Jagged Alliance: BiA demo

[Vympel]

The Demo mission is too fucking hard. Can't even get past the first fucking house in the swamp. I don't like it not being turn based. I think I'll pass on this game.

This is a case where there attempts to modernize the game have messed it up. Its a micromanagement nightmare, the camera angles are sub-optimal, and its too difficult to tell what your mercs can see/ hit, its just a big ... meh.

And LOL:-

Link

WARNING: The demo is REALLY, I mean REAAALLLY, hard. The Level included is on maximum level of units.

Link 2

The actual mission in the demo is preposterously difficult and I reckon the included tutorial is much more interesting. It was a massive help in convincing me that inventory management, positioning and sentry duties hadn’t vanished along with my beloved action points.

And the quite on-point comments:-

Making the demo mission ridiculously hard is not the way to sell a game. I've tried it a couple times and I am ready to give up. Frankly, I question the intelligence of a dev team that would release a demo in this state.

and

That would be my complaint too. Making a demo really hard is not any way to get anyone to buy your game. All this will do is prompt people to take a step back and wonder about the game and if it’s going to be a head banging task to complete a mission. I think they are stupid for not allowing people to set the difficulty to their liking.

My thoughts exactly. I did enjoy just learning how to play with the Tutorial more than the ridiculously bullshit mission.

[Stark]

Is the demo as low-budget and low-polish as the screenshots made it look?

[Vympel]

Visually the actual play area looks fine to me. I like the way the levels look. I like the way your dudes look in the level. (lots of distinct outfits, all guns look different, etc)

The lack of polish is self-evident, however, in the incredibly ugly portraits:-





This is, of course - simply lazy. And its really off-putting.

[Stark]

Yeah dude when I say 'is it low polish' you just had to say 'everything about the UI is fuck ugly' or 'yes'. :V

What I'm asking is 'does the game still look like this smear of puke'...

linko

Oh shit, research indicates this is seriously a current screenshot and they seriously, honestly thought this was good enough in 2012. Mind is blown. Talking about the success or not of 'modernising' the game is irrelevant when its clear that everyone involved was both talentless and broke.

[Vympel]

Oh, the UI. The UI sucks. You have to be a SpecOps sniper to target those damn icons.

As for that screenshot, honestly I don't think its fair on the game. That screenshot is a blurry piece of shit, the demo looks much better in motion and at a higher resolution.

Still, I'd say the graphics would be acceptable if the mechanics weren't so blah.

[Stark]

Im trying to find better quality shots, but it looks like the textures are from PS2 and the tooltips are from 1998. It just looks outrageously cheap and amateurish; barely better than that horrid XCOM remake where everything is fluro green.

Are the debs actual professionals or did some fans buy the rights/build their own engine/ignore a decade?

Remember that Alfa game from years back? This seems actually worse in presentation and quality, a remarkable achievement.

[Vympel]

Yeah, but they're a small studio. However I think the level design makes up for in attention to detail what it lacks in graphics quality - I don't think they phoned that part in, at any rate. But they clearly didn't have the resources to have amazing graphics. But they're ok, IMO. Put this way, whilst playing the game I never thought "this looks like ass".

Remember that Alfa game from years back? This seems actually worse in presentation and quality, a remarkable achievement.

No ... I must've missed that one. Or forgotten about it.

*googles*

Ewwww.

[Stark]

I'm pretty sure Alfa probably tripped all your Russian military brain switched and purged itself. It was another pretty terrible attempt to translate time unit management into real-time, and it didn't work at all.

When their website decides to work the screenshots look less blurry, but still really bad. Anyone expecting even a B-grade game is probably going to be disappointed; when I say the game appears to have ignored a decade I mean that nowadays even indie games have higher expectations of presentation. This game is clearly made for fans (probably by fans) who are expected to look beyond the shit to see... something.

I mean seriously.

In their favour at least they aren't asking full price for it ($40USD apparently) so they're not totally delusional, but unless the strategy level is really robust I can't see any reason to play this game beyond an abstract 'how obsessed can you be with doing something and forget about doing it well' way.

[Vympel]

It sorta rings a bell, but it seems like I completely ignored it. And rightfully so, it seems.

40USD is a lot of money to ask for a game, for an American - though for us its cheap.

If this game has been made by fans, its unique in that they're fans that think they can improve on the formula by taking turn based and making it real time / plan & go. Unfortunately for them it doesn't work well.

[Steel]

So now that its out, has anyone given it a go?

Oddly, the official forums seem to be down...

[Edward Yee]

Its launch-day DLC... $2 for a 5.56 mm AR, a helmet and a jacket?

[Tolya]

Don't buy it. It is not a true remake.

The debs were lazy, because they haven't bothered to implement all the interesting features that made JA2 such a hit. So, there is no sci-fi mode, no militia training, you only pay for mercs ONCE (yes, you heard right...)... and most importantly, you can't create your own character. It is laziness beyond recognition, because all the mechanics were there and just had to be coded in.

Good thing about the game is that the 3d graphics look nice and the actual gameplay mechanics SEEM to be solid. It's like someone took 7.62 (the game) and fixed and polished the mechanics. It's one of the better realtime isometric tactical gameplay mechanics. Of course it's not saying much, since 99% of them were clunky

But don't be tempted to buy it just for that. I would be perfectly happy if they just remade every feature in JA2 without a hint of creativity. But they did much less than that. I hope they will bankrupt because of BIA.

Wait for Jagged Alliance 3, although I don't have any high hopes regarding it. Everyone just seems to be banging their heads against the wall by trying to polish existing formula (which is outdated), without any effort to conjure something new.

[Stark]

From that perspective, the XCOM game coming out later in the year is unlikely to hit the same spot either. The combat is simplified and made faster to take equal place with the strategic decision-making, rather than hour-long battles and a high level of detail.

Sad to say, but JA2 1.13 might just be as far as time unit simulators ever go.