Posted August 23, 2014
low rated
I'll probably getting around to liking this game once I start getting used to it, but here are my first impressions, which are not nice.
First off, I hate the intro screen. It screams "wow I'm so edgy, oh look, the mouse pointer has a delay on it and it moves all jagged like, don't you like when games force software emulated mice instead of hardware?" Really dissuaded me. Chivalry does this too, as well as a few other games. We buy PC games for their responsiveness and superiority. When even your fucking menu is less than responsive while simultaneously broadcasting to you it's obnoxious un self awareness of it's smugness, that is very very dissuading. JA1's menu is minimalistic and responsive. That's how games should be.
Jagged Alliance 1 is straight and to the point. You are briefed in a POV perspective, and the person speaking is looking and speaking directly to you. The only thing that changes in the cutscene/briefing/intro of JA2 is that the POV feeling is lessened by the camera being positioned in third person. It is far less personal.
The tutorial stuff is welcomed, although I'm kind of impatient because I kind of know this stuff already. It's nice to have an ingame "wiki," rather than having to resort to alt tabbing and looking up random shit on the internet. I'm impatient though, because I kind of just want to get to the game. Tutorial material is nice, but it's like the father that abandoned you at a young age and forced you to fend for yourself, then all of a sudden at age 22 he wants (I think I should point out this is just an analogy) to have a heartfelt talk with you about starting your new career without so much as an apology. It's just like, "get the hell outta my way." JA barely even tells you the controls. You have to play a dozen hours of experimental play just to figure out how to properly start out a fresh game, nevermind later game.
And then the game still doesn't want to tell you what to do. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't used IMP (I think that's what it's called) to create my own mercenary the game would have insisted me to do it. And why can't I hire my own mercenaries? Why is the game so obsessed with me honestly answering this "honestly" put together psyche evaluation? If it's all about what action hero you want to be, and none of it really pertains to reality or my actual personality, why the hell is the game forcing me to answer a psyche evaluation? The templates I was given to choose from weren't too far off from my personality, but I wouldn't say it's extremely close. The game needed to give an option to allow you to pick between all the templates (and whatever other perhaps hidden things the game decided for you).
I'm greeted to Arulco's map screen and all I can say is wow, brown is such a nice color. I see how the brown kind of complements the other bits of darker brown around the map screen. I miss Metavira, the off whites and blues and brightness. Perhaps environments become more interesting later on. And why can't my decent marksman hit anything? How does the aiming system even work? Sure it'll bombard me with tutorial shit about the interface, and I lazily set it aside, but now the one thing that's pretty much new to me the game doesn't even bother to mention what the hell is going on or what I'm expected to do. I'm dropped into enemy territory, wait, the game doesn't just cut to turn based, there was some sort of timer and no action point count at first so is it like a fusion of turn based and real time? Only sometimes? What the hell is going on?
I figure out how to go prone and by that time an enemy has shown up and I can't get one shot off his torso. I keep missing. I'm obviously not equipped for this situation. Was there a mercenary hiring screen back there? I don't think the game was letting me because it was in "tutorial mode." So I get a lucky shot at his head, didn't even mean to aim there actually as torso shots even seemed hard enough. He said something about surrendering. Am I expected to fail as some sort of tutorial/introduction element?
Then again I guess there might have been a tutorial window I hastily closed, I'm not sure.
Then I was done. I just wasn't so anxious to jump into this game. By comparison JA1 is fun right now as it is. I'll beat that one first.
First off, I hate the intro screen. It screams "wow I'm so edgy, oh look, the mouse pointer has a delay on it and it moves all jagged like, don't you like when games force software emulated mice instead of hardware?" Really dissuaded me. Chivalry does this too, as well as a few other games. We buy PC games for their responsiveness and superiority. When even your fucking menu is less than responsive while simultaneously broadcasting to you it's obnoxious un self awareness of it's smugness, that is very very dissuading. JA1's menu is minimalistic and responsive. That's how games should be.
Jagged Alliance 1 is straight and to the point. You are briefed in a POV perspective, and the person speaking is looking and speaking directly to you. The only thing that changes in the cutscene/briefing/intro of JA2 is that the POV feeling is lessened by the camera being positioned in third person. It is far less personal.
The tutorial stuff is welcomed, although I'm kind of impatient because I kind of know this stuff already. It's nice to have an ingame "wiki," rather than having to resort to alt tabbing and looking up random shit on the internet. I'm impatient though, because I kind of just want to get to the game. Tutorial material is nice, but it's like the father that abandoned you at a young age and forced you to fend for yourself, then all of a sudden at age 22 he wants (I think I should point out this is just an analogy) to have a heartfelt talk with you about starting your new career without so much as an apology. It's just like, "get the hell outta my way." JA barely even tells you the controls. You have to play a dozen hours of experimental play just to figure out how to properly start out a fresh game, nevermind later game.
And then the game still doesn't want to tell you what to do. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't used IMP (I think that's what it's called) to create my own mercenary the game would have insisted me to do it. And why can't I hire my own mercenaries? Why is the game so obsessed with me honestly answering this "honestly" put together psyche evaluation? If it's all about what action hero you want to be, and none of it really pertains to reality or my actual personality, why the hell is the game forcing me to answer a psyche evaluation? The templates I was given to choose from weren't too far off from my personality, but I wouldn't say it's extremely close. The game needed to give an option to allow you to pick between all the templates (and whatever other perhaps hidden things the game decided for you).
I'm greeted to Arulco's map screen and all I can say is wow, brown is such a nice color. I see how the brown kind of complements the other bits of darker brown around the map screen. I miss Metavira, the off whites and blues and brightness. Perhaps environments become more interesting later on. And why can't my decent marksman hit anything? How does the aiming system even work? Sure it'll bombard me with tutorial shit about the interface, and I lazily set it aside, but now the one thing that's pretty much new to me the game doesn't even bother to mention what the hell is going on or what I'm expected to do. I'm dropped into enemy territory, wait, the game doesn't just cut to turn based, there was some sort of timer and no action point count at first so is it like a fusion of turn based and real time? Only sometimes? What the hell is going on?
I figure out how to go prone and by that time an enemy has shown up and I can't get one shot off his torso. I keep missing. I'm obviously not equipped for this situation. Was there a mercenary hiring screen back there? I don't think the game was letting me because it was in "tutorial mode." So I get a lucky shot at his head, didn't even mean to aim there actually as torso shots even seemed hard enough. He said something about surrendering. Am I expected to fail as some sort of tutorial/introduction element?
Then again I guess there might have been a tutorial window I hastily closed, I'm not sure.
Then I was done. I just wasn't so anxious to jump into this game. By comparison JA1 is fun right now as it is. I'll beat that one first.
Post edited August 23, 2014 by JCD-Bionicman
