Jagged Alliance: Back in Action Preview

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Written by BuckGB on February 7th, 2012

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Let's get it over with: Jagged Alliance: Back in Action is not turn-based! Instead it uses a custom-built version of the well known and generally totally mediocre (read: mass market compatible) real-time with pause (RTwP) called 'žPlan&Go(. Everything happens simultaneously. There's no fog of war. All enemies can be seen as soon as you enter the sector, only enemies inside a building are displayed as one bigger cluster representing an unknown number of troops.

So much for the bad news. Here is the good news: Plan&Go works well and it's not primitive at all. The player not only has a lot of control, he actually should pause the game to plan his next steps and coordinate his squad members. Going into RTS auto-pilot and casually shuffling mercs around will lead to a rude awakening. JA:BiA is neither an RTS nor an action game, it's still a tactical game which requires slow and careful play. A hasty course of action will lead to frustration. Effectively, the RT in RTwP will only be used to move quickly from A to B.

Now on to the the juicy details. You can choose from a list of Stop conditions. When a condition is met - or you press space - the game pauses and the screen turns grey. Mercs, neutral NPCs, enemies and their field of vision are highlighted on the map. Every squad member has his own command queue you can fill from an assortment of options. The key to Plan&Go is that command queues can be coordinated on the timeline by simply dragging order B (do this . ) over order A (. simultaneously to that). A multitude of commands are available: You can choose between stealth gameplay and more noisy solutions, fire X times at an enemy's head, body or legs, change your merc's body posture, move to a different position and then look in a certain direction, use a med kit, change weapons, reload, switch fire modes, throw a grenade, enter guard mode...

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