Howdy folks, anyone else watching this? The demo came out this weekend, and I'm pretty deeply disappointed. I was incredibly excited about this game, being a huge fan of the original JA2, but what they're putting out feels ill-considered and half finished. Anyone else try it?
I refuse to have anything to do with it. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they don't care one wit for the integrity or tradition of the original game, keep boasting about how their way is better than the original, and apparently just want to exploit the IP for some easy bucks. No thank you.
Hi, I'm the champion of "I love the original but it's 2012, change whatever you want" so a move to RTS does not bug me. That said what Benton mentions, that it looks half baked, is the reason I've stayed away.
I already had a bad feeling when I went to their booth at PAX last year and it was like a cubicle with 4 screens and all they had for JA was basically a screen saver, for sure nothing playable.
Don't get me wrong, I'm going to bargain bin the heck out of this game as soon as steam cuts it to 50% or 75% for a holiday or spring promotion, but at full cost it just looks unfinished.
Agreed. Even the demo sucked.
Lu, I know what you mean, but the logic of a genre change bothers me a great deal. Jagged Alliance ISN'T an RTS because the gameplay experience it creates isn't achievable through that genre. Game GENRES don't really get outdated the way graphics do. That's what gets me about their whole approach to this game. They more or less claim, as do their apologists, that "Turn based games are outdated! That's so 1990's!" But that is just asinine! Shooters certainly aren't outdated, and Doom came out way back in the day. Certain mechanics of the genre have changed, and Call of Duty certainly is a much different game than Doom. Still, the fundamental mechanics have remained the same because they are pretty much the only way to have that type of experience. What they're really saying is that the cerebral and carefully controlled tactical EXPERIENCE is outdated. It was never super popular, and with the likes of Modern Warfare dominating the gaming world at the moment, they're afraid they can't make money with it. That's fine, if you don't think you can do it well, make a different game, something that is more trendy.
The truth is that Silent Storm was a very different game than Jagged Alliance, and it provided a great deal of true innovation to the genre. You had completely destructable environments, a really great interface, and a thousand and one little touches that really deepened the tactical experience. It managed to take the JA experience and update it, make it current, and it did so without completely sacrificing the core nature of such a game. This new JA game feels like a big step backwards. Their entire 'innovation' is tied to this very unwieldy system that tries to shoehorn real-time gameplay into an experience that just doesn't work well under such circumstances. What makes tactical games good is the close control you exercise over your characters and the depth of the gameplay. That's what's separated great tactical games from the likes of Jazz: Hired Guns. That's what separates them from RTS games. There are a great many BETTER RTS titles out there than Back in Action, and even ten year old tactical titles are better than it in that sense as well.
Here we have a game with no destructible environments, difficult controls, very little precision IN those controls, a clunky interface, and no real innovations that I can see. I just keep wondering, 'how did this game get made AFTER Silent Storm? What were they thinking"?
I heavily agree with you and play pretty much any turn based game that comes out.
The thing is that the turn based game is not outdated... it is not console friendly. What is funny is that "the shooter" was always a PC only thing that could not be done on consoles due to lowsy controllers (I still feel that is the case, lol).
Well, we are so far into the console cycle that we are starting to see some very PC centered releases, like the upcoming UFO (non shooter) game and every month I see another turn based or at least RTS game announced.
That said my understanding is that JA2 is like Freedom Force... RTS with pause. I really like that style (loved it in Dragon Age) but the game just looks so clumsy. I need to download the Demo sometime.