Space Satan
Arcane
It looks so shitty and so CHEAP it hurts. It's a Kalypso-level of game developement.
We live in the worst timeline. There is no hope
We live in the worst timeline. There is no hope
Jagged Alliance is back, and your soldiers have aged badly
Jagged Alliance: Rage! sees your soldiers back in the jungle fighting a revolution, but the last 20 years have not been kind
Jagged Alliance is back and once again you are freeing a small island from the grip of a tyrant. However, this time, your mercenaries are older and age has not been kind to them. Weak knees, PTSD, and poor eyesight mean that your warriors will need a sympathetic hand when guiding them through this island revolution.
Between missions you must rest your troops, craft and repair new weapons and armour for them, and then choose where on the island you want to strike – whether it be at the heart of your enemies’ operations, or to raid places that will give you the resources you need to fight soldiers, starvation, and sickness.
Many games have picked up Jagged Alliance’s mantle in recent years, with XCOM and BattleTech both being recent examples of that same blend of turn-based tactical missions fitted into a larger, strategic campaign map. Jagged Alliance: Rage! looks like it will fit in well beside them, using similar systems and tools to make every decision in every battle meaningful.
SET 20 YEARS AFTER THE ORIGINAL
Jagged Alliance: Rage takes place a full 20 years after the original. That’s not so much to make changes in the equipment you’ll have access to – you’re still essentially a jungle rebel armed with AK47 equivalents and hunting knives – but to make it so your familiar mercenaries are now much older. Ivan, the heavyset Russian from the original game is back but now he suffers from alcoholism. He will act as your heavy weapon specialist but if he doesn’t have ready access to booze then he will start getting the shakes, throwing off his aim and making him a far less effective fighter. Other fighters suffer from panic in night fighting, others can’t handle the sight of civilian deaths, and others, like the slim Spec Ops soldier Shadow, are particularly susceptible to illness.
When you start a campaign you can only pick two mercs from the roster, so you will need to balance their strengths and weaknesses. This also means that each island campaign will have a distinctly different tactical flavour depending on which two mercenaries you take into the field.
INVOLVED TURN-BASED COMBAT
Like its predecessors, Jagged Alliance: Rage! Is a turn-based tactical game, much like XCOM. Your fighters will arrive in one corner of a hand-crafted map populated by enemy soldiers and you will take it turns with the AI to sneak and fight your way to victory – be that eliminating all enemies, freeing hostages, or destroying objectives.
Combat in Jagged Alliance is unforgiving, with each of your mercs only possessing a few flimsy hit points. Damage can be negated by armour but it’s a much better strategy to stay hidden, taking out enemies with stealth kills for as long as possible. When you must join a full on firefight, it’s important to get behind cover, increasing the chance of enemy shots missing.
Jagged Alliance uses an action point system, which dictates everything you do. You can only move as far as you have action points to move, and that distance is significantly shortened if you’re sneaking. Abilities like whistling to lure an enemy, setting a mercenary up in overwatch, or firing your weapons all require action points, too, so you’ll have to think about whether you really want to move closer to your target for a better shot or just stay where you are and fire your weapon twice.
When firing on a target you can choose to shoot at the legs, body, or head, with much greater chance of hitting on a body shot. You can spend more action points to increase your hit chance, though, if you really need to pull off a headshot, for instance.
LIVING ISLAND
The first missions of Jagged Alliance’s campaign are going to be linear, you fight your way out of captivity and meet with the local rebels, but the campaign soon opens up into one where you call all the shots. The island is covered in a web of possible routes and missions – villages that need to be freed, enemy camps that can be destroyed, and also more unusual locations, like reservoirs and water treatment facilities. This is because you aren’t just fighting to clear the island of enemies but to support your revolution as you go.
Your soldiers need access to water or they will become dehydrated. You can find water bottles on the bodies of soldiers sometimes but a better bet is to take control of a reservoir. If you have Ivan on your squad you need to feed his alcohol addiction, so this might lead you to taking control of a storehouse. The island has a major pollution problem, with the enemy’s operations pumping out toxic sewage into the sea and rivers, if you drink polluted water or stay in dump sites for too long your mercenaires will become ill so you want to make sure you do what you can to treat the island’s water when the opportunity presents itself.
Time passes as you move around the island, too, meaning sometimes you will be fighting at night, sometimes at day. This can play a huge part in missions, both in the obvious – you and your enemy can see less well – and the more subtle – some of your soldiers can’t stand the dark, others thrive in it.
Jagged Alliance’s island changes in ways you can control and ways you can’t, all of it needs to be taken into account when you’re making strategic decisions in the campaign.
SURVIVING ON YOUR WORST DAY
You will find yourself rarely in a position of perfect strength in Jagged Alliance. Your soldiers’ wounds carry between battles, only healing when you take the time to rest. Wounds can fester and mercenaries can develop illnesses when they aren’t fed and watered, and when they fight in toxic regions. Your equipment can fall into disrepair, your ammunition runs out, and your mercenaries have their own specific foibles about the environment they’re fighting in.
Jagged Alliance, then, is similar to BattleTech and XCOM, in that each mission is complicated by the needs and status of your team. If the developers can pull it off, there will be a rich flow of effects feeding into each mission, informing your choices and challenge. Rush through the campaign and your mercenaries will flag with failing health and equipment. Make slow progress, taking over as much of the island as you can and your enemy will respond, leading you into more frequent combat.
RAGE
Jagged Alliance: Rage gets its title from a new resource that is gained when your mercenaries take damage and get angry. Rage points are used to power special abilities – for example, Dr Q can channel his anger into more action points, and Shadow can use his Rage points to move unseen through an enemy’s line of sight.
It’s a potentially great system for getting you out of a corner. Although, banking on rage points isn’t going to be a good way to play, as receiving damage has so many long term dangers.
Rage isn’t always a good thing, however. In Grunty’s case, his weak heart means that if he gains too much Rage without expending it then his heart will give out and he will die.
And a lot of jungles. What is this, Apocalypse Now Tactics?Other fighters suffer from panic in night fighting, others can’t handle the sight of civilian deaths, and others, like the slim Spec Ops soldier Shadow, are particularly susceptible to illness.
JOURALIZD FAGGOT said:Like its predecessors, Jagged Alliance: Rage! Is a turn-based tactical game, much like XCOM.
XCOM
Features:
• 2 Player online co-op mode
• Deep turn-based tactical gameplay mixed with adventure elements
• Choose a variety of tactics ranging from stealth to brute force
• Strong character personalities with own skills, desires and personal conflicts
• Rage skills: Unique character abilities that get more powerful over the course of the battle
• Powerful Commanders coordinate enemy troops on the battlefields
• Face terrifying experimental drugs and use them to manipulate your enemies
Jagged Alliance: Rage! coming this fall
14 AUGUSTI - THQ NORDIC
The Unexpendables - Jagged Alliance: Rage! coming this fall
Vienna, Austria, August 14th, 2018: We are all getting older. Nothing bad about that, right? Well, the knees might hurt sometimes, seeing things far away gets a bit harder, and – oh, boy! - the heart is not as strong as it used to be. But we wake up every morning, go to work, business as usual: killing some bad guys, igniting the odd rebellion, overthrowing another evil dictator…
That's what the mercenaries of Jagged Alliance have been doing these past 20 years. And now Ivan Dolvich, Helmut "Grunty" Grunther, Kyle "Shadow" Simmons and the other infamous fighters have a mission again when they're stranded behind enemy lines: survive!
In Jagged Alliance: Rage! you are constantly on the brink of breakdown. Badly equipped and outnumbered, it's up to the player to lead their seasoned mercenaries in tactical turn-based missions and to light the spark of a revolution.
He didn't say "good," and it does look like it's based on XCOM.JOURALIZD FAGGOT said:Like its predecessors, Jagged Alliance: Rage! Is a turn-based tactical game, much like XCOM.XCOM
I hope you meant X-COM, you piece of trash. JA2 and xcom are basically on the opposite ends of the "good<->bad tactical games" spectrum.
some degenerate said:Jagged Alliance: Rage gets its title from a new resource that is gained when your mercenaries take damage and get angry. Rage points are used to power special abilities – for example, Dr Q can channel his anger into more action points, and Shadow can use his Rage points to move unseen through an enemy’s line of sight.
He didn't say "good," and it does look like it's based on XCOM.
No he didn't. He said that the predecessors are turnbased tactical games, and then he used XCOM as an example of a turnbased tactical game. "Like its predecessors, Jagged Alliance: Rage! is a turn-based tactical game, much like XCOM [is a turnbased tactical game]." It's all in the comma.He didn't say "good," and it does look like it's based on XCOM.
He compared "JA predecessors" with xcom. Is there a gameplay video somewhere?
No he didn't. He said that the predecessors are turnbased tactical games, and then he used XCOM as an example of a turnbased tactical game. "Like its predecessors, Jagged Alliance: Rage! is a turn-based tactical game, much like XCOM [is a turnbased tactical game]." It's all in the comma.
/autism