Jagged Alliance: Back In Action - Classic JA2 Remake

[Cortlendt]

Some of you played Jagged Alliance series back in time?

The original game was about a band of mercenaries, taking over a small latin-american country. Game had real-time strategical management and squad-based turn-based tactical battles. Close to UFO series actually. It offered a lot of replayability due to being a big sandbox where the player was free to either turtle and take the country sector by sector or execute a series of lightning strikes to eliminate the evil dictator. It had some rpg-elements and greatly developed merc personalities.

Okay, a spiritual successor to this game is being released on steam soon, 7th of Feb. Official site: http://www.jaggedalliance.com/gb/
A demo was released: http://www.4players.de/4players.php/...tion/Demo.html

I have this preordered on Steam, though their smart pause mode may no work well. Did not play the demo yet, some ppl complain there is no FOW in demo and suggest you to setup your auto pause before playing. Stiil I have some hope for this cause the original was oh so great.

[Trizzdog]

I was interested in the fact they were doing a new JA, but when I found out it was like a terrible version of JA2, I was immediately turned off. I mean, I took one look at the A.I.M recruitment screen and then I broke down into tears.

[LoneWolf666]

Tried the demo and there is indeed no FoW. A weird decision, to be sure. That said, the game was not halfway bad - I enjoyed the tactical part of combat, positioning, designating marksmen etc. The combat is a bit too deadly and there are a LOT of enemies who sadly have nothing against running headlong into your overlapping fields of fire. But it was good fun. I expected it to be terrible so I'm pleasantly surprised by this.

[medes]

Considering that I expected a blunder of the century, the demo was surprisingly alright. I wouldn't give it more than that until I see the strategic side of the game. Although there are some changes I would've liked
- Fog of war
- Switch back to the old 2d merc portraits, current 3d one is laughable and everyone looks the same
- Pre-load weapons, switching weapons empties the magazine.

[Cortlendt]

It is $17 in my region, so I'll keep my preorder. I think all JA-like games always had a strong modding community so this one has potential. Also visuals are nice, though gunfire is weak.

[Mantaray]

i gotta admit having played the demo i got much more enjoyment out of 7.62 (1c's jagged alliance wannabe) nothing quite like keeping a sawn-off mosin nagant as a backup pistol.

[Cortlendt]

Smart pause, adrenaline and shock in combat and weapon attachments were brilliant in E5/7.62. Everything else was not).

Game manual for Back In Action, if anyone interested: http://cdn.steampowered.com/Manuals/...f?t=1326137680

[mlai]

What does smart pause mean???

[Mantaray]

normally the game would auto-pause as soon as stuff like, new enemies were sighted, or important events (in the games eyes) occurred

[Afoxi]

No Rheuban = not sure if want.

[Cortlendt]

I will play this over the weekend and post my impressions. Though this is clearly not a JA2 port to newer engine.

[Cortlendt]

I did not play it a lot but. There are some simplifications - mercs are hired once and for all, no magazines for the guns, no sector inventory. I'm quite ok with it, but AI leaves much to be desired, basically it does not react to gunfire, fallen comrades, etc, making it quite possible to melee the entire sector with Blood for an example. Also you can grab Wolf with a shotgun and go straight into Meduna so you can blitz the entire game very fast. I'll wait for some mods to appear, since JA fans really have no choice of what game to play nowadays.

[TheWickedGerman]

I played it a lot and I like it a lot. Not as good as JA2, but the best game of it´s kind Since Silent Storm.

Corlendt, what do you mean by "no magazines"? They are just displayed different than in JA 2, it displays the number of bullets you have. As far as I can recall, it was similar in JA2 but the number of full magazines was shown, instead of numbers of bullets, and if you had not full clips, a bar at the side showed the approx. ammount of bullets in the clip.

Also It does indeed react to gunfire, but it depends on the situation. If an enemy is in a building for example, they usually don´t come out and rush if they hear gunfire, as they are in good cover. They also try to flank you and make good use of granades, lost once my whole team of 4 mercs as I took cover behind a van in a close quarter combat.

Overall the AI is one of the better ones I have seen in that genre.

For those that are worried about the loss of FoW, they currently think of patching it in, and in the official forum, they announced an update about the case this friday or next monday.

My bigges complaint is the atmosphere (ingame cutscenes removed, limited interactions with npc´s, ugly potraits, and too little to do on the world map).

For example they removed the militia training. Instead potential militia "grows" over time in your locations held by you, the more time elapses and the more loyalty you gain, the more milita you get. before they fight you have to supply them with weapons and you also can give them armor and helmets. While I like that Idead, the main "flaw" here is that you have to visit every map and go to potential militias phisically and give them weapons and equipment. They should do this via a screen on the world map where you can equip them with stuff available on this map (be it mercs or looted stuff laying on the map).

As for the sector inventory, it was in the game but has been removed as it was buggy as hell (items duplicated, main weapons held by mercs could dissapear), but it will be patched in again once they fixed it.

But the core of the game, the combat with it´s "plan & go" is very good. Unfortunalty the demo ist not very representative, as the ai is in a much inferior state and doesn´t show anything beyond tatcical combat.

[Cortlendt]

Corlendt, what do you mean by "no magazines"? They are just displayed different than in JA 2, it displays the number of bullets you have. As far as I can recall, it was similar in JA2 but the number of full magazines was shown, instead of numbers of bullets, and if you had not full clips, a bar at the side showed the approx. ammount of bullets in the clip.

Say I want to put away my rifle and grab my handgun - I have to do this through the inventory, and when my rifle gets there, it is unloaded, when my handgun is in my hands, it is unloaded, I do not like it at all. In E5/7.62 you could tape 2 magazines together for the faster reload (it reduced the weapon balance though) and you could put different ammo type into the magazine.

Also in E5/7.62 you could strafe, roll if you re prone, spring around the corner, shoot around the corner, aim at the anticipated spot, shoot bursts of designated length into designated sectors, you even could alter grenade trajectory to throw them around the corners and have tons of attachments on your guns. In JA:BiA your movement modes are more limiting and your firing modes are absurd.

I will play this when there is enough patches and mods. But thats just my subjective opinion.

[Zepheris]

The no magazine on gun part basically means the ammo magazine of the guns are part of the character equipment not the gun.

this is bad in some situation because it means you cannot keep loaded gun so unlike in JA2 and most other tactical squad games, you cannot keep a loaded weapon as a backup and then use it if you run out of ammo on your primary weapon, you either switch to melee weapon or you might as well reload your current gun because switching to other gun means you have to reload it anyway.

and as Cortlendt mentioned it lacks features from 7.62 like pre aiming at certain spot, etc which is fatal in a game where the action occurs in real time.

Unlike in JA2 where action occurs in turn based and you can stop or intercept someone as long as you trigger your 'interrupt' as the enemy enters your view and have enough action point left, in JA:BIA an enemy or you can actually run to someone using the terrain and taking advantage of the fact that the character have reaction time... as long as you are not within the view at any one point longer than the reaction time you or someone traveling in this manner can't actually be shot.

So it is essentially IMPOSSIBLE to fire accurately on someone who appear into view for a short time even if you know well in advance that he's coming from there, your only option is to either make some distance to the location where you expected him to show up and make sure he remains in view long enough for you to pull off an aimed shot, or to switch to hip fire mode with short reaction time and pray for the best.

[TheWickedGerman]

Zeph, I had no problems with that, just switching on the "Guard mode, and you mercs shooting pretty fast at anything that comes in their line of sight.

Their are coming 2 major content updates for the gaming, adding some of the missing features, but they are not official announces yet. But getting Helicopter transport and FoW back ist 95% sure.

I will post the content of this patches as soon as they are officially announced for those interested.

So far, the combat is a lot of fun, personally I like it more than the original, or the combat in JA online where i played the closed beta a bit (I think its in open beta now). But it still needs polishing, melee combat is too powerfull, could be more shooting modes (only "from hip", aimed while standing, aimed while crouching on the ground or lying down, no unaimed shots in these modes), and some other minor issues and balance tweaks would be good for the game.

The Major downside on the game is, that they cut too much feature. No ingame cutscene, no militia training on the world map(they appear after a while in your conquered locations, and you have to go every single milita to hire them through giving them equipment and weapons), no M.E.R.C or other websites, to name the most important things.

For now I have stopped playing(even though i enyoing the combat a lot) to wait for the new features to be added.

PS: What annoys me alot is that you can´t jump over fences, cut a hole in them, only blow up walls and climb roofs at certain spots.

[Zepheris]

Guard mode is what i use as well but it doesn't help when the character takes X seconds to aim and fire at the target... you CANNOT improve this aim time aside of changing his firing stance. And you say they shoot pretty fast? yeah sure in hip firing mode, but anything that gives a decent aim and the aim time soars.

Essentially you MUST be hip firing at any close quarter and any weapon that is good at hip firing have advantage naturally.

Doesn't matter if you KNOW he is coming through the door, or coming through the corner, you hip fire or he will melee you because anything with aim takes 1.5-2 seconds of pre aiming time at least.

It was retarded because at first you'd think that the weapon's ready stance with your character facing right at the space in which he is coming through should result in him taking the shot quickly as he appear... NOPE... big mistake, he run literally straight through the door and into point blank melee range and in the mean time your character apparently is 'ATTEMPTING TO AIM' at him for a good 2 seconds which was promptly cancelled as he reached melee range. Lesson learned, hip fire or die in short range.

Aside of that, the customizations are so incredibly annoying as well given that like the ammunition they are considered inventory item and not tied to the gun itself...

it's bloody retarded, so each time you swap weapon types you have to reequip them, reload them.

Patience frankly ran thin for me with the game ages ago, JA and JA2 in particular was a FUN game, this... not so much.

[Cortlendt]

I'll wait for half a year at least and give it a try with some mods and patches. Two big patches are scheduled and check out Blue Dawn mod on the official boards. Playing vanilla does not appeal to me.