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Jagged Alliance - Back in Action
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10-02-2012 2:39am#1
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There’s a demo out for it that you can try. It’s got a tutorial and one mission, which is incredibly difficult and not that reflective of the actual game.
I decided to take the plunge and see what the game is like and despite my better judgement, I’m loving it. It’s not without its faults. I’ll try and give you a rundown, though I’m not too far into it.
Anyone wanting a simple remake of Jagged Alliance 2 will most likely be a little disappointed. The many similarities that it has kind of just exaggerates the simple fact that they really should have just kept everything that was great about the original and expanded on it, instead of “reimagining” it.
For anyone who’s never played the original games, BIA is basically the game of The Expendables. An island nation is in the control of a horrible dictator. You’ve been employed to put together a team of mercenaries and take back the island for the rightful ruler. Oscar winning storytelling this is not.
You start off with the map view, which JA2 players will notice is no longer a grid. You can move anywhere about the island and a marker indicates the progress of your teams along their route. But first you have to pick your team, and this is one of the best parts of JA2. Sadly, they’ve kind of sapped the fun out of it.
Team selection is pretty much the same. You start off with $45k, open up the in-game website where you’re shown the mug shots of the mercs, and you click on them for more info. Since $45k isn’t a lot of money in the game, you can’t really get a large team of highly trained specialist. Instead, the only ones you can afford are the “also ran’s”. I’m currently only using 3 dirt cheap losers, but I’m getting along fine.
But here is where the first annoyance comes. Just like the original games, Mercs turn you down if they don’t like the cut of your jib. No problems there, none of us really want to die for someone who hasn’t proven themselves. But when you click the “Contact” button to talk to the merc, you’ve to wait a few seconds as it fakes a modem connection sound. It might sound silly to complain about it, but when you have to listen to it for twenty mercs, it’s really annoying.
If that doesn’t bother you, then this probably will: you hire the mercs permanently. In JA2 you were given the option to hire a merc for a day or a week, and you can choose to take their own equipment with them (which costs you extra). This made the game a lot more strategic because you had limited use of mercs before you had to pick a new (and usually cheaper) team. Now, there’s a flat fee to hire a merc for the entire game. It saves you a fortune, but it kind of takes the fun out of it.
And here’s another issue: you can’t create your own character. I loved doing that.
So anyway, you get your team together and start your first mission (they call them quests in this game, which seems a little odd for a military based game). For fans of the original, you don’t get to drop from a helicopter into a small village and have to meet the rebels. You start off at Dressen Airport, and have to take it over. It’s a small thing, but I thought the JA2 helicopter drop was cool.
Here’s where the game really changes. The new combat system had people up in arms over it. But it’s really not too bad. Essentially, it’s all real-time. You press space to pause the game and then you can issue orders which, when you unpause, are carried out simultaneously. In the options you can set a list of autopause situations, so basically nothing will happen to your men while you’re focussing on something else. These situations are things like when a merc sees an enemy, when an enemy sees a merc, a killshot, a weapon jam, if an order can’t be completed etc.
You’re able to sync up various actions, so you can have all your mercs wait until everyone is in position until they open fire, for example. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s not a bad system.
What is bad is the AI. In JA2, if an enemy was attacked in a sector, then all enemies there were looking for you. Here, an enemy will only react if they are within about 20 feet of an incident. They also don’t seem to react if they find a body on their patrol route, which they stick to rigidly.
The AI does have some good points. If an enemy only has a melee weapon, they’ll either charge at you if they think they’ve a chance of getting you, or run and hide. They investigate if they hear something, but if you stop what you’re doing and keep still, they may lose interest. It’s fairly standard AI, but at least there’s some programmed into them.
Add to this the fact that there’s no Fog Of War and you can see all enemies in each sector, it takes the tension out of the maps. The developers had said that they’d consider adding the Fog of War if sales are good, which is a kin to saying “We’ll finish the game is everyone buys it!”
Because of these two “features”, the game plays less like Jagged Alliance, and more like Commandos. Almost as if someone made a Jagged Alliance mod for Commandos 3. I loved the Commandos games, so I guess that’s why I like this game.
There’re several other niggling problems as well. There’s times when NPC’s will block you. I went into an office and a kid runs in and cowers in fear right beside me, blocking my only route out of the office. I had to reload because of it.
Also, sometimes combat seems a bit of a case of who ever fires first wins. There have been times in planning when I ordered a guy to open a door and fire at an enemy in a room. So he opens the door, aims and then does nothing. So the enemy, looking a bit bewildered as to why a guy kicked opened the door and then just stood there, aims and fires repeatedly. My guy just says things like “Taking fire, here!” until he dies. Maybe it’s done on purpose and is stat related to determine who fires first, so I may not find out until I have a better trained team.
I can’t remember if it was in JA2, but there’s a kind of RPG experience system in this. As they go through their missions, the mercs get XP and once they level, you can select which of their attributes you can increase. I vaguely remember a training system in JA2, but this is more free style, although it lacks the strategic element of JA2 where you would have to decide if training was worth taking a merc out of combat for a few days.
The animations are pretty cool. When standing still, the mercs will fidget. Head shots from powerful guns send the enemy flying backwards, almost flipping (haven’t seen a head explode yet). And sometimes a headshot that doesn’t kill causes the enemy to stagger like zombies when they next move. There’s a big selection of weapons and they feel and sound like they should. You’ll notice the difference between a .357 pistol and a 9mm. Shotguns spray the enemy and silenced weapons have a great “TSU” sound.
There’s also lots of clothing, from camouflage to armoured to standard clothing, and lots of other bits and pieces too. This makes you have to think about what you pick up, because you can only carry a certain amount, and a lot of these items need to be sold early on to fund you until you get the mines up and running (the mines are your source of income in-game).
One other problem that I just remembered is that when you switch weapons, you unload and remove any attachments that that weapon had. Now, I think I understand the logic behind it, but it wasn’t fully thought through. You see, if I have a 9mm pistol with a silencer and find another 9mm that does more damage, then I’ll swap them, and the ammo and silencer will automatically be put onto the new weapon. As an example of how this goes wrong, I was in combat last night with a 357 pistol which jammed in the middle of a fire fight, so I had to switch to a 9mm pistol. The silencer swapped ok, but because they were different ammo types, it wouldn’t automatically reload the 9mm and I had to do it myself.
It’s silly that they did this. You don’t go into combat with a sidearm that’s unloaded and doesn’t have any of the attachments that you want to use with it.
I’ve listed a load of problems with the game here but as I said, I like it. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot of fun. Just remember to save often (as in before combat, after combat and before doing anything you’re not 100% on). If you play it like an advanced version of Commandos, you’ll have fun. If you want a remake of JA2, just play JA2. It’s still a great game and holds up well (and the 1.13 adds a mind-boggling amount of stuff to it).
The maps are really well made and quite detailed and thought out(I found a car that had driven over a cliff and when I searched it I found a half-bottle of tequila) and they’re also huge. Graphics are pretty good and the portraits and voices are very like the JA2 ones. And a lot of the humour from the old games is there, from what the mercs say to the description of some of the items (particularly the various porn magazines you find).
Oh, and one final complaint, the camera is sh*te! You can't zoom in properly. When you do, it's almost like it's zooming in on something that's 2 floors above your man. And sometimes scenery will obscure your view so you can't click on enemies. You get used to it, but it's still annoying.
At the moment Steam have 33% off it. That’s not bad at all. Though if you’re tempted, but worried you may hate it (and the demo doesn’t help make up your mind), then wait for the next Steam sale.
edit: I added a few pictures to try and break up the text, but it didn't do much. If you did manage to read it all, congratulations. You now have the "Read Wall of Text" Achievement.0 -
Thanks for that post m8. Very well written.
From discription I will stay away from it and pick it up only when it's on sale for up to 20 quid.
I am one of those, who expected JA 2.6, so alot of those new changes really not what I wanted
. I will still give it a go, but not for 40eu. 0 -
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I started back in action recently and instantly loved it but i then decided to stop playing and grab Jagged Alliance 2 since i never played it.
Should i play JA 2 first ?
Played the opening part lastnight,great stuff tbh.
Between these and my recent purchase of the Baldurs Gate collection im in classic gaming heaven right now
The gas thing is im playing them on a beast of a PC.
Gameplay beats graphics everytime
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JA2 will always have a special place in my heart. its a shame mods for it are really anal to install.
640x480 is not great looking on 1080p monitor. i started playing it again and after few hours, you dont even notice crap outdated graphics 
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ShadowHearth wrote: »JA2 will always have a special place in my heart. its a shame mods for it are really anal to install.
640x480 is not great looking on 1080p monitor. i started playing it again and after few hours, you dont even notice crap outdated graphics
Im using this mod with it, running 1024X768.
http://ja2v113.pbworks.com/w/page/4218339/FrontPage
@ dreamers75 I only played the first 2 missions and loving it,id say well worth it.0 -
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