TITLE: Jagged Alliance 3D, or why the game stinks more than a black egg on napalm AUTHOR: Jim9137 DATE: 4/14/2005 03:11:00 ip. ----- BODY:
Joq kindly poked me to this article about Jagged Alliance 3D, and as I'm quite a fan of Jagged Alliance so I of course rushed to read it in glee. And well, the emotions after reading it was quite different. Click read more for my professional opinion... (follow the dots! grr.) --- The original Jagged Alliance was one of the pinnacles of Squaddie Turn-Based Strategies, right next to the first X-Com or UFO: Enemy Unknown. The sequel (Jagged Alliance 2) managed to avoid the so called "sequelitis" and actually improved the concept. Unlike the saying "Third is the charm!" (or something like it, can't remember how it went exactly for now) most of the games usually manage to destroy the whole concept with the third sequel. Not always, sometimes the third sequel even manages to save the series. But, I have my doubts in this case. Before I start dissecting the article piece-by-piece, I'll give a short introduction to those who have managed to stay away from this game all these years. Jagged Alliance in it's core is a Turn-Based Strategy, meaning that you and the baddies take turns to shoot at each other. It's also a squad-based once, meaning that you only have 1-8 peeps to control. Got me this far? Nothing particularly fancy about the system, except that it works like a charm and manages to give the player reasonable degree of freedom. The game also combines elements from other strategy games by forcing you to plan, control and manage sectors. The map is divided to sectors, and tapping the sap from the trees (sounds silly I know, but the story explains this, more later) is the only way to get you some money to hire mercenaries and pay their salaries. Surprisingly, you can't buy equipment, but rather loot it from the island. The mercenaries bring in their own equipment, but you're wanting to find some more ammo and fast, since in JA lead flies and that's not nice when your gun hits empty. Story is that an island middle of nowhere has a tree that produces special kind of sap that could prove very useful in battling against certain diseases. One of the members of the original research team hired a private army and took over the island, planning to monopolize the market with the drug. The leader of the team hires YOU in response, and gives you bunch of cash to hire 'army' of your own. A.I.M leases mercenaries for conflicts, assuming you got the money. The mercenaries couldn't care less about who wins the conflict (most of them, anyway), as long as you're paying their salaries on time. But the thing that separates and truly makes Jagged Alliance a classic is the personality of your mercenaries. They all have their own way to handle things, some might refuse to leave the enemy from their hindsight until he dies, some mercenaries hate each other to the point of making them 'disappear', and so and so on. Ivan! Wolf! 'Unusually Ruthless'! Larry! Static! Magic! Ah, memories. Do yourself a favor and find a copy of either Jagged Alliance 1 or 2, you won't regret it. Back to the article, shall we? I assume you have read the article by now, so I'll just start pointing out things that I think are just wrong and generally gives a bad 'feel', 'gut instinct', et cetera.
"Game action takes place in the western coast of Africa. There is arms race intensification and exacerbation of a situation in the region. One of local countries desires to be a member of a nuclear club, but had no access to resources to produce it. The country has financed the revolution in another one small country, which possessed that resource. Thus, there was established a special regime in this country and all its resources were crossed to the invaders. Ex-government of the occupied country contacts with a player and suggests interfering in the situation: to overthrow a government of conqueror regime and to restore the previous regime. As conqueror-country and player’s opportunities aren’t equal a player starts to wage guerilla warfare. But for all that the small country can’t conduct open operations in the most big and powerful country, as it is afraid of world community attention. Thus, a player acts in a role of a Che Gevara of the present. " --- The article
 And that my friends, is the story. It doesn't sound that bad at all, and actually goes well with the rest of the series. Only problem I have it that it sounds extremely cheesy and is clearly aiming for the "OH ME GAWD, NUKES" shock value. Or something, maybe they just love Che Guevara. Moving on, skipping the screen shots and let's get to the details:
"The game consists of number of missions that are the unification of united plot. Game contains ~20 missions, who include obligatory and several unnecessary missions. Passing unnecessary missions, the player lightens pass of obligatory missions for himself, what means that the more unnecessary missions of the episode the player passes, the more easier it will be for him to execute the main mission of the episode." --- The article, again
Pass- I mean uhm, besides for the bad wording and grammar, this practically means that there will be no or minimal amount of strategic planning. So, no sector maps or handling salaries. Which was the part of the game's charm, appealing both tactical and strategic genre lovers... Sigh. 20 missions sounds quite short too, but that probably depends how large and complex they're wanting to make the maps. Lack of real freedom will surely lower this games score, and diminish the replay value (Jagged Alliance is always so popular because you can always just take a new set of mercenaries and go for the goal in different way. At least, that's how it seems to be.) Optional missions? Why the god they just couldn't make sectors out of them while at it! Anyway, to the next part:
"Each mission is a level, on which the team of player appears and executes the combat task. In the real-time mode the player can control team, which can be arranged of 6 fighters (max). Mission considers accomplished if all of the soldiers of the enemy are destroyed. For successful execution of the mission the player gets money. Team of the player gathers experience and grows over itself." --- The article. Eyes are bleeding.
Again, the grammar. The developer is Russian, so I can let that pass but I can't let the fact they first say you execute a combat task, and then they add that it means just killing all the enemies. Okay, most of the other types of games in this genre aren't any better in this degree, BUT WHAT STOPS THEM FROM TRYING TO INVENT SOMETHING ELSE! LIKE BOMBING THE PLANT AND MAKING A GETAWAY! Okay, now to the real-time. This worked reasonably well with X-Com: Apocalypse, as long as you can switch between Real-Time mode and Turn-Based mode at will. It actually removes some of the frustration when you're looking for that last guy. But what if they mean the game is going to be real-time instead of turn-based?... Good to hear they left the experience intact, I hope at least. Don't know about the growing part, though. Next one:
"Between missions the player can hire/fire the mercenaries, can buy/sell the ammunition, choose the mission from available on given moment missions (all of non accomplished missions of episode are available simultaneously)."
Meaning, you don't have to plan your use of ammo at all, which some might say is a good thing but it detracts the feeling for me. You know, remember that warm feeling you got when you find a huge weapon stash? No more, sniff. And, no more assigning your mercenaries to various other duties besides combat, I take it. (Teaching, healing, repairing, training, etc) Which is sad and killed the little school kid inside me. Now on to the little details. This is the best, or worst depending on if you're still taking this article seriously: So we got the graphics! We got the looks! But do we have a game yet? And this is where I started laughing. I admit that the Jagged Alliance 2 used lots of same mercenaries that were on Jagged Alliance 1, but hey, that just sounds so silly. "We have these kewl guys, see we stole it from the previous games." I don't know if they're planning to continue the individual characters stories as happened in Jagged Alliance 2, (Is Larry still taking drugs? What about Ivan and his nephew?) but anyway. Gave me a laugh. Looking, looking for the game! Oh. My. Gowd. Real-time gameplay with pause. When will the developers learn that real-time gameplay, even with the pause, is going to be frustrating and will most likely will not work? Managing your units, well, ever had the feeling when you have 6 random members probably running across the map, all doing their own things and you with only one mouse trying to control them all? This begs for rushing in with your guns blazing with fire! Bad design! Bad design! Destructible objects and the weapons bit sounds promising though, maybe it will be just as good or even better as in Silent Storm. The look for the game, still going what if slightly darker than before: Finally some good news! Let's skip it and move on to the next one, since I'm ranting after all: Seriously, that's all they mentioned. Is it just me, or am I missing the variety in "Instead of shooting everyone, you shoot the guy in the red suit"? Seriously, it's not that hard to think of other types of missions to play. While I typed that sentence I got five, actually. Well, maybe they're just shining the physics code to care about such things, but let's move on to the next one: Why do they bother listing the types in ()'s when you spill them out soon afterwards? Well, no rainforests so that's different at least. And towns sound nice, I've been wanting some urban street fighting, with the snipers thankyouverymuch. Prepare yourself: ... Seriously. Instead of simply bursting into laughter and rolling in the floor for all the misery that caused to the game world, I had a heartattack. Are we still stuck in the 90's? Is the AI still that silly that we can only give it better accuracy to "make the game for the hardcore"? Really, this just shows bad design or very bad PR from the developers. Final quote before I'll let you go: "Gameplay is dynamic"? And how, pray tell, they're planning to achieve that? It's good to hear they're trying at least, but the game seems to be following a boring routine of making a game! Interface? Hm, I wonder. Since you have to bear in mind that the interface in JA2 could have been way much better, they could have just taken a new shinier one instead of constantly ripping off from the earlier parts of the series! Well, that does it for me. In the end, this game seems to be a Lite version of the other, hopefully more promising Jagged Alliance game, Jagged Alliance 3 (Note the lack of D in the 3). --- In other news, I have a shotgun. And it's loaded, with shells. --- Okay, that does it for me for the day. Hopefully you enjoyed the rant, it's quite large and whiny but so was the timegap from my previous one. Other teammembers are invited to add their opinion on the end if they wish so the management, ie John9137, notes. Addendum: I hate HTML. Addendum pt II: I hate Blogger's HTML Editor. Addendum pt III: Added some little things and hopefully the dang thing works now.
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