OMG! OMG! A NEW Jagged Alliance

[Jonzac]

You can pre-order a new, updated 3D isometric Jagged Alliance "Back in Action." Saw the pics and video looks very good!!!! A new XCOM and JA...I'm flipping giddy!!!

[warty goblin]

Before you go reaching for the pre-order, there are two points worth noting.

1) It's pause-anytime realtime, not turnbased.

2) There's no fog of war, you can see everybody as soon as you enter the map.

Personally I'm in the wait and see camp on this one. The move to realtime I'm cool with, it's more flexible and allows greater realism than turnbased. The lack of fog of war, well that could cut good or bad.

In either case JA 2: 3D it ain't. Which doesn't bother me, it's twelve years on and a different developer, but there's a good bit of nerdrage going on about this, so I thought you should know.

[Cheesegear]

A new XCOM and JA...I'm flipping giddy!!!

I'm excited about neither.

The new XCOM is basically a shooter with XCOM themes. Kind of similar to the difference between Fallout 2 and 3/NV. While FO3/NV were very good games, they were markedly different to what fans actually wanted and the response was "Wait and see, it's a different game, who knows?" rather than "FALLOUT OMG MUST HAVE NAO K!"
It might not be XCOM as I know it, so how do I know it will be good?

As for Jagged Alliance, Warty Goblin covered it. It's not the same game that I'm used to. How do I know whether or not I should be excited? Brand recognition isn't everything and a game isn't good just because of it. Might as well say that because I liked Duke Nukem 3D, I'm going to like Duke Nukem Forever. The time between games is a lot and I've grown a lot since then, and so have a lot of other people. I'm just going to have to wait and see if I like it or not when I actually get around to playing it.

[Grif]

I'm excited about neither.

The new XCOM is basically a shooter with XCOM themes. Kind of similar to the difference between Fallout 2 and 3/NV. While FO3/NV were very good games, they were markedly different to what fans actually wanted and the response was "Wait and see, it's a different game, who knows?" rather than "FALLOUT OMG MUST HAVE NAO K!"
It might not be XCOM as I know it, so how do I know it will be good?


Did you miss the memo about another X-COM game by Firaxis? This time sticking to the original game formula. :smalltongue: It's not only X-COM the FPS being produced.

[GungHo]

In either case JA 2: 3D it ain't. Which doesn't bother me, it's twelve years on and a different developer, but there's a good bit of nerdrage going on about this, so I thought you should know.
Eh... it looks a lot like Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge, which was another attempt at Jagged Alliance 2 with 3D. That one was turn-based. It was also crap. I'll let someone else buy it first.

[warty goblin]

Stumbled on this twenty minute gameplay (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaQwyB2r80g&feature=player_embedded) video. I have to say this definitely has made me more interested than I was previously, although at least some of it is from a version of the game with fog of war, so...

[Triaxx]

Of course, it might be an option to turn on and off, possibly in Multi-Player mode.

[warty goblin]

Of course, it might be an option to turn on and off, possibly in Multi-Player mode.

As it stands, FoW is just plain not there. There's the chance it'll be added in a post release patch, since they had implemented it in an earlier version of the game. Apparently the testers found it more fun without FoW than with, so they axed it.

And I can sort of see their point, since they probably don't use random enemy placement FoW just means you don't know what's about to hit you the first time you play a level. If you die and have to do the sucker over you'll play it like you can see all the enemies anyways. Personally I'd rather just avoid the whole dying first stage. Since they appear to have increased accuracy and lethality playing with FoW could be a total player murderfest, and between the two I'd rather have more realistic shooting than more realistic eyeballs.

[Triaxx]

True, though what the player sees, and what the characters see aren't always the same thing, just usually.

[Jonzac]

yes. Combat Mission: Beyond Normandy and Shock Force ahve the same thing with relative spotting. You as the player can see everything that ALL your units see, but each individual unit may not be able to see and react to everything on the board.

[MLai]

If it's just pause-unpause gameplay, then it's just a single-player RTS with pause function. With real-time, a lot of the RPG elements such as fitness affecting number of action points won't come into effect. This doesn't sound like JA at all, you might as well play Company of Heroes.

[warty goblin]

If it's just pause-unpause gameplay, then it's just a single-player RTS with pause function. With real-time, a lot of the RPG elements such as fitness affecting number of action points won't come into effect. This doesn't sound like JA at all, you might as well play Company of Heroes.
The thing is I've played games of this sort that use a real-time pause with extensive order queuing, and it is vastly better than JA2. Firefights flow much better and more realistically when everybody's acting at the same time instead of taking turns about it. It means suppressing fire actually works like suppressing fire should work, CQB is less than totally painful, you can't get away with stupid crap due to turn order and in general it simply makes coordinating a fireteam much more natural. If squad level combat isn't basically the point of Jagged Alliance, I must have missed the memo, so I'm all for moving to a system that has significant potential to be a uniform improvement. I like turns, but when it comes to small squad combat games, they simply cannot do as much as well as a real-time system.

And such a system is no more an RTS than Temple of Elemental Evil is Civ IV simply because both use turns. So yes, I suppose other than being completely different, one may as well play Company of Heroes.

[MLai]

As far as evolving the genre while staying true to it, I'd say Frozen Synapse is the correct step.

I can't stand those Baldur's Gate pause-unpause games.

[warty goblin]

As far as evolving the genre while staying true to it, I'd say Frozen Synapse is the correct step.

I can't stand those Baldur's Gate pause-unpause games.

If I understand what they're doing (and I might have it wrong, I've not played the game) it's similarity to Ye Olde Play and Pause RPG is fairly superficial. The other games I've played that use this system and context simply assign time costs to actions - reloading takes so many seconds, going prone so many, and so on. It's not based on under the hood rounds or anything like that, it's better to think of it as simultaneous AP costs assessed with a 1 - 1 AP to second correspondence. The pausing is just there to facilitate issuing commands without time stress

[Bayar]

I don't know about this one. The fact that almost all the mercs look alike, avatars no longer having any personality, and the fact you won't be able to make your custom merc "because it breaks game balance" coupled with the stuff already mentioned, pre-purchasing it seems like a bad idea.

[GungHo]

As far as evolving the genre while staying true to it, I'd say Frozen Synapse is the correct step.

I can't stand those Baldur's Gate pause-unpause games.

Frozen Synapse is great. Hell, just take away the abstract graphics, but leave everything else alone, toss a Jagged Alliance name on it and I'd buy that stuff in a heartbeat.

[warty goblin]

Frozen Synapse is great. Hell, just take away the abstract graphics, but leave everything else alone, toss a Jagged Alliance name on it and I'd buy that stuff in a heartbeat.

I found it rather tedious, personally.

edit: some interesting additional information (http://boards.jaggedalliance.com/index.php?/topic/348-a-few-questions-about-jabia-for-bc-michael/).

[MLai]

Frozen Synapse is great. Hell, just take away the abstract graphics, but leave everything else alone, toss a Jagged Alliance name on it and I'd buy that stuff in a heartbeat.
That's exactly why I didn't buy it (but studied its game system in detail), and why I would immediately buy it if it came with a game with updated graphics, individualized mercs (height, weight, face, hair, gender) customizeable (in terms of visuals) with weapons and armor, and ofc the trademark JA mercs snarks and personalities affecting their actions.

Tedious? Tedious how? Because it's turn-based? Then why are you even looking at JA?

[Johnny Blade]

The thing is I've played games of this sort that use a real-time pause with extensive order queuing, and it is vastly better than JA2.
It really is.
Sticking to JA2 examples only, but here are some things that were bad pretty much because it was turn-based (not that I know much about :

Interrupts were idiotic, especially once your mercs got good enough to camp out and wait for them.
A lot of the time, heavy weapons fired by the enemy either did nothing or were an instant reload. If it's possible to just jump out of the way or go to ground when you hear one, or react in some way when an enemy readies one, then that alone is a huge point speaking for the new system.
Oh, and anyone who has played some of the iterations of JA2's 1.13 mod knows how long it took them to get sniper rifles more or less right. They were okay in the original game, but mainly because they weren't really deserving of the name sniper rifle. As soon as they were made into proper sniper weapons with proper scopes, they were horribly broken and another great way to force reloads. A real-time system can possibly make this much better again, basically making a sniper require a lot of time to get a good shot and have him lose accuracy when his target moves.

Not to mention that it makes things way more responsive in general and opens up a lot of tactics because of that, assuming they didn't screw it up.


So, yeah, I have some reservations, but the real-time system is a huge plus for me. Actually, I'm feeling at least unsure about everything I know about the game but that. :smallbiggrin:


I'll probably buy it anyway, though. To hear Ice's voice once again...

[warty goblin]

Tedious? Tedious how? Because it's turn-based? Then why are you even looking at JA?
I found it tedious because fiddling with waypoints, then resimulating the same few seconds over and over and over is very far from my idea of a fun way to spend my leisure time. When I want to spend fifteen minutes redoing the same thing to work out why my plan keeps blowing up in my face, I'll write computer code.

And I like turn based games thanks very much.

[GungHo]

Interrupts were idiotic, especially once your mercs got good enough to camp out and wait for them.
I got to the point where I'd set up ambush points and then fire off a round or two in the air to get the enemy to come check us out. It was quite effective until you got into the southern part of the map where you'd run into a large number of elite enemies with explosives. Even then, if you spread yourself out enough and place mines along known paths of entry, you could still get through.