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A few years back, Sir-Tech's wonderful Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games won itself a legion of rabid fans with a genre-bending mix of squad combat, economic simulation, and cheeky humor. Never taking itself too seriously, the game put you in charge of mercenary black-ops, shepherding a merc crew from assignment to budgeting to recruitment and, ultimately, controlling the troops on the ground. Mercs would bitch and complain if unhappy, and their allegiance to the almighty dollar was constantly tested by political and nationalist squabbling. The front-office skullduggery was every bit as vicious as the action in the field, and that combination made Jagged Alliance an absolute riot to play. Tickets
Jagged Alliance 2, now under the publishing aegis of TalonSoft, is the long (long, long)-awaited sequel, and manages to throw some new ingredients into the old formula without abandoning the elements that made the original so entertaining.
The setting is a war-torn island nation called Arulco, where a military coup has installed a ruthless female dictator. The new queen's exiled family members have hired you to spark a revolution in Arulco and supervise the guerrilla destabilization campaign against her repressive armed forces.
They sure as hell called the right man for the job. Using a clever laptop interface, you have access to a dizzying array of war-for-hire resources. Your first assignment is to recruit a guerrilla leader from the jungle hideout of a rebel band and hire a crew of mercs. Here's where we return to the wild and wooly world of A.I.M., the Association of International Mercenaries. A.I.M. is a network of the world's more scurrilous paramilitary elements. A motley roster of disgruntled ex-operatives and career criminals, these guys (and gals) are specialists in black-ops skills ranging from explosives to sniping to knife assassination. They're available for hire at rates that reflect their various strengths and weaknesses.
Putting together your team, and managing your bottom line, is half the fun of Jagged Alliance 2. Each merc is a unique and vivid personality; their interplay makes for high entertainment value. Some people refuse to work with Communists; others have long-standing grudges against colleagues who dropped the ball on past missions. You'll find yourself playing wet nurse as well as puppet master, assuaging bruised egos and juggling the various personalities of your crew members.
But the meat and potatoes of JA2 is the field action. Your missions begin with drops into the Arulco countryside, where you can almost always expect resistance from the queen's henchmen. The skill level of the opposition grows steadily stronger as the campaign unfolds, evolving from pistol-equipped thugs to superbly armed and coordinated commandos.
Combat itself begins with real-time movement around the pre- rendered 2D maps, but once an enemy is spotted, action shifts to a turn-based, action-points model. You can direct your team to run, crouch, lie prone, and belly-crawl, and open fire with the help of a targeting reticle that advises you on the likelihood of a shot finding its target. Sound tactical thinking is generally rewarded; in one satisfying gunfight, I had a shooter exchange fire with a barricaded enemy while a knifeman snuck around and took out the bad guy from behind. There's also a surprising amount of non-combat interaction during the missions - letters are delivered to non-player characters, interrogations are conducted, and items are picked up and added to your inventory list.
JA2's disappointments spring from the lapses of its design ambitions. The campaign is totally linear, and, as a result, replay value is not very high. Worse, the lack of a multiplayer element (in a game that positively screams for such a feature) means you'll never be able to match your wits against other human merc bosses. Fans of squad-based tactical combat games will find this one a bit simplistic and uninvigorating, but the engaging managerial elements will satisfy anybody who liked the original JA or New World Computing's underrated merc sim Wages of War. After all, there's nothing like watching a good plan come together.