Jagged Alliance Remake

[TacticalWargames]

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.

[SgtRock]

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?

[Boggit]

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.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

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. 

[Philippe]

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. 

[Tpek]

So Jagged Alliance Flashback is out on Steam since yesterday.
Anyone tried it so far?

[Grim.Reaper]

$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.

[Jarhead0331]

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.

[airboy]

$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.

[SgtRock]

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:

As 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???

[Bletchley_Geek]

@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.

[Bletchley_Geek]

From the Steam forums, it sounds like an Alpha release:

As 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.

[KyzBP]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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  -- but some of the complaints seem objective (design and graphic problems).

[KyzBP]

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.