15% off, no less.

WHAAAAAAAAT?

I think Primetide mentioned that Back in Action was a bit pooh-poohed by some hardcore fans, though I'm not sure why. I'm curious to check it out, but I'm not curious enough to lay money on it just yet.

It's not turn-based.
I, for one, don't think it's necessarily a bad idea: a good real-time with pause system (like a polished version of what was in one of the many Russian JA rip-off) can lead to a faster game while keeping all the tactical part (or even a better tactical part since it handles simultaneous actions).

Well, I played A LOT of JA 2 and posted about it on here.

I looked at the previews and in the future I'll play the game and give it a whirl.

And to be perfectly honest some aspects of JA 2 were broken. Many of them were fixed in the 1.13 mod. But if someone wants to go back and retool certain parts of JA 2 I'm not going to say that they're automatically wrong or the game is automatically going to suck.

In my opinion one of the biggest frustrations with JA 2 was the flip flop between real time and turn based. It's like you could move your men in formation in turn based by moving them individually in a certain position. But you couldn't do that in real time. So instead of being able to send your men across the map in a certain formation, you had to make them either move one at a time, or rubber band select everyone and make them walk in a random gagglefuck. This was a flaw of the system not allowing you to set formations. And you got screwed over when you had the gagglefuck, or one guy out by himself, and the game changed to turn based all of a sudden.

So, if the new game is going to have "plan and move" instead of flip flopping between turn based and real time, well, hell, it could very well be a tactical gameplay improvement. I'll give it a chance.

Plus there were loads of issues and strangeness WRT firing up to rooftops and vice a versa, and the game tended to crash when you blew holes in walls. Lots of very basic stuff that a remake might be able to fix that with a different engine hopefully wouldn't be so problematic as it was in the original JA.

I loved JA 2 and am intrigued by this, but with all of the "re-imaginings" that have been happening in games lately and the horrible things they've done to the original series, I'm hesitant about just buying it without trying it out and see how good or bad of a job they've done. I'm hoping they'll release a demo at some point so that everyone can try it out first.

Frankly, though, it looks like sort of a low budget production, so hopefully some suit isn't going to jack it up in the sense of mandating they need regenerating health or something like that.

Well, here's an mostly insightful little preview of BIA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaQwyB2r80g

There's some obvious differences in gameplay but I don't think it's anything compared to the true sin of this game: the faces. Damn those are some ugly facial portraits, Call the Bear Pit, we need the mod crew to reimpliment the old 2d portraits ASAP.

Now I'm definitely interested. I agree about the 3D portraits, though, they have to go.

Eh, the portraits aren't great, but who cares? After watching the video the gameplay seems just fine.

Demo's Out! If you can't get it through Steam, you could try the mirrors contained in this link: http://boards.jaggedalliance.com/index.php...-demo-released/

I've only played a little bit of the demo so far. The "Plan & Go" system works pretty well, and it certainly eases my complaints about how combat slowed to a crawl when trying to get your men to move in a tactical fashion. There is some jankiness, however. The most noticible thing to me is that there is no point swapping your rifle for a backup gun unless you're totally out of ammo, because for whatever reason all stashed weapons are unloaded until equipped.

The other thing about this demo that might throw you? It is indisputably balls-to-the-walls HARD. You got four men, meager equipment, and you are thrown into a map with about 30 or more badguys milling around and some 6 or 7 of them right beside you. At the very least, you have the advantage of being unnoticed until you move(keep to a crawl!) and it's a night-op, so you won't be spotted from across the map unless you run.

Some other advice I suppose I could give is distance: You'll need it to stay alive. Lynx doesn't get any body armor but has two sniper rifles; that's probably a hint you want him well behind the other three. Use grenades liberally on any groups. Also keep in mind nearly everyone is wearing armor, so keep an eye on the "Expected Damage" readout to keep Fidel from uselessly emptying his SMG into someones vest. Also, don't rely too much on the Guard action, always adjust their aim when you have a moment to spare so they don't dawdle too much between kills.

Wait, people actually hire the sociopaths that full-auto EVERYTHING as soon as they see them???

EDIT: *Kicks Steam* Download the demo you PoS!!! I clicked on the button! And again! And again!!! What, another "Not available outside of the US" thing on the Internet or something???

I, also, am unable to download the demo for reasons unknown. The button is there, but when I make with the clicking, she does nothing.

Like I said people, if Steam refuses to cooperate then use one of the mirror sites listed in the link I gave. It'll be on the first post. They may be slow but they at least work.

"Leave me alone! I busy!"

I have to agree, the demo mission is pretty brutal. Hopefully by the time you reach that point in the campaign, you'll have more mercs and they'll be tooled up a little better.

Got the demo, died in less time than it took to sip tea.

Exploit the fact that Magic and Lynx have better range than the enemies. I went south from the starting point and circled around through the two checkpoints. Where it got hairy is when I tried to enter the building.

Well, I managed to get farther than before. End result: Managed to take out about 15-20 of the bastards, but Lynx died, with Danny and Fidel way too injured to be any help outside of packmuling. Magic is awesome as ever, but only one guy against another 15 to 20 enemies. Missions a wash, try again later.

Started playing it last night when it was released for play. Played it for about an hour, ran the tutorial saved in the middle of the first battle.

I'm glad the game designer decided to stay very true to the original JA 2. All the characters and their lines are the same. IMO the Full Metal Jacket references in the tutorial are signalling that the game designer understands that people like characterization.

I have to say that I really like Plan & Go, as well as the ability to make your characters cover a field of fire. Even though that's not exactly like the original JA 2 it really improves the ability to implement tactics in game. It makes the tactics feel a lot more realistic as well, since you can now have people cover doorways, cover the rear of the squad, and so on. IMO the implementation of stuff like that in the original JA 2 was a bit haphazard and not really satisfying.

During my first attempt at the game I have to say that I did initially seem to have a hard time coordinating dynamic entry in the first battle. I had Gunty, Steroid, and MD try to take out their first opponent in a building. My plan was to have MD make entry through a door on the left, and then have Gunty and Steroid stack up on a door to the right, and to have them all enter simultaneously and engage the one bad guy. Gunty and Steroid were supposed to run the walls in opposite directions as well after making entry. But, things really didn't go as planned.

MD bust into a closet or something that unbeknowest to me did not have access to the room where the bad guy was. Gunty and Steroid had line of sight issues as they ran the walls because apparently the fact there were some beds in the room completely interfered with their line of sight on the bad guy. In order for them to shoot they ended up having to just run up the middle of the room until it was possible to get a line of fire that did not intersect a bed. So the bad guy ended up taking out both Steroid and Gunty as they blundered up the middle, but luckily by then MD had completed his lap around the outside of the building, entered the room where everyone was bleeding on the floor, and since the bad guy had at that point walked out from behind the beds, he was able to open fire from near his point of entry and kill the bad guy, and save Steroid and Gunty.

As a result, I've been completing the rest of that battle with MD, and a badly shot up Steroid and Gunty. The thing is, the rest of the battle is really easy compared to that one room entry. I had expected that all the enemies on the map would come running in response to gunshots, but they don't. For the most part they just stay in their places and continue their patrols. So, so far, killing those bad guys has been a matter of low crawling around the map and just figuring out how to shoot people in the back.

One annoyance which I also remember from JA 2 is how vital medical supplies seem to be hard to come by. MD used up most of his medical supplies after the first disastrous room entry, and in spite of many kills my team has not found any more. Also, they're running low on ammo now, in the same vein.



So, on the whole, so far, I really like the game. I do feel that Plan & Go feels a lot more realistic than the turn based combat, which created a lot of intensely pen and paper RPG moments, like when you guy covering the rear could only shoot a bad guy coming into view if he had better stats, or something like that. With Plan & Go basically you have less surreal statistical exploits or strangeness occuring, at least based on my observations so far.

I like the more detailed and realistic items, i.e. a bottle of CLP versus a gun cleaning kit versus a full general maintenance kit, or no more Vietnam era flak jackets inexplicably being standard issue at AIM.

I still feel a certain amount of misgivings about dynamic entry. I will have to play some more and see if dynamic entry can be a satisfying and realistic aspect of gameplay or not. I almost wish there were some command you could issue to "stack up" and then "make entry, fan out, engage on sight" or "make entry, run the walls, engage on sight".

Finally, I was a bit thrown for a loop when upon starting a new game it didn't present me the same options menu as from JA2. I guess there's only one difficulty level, and there will be a bug hunt?

I have played for 7 hours. Not exactly the same as JA2 but still a good game. Better in some ways, although there are a few strange things, like non readied weapons cannot be loaded so you can't really have a sidearm you transition to like you would in real life if you had a stoppage. Also no shooting while walking which affects dynamic entry. Dumbed down in some ways, but not on the whole a dumber game, since they implemented some new things that weren't in JA2.

I know purists will bitch but the game is all right.

I kind of want to be able to change the background music like you could with JA 2. I want Vietnam war music for my firefights. Some Hendrix for the firefights, some Animals for the strategic map.

Well, I thought I might write a full review of the game, but now I'm not so sure.

All the stuff I already said about the game still stands.

But now my opinion is that the game is kind of flawed or limited in two ways:

1.) Your starting resources pretty much guarantee that you can't really play the game "Iron Man" style. You can tell they meant for you to save and reload a lot. Shouldn't they have given you the option to set starting parameters so you could play the game the way you want to, though?

2.) As you progress through the game, most of your time starts to be spent in mico-management. Have more than a few mercs? Micro manage them. Want to have a lot of militia in one city? You'll have to send your mercs back and forth across the map carrying extra guns and then watch them run all the way across the map to hand each gun to an eligible militia member, and you'll have to do it again as soon as some of the militia die.

As much as I enjoyed the beginning of the game I'm not sure I really *want* to finish the game because it just seems like my whole game is becoming the gun ferry back and forth across Arulco.

That does sound like a huge pain in the ass. This is clearly a case where somebody allowed "realism" to override "fun:" JA2's system of militia training, where you just paid a lump sum for each level of training, was clearly superior.

The new system isn't even particularly realistic. All you're doing is handing a person a gun. They can't pick one up themselves. You can't give them money so they can go buy one. You don't provide ammunition or training.

If anything the old system was more realistic because you invested money and training time.

If I wanted to make it totally realistic, I would instead simply have the player specify which sector items are for militia use. You would need to provide ammunition to be able to have them train, but you'd also need to ensure they had ammunition in order to fight. To make that system not be a pain in the ass I'd allow for Bobby Ray to deliver anywhere in safe airspace.

Snagged the game in (you guessed it) a Steam sale the other day. Fun times so far. I do wish the starting cash was a little more generous, though. I hired Buns, Grunty, and Fox, and so far they make a pretty good team; Buns and Grunty are the trigger-pullers while Fox keeps them patched up and provides close-in automatic fire when necessary. I agree about the lack of availability of medical supplies; it looks like Bobby Ray's is the primary source. One of the doctors at the hospital is marked as a merchant, but won't do business with me.


Actually, you can pay to train the militia. Go to the world map, click on the icon of a location with militia. In the box that pops up in the lower right, you can see the number and levels of militia members; click on the green plus sign to upgrade the militia members one at a time.

I see that there is a new one (JA: Crossfire) coming out soon.

Bye
Thanee

Holy crap, you're right. Although I wish they would include character creation rather than new pregenerated mercs.