Jagged Alliance : Back in Action

[rejenorst]

So how do the mechanics feel to you? Is it fun or does it get boring quick/**** compared to JA2?

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

Well, I've just finished the demo, and it feels fine actually. Having played 7.62 extensively, I can only say it's better than 7.62, but don't come expecting tb JA feel. It's not bad, but I could see some things that need improvement already.

For starters, when you try to shoot in point blank, you revert to hitting someone with the buttstock. My medic with a shotgun took a little too long to aim, reverted to melee and promptly got his ass handed to him. If he just stood there and finished the goddamned order (shoot someone in the face point blank ala 7.62 style) he would have lived. Fidel did a pretty decent job with the silenced 'klock' 17. Enemy zerg rushes feel even more tense than 7.62, especially when you didn't have time to hunker down behind cover first. But the commando style viewing system (no fog), mean you have to be retarded to be surprised by the enemy. It boiled down into an "Oh **** they are coming, hunker down and wait for them" thing.

All and all, it's not a proper JA by the Bear Pit's standards, but something quite fine with the JA feeling to it.

 

[Kevlar]

One thing I miss is lack of 'aiming' from 7.62. I found out you can drag your right mouse button to look in a general area but I don't see a way to actually have my gun with his finger on the trigger ready to shoot which is somewhat annoying.

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

True that. It ain't a proper ambush until I get to shoot buckshot in your general direction when I just saw you.

 

[Theo]

You get free aim by pressing F or clicking gun icon.


I finished demo too, I enjoyed playing it so far. There are things that could be improved though, like side steps from 7.62 when you are in aiming mode, side rolls on prone, shoot enemy until dead order, etc, but most importantly hiding the enemies.

Seeing enemies makes game way too easy, while it is still enjoyable in sort of Commandos style, knowing where enemy is takes much away from feeling and tactical planning, not to mention you overpower enemies with long range guns. I got my ass owned first when I got too close to enemies, but then I realized I could use dragunow and steyr to just pick off rushing enemies, it got piss easy. It is possible to kill opponents 2-3 times farther than they have change to see you, not good.

On the other hand I noticed game has items such as extended ear, night goggles, scout skill to spot enemies further, what would be point of those if not improve your spotting as in vanilla JA? Your mercs also comments when they hear something or spot enemy. Perhaps there will be option in full game to hide enemies.

Oh and talking about shooting far, I noticed camera angle to be limited, probably because slower computers lag in this kind of games when you turn camera so it draws larger part of map, but it is really needed if you want to see your sniper and target same time. Most natural camera position to me would be behind my sniper seeing target same time in distance when he shoots.


But overall, I think it has potential, hopefully they offer option go around for annoyances. I liked the controls, in fact game's pause - tactical planning phase was very easy and fast to use, yet offering good amount of control to you without slowing them game. As well as part of the critique shown earlier against game is obsolete in my opinion, not everything, but game does some things differently than old JA, updating some things in progress is necessary and lack of some minor old features isn't game or atmosphere breaking.

Though only final version will show how the rest of the game: story and strategic map modes plays, and will there be much needed tweaks in tactical mode. Hopefully dev team will update their product too. I think it has good changes to be enjoyable game in it's genre, and if it will be success then perhaps there will be sequences with improved mechanics too, as well as more interest to the genre from other publishers, but thinking something like that is still way too early.

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

I finished demo too, I enjoyed playing it so far. There are things that could be improved though, like side steps from 7.62 when you are in aiming mode, side rolls on prone, shoot enemy until dead order, etc, but most importantly hiding the enemies.

Seeing enemies makes game way too easy, while it is still enjoyable in sort of Commandos style, knowing where enemy is takes much away from feeling and tactical planning, not to mention you overpower enemies with long range guns. I got my ass owned first when I got too close to enemies, but then I realized I could use dragunow and steyr to just pick off rushing enemies, it got piss easy. It is possible to kill opponents 2-3 times farther than they have change to see you, not good.

On the other hand I noticed game has items such as extended ear, night goggles, scout skill to spot enemies further, what would be point of those if not improve your spotting as in vanilla JA? Your mercs also comments when they hear something or spot enemy. Perhaps there will be option in full game to hide enemies.

Well, scouting is the same as JA2, it's a tactical map perk, not a combat one.

I agree on the 7.62 features, but I'll be most happy if the controls were actually even more detailed, like frozen synapse.

You get free aim by pressing F or clicking gun icon.

But that free aim end up with taking a shot right? Was talking about in 7.62 where you point your shotty at a door and the moment someone rushes out, he gets buckshot to the head instantly.

Also someone gotta fix indoor grenade throwing or something. Currently, if you throw one indoors, the range does not even allow you to be outside the blast zone. Never heard of an underarm lob?

Edit 2 : The official excuse given for removing fog is that it disturbs the flow of gameplay (IT KEEPS AUTOPAUSING WHEN SOMEONE TIP TOES IN AND OUT OF YOUR VIEW). The tester who came up with that excuse needs a cactus up his ass.

 

[Kevlar]

You get free aim by pressing F or clicking gun icon.

But that free aim end up with taking a shot right? Was talking about in 7.62 where you point your shotty at a door and the moment someone rushes out, he gets buckshot to the head instantly.

Also someone gotta fix indoor grenade throwing or something. Currently, if you throw one indoors, the range does not even allow you to be outside the blast zone. Never heard of an underhand lob?

Edit 2 : The official excuse given for removing fog is that it disturbs the flow of gameplay (IT KEEPS AUTOPAUSING WHEN SOMEONE TIP TOES IN AND OUT OF YOUR VIEW). The tester who came up with that excuse needs a cactus up his ass.

Ya, I was talking about that style of aiming as well. In this game you just can shoot which I tried doing a few times and then having to cancel most of the time since it was to hard to get the timing correct.

As for your edit 2, in 7.62 there was an option to make it so that didn't happen which I turned off and only had it pause at start of combat.

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

I actually like knowing when someone poked into my field of view. Wastes no time pausing then aiming. Plus my style of play doesn't really allow much people to be outside my field of view. The ones who come into it usually get at least a 7.62 nato bullet going his way immediately, provided he's relatively close to my sniper's current aim.

My support gunner keeps people who are already in view from advancing while my riflemen take them down one by one. The amount of money I spent on buying rifles is ridiculous (30k for 3 hk416, then another 40k for the 6.8spc version later down the line). I've gotten my M60 from calling the black dude, turning him hostile on me and then killing him. The support gunner uses either that, or a 10x scoped hk21 for long distance gunning.

Edit : Steam unlock date is pushed back into the 10th. Dirty rats. Also, now they are trying to lure more preorders with TF2 hats?

Also, I can't tell whether the projectiles in this game is modelled individually (ala 7.62, where every shot pellet counts, and every bullet has a set penetration chance, so it might take 2 or more shots in the same spot to penetrate armor, but when it does, ****'s going down, aka no gun is useless.) or is it the same as JA2, which would frankly be quite disappointing for a game made in 2012.

 

[Kevlar]

Edit : Steam unlock date is pushed back into the 10th. Dirty rats. Also, now they are trying to lure more preorders with TF2 hats?

Tf2 hats huh, time to preorder :/

Might actually be able to sell them or trade for another game if nothing else at least.

Also, I can't tell whether the projectiles in this game is modelled individually (ala 7.62, where every shot pellet counts, and every bullet has a set penetration chance, so it might take 2 or more shots in the same spot to penetrate armor, but when it does, ****'s going down, aka no gun is useless.) or is it the same as JA2, which would frankly be quite disappointing for a game made in 2012.

I can't really tell either. I tried playing again on Friday and kept shooting people to near death buy they wouldn't even bleed out and sometimes it took a lot of shoots to down people. Pistols seem to be very very weak in this game, I could actually have a merc use a pistol all throughout 7.62 and not even care.

I am hoping guns stay loaded at least come release, can't remember what I read on the forums about that the other day but currently if you unequip something all the ammo somehow magically disappears out of the magazine and you have to reload it. I don't even think you need to load each individual round into magazines anymore but can't say for sure, starting to like 7.62 more and more while playing this and hope they make a 7.63 or maybe .50 cal :p

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

.50 cal. I demand at least 20mm autocannon.

Yeah, not being able to preload guns is a pain (Who the hell is their tactical advisor?), the 'klock' or DEATHKLOCK as I call it seems useful for silent takedowns, with quick firing time, and a range of 25m (19m for shotty, 13m for the .357 d.eagle and 16m for tec9?), so it's one hell of a pistol, but armor in this game seems immune to 9mm rounds.

edit : also found a way to somehow rig an 'aim at point'. Aim your merc at someone's (out of view) head for 30 times, try not to flip out at the horrible voice acting telling you it's impossible to take the shot, then when enemy comes into view, kablam.

 

[Jhessail]

Well, I tried the demo and it confirmed all my fears. A dumbed down piece of crap. Only for those who loved 7.62 and desperately want something similar and the UFO: Afterxxx series have been played to death. And you don't like Men of War for some reason.

- No fog of war is of course the crux, it's ridiculous that you see all the enemies all the time, even if they are inside the buildings. There's no justification for this and it's a game killer to begin with.

- Line-of-sight is in the game but it's very tricky to utilize. That big rock that your mercenary is hiding behind? Bullets go through it. That flimsy bush in front of the enemy soldier? As effective bullet stopper as concrete. Combine this with the inability to turn mercenaries on the spot and it's another game breaker. Only way to change their FOV is to make the mercs move around which is stupid and in-doors sometimes impossible.

- Poor GUI. Why are the command buttons on the right side of the screen while the mini-map and the mercenary status windows are on the left side? Why is health green bar and stamina red bar, even though in every other game as in the previous Jagged Alliance games it has been the other way around? Luckily the short cuts make life easier and this is something I could live with, except that naturally, you cannot rebind the keys which is all sorts of retarded stupidity. Why cannot you use a single button to switch between single shot, burst and autofire? Now there's one key for single shot and another key for burst. Auto fire is missing completely. And why is there a lag when you scroll the map? When you release any of the map scrolling buttons, the map still slides a bit until it slowly stops, making camera movement clunky. Which leads me to the next gripe,

- Crappy camera. Always a problem in 3D games. As you cannot tilt it level with the ground, estimating LoS is very difficult. Items and enemies can remain hidden under/behind trees/furniture/walls and you need to pan the camera around. You can't zoom out enough for a proper overview, either. Sure, one can live with it but why bother? Either use a fixed camera and build the maps around that feature or then allow truly freeform camera.

- Lacklustre AI. Your mercs, even in guard mode, will happily stay in place and eat hot lead with their butt cheeks if an enemy managed to get behind them. That's some dedication. While the visibility and noise indicators look good, they are mostly useless as enemies will mindlessly rush towards you, only to be cut down like wheat. Meanwhile, their buddies ten meters away are blind and deaf. As it is, the game plays more like an old RTS than a tactical war game.

- Lack of gun porn. Some guns have their real names (M14, M870, Tec-9), others have silly fake names (Deagle, Klock, etc). Unforgivable in a sequel to the game that had the most gun porn ever. Apparently there's less guns in the full version than in vanilla JA. Add to this that you can only have a single attachment per gun and it's not even a real attachment because they automatically fall off the weapons if you unequip the gun in question. WTF?! JA2 had 4 attachments per weapon and 1.13 has added even more possibilities for customizing them but BiA rolls the clock back. In this vein, ammunition isn't carried in clips any more, no sir, you just have a pile of bullets for each calibre. If you unequip a gun, it's magically emptied of all bullets - meaning that sidearms just turned useless because if you run out of ammo for your main gun or it jams, your merc will have to waste valuable seconds reloading the ****ing pistol s/he equips! How come QA didn't spot this major malfunction, I'll never know. And to add insult to injury, the game claims that AK-47 uses 5.45x39 WP. In the real world, it uses 7.62x39 WP - this is the big difference between old AK-series guns and later ones (AK-47/AKM/AKMS/AKSU-47 versus AK-74 etc).

- RTwP system is not as bad as I initially feared but it's not very good either. As usual, it's not as fluid or actiony as true RT, while not being as in-depth or tactical as true TB. Trying to control more than two mercs is a headache, which you can some what circumvent through meticulous planning - but then the game is as "boring" and "slow" as it would be as a turn-based one, except you wouldn't have to mess around with the auto-pause that has some unexplainable lag built-in it. Why? Oh and who ever thought it was a good idea that mercs stop firing after a single round/burst even if their target is still standing needs to be shot. Now the player has to queue several shots because the mercs are too dumb to keep firing. At least they know to stop firing when the enemy is dead even if they still had shots in the queue.

- Dumbed down game mechanics. Magic got shot? No problem. Magical medkit will bring his health back up almost instantly! No more resting for days or going through costly surgery! You found a fancy rifle but it's shot to hell? No problem. Magical toolkit will fix the gun in seconds and it's as good as new! Who wants to train skills through using them, like in the real world? Geeks, I guess. BiA scrapped that and instead you get training points with levels that you can assign to whatever skills you prefer. Bloody stupid idea. You can't climb on roofs, why not? You can't blow up buildings, except in few scripted locations, why not? The game is using Unreal Engine 3, both should be easily feasible features. But no, too difficult things for BitComposer to code, I guess.

- Ugly portraits. Just amateurish. Why not use the pretty portraits from JA2? Since BitComposer already lifted all the weapon/item descriptions from JA2, they might as well stolen the portraits. But no, they use 3D portraits lifted straight from the game engine. Meaning that all the mercs look like inbred cousins from Hicksville, Missisippi.


Well, it's not all bad. The maps are relatively large, which is a nice thing. The voice actors are decent. The graphics, aside from the fugly portraits, are pretty enough. But I can't really fathom to whom Bitcomposer/Calypso is aiming the game. Most old JA2 fans won't like the dumbed down gameplay and mechanics. Perhaps the people who enjoyed Frozen Synapse will flock to BiA? It's better than Jagged Edge or those other shoe-string budget Russian JA2 clones but that's not much of a praise. I'd rather play 7.62 or any of the three UFO: Afterxxx games than this.

 

[Kevlar]

I'd rather play 7.62 or any of the three UFO: Afterxxx games than this.

Thinking the same thing. Wonder if any of the mods have been updated since I last played.

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

BSM 2.0 is being tested and might be out soon-ish (I hope).

@Jhessail : Mostly my gripe with JABiA is the lack of feedback from damage getting shot.

 

[Jhessail]

They grunt in pain, their portrait flashes red and they get a little "-15" hovering above their heads for a bit. I think one of the auto-pause options was "merc gets shot" alongside "merc is spotted" and "merc is wounded" but since I already uninstalled the demo, not 100% sure. Oh and it's funny that wounded now means "less than 30% of health left".

In any case, the autopause doesn't really help in such situations because the only thing you can do is keep shooting back in the hope of killing the enemy quicker than they are killing you. If you try moving away, you get shot in the back, if you try throw a grenade, you get shot in the face, so there.

 

[rejenorst]

Good overview there Jhessail. Has completely dashed my hopes and the likelihood I will even look at the demo. :/

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

They grunt in pain, their portrait flashes red and they get a little "-15" hovering above their heads for a bit. I think one of the auto-pause options was "merc gets shot" alongside "merc is spotted" and "merc is wounded" but since I already uninstalled the demo, not 100% sure. Oh and it's funny that wounded now means "less than 30% of health left".

In any case, the autopause doesn't really help in such situations because the only thing you can do is keep shooting back in the hope of killing the enemy quicker than they are killing you. If you try moving away, you get shot in the back, if you try throw a grenade, you get shot in the face, so there.

I meant like in 7.62, where people can bleed out, or have their winds knocked out by buckshot, even when wearing armor. JA:BiA fails to make you think why is it bad to get shot, besides 'I'll need to smack my head into a medkit for a while'.

 

[Swordmaster]

From what I've understood from Jhessail's review, I hope they just release the game modding-friendly and some guy from the hardcore fanbase will fix the game to its glory.

 

[Kevlar]

Hopefully the game gets modded and puts in some features that are lacking. Won't be preordering since I am somewhat disapointed in the demo and don't think it will be much better in retail version.

 

[Skyrage]

Yep, I more or less discarded this as well once I got to see a few ingame videos.

Really, what is up with all these so-called attempts to revive old names/franchises whilst cutting out everything that made said names/franchises good? And on top daring to say that they were huge fans of the originals.

 

[Jhessail]

Yep, I more or less discarded this as well once I got to see a few ingame videos.

Really, what is up with all these so-called attempts to revive old names/franchises whilst cutting out everything that made said names/franchises good? And on top daring to say that they were huge fans of the originals.

No need for originality or innovation, just warm-up an old IP/franchise, transform it into whatever your studio is barely capable of doing and put the PR-machine into work - "INNOVATION, VISCERAL, ACTION-PACKED, MODERNIZED, BEST EVER" and so on - it's all bull****. Take names and "lore", that you can butcher whatever way you want, and pack it into new shell that's whatever studio you have unemployed at the moment is "good" in. Hence Syndicate FPS, X-Com FPS, Firaxis making a pseudo-TB X-Com since Civ5 bombed, and so many others that I can't keep count.

Hopefully the game gets modded and puts in some features that are lacking. Won't be preordering since I am somewhat disapointed in the demo and don't think it will be much better in retail version.

Good luck with that. Do you mind putting in some lottery coupons for me? There's about as much of a chance for either.

From what I've understood from Jhessail's review, I hope they just release the game modding-friendly and some guy from the hardcore fanbase will fix the game to its glory.

There's nothing to fix. They took original JA2, moved it into UE3, raped the lore and made it console-friendly. There's nothing to salvage, it's pretty obviously completely ****. Get 1.13 mod for the original JA2 or the true 7.62 for some actually good RTwP action.