A First Impression from a JA Veteran
Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 4:20 pm
Well, I love the turn based tactical style of game especially the Jagged Alliance, Hammer & Anvil, Silent Storm, style game -- It's one of my favorite types of games in a world of FPSes which I don't care for generally.
So I was overjoyed when I found out about Jagged Edge.
My first impressions -- The player creation is great, of course we've seen it before and it's great to see it like this again. The psychological profile, the statistics, the doctor/trainer/repair roles. It's what we've always liked and it's fun to tinker with. I spent a good deal of time just enjoying seeing what kind of psychological profiles I could get out of answering the questionnaires differently.
The gameplay is hard, very hard on the medium level. Grenades will take you out, and they will take you out one shot permanently in the beginning. If someone gets a chance to throw a grenade, you may suddenly have a dead mercenary or team, no second chances! I don't know how much of a deal body armor will make later in the game but it better make a difference! Some games I like to play ironman, and a game that's impossible to play without saving/reloading all the time is a badly designed game.
It's interesting that sneaking is automatic on a crouch, I expected a 'stealth mode' and to have integrated like that means we won't be running stealthed ever. Fortunately the crouched mode isn't so slow as to bother me, so it's a don't mind situation.
Right now I'm rethinking my initial three person sniper team, and thinking of getting a huge bunch of low quality cheapo mercenaries to see me through the beginnings, so that if some of them die, big whoop, as long as numero uno pulls through until we get better gear OK.
The manual is good but could've used more info about interacting with people and some of the basic stuff that I think was left to players who've played this genre before to figure out, if you haven't a lot of little things might get past you. There's definitely room for a strategy guide here.
My biggest complaint in this game is the camera. It zooms in too close, and doesn't zoom out far enough for strategic decisions. I can't make it zoom at an angle. Worst of all, when set to move to events which of course you want to know what's going on with the NPCs shooting it out, it always zooms in again -- so you're constantly zooming out insufficiently and trying to figure out where everything is on the camera. Many times people've thrown thrown grenades and I have no idea where they were from, when if I just had a little strategic zoom out I would've at least had an idea of the scene. Dying because your camera's clunky when the game is already this hard is a big problem, that fortunately a patch can fix. So let's see it!
The weaponry and upgrades look interesting, a right click brings open the weapon to place the upgrades in -- but is this intuitive for a new player? Did I miss the instruction on this somewhere? A tutorial for this game really would've been nice or at least more instructions in the manual. A FAQ for this stuff will have to do.
I haven't played long enough to see of the mercenaries personalities come out and if there's a good deal of banter and humor, which is what really makes these games work.
So my first impression so far is that this game is pretty rough around the edges, it has the potential for a hit or a miss, and just playing a few hours isn't going to tell me which it is. We'll have to see!
So I was overjoyed when I found out about Jagged Edge.
My first impressions -- The player creation is great, of course we've seen it before and it's great to see it like this again. The psychological profile, the statistics, the doctor/trainer/repair roles. It's what we've always liked and it's fun to tinker with. I spent a good deal of time just enjoying seeing what kind of psychological profiles I could get out of answering the questionnaires differently.
The gameplay is hard, very hard on the medium level. Grenades will take you out, and they will take you out one shot permanently in the beginning. If someone gets a chance to throw a grenade, you may suddenly have a dead mercenary or team, no second chances! I don't know how much of a deal body armor will make later in the game but it better make a difference! Some games I like to play ironman, and a game that's impossible to play without saving/reloading all the time is a badly designed game.
It's interesting that sneaking is automatic on a crouch, I expected a 'stealth mode' and to have integrated like that means we won't be running stealthed ever. Fortunately the crouched mode isn't so slow as to bother me, so it's a don't mind situation.
Right now I'm rethinking my initial three person sniper team, and thinking of getting a huge bunch of low quality cheapo mercenaries to see me through the beginnings, so that if some of them die, big whoop, as long as numero uno pulls through until we get better gear OK.
The manual is good but could've used more info about interacting with people and some of the basic stuff that I think was left to players who've played this genre before to figure out, if you haven't a lot of little things might get past you. There's definitely room for a strategy guide here.
My biggest complaint in this game is the camera. It zooms in too close, and doesn't zoom out far enough for strategic decisions. I can't make it zoom at an angle. Worst of all, when set to move to events which of course you want to know what's going on with the NPCs shooting it out, it always zooms in again -- so you're constantly zooming out insufficiently and trying to figure out where everything is on the camera. Many times people've thrown thrown grenades and I have no idea where they were from, when if I just had a little strategic zoom out I would've at least had an idea of the scene. Dying because your camera's clunky when the game is already this hard is a big problem, that fortunately a patch can fix. So let's see it!
The weaponry and upgrades look interesting, a right click brings open the weapon to place the upgrades in -- but is this intuitive for a new player? Did I miss the instruction on this somewhere? A tutorial for this game really would've been nice or at least more instructions in the manual. A FAQ for this stuff will have to do.
I haven't played long enough to see of the mercenaries personalities come out and if there's a good deal of banter and humor, which is what really makes these games work.
So my first impression so far is that this game is pretty rough around the edges, it has the potential for a hit or a miss, and just playing a few hours isn't going to tell me which it is. We'll have to see!
