Jagged Alliance Flashback is attempting to relaunch the Jagged Alliance franchise with a game set in the late 1980s before the end of the Cold War.
It is a kickstarter development project - so no telling if this will actually become a playable game.
Information can be found at:
http://www.jaggedallianceflashback.com/home
They are planning to make it turn based, which is the way to go with this game.
Apparently there is an alpha build for supporters. Anybody?
Awesome! Finally getting back to the Jagged Alliance roots.
That new, real-time Jagged Alliance:Back in Action just didn't trip my trigger.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on April 03, 2014, 12:30:12 PM
Apparently there is an alpha build for supporters. Anybody?
http://www.jaggedallianceflashback.com/url/shop
Yep, there sure is. It's actually releasing today for backers. I haven't become a backer yet, but I probably will once it goes beta.
Warning !!! - Malwarebytes flags the web site (http://www.jaggedallianceflashback.com/home) as Malicious!!!!
Did they get hacked or something?
.
I'm a beta backer - we should get Early Access by the end of May, according to what Full Control has been stating.
I think they'll get the game play absolutely right, as they did with Space Hulk(*), not so sure about the atmosphere. This latter bit was a huge part of the JA2 experience, and the lack of such atmosphere, explains quite well why those Russian-made reboots, as full with game-breaking bugs as the original JA2 was, like Hired Guns, Brigade E5, 7.62mm (which got back a bit of that with R@S' Black Sun Mod, yet that mod goes a bit too far) or the distinctly cold and soulless Back in Action, never did really take off.
But they are also probably going to release a smaller game than the original JA2. Which I think it should be fine, as long as they stick to the promise they're making of opening pretty much everything to anyone capable of handling Unity. One could expect a fan-made remake of the original JA2 "campaign", possibly led by the Bear Pit fellas. Back in Action further failed when they force modders to jump through hoops in order to mod the game (which seems to me to be almost mandatory for this kind of tactical strategy game, where "gun pr0n" is rampant).
(*): And that's the irony of Space Hulk, they make a 100% faithful port of Space Hulk and people just went medieval on their assholes because of the game not being up to "expectations". The irony bit is that I have always thought that Space Hulk was a pretty average game (and a rip off of Colonial Marines), and that Full Control shot themselves in the foot by tying themselves to a clearly overrated game (when compared to what one can do with turn-based strategy on a PC or a tablet). It's likely that a similar reaction will ensue with this JA reboot when the JA2-hardcore mechanics get exposed to the "unwashed" masses.
They can take the X-Com model and I'm all in. Other than that, I'm going to have to wait and see.
Fingers crossed.
This is definitely shaping up to be a proper remake, as we can see on this Alpha Playthrough posted on the JA Flashback backer forums
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT3L482uVcU
the video looks very choppy, and the guy recording the session isn't really doing a great job with the video or the game - in my opinion - but we can see that Full Control is definitely steering the game into the "right & proper" direction. It's interesting to see how XCom: Enemy Unknown is influencing tactical strategy games - see the Don't Starve guys strategy game - in the user interface department (the cover GUI, movement allowance display, etc.): those were good ideas to be kept, I think. It's also good to see how the 'look & feel' (the music, the mercs voices, their faces) of the original JA2 is being preserved, without tossing into the scrapheap the possibilities of technology available in the 2010's.
In the latest backer update Full Control announced that they will be shipping the editor with the Early Access/Beta and they're looking forward to full Steam Workshop integration. The editor is basically Unity, with some plugins automating some tasks I guess, and it looks like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_v1j7B1IVU&feature=youtu.be
The devs estimate the Beta will be available at some point during the next three weeks.
JA2 still works so why do we need another remake?
I'd like to see a WWII squad level game at this scale, something like 82nd Airborne/Computer Ambush meets JA.
Quote from: SgtRock on May 06, 2014, 11:34:22 PM
JA2 still works so why do we need another remake?
One remake that is faithful to the original and upgraded so to exploit present day PC capabilities was something me, and a few thousand other backers, found worthy of being crowdfunded. I have played and owned Brigade E7, Hired Guns, 7.62, JA Back in Action, and all of them have failed (to a different degree) to capture the "soul" of JA2.
Quote from: SgtRock
I'd like to see a WWII squad level game at this scale, something like 82nd Airborne/Computer Ambush meets JA.
Wasn't that supposed to be Team Assault? Didn't pan out too well that one.
Quote from: SgtRock on May 06, 2014, 11:34:22 PM
JA2 still works so why do we need another remake?
I'd like to see a WWII squad level game at this scale, something like 82nd Airborne/Computer Ambush meets JA.
Sgt Rock, if you didn't bitch about how games don't meet your expectations, would you have anything to say, ever?
JA: Back In Action is a good game. It's just that the pausable real-time mechanics weren't as fun as the original Turn/AP-based one and felt like a real chore at times. You just end up having to constantly jockey the pause toggle which is, in essence, playing a more annoying version of a turn-based game.
Real-time had been highly overrated for many years. Luckily not quite so much these days since we're seeing more turn-based stuff show up again. Thankfully.
QuoteI have played and owned Brigade E7, Hired Guns, 7.62, JA Back in Action, and all of them have failed (to a different degree) to capture the "soul" of JA2.
I too played most of them, Brigade E7 & 7.62 started out Ok but, in all of the later mission you were always outnumbered 20:1, even 30:1, the battles just got crazy and no longer fun. Hired Guns could have been a contender if had more support from the developers but, just like E7 & 7.62 Russian developers don't seem to support their projects after release.
QuoteWasn't that supposed to be Team Assault? Didn't pan out too well that one.
I have no idea what Team Assault was trying to do but, it was nothing like JA or 82nd Airborne.
The Silent Storm engine was superb. A shame no one could pick it up and do something with it.
I too would love to see an indepth WW2 game similar to JA2, maybe set in Stalingrad with all that street fighting. Would prefer WEGO than turn based though.
Quote from: skeptical.platypus on May 07, 2014, 07:06:22 PM
Quote from: SgtRock on May 06, 2014, 11:34:22 PM
JA2 still works so why do we need another remake?
I'd like to see a WWII squad level game at this scale, something like 82nd Airborne/Computer Ambush meets JA.
Sgt Rock, if you didn't bitch about how games don't meet your expectations, would you have anything to say, ever?
Sound like your the one Bitching!
I just said what I would like, how is that Bitching?
Quote from: Nefaro on May 07, 2014, 07:14:43 PM
JA: Back In Action is a good game. It's just that the pausable real-time mechanics weren't as fun as the original Turn/AP-based one and felt like a real chore at times. You just end up having to constantly jockey the pause toggle which is, in essence, playing a more annoying version of a turn-based game.
Real-time had been highly overrated for many years. Luckily not quite so much these days since we're seeing more turn-based stuff show up again. Thankfully.
I've got JA-BIA, and agree it's a good game with a few - not really gamebreaking - flaws. I'd agree with Nefaro, it would have benefited at least from an option to play turn based.
I really liked the tactical combat engine in 7.62mm - High Calibre. If they could add the same quality writing, voice acting, characters, and story found in the original JA games to this engine, we'd have a winner.
I played a little bit of this game a while back and was really impressed with the tactical engine. It wasn't lacking in all the other supporting areas, but it didn't quite go far enough. But I agree that if many of those areas were polished up, and not polished up all that much, it would be a winner.
I just started playing the BIA (the JA 2 remake) for the first time and JA 2. Like all Kalypso games BIA is great to look at (except the character portraits which are better in the original), but the map seems smaller, it feels odd to assault Drassen airport (successfully) with only three mercs, and my sense is that the AI (on max difficulty) in JA 2 puts up a much tougher fight than BIA.
I don't dislike BIA, but when you play the two games simultaneously what you come away with is that JA 2 has so much style it's hard to justify giving some of that up for better graphics. The mercs in BIA feel like echoes of the mercs in JA 2, and I suspect that JA 2 is a much longer game. (True confessions: I've never actually finished JA 2, in spite of having played JA 1 through to conclusion many times -- I usually get sidetracked playing what amounts to a logistics game, stockpiling ammo and spare parts at various depots scattered across the map and spending most of my time ferrying supplies to my forward supply dump). The only thing that bothers me about JA 2 is that the screen resolution is a bit lower than I would like, and the lighting in most of the screens seems too dark -- the colors should be more saturated, even in the desert.
So Jagged Alliance Flashback is out on Steam since yesterday.
Anyone tried it so far?
$45 is a little steep for me to jump in on it right now....likely a game I will wait for until a decent sale especially since still in first access stage.
The tactical combat portion of the game shows a lot of promise. However, it is in a very early state and has a long way to go. Most features remain to be fully implemented.
Quote from: Grim.Reaper on May 16, 2014, 03:12:22 AM
$45 is a little steep for me to jump in on it right now....likely a game I will wait for until a decent sale especially since still in first access stage.
I don't buy unfinished games. Same philosophy with Xenonauts which I'm also looking forward to.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on May 16, 2014, 07:51:39 AM
The tactical combat portion of the game shows a lot of promise. However, it is in a very early state and has a long way to go. Most features remain to be fully implemented.
From the Steam forums, it sounds like an Alpha release:
QuoteAs of v0.2:
The game at the moment doesn't really have too much going for it - only pretty basic mechanics like shooting, walking and talking are available.
Steam says The game is due for full release later this year???
@Nefaro, @Sgt_Rock, et al. You're right, the Back in Action gameplay was probably the best tactical 3D hi-jinks since Shadow Company (a game which didn't quite deserve all the attention it deserved, I think). The Plan & Go thing worked very well, regardless of the endless drivel and abuse some "JA2 Talebans" posted on the devs forumses (things got very ugly there, and I could see that the devs started acting in a "f*ck you too" manner).
Hired Guns gameplay was quite good as well, but the engine was too unstable (and unsupported).
The Silent Storm reference is worth commenting on: in my opinion, the Commandos formula didn't mix too well with that of JA. And the Panzerkleins were totally over the top. Yet I quite liked the art style and the game play was very good (the destructible environments were particularly well-done for the time).
My major problem with Back in Action was basically that they totally killed the setting: story wise and in the art direction department. They wanted to give us a more "realistic" deal in the wrong quarter, killing some of the charm and tongue-in-cheekness of the original. And then we got 3D merc portraits that all shared a most weird resemblance, as one would expect from villagers in a isolated village in the Appalachians featured in a Lovecraftian short story. It also featured a sense of humour that seemed to borrow a page from JA-JA2 antics, but left me sometimes wondering "what the hell? was that meant to be funny?".
Or also the way they approached the problem of scaling up difficulty: Deirdranna's army at the start is reminiscent of the kind of mob-like militias one sees in the news in places like the Central African Republic. I mean, confronting mobs armed with machetes might be realistic, though it's not the most interesting of all possible match-ups with trained men equipped with automatic rifles. I'd rather preferred that the initial opposition was equipped with vintage weaponry posing a nightmarish logistic problem when you're basically equipping yourself with what you can scavenge (that's a feature I quite like from JA 2 1.13, you get very colorful outfits).
The writing at times was uninspiring and reminded me of what you can find on those German car & police TV thrillers (what's its name? Cobra Something?). There were other questionable decisions - like leaving out the IMP player-generated character, the campaign where one felt very cozy too soon, foregoing funny stuff from the original like the Mel Gibson lookalike bromance with the not-too-disguised Ed Gein lookalike probably because BitComposer writers and devs didn't appreciate the joke - which didn't help much to enhance my connection with the game.
Regarding Flashback. It's a "backer" price - that is, in line with the Kickstarter pledges for the beta, which wasn't cheap - and what we got is a rough and ready prototype of the tactical combat engine. Which I'm liking quite enough (streamlining what needs to be streamlined, but keeping the gorey details under the hood). We also got the modding tools, which I'm seeing some people already taking to places (remaking sectors from the original JA2, for instance).
So if you want an actual game, rather than just support and encourage Full Control, just sit out the Early Access.
Quote from: SgtRock on May 17, 2014, 09:56:52 AM
From the Steam forums, it sounds like an Alpha release:
QuoteAs of v0.2:
The game at the moment doesn't really have too much going for it - only pretty basic mechanics like shooting, walking and talking are available.
Steam says The game is due for full release later this year???
If we take "alpha" to mean "tech demo" and "beta" to mean "polishing & bug-fixing", indeed, this one is still more on the "alpha" side than the "beta" one. Regarding the release time, I do think they'll deliver it in time - they work hard and fast (back in Christmas we just got to see some screenshots). They also have integrated in the current build a feedback system so one can make comments and point out to bugs. Whether this is just a mock-up to make people feel better, I can't say. But what I can say is that they do indeed come forward quite candidly, something I appreciate.
So I just fired this up. My initial impression is pretty good. It feels a lot like the new X-Com, which isn't a bad thing. The previous editions of this game had tremendous voice acting sadly this one falls kind of flat so far. It feels like it has a lot of potential so I'll continue exploring and report back.
Man, the Steam reviews are brutal. Some of that could easily be JA2 fanbois -- which is understandable, why not just update JA2 please after what feels like 20 years :tickedoff: -- but some of the complaints seem objective (design and graphic problems).
Unfortunately I haven't been very impressed. It's not terrible but it's just not immersive in the way JA2 was. As far as I can tell you can't loot buildings and such. All you get is whatever drops from a fallen enemy. The trees and buildings obscure your view at times which gets kind of annoying. There's kind of a see thru thing going on but I'm not sure I like it. Also, no laptop or an equivalent to contact the outside world. If you want another Merc you just hit the Hire Merc button, select a Merc and, voila, he's standing at your side. I liked JA2's method better.
In the game I'm playing now, my main character just got killed but the game continues. I'm now controlling 2 Mercs and a farmer's daughter.
Again, it's not bad, just not what I was hoping for. I too was really hoping for more of just a graphics enhancement and a change in location but most everything else to stay the same.
Quote from: JasonPratt on October 22, 2014, 06:35:42 PM
Man, the Steam reviews are brutal. Some of that could easily be JA2 fanbois -- which is understandable, why not just update JA2 please after what feels like 20 years :tickedoff: -- but some of the complaints seem objective (design and graphic problems).
Jason, disregard any review with less than 4 hours of playtime. Some of the stuff people is writing is wildly inaccurate :)
As Kyz, I am not impressed and I kind of have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Let me share some thoughts below (by the way, I was a KS backer):
The Good
- The tactical combat is very good. I do like how they have mixed the elements of the original with a modern UI that doesn't get in the way of things and more "modern" concepts, like the very XCOM-like cover system (but deeper than the one in XCOM).
- The interrupt system is much better - to my taste - than the one in the original.
- The I.M.P. is back.
- The game architecture is ready for some heavy modding (with the proviso below) both in terms of customizing assets and world reactivity (there's a substantial LUA interface for scripting quests and other stuff).
The Meh
- The world feels a bit lifeless and shows very little reactivity and interactivity. The original JA's weren't precisely very reactive, but this one feels a bit like talking to a brick in that respect (NPCs always stand on the same place, even when there's a thick firefight around, you can't open/close doors, little details that give a bit more of credibility and immersion to the game).
- The starting selection of mercs feels a bit limited. However, you can "unlock" more mercs as you walk across them during your travels.
- The possibility of fighting alongside the militia isn't in the game.
- The strategic layer is a bit bare. Indeed, this one is set in the early 1980s so no ordering of weapons over the Internet etc. But I would have appreciated a suitable replacement (like some sort of mock brochure or something to order your stuff).
The Bad
- The story in JA or JA2 was at the level of perhaps the best episodes in the A-Team series (nothing amazing but decent and providing some fun and entertainment). The story here feels a bit like those filler A-Team episodes right before the end of the season, with a dash of those convoluted things we ESL do sometimes with English sentence structure.
- The modding support promised didn't make it for the deadline they set themselves for the game. I am not amused by that, because that was probably the most important reason I backed this up on KS.
- Wounds dressing in the field recover health instantly "sometimes" and "sometimes" they require to have a merc in the squad with a med kit designated as a "Doctor". This is a bit confusing, and I reckon they didn't devote much time thinking the whole thing over.
- A number of miscellaneous promised features like weapon attachments, didn't make it for the deadline and have been promised to be added in some future free DLC to be released in the next few weeks.
- Mercs don't have "personality" traits, or doesn't seem like they do. Which is a shame, as it was what gave some character to JA2 and sometimes created some unexpected crises which were at the same time a pain in the arse and fun to manage.
I haven't seen much of the AI, but they're not bloody idiots. If you hole up in a house, they'll be reluctant to come into the house forming a neat queue at the door as in JA2. Seems that the initial sectors are meant to be sort of a "safe haven" providing some minimum income, and not too challenging. Some the twitch.tv streams by Shanga from the Bear Pit show that the AI can put up a more than decent challenge (flanking, taking advantage of the range of their weapons, etc.).
So mixed feelings, really. I'll wait until they release the modding tools and that free DLC before writing my Steam review. And I would advise people to buy in only if they're suckers for turn-based tactical strategy games.
Damn this weird browser on my phone!
BG broke it down much better than I did. Right now the game just doesn't feel like it has any personality, which was something JA2 gave you almost instantly. It certainly has the potential to get better though.
Reminds me of Brigade E5: New Jagged Union. I was supposed to review that for WG back in the day and within minutes of meeting a character named "Mayonnaise," I was done with it.
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on October 23, 2014, 06:35:09 AM
Reminds me of Brigade E5: New Jagged Union. I was supposed to review that for WG back in the day and within minutes of meeting a character named "Mayonnaise," I was done with it.
Yeah, there's a bit of misunderstood absurdist humour, which is the hardest thing to translate. In E5 it seems to me that somebody translated literally something that was genuinely funny in Russian. Back in Action was a German production - the closest to funny I ever got there was an NPC line similar to "You girlie mann, DIE! ". And with this one I don't know, looks to me like the result of a night hanging out with mates, eating too much pizza, too much beer and watching twice or three times those hilariously bad movies with Franco Nero playing the white ninja.
^ Ha! Though I quite enjoyed Sho Kosugi myself. Michael Dudikoff was good for a laugh or two also in his terrible American Ninja movies.