Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge Demo

<strong>[ Demo ]</strong>

<p>It's time to get your hands dirty with the demo for <a href="http://www.gfi.su/index1.php?langid=2&idt=675&categ_id=39&men_id=11" target="_blank">Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge</a>, the game that was <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=20011" target="_blank">almost</a> part of the Jagged Alliance series. GFI has been strangely silent about the demo, but <a href="http://www.jacenter.pl/" target="_blank">Lenn</a> was nice enough to point out the link over at <a href="http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/board/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/154309/page/1#Post154309" target="_blank">The Bear's Pit</a>. Download the 731 mb demo directly from <a href="http://www.gfi.su/files/demo/JAZZ_DEMO.exe" target="_blank">here</a>. And yes, it's in English.</p><div style="text-align: center"><a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/gallery.php?dir=Jagged%20Alliance%203D&file=HG_01.jpg"><img src="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/screenshots/Jagged%20Alliance%203D/thumbs/HG_01_thumb.jpg" alt=" " width="200" height="160" /></a> </div><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/forums/ultimatebb.php">Bear's Pit</a></p>

some step up and post some thoughts on this one. I need to find out if it's worth loading up windows to check out

The crappiness of my current internet connection has never been the cause of such heartbreak as when I read this announcement. JA2 being my favorite game of all time, I'm wary of the official JA3 for one and only one reason: The Silent Storm engine. And I only have one complaint about the Silent Storm engine: It just doesn't do big enough areas.

The ranges in JA2 were pretty realistic, once you accepted that each square was 10 meters. Graphically, that didn't seem to be the case (since each person would have been 7-8 meters wide), but you know it was a 2D game and us gamer types are used to that kind of abstraction. So when you let lose with the Uzi from 12 squares away, it looked like you were missing from point blank, but you were really missing from 120 meters, and rightly so. JA2 got away with this because the it's era still had graphical limitations, and it was all good, as the youngsters say.

Then Silent Storm. Smaller boards than JA2, sometimes brutally so; I remember a town level with like 4 buildings; in JA2, sometimes a sector had 12 or more. But rendering a gigantic environment of such great detail isn't easy, so they did what they did. As an upshot, there was no way the devs had enough room to let your sniper rifle shoot from 500+ meters, so they shrank the ranges way down. So again, you're missing at what seems to be point blank with your MP 40. Only now, there are no squares, and everything else is perfectly (beautifully) in scale to your handsome 3D men. So I'm not really believing that the guy who looks 50 feet away is actually 50 meters out. But OK, that was Silent Storm, and it was a very fun game in its own right. The range thing just bugged the hell out of me.

Shortcut to JA3 announcement, and now I'm wary. Assault rifles have pretty long effective ranges, and in JA, your guys get to play with them. Is the SS engine up to rendering environments that support engagements at that range? Judging by the claustrophobic screenshots released so far, no way.

Shortcut to this game. I'm not totally clear on what happened between Strategy First and whoever makes this, but I wonder if they've ripped off enough of the gameplay to make it great. And I wonder if the engine can handle the scale JA so desperately needs...

I tried to play this, but it crashed while loading the mission (I presume). Up till then it was clear that this game was supposed to be JA3 and the developers wink at you constantly: the merc organization is called IAM, there is a site (with the activation code xep604) where you can create your own merc by answering silly questions, etc.

Also, I hope that this isn't the "gold" version, because it's clear the game was translated by someone with a strenuous grasp of the English language.

abstract said:

I tried to play this, but it crashed while loading the mission (I presume). Up till then it was clear that this game was supposed to be JA3 and the developers wink at you constantly: the merc organization is called IAM, there is a site (with the activation code xep604) where you can create your own merc by answering silly questions, etc.

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Well, not running doesn't exactly instill confidence.

Also, I hope that this isn't the "gold" version, because it's clear the game was translated by someone with a strenuous grasp of the English language.

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Can't say I'm thrilled about this, but I've come to expect it.

I've wondered, could they just make everything smaller? (@yeesh)

My first playthrough was pretty odd.

The first thing I noticed was the lack of tutorial. Which is fine, as I'm used to just figuring things out anyway.

At the onset of the mission you get to deploy your squad members around the edge of the map. The game runs in real-time until you engage in combat. You meet up with your contact who tries to sway you to help him while you're there (Local banditos causing shit.) You can: a) Tell him to take care of his own problems, b) Buy him a way out, or c) Tell him you'll "take care" of them.

Well, I gathered some nearby mercs and starting running them up north until I found a soldier in the distance with a mouth icon (international symbol for "Let's talk shit"), but when I got close combat started. Here's where it gets hairy. Despite them being very close to me, my SMGs can't seem to hit very regularly (even while selecting the pebble in conjunction with the bullseye, which I come to find facilitates a single accurate shot), and only my 9mm pistol seems to hit (with her just a step in front of my SMGs.) The Calico hand smg seems to fire directly into the ground if you're anything but standing, judging by the little streak tracers for bullets. Luckily the evil banditos nearby start to flank the soldiers, and the two shotguns I had in rear positions sweep through the back and one shot a soldier nearly every time they shoot. I tried having some of the SMG people use grenades, but they did around 15 damage landing nearby, while the shotgun did 100-120. Eventually I just got tired of missing and engaged in melee combat, which the asian merc named Dragon excels at, naturally.

All in all, I lose three in the soldier conflict, and two more in the bandito discussion (we didn't see eye to eye on an issue.) The lone victor is my black voodoo merc who plowed through the bandito house with a 40mm grenade launcher after losing his friends. A powerful moment indeed.

After that I couldn't recruit anyone and try to pursue the other 2-3 missions on the map. I'll have to do another runthrough which should go much better now that I've found the arms dealer. I can get actual rifles rather than resigning myself to fisticuffs.

The firearms combat didn't impress me much, the bullets didn't have that visceral impact I remember feeling from JA2. Though you could knock them down with certain shots, it just didn't make me squeal with delight. This could all change when using actual weapons, though.

And yes, it's in English. Just barely, though.

Smaller

I wish. That's just not the way game companies roll. Let me date myself. The year was I don't fucking know, and the game was Warcraft. The resolution was that old one 320 by 240? And it was really cool; all your little guy smoved around IN REAL TIME! Awesome. Anywho, then I heard tell that they were making another one, but this time in full SVGA or whatever 640X480 was called. And I was like, woe! They'll be able to fit 4X as many units on the screen! This is going to rule!

Of course they didn't. They just used the extra resolution to make the guys way prettier, and the end result was actually such larger sprites that you ended up with less total guys on the screen in the hi res sequel than had been in the low res original.

But man they were pretty little guys. And Korea responded well. And America too, I guess.

Now of course in 3D you can just zoom out and make everything as small as you want, but the bottom line is the SS engine brings a certain level of detail which (I assume) limits the environment size because the engine can only handle so much, and thus limits the amount of playing area, indirectly shrinking ranges. And just like embiggifying the sprites to the detriment of gameplay in the olden days, so too are devs willing to em-detail-ify the 3D models (actors and environments) at the expense of rendering limits. Why? Because that's what people want to buy: Pretty.

Anywho, this game (by contrast) looks like it sports pretty big ranges, but of course that's just one element of JA deliciousness.

The English thing I don't get. I will never get. I'm completely confused by it, so someone clue me in. OK, they don't want to hire professional translators or something, fine. But just like post the fucking copy to an Internet message board ANYWHERE and any one of us native English speakers can fix 99% of your incredibly clumbsy errors without even needing context. I mean, that's how bad these Russian games are, and I don't get it.

Oh you kooky Russians, check out these filenames from JAZZ textures :

body_big_nigger.skin
head_big_nigger.dds
militia_nigger_body.dds

and so on...


How can you be stupid enough to actually name the filenames like that?

Wow, I wonder how many times I've missed something like that.

Wow.

Yannos said:

Oh you kooky Russians, check out these filenames from JAZZ textures :

body_big_nigger.skin
head_big_nigger.dds
militia_nigger_body.dds

and so on...


How can you be stupid enough to actually name the filenames like that?

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Wow. Can you make a screenshot?
Edit: nevermind, i checked it myself.
Developers promised to rename the files.

where did you read that they will change it?

Here:
http://forums.ag.ru/?board=fl_ja&action=display&s=0&num=1115291065&start=1600

К западному релизу - уберем. К российскому - нет, некогда.

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Translation: We will fix it for the western release, but we have no time to do so for russian version.

They will change them to "black_person"

Oh dear oh dear
What geniuses.

micmu said:

They will change them to "black_person"

Oh dear oh dear
What geniuses.

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I figured they would change them to "whiny_nigger" or something equally sensitive.

The demo is very similar to JA 2 in many ways, I must admit... The controls take a short time getting used to (the UI is a bit too small), but definitely aren't worth complaining about. The tactical depth and JA 'feel' is there. The bullets leave a trail of light/fire behind them, it gets annoying after a while. What worries me is the campaign map - it is no longer a free-roaming, divided into sectors one. In addition, the character design leaves much to be desired, it is relatively hard to get attached to Your squad.
Still, the game has big potential and shall undoubtfully be worth buying provided none rushes the release.

I am willing to accept a lot of the changes since it is NOT JA 3.