Jagged Alliance: Back in Action Review, Cheats, Secret, Cheat Codes, FAQ, Unlockables, Walkthroughs, Guide for PC

The remake of the classic Jagged Alliance 2 becomes a failed attempt to reinvent this long saga. Talking about Jagged Alliance: Back in Action is necessarily speak Jagged Alliance 2, one of the PC strategy games of the most legendary 90's, like XCOM and Syndicate. And it seems that lately companies have agreed to revive these old glories and bring them back to the present. Whether action game in first person (XCOM, Syndicate), taking the classic style (XCOM: Enemy Unknown) or betting on the same genre as the original but with substantial changes, as is the case at hand with Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. This time we have a remake of Jagged Alliance 2, so again revive the reconquest of the island state of Arulco, this time changing the action in turn by the action in real time. However, the end result is far from original, as discussed below. The Back in Action argument tells how the wife of former President Arulco has come to power his country, becoming a tyrant who rules with an iron hand and terrorizing its citizens. So we hired the ousted president to us, a veteran commander, to which we direct a group of mercenaries on a mission to conquer the island and end the dictator. The original story is respected at all times, though its staging and its narrative is not no big deal. It is there to meet and serve as an excuse to give rise to all operations will be carried out, but at no time will become the reason that impels us to keep playing to see what happens next. Once we start playing, the first thing we must do before jumping into the field of battle will be to recruit mercenaries to our squad, so we have to choose from a selection of 40 candidates. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, as they may be experts in the use of ranged weapons, the use of explosives, medical, or very secretive. Of course, not everyone will be available from the very beginning, either by lack of seed money or because we refuse to our lack of experience.



As for the customization of our characters, they will gain experience with every action they take, allowing them to level up, and consequently earn points that can be shared among your stats. One thing that is lacking in this aspect is an editor with which created us to our own mercenaries to start the game. At first the economic management of our mercenaries, equipment and ammunition is interesting and will force us to carefully select our investments. However, once we play a few missions, and performing occasional secondary objective, our revenues will skyrocket and it will be quite rare that we get to missing money at some point, this facet of the title being completely wasted and uninteresting real. With our squad of mercenaries and selected (can take up to six) and in the field of battle, when we start to realize the enormous changes that have been made in the traditional gameplay of the series. Now everything happens in real time, although we have the option to pause the action with the space bar to give orders that we want each of our soldiers. In this way we can develop strategies paused quite complex, since we have the option of giving more than one order, as they move to a place, shoot a certain number of times and thereupon move to another place to take cover. In addition, we make our units perform joint attacks, forcing them to not open fire until the rest is in shooting position.

This is a system that its developers have dubbed "Plan & Go" and will bring much more controversial among fans of the series veterans, but it works more or less bearable. Thanks to him we have a number of actions to perform, such as picking locks, setting explosives, demining, sneak attack with a knife to make no noise, repair weapons, trade items, etc. However, we found a very old-fashioned interface, cumbersome and impractical, and controls that could have been more polished. Because of this, do almost anything we can take a huge amount of clicks, such as inventory management or actions theoretically as simple as an object exchange between two of our characters or repair a weapon. Continuing with the possibilities of action, we can force our mercenaries to move running, crouching, crawling or standing pointing the gun. Each of these will more or less noise (which we can control one of the bars next to the portrait of our characters) and will waste more or less of our stamina bar, so we are parameters that take into account at the time of move. At the time of detection will also influence us to move in the shadows and camouflage type we choose. Unfortunately, all this stealth factor stays quite useless, since the erratic AI of the enemies will never be safe, cost too much stamina to move slowly and surprise attacks are not usually guarantee of success.

Following changes to the original, is to mention the elimination of the fog of war. Now we can see the entire map and the positions of the enemies properly marked with red marks from anywhere to have it all under control, something that takes away much of the original tension of not knowing what we will and we forced to do earlier surveys before moving to the whole squad. As expected, this decrease quite the tactical component of the title, formulate a plan of action and move at the right time. However, the big mistake of Back in Action which overthrew all the work is found in Artificial Intelligence, to which we could rename smoothly as Artificial Stupidity. For starters, the routes taken our characters when we command that is directed to a site, often carry unnecessary detours, to stay a while not knowing what to do or even to jam, which will force us to be all the time remaining of them, instead of giving orders and watching another area of the map while running. This is especially bleeding when they hit each other, they begin to go against each other without allowing forward. But if the AI ally and has serious problems, the enemy is not far behind. And these seem taken from the original Doom games like, and who behave in an overly aggressive and stupid, running from front to us when we see no other plan to destroy us with its usual numerical superiority. This numerical superiority to say do not say, because sometimes, when engaged in combat with the soldier who is completely isolated and cut off from the rest, we are immediately overwhelmed by a veritable legion of enemies rushing towards our position (front how not to), leaving us in a rather unfair and precarious.

Graphically, Jagged Alliance: Back in Action no wonder. We are faced with a 3D modeling of the characters quite poor and without much detail. The scenarios on the other hand do their job without highlighting especially, but visually they are all very similar between them, which causes a rapid general feeling of monotony does no good to the title. Furthermore, missing a physics engine with which to go with our maps altering explosions and bombs, as they are not having their tactical utility is reduced. As for the sound, Back in Action comes with vocals in English and Spanish subtitles. The interpretation of the doublers is purely functional and repetition of phrases during missions becomes quite annoying. As for the subtitles, we find a Spanish translation with many errors, with constant absences of words, phrases and punctuation, which we will notice especially in the tutorial. Moreover, sound effects and soundtrack are in line to be there as a mere functional element. The ideas to reinvent the series that brings Jagged Alliance: Back in Action are not all bad and it shows some effort to bring something different. But either one thing or another, all trying to do good just seeing burdened by various problems that prevent the experience as successful as we would like and that it falls far short of Jagged Alliance 2. The cumbersome interface, the disastrous Artificial Intelligence and how limited your options are tactics are just some of the mistakes that end up derailing a product that could have gone much further. All this, coupled with the radical change in the key elements of its gameplay, make it difficult to recommend even the staunchest fans of the original.