Jagged Alliance: Back in Action is a remake of the 1999 game Jagged Alliance 2, which has gone on to be a cult fan favourite. Though it hasn’t joined the throng of FPS shooter clones on the market, there have been some significant changes, most notably a controllable camera, a 3D HD game engine and a controversial shift from pure turn based experience (think Fallout 1 and 2) to real time strategy with a stop and go planning feature.
The game pits you as the commander of a mercenary group ‘A.I.M.’ paid to go in and oust the evil Romanian born Queen of the Island of Arulco, Deidranna Reitman. (And her ex-husband, the former President of Arulco is paying you to do it). Working with rebel militias, crime figures and a host of other locals it’s time to take back the island and make some cash along the way.
A confession, in 1999 I was still a proud Mac gamer, with my early teenage years spent playing games like the Marathon series. So I missed out on Jagged Alliance, though I did try it recently before this release and found it to be rather dated and frustrating. So consider the following a review from someone who is new the series.
Loved
The 1980’s Were Awesome: The entire feel of the game is like a 1980’s action film. Think ‘Commando’ + ‘Rambo’ + ‘Missing in Action’ = Jagged Alliance: BiA. The narrative, characters and setting are ripped from an over the top 1980’s action flick with the stereotypes and accents laid on thick for humorous effect.
Guns Guns Guns: There are a tonne of weapons to choose from, ranging from small calibre pistols to shotguns and sniper rifles. If you’re a gun nut you’ll love scrolling through the in game shopping cart purchasing equipment for you teams of mercs. There are hundreds of different items, to shop and scavenge for. Customisation plays a big part of the game with all purchases modelled on your mercs in game. So change a merc’s T-shirt, add Kevlar, give him a blue beret and sunglasses and his appearance in game will reflect each change. It’s a nice little simple feature, whic is overlooked by many modern games which take shortcuts to streamline character customisation options. There are also variants of most items – for example, there is fresh beef and not so fresh beef. One replenishes your energy bar, the other doesn’t. It took me a while to realise this after scavenging food from dumpsters and wondering why my stamina wasn’t replenishing.
We’re in This for the Long Haul: The game is long with plenty of play time. Though there is a steam achievement to finish the game in less than 7 days game time, which would be a real feat to achieve. At the time of writing I haven’t finished the game but have played over 25 hours and still have a long road ahead of me. If you enjoy the gameplay you’ll get your money’s worth.
The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men: The game rewards careful planners and expert tacticians. It’s a real buzz when you spend five minutes planning out the movements of six mercs to conduct a series of flanking manoeuvres and to see it all flow smoothly. The game holds nothing back and can be very hard even from early on if you make some wrong choices customising your team. You stuff up your timings or fail to recognise a threat; the game will make you pay with dead mercs or in medkits.
Hated
Look at All this Stuff: The tonnes of items can become annoying as your inventory builds up to ridiculous levels. Sadly items that are fully destroyed are not removed from your inventory or even from the game world. So you get a build up of destroyed items that are useless in game but stick around in your inventory until you sell them, or store them in an unused crate out of the way. This level of detail and resource management is on par with a football manager sim and could put off some players.
So You Passed High School?: The AI is not the best. Mercs do not move a muscle (by design) if you don’t command them to do so. They will stand out in the open if they are ambushed by the enemy firing a machine gun at point blank range and only complain about being shot. Enemy AI will generally sit still except for programmed patrol routes until they spot you and give chase. It’s not perfect but still provides a challenge with enemy spotting distances quite far for the trained enemy soldiers.
I Can See Clearly Now the Fog Has Gone: There is by default no Fog of War. I have a feeling this was dropped as the difficulty level was already high enough without it. In a recent patch, there has since been a Fog of War feature added for combat zones that are still held by the enemy but it isn’t on by default.
Tips
- The game is easy to learn and hard to master. Be patient.
- Learn your Mercs strengths and weaknesses and exploit. It may seem easy in the first few areas but when Mercs start getting sniped by enemy elite forces you’ll regret decisions made hours before if you haven’t planned accordingly. Google and search for YouTube videos to get tips on which Mercs work best with each other.
Is the game perfect? No, not by a long shot but it’s damn addictive and different in a FPS dominated industry. I suffered from ‘one more turn syndrome’ over a weekend play session which went late into the night. Many of the initial release issues have also been fixed some new features added to make team and inventory management much easier. It’s a rough diamond that thankfully doesn’t take the trendy route of taking an old series and turn it into a Call of Duty clone. If you like thinking, planning and customisation in your games, or simply want to relive the glory days of 1980’s action movies, then I recommend you try the demo.
The game pits you as the commander of a mercenary group ‘A.I.M.’ paid to go in and oust the evil Romanian born Queen of the Island of Arulco, Deidranna Reitman. (And her ex-husband, the former President of Arulco is paying you to do it). Working with rebel militias, crime figures and a host of other locals it’s time to take back the island and make some cash along the way.
A confession, in 1999 I was still a proud Mac gamer, with my early teenage years spent playing games like the Marathon series. So I missed out on Jagged Alliance, though I did try it recently before this release and found it to be rather dated and frustrating. So consider the following a review from someone who is new the series.
Loved
The 1980’s Were Awesome: The entire feel of the game is like a 1980’s action film. Think ‘Commando’ + ‘Rambo’ + ‘Missing in Action’ = Jagged Alliance: BiA. The narrative, characters and setting are ripped from an over the top 1980’s action flick with the stereotypes and accents laid on thick for humorous effect.
Guns Guns Guns: There are a tonne of weapons to choose from, ranging from small calibre pistols to shotguns and sniper rifles. If you’re a gun nut you’ll love scrolling through the in game shopping cart purchasing equipment for you teams of mercs. There are hundreds of different items, to shop and scavenge for. Customisation plays a big part of the game with all purchases modelled on your mercs in game. So change a merc’s T-shirt, add Kevlar, give him a blue beret and sunglasses and his appearance in game will reflect each change. It’s a nice little simple feature, whic is overlooked by many modern games which take shortcuts to streamline character customisation options. There are also variants of most items – for example, there is fresh beef and not so fresh beef. One replenishes your energy bar, the other doesn’t. It took me a while to realise this after scavenging food from dumpsters and wondering why my stamina wasn’t replenishing.
We’re in This for the Long Haul: The game is long with plenty of play time. Though there is a steam achievement to finish the game in less than 7 days game time, which would be a real feat to achieve. At the time of writing I haven’t finished the game but have played over 25 hours and still have a long road ahead of me. If you enjoy the gameplay you’ll get your money’s worth.
The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men: The game rewards careful planners and expert tacticians. It’s a real buzz when you spend five minutes planning out the movements of six mercs to conduct a series of flanking manoeuvres and to see it all flow smoothly. The game holds nothing back and can be very hard even from early on if you make some wrong choices customising your team. You stuff up your timings or fail to recognise a threat; the game will make you pay with dead mercs or in medkits.
Hated
Look at All this Stuff: The tonnes of items can become annoying as your inventory builds up to ridiculous levels. Sadly items that are fully destroyed are not removed from your inventory or even from the game world. So you get a build up of destroyed items that are useless in game but stick around in your inventory until you sell them, or store them in an unused crate out of the way. This level of detail and resource management is on par with a football manager sim and could put off some players.
So You Passed High School?: The AI is not the best. Mercs do not move a muscle (by design) if you don’t command them to do so. They will stand out in the open if they are ambushed by the enemy firing a machine gun at point blank range and only complain about being shot. Enemy AI will generally sit still except for programmed patrol routes until they spot you and give chase. It’s not perfect but still provides a challenge with enemy spotting distances quite far for the trained enemy soldiers.
I Can See Clearly Now the Fog Has Gone: There is by default no Fog of War. I have a feeling this was dropped as the difficulty level was already high enough without it. In a recent patch, there has since been a Fog of War feature added for combat zones that are still held by the enemy but it isn’t on by default.
Tips
- The game is easy to learn and hard to master. Be patient.
- Learn your Mercs strengths and weaknesses and exploit. It may seem easy in the first few areas but when Mercs start getting sniped by enemy elite forces you’ll regret decisions made hours before if you haven’t planned accordingly. Google and search for YouTube videos to get tips on which Mercs work best with each other.
Is the game perfect? No, not by a long shot but it’s damn addictive and different in a FPS dominated industry. I suffered from ‘one more turn syndrome’ over a weekend play session which went late into the night. Many of the initial release issues have also been fixed some new features added to make team and inventory management much easier. It’s a rough diamond that thankfully doesn’t take the trendy route of taking an old series and turn it into a Call of Duty clone. If you like thinking, planning and customisation in your games, or simply want to relive the glory days of 1980’s action movies, then I recommend you try the demo.
