she makes a sequel to this game with accessibilty as the main priority.

I'm pretty split whether to recommend it or not. If you're a very patient, old-school hardcore player, sure give it a try.

[table][tr][th]I'm a Steam curator, you can follow me[/th][/tr][/table]

Having tried a few games like this (steam marines, space hulk, templar battleforce) I feel safe in saying if you're looking for a turn-based space marines vs aliens game this is the best available on steam. The UI looks a little amateur but there is a very solid game underneath.

The game sells its theme through its gameplay very effectively, with every fight a battle for position to avoid getting surrounded, opening and closing doors to move through cramped corridors safely, enemies breaking down walls and doors to reach you, there is a lot of tension and uncertainty. Your guys have a lot of health and relatively high % chance to hit compared to similar games, which I find helps keep things focused on the tactics and does a pretty good job of avoiding those all too frequent XCOM moments where the success of a mission ultimately comes down to a single dice roll.

Game rules are consistent, and with plenty of actions per turn it always feels like each turn represents a significant change in the state of the game. Enemy AI is pretty good and at its best feels very human-like, attempting to surround you, negate chokepoints and pick off your weakest squadmates.

Graphically the game is a bit of a mixed bag, I love the way the map tiles look like they came straight from a Fantasy Flight board game (as do the procedural map layouts), but on the other hand the marines are servicable but obvious knock-off 40K marines, and I find a few of the alien designs a bit samey. This is really a non-issue for me, but then I play a fair few ASCII games so clearly graphical fidelity is not high on my priority list.

Ultimately, if the theme or genre of this game interest you at all you will almost certainly get a lot of fun out of it, and considering the depth and robustness of the underlying ruleset, at £6.99 its an absolute steal.

Remember the Space Crusade game for DOS and Amiga in the 90's? This is as close as we are going to get to a new one of those. Basically the same kind of turn based strategy game with some more RPG stats thrown in.

Graphics are simplistic, not a good looking game, and the interface is confusing at first; but it is a very tense and challenging game.

Old school feel like X-Com only wayyy more tactical depth and a steeper difficulty which I enjoy thoroughly. Picked it up on sale during Xmas vacation, don't regret it at all and I will be playing it well beyond the point when Santa squeezes his fat a** down the chimney.

I usually wait until I've got at least 30 hours or so on something to review it, but in this case, I think I'm safe writing one earlier.

TL;DR = A tactical combat game very similar to the tac games of the 1990s. Quite a bit of micro, and lots of freedom to do what you want. It's a yes.

Review Proper:

Ultimate Space Commando is a bit deceiving. The name sounds like a weird Japanime crossover thing that's gotta be horribly translated, and the graphics are kinda ugly, even for a retro-esque game like this. That said, the gameplay itself is great, the freedom the mechanics offer is pretty hard to match, and it's certainly addictive.

The concept is pretty simple - you've crashlanded on a far away planet, and need to escape. To do this, you need to fight through enemies, collect materials, and maybe uncover some answers as to what's been happening. You'll upgrade your gear on the way, meet increasingly scary [s]sprites[/s] monsters matched only in their deadly-ness by their ugliness, and uncover little bits of a surprisingly well translated story on the way.

As many have mentioned, it plays a lot like older X-Com, Jagged Alliance, Silent Storm, etc. etc. As of such, there's some great stuff, some stuff you might love or might hate, and some meh stuff.

The Good:

First off, this is currently about the same price of a pack of smokes. That's never bad, particularly when the game is actually good, like this one is.

The combat is interesting, and the "18 distinct weapons" are actually pretty distinct. Even the shitty starting guns can be upgraded to respectable death machines with their own advantages. That's kinda cool.

The story is good for this kind of game - for one, it actually exists, and for two, it's reasonably coherent.

Dev support is great. Think I waited something like 3 hours to have my question answered. Given that you'll often only hear the words "there's only one dev" followed by some excuse as to why it shouldn't matter that a game sucks, is broken, or what have you, it's actually pretty mindblowing when you consider that this lady has managed to make a game that suffers from none of the above, is more indepth and packed with features than most multi-dev projects in the same genre, and is just genuinely good, while still having time to reply directly to the fanbase in a prompt manner.

It's HOTSEAT MULTIPLAYER. Seriously, why the fuck are all games like this, not to mention turn based 4x games, not hotseat multiplayer anymore?

The mechanics run deep.

You generally don't die because something utterly unfair has happened. Sometimes you get unlucky, but usually, you just fucked up.

There's really alot of good to say about this game, but the store page itself lays most of it out very well, so there's no need for me to do it again.

The Mixed:

You need to buy and manually equip every bullet you fire, every healthpack you use, and literally anything else you might expend in a mission. I don't mind this, because I grew up when games were like this, but some people might.

You have a very limited inventory. Your guys can only carry what they can carry in nine inventory slots, and you can only store nine things at your base. There are some good mechanics to help you not lose out on potential loot during a mission - namely that materials are automatically picked up at the end of most missions, and you can "field salvage" weapons and stuff for a percentage of their value if you don't have room to pack them back - but if you like to hoard stuff, you might find this irritating.

It's a little punishing. The mechanics run deep, but aren't usually very evident. Part of the fun of these kinds of games can come from figuring stuff out, but there's just some things you can't know until something goes wrong, or unless you ask the devs directly. Or read the manual, but who does that?

Similarly, the UI is oldschool. It's not as incomprehensible as some of the games it imitates, but it's not incredibly intuitive either. On the flip side of this, it's actually pretty simple once you get the basics down, and thus the learning curve isn't so bad.

The translation is surprisingly good, but it still seems fairly evident that the writing is either done by a complete amateur, or a non-native english speaker. That really doesn't matter at all to me, since it's still effective in getting the story across, and you're supposed to build your own attachments to your troops in these kinds of games, not have them thrust on you. But it might matter to someone. The only real complaint this causes is that sometimes, instructions are a little unclear.

The Bad:

There's not a lot to say here, but a two things do come to mind.

The fields of fire are messed up. You can only shoot straight, like a rook in chess, unless you're in defensive mode. Then you get a much larger field of fire. I'm guessing there is some reason behind this, but I haven't encountered it yet.

It's ugly. I couldn't design something prettier, but it's basically animation free, overly sterile, and just not pretty. This usually doesn't matter to me in games, and likely wouldn't here if the graphics style was something else, but I just don't like it much.

Conclusion:

All in all, this is really a hidden gem. It's cheap, has hotseat and online multiplayer, great gameplay, and tons of replayability. It's a really good game that catches the feel and style of 1990s turn based games very well, without descending into mediocre mechanics and design flaws.

I should also mention that there's a ton of other features such as an annual tournament, a series of challenge and other game modes, and a bunch of other neat crap I didn't touch on in the review because I haven't played around with them yet. There's a good bit of content I don't even know about, personally.

If this is your type of game, then you may find this is the best ten bucks or so you'll ever spend on Steam.

Have logged a few hours, both on & off Steam. This is game is very well designed & easy to setup & play. I really enjoy playing the "single missions". This game offers a variety of settings to include designing & tweaking your squads.
The random maps insure endless replay-ability as per one's surroundings. The "seeding numbers" per each map allow one to share his/her "world" to play as a challenge.
Of course; the best part is multiplayer co-op & head to head battles, which can be done via online or...HOTSEAT. :)
As any game ( pc or board ) is dependent on its' ability to provide an entertaining challenge...USC scores a 10 from me.
I will add, There are many very good videos on You Tube which highlight the many facets of this game.

If you like games like the old school xcom, jagged alliance, or the old space hulk, you will feel at home and love this game.
The randomized elements, different game modes (single mission with different challenges) the big campaign (with meaningfull choices) and defend the base all feel unique and will keep the experience fresh and make you come back for more.
The animations could be better but that is pretty much the only flaw in this game, and it is perfectly understandable since it is a one-person project.
8/10, would die because of stupid mistakes again ;)

This is what I would call a very good turn-based tactical sci-fi squad combat CRPG.

There's a fair amount to absorb at first, and when I first saw the battle maps it took a while to absorb, but it soon became natural and made sense. The combat similarly seemed very chaotic at first (especially when I jumped right into a one-off single mission with hordes of weird aliens - I tried to hide in my elevator but they started eating through the walls and electrocuting me and who knows what. But then I started the campaign and tutorial scenario and it was nice and slow and full of skippable explanations and things made sense from there out. Now there is still often all sorts of chaos, but it makes sense and I get what's going on even when monsters are eating through nearby walls and chain reactions of fuel and ammunition are ripping through a base and setting monsters on fire who go running away while other types come creeping in, etc...

It has most of the things I want in such a game, including many that are fairly hard to find all in one game:

* A campaign where you can manage your squad, trying to keep them alive through many battles, see them improve through experience and adjust their equipment and so on.
* Enough challenge and risk and permadeath, and no expectation to savescum/replay when things go wrong.
* More or less fully destructable environment, where missed shots and violence damage everything - walls and doors and objects, accidental "friendly" fire, etc.
* Tactics that mostly make sense and arise naturally from simulating the situation in ways that mostly make sense, with overwatch, use of cover and doors, a variety of weapon effects and skills, etc.
* Interesting, meaningful, and logical choices both at the tactical level and between missions.
* Freedom to try various approaches, as far as weapons and tactics, but also taking time to rest and repair at the risk the aliens will come after your base, etc.
* In the campaign, you manage 16 men but only use one or two squads per mission, so you can choose who to send on attacks, who to leave behind resting or doing repairs, and whether to try to get experience for the greener people or not.
* Nice relative absence of contrived scenarios and hoops to jump through, compared to some games. More of a chaotic simulation feel, which I like, though also with a fun/gamey/dark-humorous flavor.
* Details of ammo/equipment management, but not too much.

One great thing I didn't expect is the Defend The Base mode, which lets you set up a base and try to defend it against increasingly stronger waves of aliens, with damage details (including spilled fuel and acid and so on) being carried over, and limited resources to repair or re-arrange things, and an option to retreat rather than hold once the position seems untennable. Nice!

Also, the game is still in development and the developer is listening and adding some things that players have asked for, which is awesome, and in my very long experience with games, is what makes for the best games. For example, one thing that was jarring to me was the firing arcs of some weapons, which were limited during one's own turn to firing along straight or diagonal grid lines, which the developer had an interesting intention for doing, but which seemed unnatural to me (in contrast to the way most of the rest of the game works in ways I would expect, in nice detail, in fact). Turns out in response to player comments, they are working for an option to not do that, for players who don't want it, which may be in the next patch. Sweet!

I have a few gripes but nothing major. The odd firing arcs of some weapons was probably my biggest nitpick. The looting and inventory manipulation can be a bit fiddly but it hasn't bothered me too much yet, and I quite appreciate all the detail and choices. I could even wish it were more fiddly, as I find the recycler and manufacturing of new items during the campaign is very generous and I'd be interested to have to make do more with what I find. (Though without the recycler/manufacturer the lack of storage slots would become an issue.) Mainly I'd just like more of the same. I expect I will eventually have had enough for a while and wish for another campaign, but for now I'm happily hooked.

Anyway, I quite recommend Ultimate Space Commando!

A pretty bloody neat squad based tactical game.
If you want tactics against swarming enemies(flow control and the like) with heaps of weapons and both character customisation and permadeath, this is a very good game.
If you care for graphics and presentation, and want something super replayable, reconsider.

X-Com, Laser Squad, Fallout 1/2, Space Hulk.
If you're a fan of oldschool tactical combat, this game belongs in your library.

Pros:

Meaty, non-casual, action-point based combat like the orig X-com. The tension and onslaught of Space Hulk, where campaign ending death can occur at any moment.

Rogue-like randomisation, permadeath, one-save, possible to make campaign ending mistakes both tactically and strategically.

Oldschool difficulty. Normal is hard, hard is Ninja Gaiden/Battletoads sewer difficulty.

Tons of items. Random unique shiny loot. Melee weapons. Lasers, flamethrowers, tranquilizers, rocket launchers, miniguns, and everythig else under the sun. Each weapon has multiple attack modes, mods, and different types of ammo. Will you survive long enough to make use of any of it?

Helpful, responsive developer.

Cons:

Tedious, at times infuriating looting system that trolls you and can cause campaign restarts. Your commandos only have 9 slots, most of which will be filled with essential items, which means you'll spend a lot of time micromanaging inventory space to pick up loot after battle. Missions will abruptly end before you can reclaim deployed equipment/pick up loot. I'd kill for an option just to have all discovered/deployed items on the floor automatically looted after a successful mission.. it's all just unnecessary downtime that gets in the way of the tense combat .

Weird, arbitrary firing angle rules on the majority of weapons/firing modes, limiting your shots to UDLR and diagonals. Granted a token few are simply LOS, but the vast majority use the "star" aiming system. Overwatch/defend mode and monsters completely ignore these limitations.


The visuals are what you'd expect from a one-person project, but combat/gameplay trumps everything.. and USC has damn good combat. This is clearly a work of love for the genre.

Gameplay 8.5 (9 if the looting/inventory system is ever improved)
Visuals 6.5 (needs more alien variation/tilesets)
Developer 10

A surprisingly well made game. It doesn't have high production values, as you can see from the screenshots. But it's enough to get you into the setting and convey the information you need.

The gameplay seems well balanced so far. Though the tutorial does start you with far less ammunition than you would want. It allows a lot of customization in terms of what kinds of weapons you want on your squad, and what other support equipment. And specialization of your characters into different roles.

Destructable terrain and explosives play heavily into the tactics. It becomes very important to set up your fights so they take place in the right area. But even so, it doesn't feel like a game where "one mistake costs you the game", which is one of my least favorite of the xcom alike mechanics.

This is a tactical squad game in the mould of classics like Rebelstar (if you're old enough to remember that), Laser Squad and XCOM or, more recently, Halfway. It doesn't perhaps expand on them a great deal. You do the usual of equipping your squad with a range of weaponry and other equipment, finding upgrades, crafting materials and protoypes to get better weaponry, whilst gunning down aliens en masse on te tactical map. A game doesn't really need to expand on something like Laser Squad to be good fun. And this is mostly true of USC.

Killing aliens seems to be a case of expending huge amounts of ammo; clicking lots of times for low-cost shots that knock of relatively small amounts of health. This gives the game a certain attractive aesthetic I quite like of marines pouring vast quantities of lead at hordes of aliens. On the other hand, it also takes quite a lot of time and makes it seem like a bit of a grind. Aliens explode into blood splats (often toxic radioactive blood that is dangerous to step into), and the playing area rapidly fills up. Preparation is a big part of USC: you have to make sure you go into a level with the right weapons, equipment and enough ammo, otherwise you'll be in trouble.

However, USC is rather a mess. The UI is undoubtedly clumsy. Sure, you'll learn to navigate it at least reasonably smoothly, but it should be better. Everything is graphically cluttered: the interface, the levels which are totally full of stuff and frequent narrow corridors (reminiscent of Space Hulk). I find the procedurally drawn levels have annoying bugs: corridors without access except by destroying walls; once my marines arrived into a level and the start room opened straight into half a dozen crates blocking the passageway that I had to destroy before I could go anywhere. I'm not sure how well worked many levels are: some listed the resistance as "low" and yet my squad of four ended up permanently swarmed by aliens (aliens can spawn: no matter how many I killed, there seemed to still be another 40 left) until I ran out of ammo and/or medkits. Unless the mission is some sort of hold out as long as possible (and it wasn't), this is more tedious than it is fun.

In the end, I think USC is a significantly flawed and slightly frustrating game that falls well short of what it could have been, and in some ways less fun than its stylistic ancestors. Nevertheless, if you like this sort of Laser Squad type of game, you'll find something to enjoy, and it has some promise that I hope the developers build on.

It is with these caveats and the modest price tag I just about recommend it; I would be far less forgiving were it more expensive.

An interesting game with some intense combat and roguelike dead system. You command 4 customizable squads of four marines with the usual skills: weapon skills / first aid / reaction / health / stamina(AP) and dying is dying.
There is also equipment upgrading via new weapons / prototype weapons and modding. + There is research through which you probably proceed through the game .. not far enough to be sure yet. Definitely worth a try!

Before you read on, make sure you realize I'm only roughly two hours in.

This is a yes and a no in my book. I really don't think this should be marked as a "full release" yet. There are a few reasons why.

There are a few minor (but noticable) spelling and grammar mistakes, along with a lack of continuity, at least where I got in the campign (which is barely past the tutorial). A character has the rank of (in their panel) Petty Officer, but is addressed as a Corporal by a Lieutenant. What? Did the writers not agree somewhere?

The basic gameplay and mechanics is more or less XCOM, but in space. If you've played XCOM, you've played this game. There isn't anything I've seen so far that sets it apart, although this is subjec to change.

What I don't like is the fact that you're stuck with character names for the campign. While I guess it makes sense, it also puts up a barrier between the player and the game, because they aren't able to relate as well with characters the dev's named, in this sort of game at least.

There are also no animations, in regards to movement and attacking. It's sliding around on the screen, with sound effects. The first thing I thought of, was ToME, in regards to it. Games like that can get away with it, because they're cheaper. At least very minor ones would be nice, for a game that is charging $20 (keep in mind I bought this at $15) to play. Not that it's terrible how it is, it's just kinda a mild annoyance.

It also suffers from the same annoying "multiplayer" that some other indie games do. The one that is inputting an IP address, and hoping it connects. Unless you know somebody who can port-forward every day, or some shell server, you won't be getting on multiplayer, as there is no server browser or even a quick-match service.

With the rather hefty price tag in mind, unless things get patched and added for the game, this isn't a game you should pick up if you have played games such the older (or newer) XCOM. If it is on sale for $10-13, maybe. $5, then without a doubt pick it up. At the normal price of $20, you could do much better.