By Jim Rossignol on August 13th, 2011 at 8:09 am.
It’s GamesCom next week in Cologne, and that means we’re about to be engulfed in a torrent of news. A few early trailers and so on have started turning up, and he first of these to attach to our GamesCom 2011 tag will be this: Jagged Alliance Online (not to be confused with Jagged Alliance: Back In Action). Gamigo’s MMOG take on the tactical squad-combat game is going to be properly revealed at the show – having been announced at the show last year – but today we get a bit of a glimpse of it in action. Developer’s Cliffhanger are producing an isometric combat game that is reminiscent of the original series, even if not quite the same sort of turn-based affair. Go take a look, and we’ll round up some more details next week.
Ivan!
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Colour me intrigued but with a slight blue tinge of skepticism.
And pray tell, where’s my ice cream truck?
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Mine is stuck near Grumm without fuel.
Where do I even get fuel?
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you can find it in red cannisters in some areas, also I think there is a guy who sells it (and another vehicle) somewhere down south.
Although some of that may be the 1.13 mod, its been so long..
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I do play 1.13 and of course I know about cannisters( it’s my 10+th playthrough, I just never used a car since helicopter was always an easier choice), I need to find that guy who sell fuel.
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You can buy a fuel in or next to the junkyard, not far from prison. But maybe, you have to have certain character in your party? Don’t remember.
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He’s one square west of Balime. Gives you a nice jeep. Well, sells you one anyway. 1.13 is awesome and everyone who liked JA2 should play it.
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I think you get fuel AT the junkyard.
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This is too little footage to get me excited, but I’ve bookmarked the developer’s site since this was first announced for a reason: the original Jagged Alliance games were one of my best gaming experiences. Thing is, you can’t have a turn based game MMO, so I’m waiting to see what they have in mind. Cause global hubs with PVP arenas and instanced areas can perhaps be the only solution, though I don’t consider that a massively multiplayer game, as I didn’t Guild Wars.
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the decider decides!
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80% clip of some nonsense no-one wants to see and only a few seconds of footage :S. Who even wants to see CGI crap in trailers anyway?
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You misspelled “CGI of beloved fan-favourite characters from the franchise.”
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I find it a little weird that companies fight so hard to acquire IP only to promptly ignore everything that actually made that IP successful.
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Like what? It looks pretty faithful to me: There’s mercenaries, there’s guns, there’s explosions, looks turn based. You might even get to overthrow a dictator.
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I think it’s nice that you feel that way.
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Indie platformers are very successful recently. Is this a free to play indie online Jagged Alliance platformer?
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Look, 2K. Look upon this. This is game development. What you’re doing is… I don’t know what you’re doing
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“When you bury your secrets, you better make sure their dad”
Dad what? DAD WHAT?
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“…is buried too!”
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This already looks better than Jagged Alliance: Back in Action and it’s also supposed to be turnbased.
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I agree… it looked more like Jagged Alliance than the new Jagged Alliance.
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I hope Jagged Alliance 3′s new owners will still be using the Silent Storm engine. A better turn based tactical squad game engine I have yet to see.
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Agreed, the engine is truly amazing, you can almost destroy each building brick by brick.
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FINE, I’M REINSTALLING IT.
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I also remember it having horrible performance issues.
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Fantastic engine, but performance was always a problem.
Strange slowdowns, and more importantly, AI turns would take forever. It made it a bit of a chore to play to be honest. Which is a shame really, so few other games allow you to shoot through the ceiling because you heard a noise above you, only to overdo it and have the ceiling crumble on top of you.
That, and those freaking panzerkleins. Could’ve done without those.
It makes me sad that the engine has been used for anything else (albeit with some improvements on the technical side), or even something similar. Hell, someone could use the Men of War engine for similar results (another glorious game where you can blow up a house and accidentally kill a man with a falling brick).
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The original developers of Silent Storm did use the engine for something else: a game adaptation of the Night Watch series of books (and films).
While awesome in theory, the game really wasn’t. The mechanics that gave Silent Storm its tactical diversity were gutted (largely because they didn’t fit the setting), but not replaced with anything more interesting.
In addition, none of the glaring technical problems with the game were fixed, including the lengthy AI turns. The end result was a game that dragged even more than Silent Storm.
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This looks better than the one they showed before that was supposed to be the one that would keep the original fans happy. So confused.
But I bet that this is going to be loaded with “pay to win” micro transactions, pointless social features and isn’t going to have a quarter of the depth in the tactics engine of JA2 so thankfully I still have plenty of reasons to be miserable.
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Well, we do have micro transactions – though mostly they make your life easier. If you can take the heat, you probably won’t have to pay. And social features…nah- currently even our chat isn’t ah..state of the art, to be honest. We got PvP and Co-op mutliplayer coming up though.
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But, but… this is not contemporary…?
How dare they! And in this day and age no less!
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Quick, somebody call Lady Gaga and 2k games. This sort of aggression against contemporary culture will not stand.
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Cliffhanger- stubborn, backwards and proud of it. Hmm…sounds like a good company motto for us.
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This all serves as a painful reminder that I still haven’t managed to finish JA2 Gold. It’s one of my all-time favourites, but it’s just so fucking hard…
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Sir-Tech lives?!?!?! Oh, “Cliffhanger Productions”.
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I have always dreamt of a real JA2-online-game, where everyone plays as one (highly customizable) mercenary, taking up missions of various length all around the world. Permadeath, perhaps. I wonder what this will turn out to be. Ah… Jagged Alliance.
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Instead you get instances (sorry, “scenarios”) and pay to win.
BUT IT’S AUTHENTIC, MAN
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We actually have contracts – which are scenario maps strung into a storyline – but of course they are instanced. As were the JA2 maps – so I don’t see the failure here. And you pay to play – as with every game. You just decide what you want to pay for. However we actually are thinking about giving a “subscription style” premium currency option, so you can use it like a subscription based game. Not sure yet, if that will work. But if enough people prefer it this way, we can adapt.
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ANOTHER THING: ONLINE
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I always got the impression that the JA games were very niche. Loved fiercely by a few and ignored by many. Not great sellers. Not the sort of license the marketing boys would fight to acquire, whether to exalt it or degrade it; not enough people are supposed to care.
Am I wrong about the sales numbers? Did these games actually do quite well? Or is it a matter of publishers now turning to licenses that are supposed to have some game equivalent of street cred?
(I like the games, BTW; I’m just surprised at the recent attempts to revive the franchise.)
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Actually the franchise is beloved by many and bought by a few :)
But the great thing about being an online browser game with a limited budget is: It does not cost you and arm and a leg to break even. We fully expect this to be a niche game compared to say WoW. But then, we have about 1% of their budget, so we can make do with 1% of their revenue :)
It also allows us to do things that do not need to cater to the lowest common demoninator. We may not go as much full hardcore as many may wish, but we don’t need millions of players. Actually we aim at fewer players who have more staying power. We have over 100 single player missions as of yet (so over 100 maps to play in), which hopefully will keep people occupied until we have delivered more.
Goiung niche is much more fun!
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Ah, thanks for the reply. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.
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This game has one thing in common with 98% of the other high profile games in the past 2 years; it completely sucks.
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I wish I was precognizant. This looks a lot like the Jagged Alliance we love – certainly a LOT more than the realtime abomination in the works
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