Jagged Alliance is one of the older strategy titles out there. The first game was released for MS-DOS way back in 1995, and there has been a somewhat uneven release of titles ever since. Multiple re-releases, spin-off titles, and tons of DLC abound for Jagged Alliance. And let’s not even look at the digital rights involved, the ownership of which is so convoluted, it would take an entire article just to map out. Suffice it to say that ever since that original release of the first Jagged Alliance, developers have been trying and failing to recapture the magic.
Into this maelstrom of games and misbegotten ideas wanders Jagged Alliance: Rage. Brought to you by the team over at the virtually unknown Cliffhanger Productions (not even a website) and published by HandyGames, Rage sets out to win back fans to the Jagged Alliance IP with an all new offering, available on consoles and PC. Let’s take a quick look at what they’ve brought to the table in this reimagining of a PC classic.
Jagged Alliance: Rage is intended to be a direct sequel to the original game. Taking place 20 years after the original title, it sets a whole new stage for some fairly familiar mercenaries. Of course, being 20 years later, each one has their problems, including functional alcoholism, a penchant for unstanchable bleeding, and so on. Cliffhanger took pains to make each individual mercenary stand out with their own nuances, strengths, and weaknesses. It had the potential to be an endearing alteration to the fundamentals of the game, but instead just comes off as irritating as you have to balance even more spinning plates to keep everyone healthy and functional for the duration of each mission.
Looking at Jagged Alliance: Rage’s gameplay, it’s a bit of a mixed bag as well. Rage throws you into a mission, trains you up on all the specifics of what each button press does, and then simply leaves you hanging, assuming you’ve memorized every obtuse command available. It seems logical when you play through the tutorial, but afterwards, you’re constantly hunting for the right button to crouch or equip something, not to mention the obtuse menu design. Overall, the best description of Jagged Alliance: Rage’s controls is simply a hot mess. Inventory management is a hassle, cursors don’t line up and aren’t clearly highlighted, and moving items is a pain. You have to manually move items one by one when looting, something that’s pretty much a necessity in the game, and the entirely of inventory management seems like much more of a chore than it should be.
The same goes for the combat menu, which is definitely designed for PC and has tacked on controller support for the Xbox One. It’s hard to tell what’s highlighted as you attempt to select options, and easy to hit the wrong button and waste precious action points. Combat is odd too, as you can do things like boost your accuracy to 100% easily, making head shots a breeze. Sure, there’s some challenge in the strategy, but the AI is weak and predictable, pulling enemies together in easily targeted groups as often as not, and simply not presenting a real challenge, unless you repeatedly forget to select crouch before sneaking up behind someone like I did due to the damned battle system. Sure, you can learn the controls and memorize everything, but it’s simply not intuitive at all. Yes, I’m ignoring the Rage points and all the funny little special abilities each character gains here, but in the long run, they’re just not important. They don’t make the game any more fun and it all feels gimmicky somehow.
Graphically, Rage is a mixed bag as well. It’s fairly detailed, but it’s certainly nothing special. The rotating camera certainly helps gameplay, but that’s pretty much standard on everything, not a surprise. The redneck feel to the game doesn’t truly shine through as well as it would have with a slightly more cartoonish style, but it’s still present here and there. Honestly, Jagged Alliance: Rage looks like a game that’s 10 years old and just runs in HD. The imagery is nothing notable, the character portraits and artwork are decent but not spectacular, and the game feels like it’s just missing something visually. It doesn’t have the impact that games with a little more personality such as Mutant Chronicles have. I feel like the developers went in the wrong direction here, trying to appeal to Jagged Alliance fans while taking the franchise in a new direction.
One place where the game did shine however was the audio. Jagged Alliance: Rage sounds great, and in addition to the excellent foley work and decent but forgettable music, there are some surprisingly good spoken dialogue pieces, many of which had me laughing out loud. The voice actors were excellent in this one, nailing their characters’ personality quirks on almost every line. It’s hard not to love hokey banter in the middle of your tactical turn-based combat. If only there was a bit more depth to the storyline or tactics, there would be something here.
When you look at the full package, Jagged Alliance: Rage is nothing special. It’s just another tactical game in a long, long list of tactical strategy games that are being regularly churned out by the industry now. This is one that doesn’t manage to stand out from the pack however, unlike the exceptional Fell Seal, the Battletech reboot, or the widely acclaimed Mutant Year Zero. Simply put, Jagged Alliance: Rage is a sub-standard strategy game with no real sense of identity. It tries to capitalize on the franchise name recognition, but in reality bears scant resemblance to the original title and falls flat relatively quickly. Do yourself a favor, skip this one, and save the frustration unless you’re an utterly rabid devotee to the franchise.
This review was based on a digital copy of Jagged Alliance: Rage provided by the publisher. It was played with an Xbox One X on a Sony 55” LED TV in 1080p. Images for this review are stock and direct from the Jagged Alliance: Rage website, as I had an issue with my Captures on the Xbox One for this one. My apologies.