Jagged Alliance: Back in Action

[Tuesday Night Fever]

So let me preface this by saying that I've always really liked the Jagged Alliance series. Played through both the original and the sequel a whole bunch of times, and thoroughly enjoyed a few completions of JA2 with the fan-made 1.13 mod as well.

Anywho, I bought Jagged Alliance: Back in Action on Steam last Friday, and put in about ten hours so far. At first I was pretty unimpressed with it, seeing only the shortcomings (of which, in my opinion, there are many - I'd be glad to elaborate if anyone wants me to).

I actually thought I was going to just stop playing it after an hour or two and shelf it until the modding community goes to work on it... but instead I pushed onward, and I'm actually finding that the further along I get, the more fun I'm having with it. Though the game is very clearly not a perfect remake of JA2, there's enough of JA2 in it to get me all nostalgic while still experiencing something brand new.

I feel that it's a game that with a little bit of tweaking from the developers and a little bit of love from the modding community could very well be just as classic and memorable as the original Jagged Alliance titles are to me.

So what about you guys and gals? Have any of you taken a chance on this game? If you did, what do you think of it so far? I'm interested to see what my fellow Escapists think of this game, since it looks like it might get some very different responses from people!

 

[Bostur]

I played it quite a lot, and have the feeling that it could have been a really great game with a bit of extra time for polishing. It's a shame because it has a lot going for it. I'm having a lot of fun with it, but I might become overwhelmed by the many little annoyances eventually.

The good parts:
I love the visuals. They add a lot of feel to the game. The terrain is very detailed, and so is the character models. The animations that play when combatants are hit are also reasonably good, with a few non-intrusive killcam shots.

The pause and play system works great. While paused orders can be queued up in much the same way as in Frozen Synapse. Pause and play does add some realism by letting all combatants move in tandem, and usability doesn't really suffer much compared to a strict turn-based system.

The environment works well. Terrain is detailed and have noticeable impact on combat and tactics. The 3D engine allows for realistic line of sight calculations enabling a wide range of cover types. Lighting also plays a role, characters can hide in shadows more easily than in a brightly lit area. The lighting effect is supplemented by a neat indicator to show how visible a character is.
Line of sight/line of fire through windows feels wonky though.

The time it takes to fire a weapon varies a lot based on the character, the weapon and the stance used by the character. There is a trade off between 'firing from the hip' and making an aimed shot. The game makes characters in prone or crouched stances aim more than characters using running or walking stances. Combining stance and aiming time is a bit of a simplification, but works well in practice. A combatant charging into a room with a shotgun will usually be better off making a quick shot, while a long range fire support team benefits from prone or crouching stances to get a better aim.

The AI is generally decent with some inconsistencies and caveats mentioned below.

The campaign map looks neat and polished.


The bad stuff:
There is no fog of war. The player can see the exact position of every opponent on the tactical map, even the facing. The AI acts as if it can see the exact position of player characters as well. This is a huge turnoff for me and removes a lot of depth to an otherwise detailed combat simulation. It's pretty much impossible to execute a flanking maneuver or surprise attack, because the AI will always maneuver to counter it. This feels odd considering that the game often announces that an enemy has ben spotted or a player character has been spotted. In practice the spotting mechanics make little difference.

The AI works odd in other ways too. Enemies seems to be linked with MMO style aggro mechanics. Some enemies can be picked off without fear of alerting the rest, making gear like silencers or melee weapons pointless.
Pathfinding for player characters is horrible, they often get stuck trying to move around other characters. They do navigate terrain without issues though.

The campaign map seriously needs a better UI for managing gear. The game tracks items in every container in the world, and even remembers items dropped in random position on the tactical map. But there is no way to manage gear from the campaign map. This makes gear management a tedious and time consuming task.

The mercenaries available for hire are copy pasted directly from JA2. This is not a bad thing in itself, but "Back in Action" makes a rather poor job at the recreation. The 3D rendered portraits looks worse than the old hand drawn mini-portraits. The descriptions hint at game mechanics that are now obsolete, for instance some mercenaries are described as ambidextrous, but "Back in Action" has no mechanic for dual wielding. Some of the original voices have also been copied, but there seems to be a lot missing. The old characters felt a lot more alive and interesting.

The UI does its job - barely. There are plenty of typos and the game is in general in dire need of proofreading. The configuration options are very barebone, there isn't even a way to rebind keys. There a lots of little annoyances related to the UI, nothing truly game breaking but it feels lazy and low-budget.


In short, the core gameplay is good - really good. But the game shows an astounding lack of polish, and I'd say that Jagged Alliance 2 is better in almost every respect except the visuals. That makes "Back in Action" a bit of a weird reboot since there isn't much new to the game. Veterans are probably better of playing JA2 again, and newcomers might want to wait for some of the bugs to be fixed or a discount. At a lower price point "Back in Action" would be a nice introduction to tactical games, mainly because it's prettier than most games of the genre.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

As soon as I heard about the lack of fog of war that was pretty much it for me in terms of my interest. The switch from turn based to pause and play didn't thrill me, but I would've lived with it...but no fog of war? Ugh.

From what I've read the AI is fairly terrible as well.

It's sad. If they'd just given 1.13 a slight makeover I probably would've happily plunked money down for it. Instead we get this weird half-assed reboot that will almost certainly falter, and that'll be it in terms of hopes for a proper sequel. Pisses me off, really. Do it right or don't do it at all.

 

[octafish]

I thought Frozen Synapse was the game of the year last year until BF3 was released and ruined everything by being incredibly enjoyable, so I don't have anything against the pause and go mechanic. The fact that the mercs I love so much, and I do love them all (even Bubba), seem so lifeless in this game combined with the gameplay breaking lack of a fog of war leave me incredibly disappointed with Back In Action and I regret pre-purchasing. That's OK I still have JA2.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Yeah, the lack of Fog of War makes things a bit too easy a lot of the time. Especially if you tend to play using sniper rifles.

I started my game with Raven, got her an M-14 and 12x scope fairly early-on, recruited Scope as soon as I had the money to do so, then replaced Raven's M-14 and Scope's M-24 with a pair of PSG-1's. Given a long line of sight, the two of them can take out an entire map's worth of enemies by themselves with little danger.

One thing I do really like in JA:BiA though is the grenade mechanics. They feel far more useful to me in this one than in the previous games - especially when breaching a building. The M-79 Grenade Launcher is extremely finicky though. The rounds almost never seem to go where I want them to, and it seems to behave far more like an RPG than an actual thumper. Perhaps its accuracy is based on the explosives skill rather than marksmanship? I dunno.

The AI works odd in other ways too. Enemies seems to be linked with MMO style aggro mechanics. Some enemies can be picked off without fear of alerting the rest, making gear like silencers or melee weapons pointless.

I've noticed this too, but usually there seems to be a reason for it. I don't recall enemies in JA or JA2 ever becoming alerted upon spotting corpses - unless they actually saw the person die. In this game though they seem to actually become alerted by that. So if there's a stationary guard and a patrolling guard that passes by, and you stealthily dispatch the stationary one without also taking out the patrol, the patrol will then proceed to alarm everyone in the area when he finds the body of the other guard.

They also seem to shout out for backup from time to time if you don't score a one-hit kill and there are other guards in nearby rooms.

 

[Bostur]

The AI works odd in other ways too. Enemies seems to be linked with MMO style aggro mechanics. Some enemies can be picked off without fear of alerting the rest, making gear like silencers or melee weapons pointless.

I've noticed this too, but usually there seems to be a reason for it. I don't recall enemies in JA or JA2 ever becoming alerted upon spotting corpses - unless they actually saw the person die. In this game though they seem to actually become alerted by that. So if there's a stationary guard and a patrolling guard that passes by, and you stealthily dispatch the stationary one without also taking out the patrol, the patrol will then proceed to alarm everyone in the area when he finds the body of the other guard.

They also seem to shout out for backup from time to time if you don't score a one-hit kill and there are other guards in nearby rooms.

Yes if opponents are close attacking one will usually alert the others. What I noticed is that even when the player characters are close to the enemy, the noise of weapon fire doesn't seem to alert anyone. Almost like the noise of the weapon is calculated from the point of impact instead of the weapon. Firing and missing completely with an unsilenced weapon also seems safe. But it's hard to tell exactly what happens sometimes.
The game does seem to use different mechanics in and out of combat. Out of combat spotting mechanics seems to work ok, in combat all opponents with "aggro" seems to have perfect battlefield awareness.

Patching and tweaking can certainly make a big difference because a lot of the game is sound. They did mention that they plan to include a better inventory system from the campaign map. Whether they will include true fog of war time will tell.

Grenades are incredibly useful. It's very dangerous to clear a room, and grenades serve an essential purpose for this. I do like how the AI reacts to grenades and tries to move away from them.

 

[Mekado]

Yeah it's a decent remake of JA2, far from perfect but still enjoyable...

Sector inventory is coming back next patch (confirmed by bitcomposer) though imo the part where they really need to work is the idiotic militia AI , the computer does a decent job of defending when you attack but when your militia defends against AI they're beyond retarded.When you can't counter a 6-guys, pistols and axes team with 8 militia armed with M4's and FAL's armored in spectra, you know it's ridiculous...

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Yes if opponents are close attacking one will usually alert the others. What I noticed is that even when the player characters are close to the enemy, the noise of weapon fire doesn't seem to alert anyone. Almost like the noise of the weapon is calculated from the point of impact instead of the weapon. Firing and missing completely with an unsilenced weapon also seems safe. But it's hard to tell exactly what happens sometimes.
The game does seem to use different mechanics in and out of combat. Out of combat spotting mechanics seems to work ok, in combat all opponents with "aggro" seems to have perfect battlefield awareness.

Patching and tweaking can certainly make a big difference because a lot of the game is sound. They did mention that they plan to include a better inventory system from the campaign map. Whether they will include true fog of war time will tell.

Grenades are incredibly useful. It's very dangerous to clear a room, and grenades serve an essential purpose for this. I do like how the AI reacts to grenades and tries to move away from them.

Ah, I see what you mean. I did a little testing this morning, and I think you're right about the bullet impacts being what alert the enemy rather than the sound of the shots being fired with suppressed weapons. I found a spot where there was an enemy close to me and an enemy off in the distance. With a suppressed handgun I took a shot at a wall close to the distant target. The enemy right next to me didn't notice at all, but the one off in the distance became suspicious, dropping to the crouching stance and getting behind cover. I guess in a way it kind of makes sense, at least in the suppressed weapon TV trope sort of way, since games and movies tend to portray a suppressed weapon as being completely silent when in reality a suppressed weapon is still pretty loud most of the time. Going by the trope, it would make sense that the round impacting with something would be louder than the gun. But it's still odd at times.

That's pretty awesome that they'll be adding in sector inventory. I heard that the reason they didn't do it in the first place was because of how the game doesn't really have designated sectors on the world map... but even then, the various towns and outposts seem to have designated sectors, so it would have been nice if at least those got the sector inventory treatment. Especially since I'm one of those OCD players that upon clearing a zone will spend the next 20 minutes policing up every single enemy item drop and lootable object.

If they've decided to work on sector inventory, hopefully they'll decide to give us back the fog of war at the very least as an option. I guess the game was originally supposed to have it, but it got removed at the last minute.

If it weren't for grenades, clearing the basement of the hick farm would have been pretty hellish. I find that on most maps the last few enemy soldiers almost always seek out a 'last stand' position with only one or two very easily defended access points.

 

[Mekado]

So let me preface this by saying that I've always really liked the Jagged Alliance series. Played through both the original and the sequel a whole bunch of times, and thoroughly enjoyed a few completions of JA2 with the fan-made 1.13 mod as well.

Anywho, I bought Jagged Alliance: Back in Action on Steam last Friday, and put in about ten hours so far. At first I was pretty unimpressed with it, seeing only the shortcomings (of which, in my opinion, there are many - I'd be glad to elaborate if anyone wants me to).

I actually thought I was going to just stop playing it after an hour or two and shelf it until the modding community goes to work on it... but instead I pushed onward, and I'm actually finding that the further along I get, the more fun I'm having with it. Though the game is very clearly not a perfect remake of JA2, there's enough of JA2 in it to get me all nostalgic while still experiencing something brand new.

I feel that it's a game that with a little bit of tweaking from the developers and a little bit of love from the modding community could very well be just as classic and memorable as the original Jagged Alliance titles are to me.

So what about you guys and gals? Have any of you taken a chance on this game? If you did, what do you think of it so far? I'm interested to see what my fellow Escapists think of this game, since it looks like it might get some very different responses from people!

Havent tried it yet. A question though. Are the old characters still in the game? Because if I can't get Haywire, Razor and the I-team. It's a dealbreaker.

Yes, all of them with no new ones, they even copied the bios from JA2 (ambidextrous ? congrats it dosen't exist in back in action yet it's still in the bio...)

No I.M.P. though, no custom mercs.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Havent tried it yet. A question though. Are the old characters still in the game? Because if I can't get Haywire, Razor and the I-team. It's a dealbreaker.

All of the A.I.M. characters are definitely in the game, although their ordering in the menu seems to have changed slightly. I don't think any of the M.E.R.C. characters are in it, though. I'm at about 50% of the country liberated, and I still haven't gotten any mail from M.E.R.C.

The characters that you recruit in the world seem to still be around, but so far they've all needed you to complete a quest for them before they're actually recruitable. I've gotten Ira, Vince, Shank, and Maddog so far.

 

[Fat Hippo]

It sounds like they've released it in a only half-finished state. It's a shame, but it happens all too often with small productions like these. (Paradox, I'm looking at you!)

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

It sounds like they've released it in a only half-finished state. It's a shame, but it happens all too often with small productions like these. (Paradox, I'm looking at you!)

I don't think I'd call it half-finished... it definitely feels like a very complete game. It's just very much lacking in polish. The things that it seems to be missing are mostly little quality of life features that JA2 had (granted, many of them are actually things JA2 didn't have but 1.13 added in).

That said, it's probably a title that I wouldn't recommend to my friends until either...

1. The game gets some love from patching.
2. The game gets some love from the modding community.

or, if neither of those two happen...

3. The game's price drops during a Steam sale.

In general though, it is a fun game (to me, anyway), it just needs a bit of work before it lives up to its name. It's kind of like Command & Conquer: Generals. For the longest time I hated that game - even though the game actually wasn't bad at all. If it had just been called 'Generals' when it came out, I probably would never have been so harsh toward it.

 

[bigwon]

I was pretty dissapointed. almost put some cash down on it until I played the demo and saw the reviews.

still if there mods to

1)add fog of war
2)rip voice clips from original and replaced the new voice acting
3)A.I tweaks

It would be heaps more playable....it's sad because this game has so much potential..i'm conflicted.

 

[rofltehcat]

Loved JA2 and JA2 Wildfire. I'll get this but from what I read everywhere, it feels a bit unfinished. So I'll wait for a few patches and probably a Steam offer (40? is simply too much... and I won't preorder a game for 15% off either if I can't be sure of its quality beforehand)

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

So so disappointed.

No M.E.R.C.
No user character
Spelling mistakes everywhere
Total re-make. Nothing new.
No Bugs (You know what I mean)
No Rocketrifles so far.
No personality test.
No Flowers for Deirdranna.
Attributes are detailed instead of sussed out
New voices

FFS...they can't even spell "Tough" correctly.

It's like they simply copy/pasted the entire text onto a different engine.

And Kalypso make some of my favourite games.

3 Day 1 DLC packs.

Just killed the entire idea of day 1 purchases for me.

You know it's bad when the original movie is exactly the same as the old one.

 

[Mekado]

You know it's bad when the original movie is exactly the same as the old one.

Except it's prettier but with less "meat" , it's kinda like the phantom menace of the Jagged alliance series

Though i'm hopeful they'll fix/add lots of stuff with patches, still a strange way to sell a 40$ game but heh...i love squad shooters...

P.S. the devs did say they were looking to improve the game according to feedback, they already promised to put sector inventory and they're brainstorming ideas about how to make the AI better without being overkill. For example defence is treated as multiple squads (alert1, it's not *everybody* that comes), offense is treated as one, hence the 8v1-2 fights when they attack your militia, resulting in your guys being ground to dust regardless of equipment superiority.

Also, they don't plan of putting in armor repair, ever, it's intended as a money sink (bleh...)