![]() As soon as your squad enters an area, every enemy is marked on the map. You’re God now, you see, or at least the omniscient part of Him. It may be a necessary brake, preventing a squad from strolling forward, all guns blazing, killing enemies as soon as they come into sight.Įxcept they don’t come into sight at all. Whatever the case, the fact that combat feels more immediate and lethal isn’t a bad thing. Maybe that’s because it’s harder to keep track of bleeding when it’s a constant flow rather than a sort of tick-tock effect. My team and the bad guys alike were dropping like flies. ![]() One thing that changed my play style is that either the random number gods were playing a consistent game of silly beggars or bullets hurt a lot more. The pace is quicker but the tactics haven’t changed that much. Mostly because of how little difference the real-time control makes. Sending the same mercs to hide behind the same cover, to kill guards who have taken up the same positions, but in real-time, feels incredibly odd. Turn off my monitor, give me the keyboard and mouse, and I reckon I could still take it. I’ve taken control of that first airfield so many times that I can almost do it through muscle memory. I ended up going quite a bit further, mostly because it’s Jagged Alliance and I find it hard to walk away, but also because it was harder to tease out the differences than I’d anticipated. It’s the initiation into any Jagged Alliance 2 campaign, the first step toward establishing a force in the country and marching on to a terrible defeat. The first time I played, after the initial shock at the fact that I recognised every line of dialogue, every hole in the fence around Drassen airfield, and the positioning of almost every tree and rock, I decided I’d take the landing strip and then write down some thoughts. That is, until the enemies’ reactions come into play. Setting up the mercs like a bickering SWAT team is a pleasure. Having Grunty open fire at the enemies inside a building just as Ivan opens the door, goes prone and unleashes a hail of lead and Buns lobs a grenade through the window is satisfying, no doubt about it. Stances are selectable, altering movement speed and accuracy, and the ability to synchronise commands is an addition that could make this most significant alteration worthwhile. The move to simultaneous movement and controlled rather than enforced pauses hasn’t diminished the level of control provided. That’s terrible tutorification.īack In Action takes the other route, the one that leads to a tutorial that is almost a suitable replacement for a chunky manual, teaching you how to do everything up front and leaving you to figure out the why and the when. It’s the only time a wire has ever dangled just so, the only time a gap has ever been just the right size for this to work, so the lesson is taught for a one-time use and victory is yours. It’s not unusual to be taught how to jump and swing from a dangling wire during the final escape from a space station that is crashing into two other space stations, the climactic action pausing as a never-before-used series of commands appears on screen. Arithmetic informs me that 92% of games made in the last four years are tutoring for at least the first 46% of their playtime. That’s nothing to do with calm, controlled objectivity, which I could never have when scrutinising the mutant reincarnation of a loved one, but it should say something about the quality of the tutorial and the effectiveness of the plan-and-go scheme. I’ve been prejudiced about Back In Action ever since I heard it wouldn’t include an option to play turn-based but all the malice in me shrivelled away as soon as I started working my way through the tutorial. Pausable real-time action is the order of the day, replacing the turn-based movement of the original that was a sequel. Unfortunately, as the changes become more apparent, they are detrimental to more than nostalgia. The new game is the old game in so many ways that I can only imagine anyone with an intimate knowledge of Arulco is going to find JA:BIA a rather disconcerting experience. I revisit Jagged Alliance 2 all the time so it was a little disconcerting to play JA:BIA (which I just realised sounds like an unpleasant gynaecological condition) and realise that I was essentially revisiting Jagged Alliance 2 again. I don't know why I keep a lot of that stuff but I guess it reminds me how much of a man I am. I keep my copy of Jagged Alliance 2 atop a giant stack of Soldier of Fortune magazines, which stands between an ashtray containing a smouldering over-sized cigar, some satellite surveillance photos of a dictator's villa, a few scattered dogtags (some with bulletholes through them) and a pile of empty shell casings. I've been playing an early version of Jagged Alliance - Back In Action, the upcoming remake of one of my most beloved games.
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