14 DAY TRIAL // I have very fond memories of Jagged Alliance 2 from back in the day and I always considered it one of the most underrated tactical shooter experiences that also had role-playing experiences and a modern narrative treat.
Back in Action is a remake created by bitComposer which takes the very courageous decision of eliminating turns, one of the core elements of the original game, in order to deliver a smoother, isometric perspective that challenges the player to direct his mercenaries in real time.
For those who have spent countless hours with the Sir-Tech Canada developed game, Back in Action will be hard to accommodate to initially, mainly because of the shift in perspective and because of the re-designed user interface, which makes it somewhat harder to control characters.
After a while I began to get the hang of the game and even enjoyed some moderated victories as I assaulted the Drassen airport before getting my three-man team taken out by two enemies that managed to catch me by surprise while I was patching up some wounds.
The real time nature of the experience offered by Jagged Alliance – Back in Action means that the player needs to process a lot of information quickly, and I found that Backspace (the default pause button) quickly became my best friend as I transformed the experience into, essentially, a turn-based one.
Checking the Game Options in order to set the new Jagged Alliance to auto-pause on important events also makes the game easier to understand and control.
The gamer-controlled mercenaries seem much more fragile that I remembered (I was also only able to recruit three of them with my starting funds) and the enemies tend to be significantly smarter, which can make even the introduction to the game challenging.
I also miss the fact that you can no longer create an in-game merc, which tends to limit my immersion in Back in Action.
My first few hours with the game suggest that fans of the original will not be pleased with the remake but it might drive a number of modern players to see what the first Jagged Alliance 2 had to offer.
The video above shows a chunk of the action taken from Jagged Alliance – Back in Action, showing the new real time mechanics in action.